Affiliate Marketing

OK, so you want to make money online.

Whether it’s to supplement your retirement income or replace a job, there are certainly enough ways to do it.

You could get into e-commerce and drop shipping.
You could dive into info-product creation.
Maybe you’ve thought of local marketing consulting, site building, SEO, and well…
I could go on and on.

And while all these methods can work, this wide array of options is precisely why most people get overwhelmed and end up taking no action at all!

That’s when I usually tell people to keep it simple. Get started with a no-cost/low cost method that I consider one of the easiest ways to start making money online…

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is good fit for both newbies and established marketers. Here are five reasons why…

Zero to Low Start Up Costs
No Product Creation Hassle to Worry About
Affiliate Marketing Allows you to go Into Many Niches to Test Profitability
Affiliate Marketing is Easy for Newbies to Learn Quickly
Your Customer Service Is Non-Existent

Now, let’s look at each of these 5 reasons in more detail.

Zero to Low Cost Start Up Costs

Whether you’re on a shoestring budget or you’re working from nothing, affiliate marketing is a strategy that doesn’t ask much of you from the start. The investment you’ll be making will be mostly effort, not cash. Of course for those who want to jumpstart their return, you can always do a little investing in things that cost money – like a domain, hosting, and some advertising if you want to – but it’s not a necessity to get the ball rolling.

When you’re just getting started – and there are so many different business models to choose from – you may not be sure if you’ll enjoy (or profit from) some of them. When you find a strategy that’s no or low cost like affiliate marketing, it lessens your financial risk. Some business models require a huge investment up front – and then, not only are you wasting time and effort if it fails, but you’re out hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars.

Another great thing about the low upfront costs associated with affiliate marketing is that you can be just as successful using 100% free promotional efforts as you can using a paid platform.

So lets look at the minimal requirements…It’s always best if you can go with a domain. You can find great deals on domains. For example, you can do a Google search for a coupon code for your favorite domain registrar like NameCheap. Just enter something like “NameCheap coupon” and search. Sometimes this can knock a domain’s price down from over $10 to just a dollar or two!

And hosting doesn’t cost much at all. Hostgator has great deals too – and you can get a plan that costs under $5 a month.

If you’re worried about building a website, don’t be. There are outsourcers on Fiverr who will do just about anything online business related, including complete blog installations for not much money. Or, find the instructions on how to install WordPress free online and do it yourself.

You don’t even need sales experience to become a great affiliate. Your job isn’t to sell the customer, but to recommend solutions and then let the vendors’ websites do the selling! To learn more about this, check out Lazy Commissions – It’s Free.

No Product Creation Hassle to Worry About

Creating a product can be daunting to newer marketers. You have to learn all sorts of things – niche research, product creation through multi media platforms, how to launch a website and create high-converting sales copy, and more.

Plus, there’s production costs involved – like paying for graphics, launching on a paid platform, and paying for a tool that delivers your product to the target audience.

With affiliate marketing, you’re not burdened by all of these inconveniences. All you’re doing is being the middleman.

That means you go into a niche hoping to bring together buyers and sellers. You’re the liaison between the two. This can be just as rewarding as being the one who created the product.

So for instance, let’s look at how an affiliate marketer would be the primary go-between:

Let’s say you pick the acne niche.

Your job as a product creator would be to provide a solution that helps people cure or treat their acne.

But if you’re an affiliate, your job is to find the people suffering from acne problems and point them in the right direction to where they can find good help – to the sellers.

The key to becoming a super affiliate is to build a list of subscribers (they have free list building tools until you can afford a paid one) and become their go-to person whenever they need advice.

Someone they can trust.

You’re not actually providing the advice – you can if you want – but you’re just saying, “Oh you need help with acne scars? I know of the perfect product for that – here’s the link.”

Of course, building a stronger rapport with your readers will increase conversions. If you take the time to review and maybe even implement products and share your results, that will help you convert even better.

When it comes to product creation, you’re limited on time and the creation process. It might take you months to take a product from conception to completion.

But as an affiliate marketer, you can instantly begin promoting from a catalog of hundreds of products with a wide range of opportunities for your readers. You’ll be profiting on all of them, not just one income stream.

Plus, once you have started establishing a following you can be among the first to recommend new solutions as they are introduced into the marketplace.

Affiliate Marketing Allows You to go Into Many Niches to Test Profitability

Here’s one of the BEST perks of pursuing affiliate marketing: Diversity.

You get to dip into dozens, possibly even hundreds of niche markets to see what works best for you.

You’re going to get to determine:

Whether it’s easy to compete in that niche.
How much you can potentially earn.
Whether or not you find it satisfying.

All three of those are very important factors for your online success as an affiliate. Some niches will be harder to break into than others, so as an affiliate, you can test the waters to see how easy it is to dominate before you buy a domain and pour your heart and soul into it.

Potential earnings will be of concern to you. If the traffic’s coming, but it’s hard to convert the visitors into buyers, then you might prefer to go with another target audience.

Personal satisfaction is what this career path is all about! Online marketing in general is about being your own boss – not having to pursue tasks and topics that don’t fulfill you.

As an affiliate marketer, you can dabble in many niches all at once – getting a feel for what satisfies you.

You’re going to probably hear a lot of advice about keyword volume and competition – but it’s important to pay attention to which niches make you feel like getting up out of bed early just so you can get engaged with your audience!

Affiliate Marketing is Simple and Easy for Newbies to Learn Quickly

A great perk of affiliate marketing is ease of use. So many people find it intimidating to go into product creation because there are so many behind-the-scenes elements involved – including many technical skills you need to know.

But as an affiliate, you’ll need to learn some basics that are easy for any level of marketer, including things like:

Blogging
Blogging is simple when you’re on a free platform. You’re basically going to pick a name and URL for your blog and start publishing posts. It’s good to learn what people want in terms of blogging.

One of the biggest factors is personality. Your visitors want you to share your insight, opinions and
advice with them. Blogs are a great place to review products and share your results and they rank well in search engines.

Video Reviews
In addition to writing reviews on your blog, you can also make video reviews. If you’re comfortable with video, then you will want to start using YouTube and maybe embedding those onto your blog.

In your videos, you can talk about the niche problems and solutions, then you can advise your viewers to purchase through your links.

Even if you’re not yet comfortable with video, it is a good idea to get your feet wet. Video reviews can be produced in less time than written reviews, plus videos tend to rank faster in the search engines, especially Google.

Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is all about sharing. You’ll be using sites like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest to share your blog posts and links to good products that you think will help your niche audience.

Your Customer Service Is Non Existent

One of the most time consuming tasks when selling online is handling Emails and support requests from customers.

They may have download issues, need clarification about the product, or want other help. As an affiliate, none of that is your problem.

It all rests on the shoulders of the product creator. It’s their job to handle the customer once you send them to the sales page, so you can continue working on what matters most – converting new customers.

In closing….

Affiliate marketing is right for just about everybody. Even product creators adopt an affiliate strategy to complement the product development branch of their business. It’s time you add a serious affiliate marketing plan to your online business too!