Affiliate Internet Marketing Business
Let me ask you a question. Do you like the idea of having to store inventory, collect credit card payments, run to the post office to mail a product, and to have to deal with all kinds of customer service problems? If you are like most people, the thought of having to do all that makes you think twice about starting your own home business. The good news is that you can actually make money focusing solely on the promotion of other people’s products and services in a form of business called affiliate internet marketing.
Imagine if all your time and energy could be spent focusing on promotion and marketing, and you could do it all on the internet. Somebody else worries about creating a product, collecting payment information, mailing orders, and dealing with an entire laundry list of activities that have nothing to do with sales and marketing. What I am describing to you is easily one of the best business opportunities in the world and it’s called affiliate internet marketing. Let me explain how it works…
Companies or individuals create products and services that can be sold on the internet. You can often times sign up as an “affiliate” (usually for free) and they will pay you a percentage of the sale every time you refer somebody to their website who purchases one of the products or services that they offer. It’s sort of like working on their sales and marketing team, but you are actually in business for yourself.
Offering an affiliate program makes a lot of sense for the company because they get a lot more sales from affiliates that they normally wouldn’t have gotten. Even though they have to pay the affiliate a certain percentage they still make more money than they would otherwise. Also, some people don’t really like selling and marketing, they would rather operate behind the scenes doing product fulfillment and handling customer service. They let their affiliates do all the marketing.
As an affiliate marketer, you make money every time you successfully refer somebody to a particular website and that person makes a purchase. Commissions for affiliate internet marketing are usually at least 50% and can sometimes be as high as 100% of the purchase price. You might wonder how companies can make any money if they pay you so much money in commissions. That’s not your problem!
In reality, these companies/individuals usually have a variety of products and services, and they more than make up for any money that they pay you as an affiliate by selling the customer that you refer additional products and services over the lifetime of the business relationship. There are plenty of other ways they make money from your efforts as well. They might only break even or actually lose money on your affiliate sales, but they make up for it somewhere. Either way, it shouldn’t matter to you because you are making money without all the extra business hassles.
So, if you want to make money online, you really need to consider what an affiliate internet marketing business can do for you. There are a lot of people making a great living from affiliate marketing. I have personally made thousands upon thousands of dollars from affiliate programs over the years, and you can too.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
These days money can be very tight for many people and most of us can definitely use some extra money. There are many different ways to make money online, and unfortunately many of them are nothing but “get rich quick schemes” that never work or sometimes even outright scams. However, if you want a legitimate way to make money online, one of the most popular ways is through affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing and can you really make money with it?
Basically affiliate marketing is a way of making money online by marketing products or services for other businesses. You do this by putting links, banners or specific product information on your own website or blog. You are not creating products you are just affiliating yourself with an existing company and marketing their products and services to others online.
There are two different types of affiliate marketing. First, you put a link on your blog or website to the business you are marketing and when someone clicks on the link it will take them to a page where they can purchase something from that particular business. You make money this way by getting a certain percentage of the sales.
The other way is by referring someone to the business website where the person is able to sign up for something or leave their contact information on the businesses website. You make money simply from them giving their information. There are many different types of affiliate programs available so finding a company that you are comfortable advertising for that will also match your website or blog is a lot easier then you think. A great place to start is the Clickbank.com marketplace.
The popularity of affiliate marketing programs has grown tremendously in recent years because of the ease of entry and the desire to make money online. There are also many individuals needing to find ways to supplement their income and affiliate marketing can be a great way to do that. It is quite possible to make a decent income from affiliate marketing you just have to invest the time and effort needed to build a successful online business. You won’t get rich quick so don’t even let that thought enter your mind!
There are many websites/blogs that offer free information about how to start an online business with affiliate marketing, and also plenty of forums available that you can use to find tips and tricks to help get you started. The nice thing about affiliate marketing is that you can do it in the comfort of your own home and on your own schedule, if you want to do it part time or full time that is entirely up to you. Just remember that it will take time to build a decent income from affiliate marketing, but once you become familiar as to how things work you will be surprised at the amount of money you truly can make by marketing for other companies.
How to Learn Affiliate Marketing the Right Way
Many experts believe that affiliate marketing is one of the easiest and fastest ways to make money online. The best thing about online affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to have a background in business or sales to enter it and become successful at it. All you need to succeed in this field is creativity, your time and some focused effort.
Affiliate marketing is actually quite easy to do. In fact, if you wanted to, you could start right now and become an “affiliate marketer” in a matter of minutes. All you have to do to get started is sign up with any of the free affiliate sites such as Clickbank.com and choose a product to promote, and then start promoting it. One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you can find an unlimited number of products and services to promote in just about every niche imaginable.
In order to sell your affiliate products you will need to start a campaign. Simply put, a campaign covers everything that you are planning to do to promote your selected affiliate product. A popular type of an affiliate marketing campaign is called pay-per-click (PPC) which is a paid advertising campaign where you bid for a spot on a site and you have to pay every time someone click on your ad, hence the name.
Though PPC is one of the best ways to attract traffic it is not advisable for newbie’s because it can be very expensive and easy to mess up. There’s a lot to learn before you become an expert PPC marketer. Those new to affiliate marketing will benefit more from the free methods of increasing traffic to a site.
One popular free method of affiliate marketing is blogging. If you don’t have a blog yet then you should know that it is very easy to start one using services such as Blogger or WordPress. Before you sign up for a blogging service you should first select an affiliate product that you would want to promote from one of the various affiliate marketing sites. Now create a blog centered on a theme related to the product or service you have chosen. Then start posting useful content to your blog and promote your blog by submitting it to blog directories or by writing articles with your blog link on it then submitting them to article directories.
The above description of affiliate marketing may be a simple one but it provides a basic idea of how affiliate marketing works. If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing there are many resources available that can help you. In choosing a resource to help you learn affiliate marketing, choose one that is not full of hype and empty promises. Many affiliate marketing resources from so-called “gurus” are simply fluff filled materials that will do nothing but make you more confused about how to become a successful affiliate marketer.
The best affiliate marketing resources you can get are the ones that provide real, useful, step-by-step information about how to make money online as an affiliate marketer.