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Admit it ... selling something online, from the comfort of your
own home office, would be great. More specifically, selling
something from your own home office that you don't have to
stock, that you don't have to ship, and where you don't have to
deal with customers would be great. This sounds like the perfect
job, doesn't it?
But what if you have nothing to sell? Let's say you're not an
author, and you are not a professor, nor do you manufacture
anything. Can you still make money by selling things part time
from home?
Yes, and it's called Affiliate Marketing. And it works
something like this:
A person registers with some company's (merchant's) affiliate
program (retailers such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Vonage, etc).
This person then "drives" or "refers" Internet traffic to these
merchants. When a referred visitor purchases some product, say a
book or piece of software, the person who referred the visitor
is paid a commission for generating the sale.
The person or company that owns the product will be responsible
for stocking it, getting it to the customer and dealing with any
customer service issues. You, as the affiliate, have nothing
more to do with the transaction except cashing your check.
What a job!
You're first step is to decide what to market.
Deciding what to market has been made a lot easier by the
emergence of Affiliate Networks. Affiliate Networks are also
know as "Pay for Performance Networks" or "Marketing Solutions
Providers". They all provide basically the same service, which
is to allow affiliates to search for and market the products of
the companies ("merchants") in their network.
The process works basically like this:
1. A person who wishes to sell something signs up with an
Affiliate Network. They now become an "affiliate".
2. The affiliate searches or browses the Affiliate Network for
products that they think they might be able to sell.
3. When the affiliate finds a product they want to sell, they
are given their own "affiliate link" to the website where a
customer can purchase the product. This link is encoded with the
affiliate's uniquely identifying number.
4. The affiliate sends or "drives" potential customers to the
company's website via their affiliate link.
5. If a customer purchases the product then the affiliate gets
credit for that sale and earns a commission.
6. At the end of the pay period (defined by the Affiliate
Network) a single paycheck consolidating all commissions for all
products sold is issued to the affiliate.
"Driving" customers to the company's website is where the
real fun resides. There are two main methods for driving online
traffic to these companies:
* Build a large or small website. Place various links, banners,
and products on this website. When your visitors click through
on these links and purchase a product you will get a commission.
* Send potential customers directly to the companies using
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
networks. When these people purchase a
product you will get a commission.
It takes more time to build a website with all of the affiliate
links. However, you can use your website to "pre-sell" the
company and/or products that you are promoting. In addition, you
can capture the email addresses of your visitors. These can be
used later to offer more products and generate even more sales.
Luckily, there are software programs available that can make
building a website a breeze.
Affiliate Networks are free to join.
They make their money by charging the merchants a percentage of
their sales. Some networks will allow just about anyone to join,
while others are more particular ... maybe requiring that you
own a website that receives a certain number of visitors each
month.
Some of the most popular Affiliate Networks are:
* ClickBank
* Commission Junction
* LinkShare
ClickBank is one of the easy ones to join. They offer mostly
downloadable products (i.e.; ebooks, software, etc.). They also
allow you to browse their product directory before you signup.
In addition, affiliates are not required to even own a website
to join. That makes this a perfect starting point.
You can do affiliate marketing full or part time
One great aspect of this business is that you can put as little
or as much time into it as your schedule allows. Many people
start by just doing a few hours a week after work or on
weekends. Just have fun with it and the money will come!
Much, much more...
This has just been a very basic overview of affiliate marketing.
For those people who want to grow this into a full-time
"at-home" business there is much more they can learn to do.
Topics such as ad placement, search engine optimization, link
building, auto-responders and other are very important, but
beyond the scope of this article.
For more information or resources pertaining to this
article, please visit WorldWideReviews Work at Home Archive at http://www.worldwidereviews.com/blog/Archive.htm<
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Copyright by John Lee
Staff@WORLDWIDEREVIEWS.COM
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
John Lee is owner and publisher of the acclaimed
consumer reporting website WorldWideReviews.
A free product review and watchdog service.
Work at Home Archive
http://www.worldwidereviews.com/blog/Archive.htm<
/a>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
About the author:
John Lee is owner and publisher of the acclaimed
consumer reporting website WorldWideReviews.
A free product review and watchdog service.
Work at Home Archive
http://www.worldwidereviews.com/blog/Archive.htm<
/a>
Written By: John Lee