In recent years there has been a huge movement to using your Internet marketing skills to help offline business owners market their businesses online. And there are a number of reasons why this seems like a good idea. First we'll explore those and then we'll look at the reasons I think it's a bad idea for your business and how a couple of changes can make all of the difference to your business.

I think the biggest reason that people get into offline consulting in the first place is the lure of easy money. Trying to make money online as an affiliate has become increasingly difficult. Comparatively speaking, it's far easier for most people to convince a local business owner to hand over some cash. In return you market their business with your Internet marketing skills.

At first glance this seems like a great deal. You get relatively easy and fast cash and the business owner gets more customers from the work you do.

Sounds like a win-win, right? Wrong. Here's why.

You really aren't doing anything to grow an asset of your own. It's almost certain that you'll lose your client one way or the other. Perhaps they will not see the results they'd hoped from your efforts (maybe they had unrealistic expectations) or perhaps they feel that everything is now set up to run smoothly so they don't need you anymore. Whatever the reasons, you will almost certainly lose that client. And then what are you left with? Nothing.

Here's A Far Better Way To Help Local Business Owners AND Help Yourself At The Same Time

There's a simple way you can turn this around in your favor and still help the business owners at the same time. Instead of using your skills to work on your clients websites, why not build a website that you own and brand it for your client. Then, instead of charging them a monthly fee for services, you charge them a monthly fee to be the sole advertiser on the site (rent) or you charge them per lead (if that is legal in the client's industry).

So here's how your business looks under that scenario...

• -The client still gets the benefit that they want derived from the site (new customers) but you get to own the assets.

• -As long as your work is producing calls, it's unlikely that the client will ever leave (if they leave, they have nothing).

• -There's no question about the value you bring to the table.

• -If the client leaves you or doesn't pay you then you simply point the phone number that you own to your new client (in the old scenario you would have done all of that work with nothing to show for it).

I've set up a lot of my business to run this way and it has made all of the difference. I call this strategy being a local affiliate. When you think about it, it is still affiliate marketing just done at the local level. That doesn't mean that you have to play locally, it means that you deal with clients who are local to their customers. I talk a lot more about local affiliate marketing on my blog.