Affiliate Marketing–Easy Road to Profitable Online Business?

If you are looking for a low cost way to get into business online, then you have probably heard of, read about, or dabbled in affiliate marketing.  You often hear that affiliate marketing is an easy way to online profits.  Well I want to clarify this point.  You frequently hear about how "easy" affiliate marketing is.  In fact, I may have even suggested that this is an easy way to make money online.

In my opinion, it is easier in some respects to get started because it really costs very little, if anything at all, to get started selling other peoples products.  In any business endeavor, it helps to have start-up capitol, and affiliate marketing (from here on out referred to as AF) is no different.  When you bring up a page on Yahoo! you see the power of money at work it those ads on yahoo.com.  Yes, all of those ads lead back to a "money page," and some affiliate marketer or marketing organization of paying top dollar prices for the Yahoo ad placement, and probably making top dollar in return, as well.

What I like about AF is that it is a sophistication tolerant business model.  Almost anyone at any level of sophistication and expertise can make money with a little effort.  However, to do AF consistently well enough to replace your income–and I think for most of us that means anywhere from between $30,000 to $100,000 a year–takes skill, and that means having the willingness and persistence to go through the learning curve.  Affiliate marketing is not easy in that respect.  You have to respect it, just as you generally have to respect any job or profession to do it well.

Now, on the subject of respect, for those of you seeking to replace your day job, let me ask you this:  Are you good at your day job?  Even if you don't like it, even if it is just a garbage suck of job, even if your manager is pig mutant of a human being, are you good at your job?  The reason I ask is that it is generally advisable to leave a job for another from a position of success.  That's not always possible as some working situations are a complete mess from the get go.  All right, enough said.  Regardless of whatever home business you start, be prepared to plan and have the persistence to see it through.

Is It Really All About the Money?

I just read this great report by Jason Fladlian about  8 mistakes that prevent people–maybe you–from making money on the Internet.  Number one on the list is not realizing its all about the money.  So, I ask you, is it really all about the money?  In a word yes.  I'm not even going to say, "in my opinion."  Yes.  The answer is just bloody "yes" if we are talking about business.   If we are talking about making money online, then yes, our website or sites and offline acitivities are all about the money.  Not understanding that is a crucial mistake.

If you admit this, does that mean you are a cold, heartless bastard?  Mmm, maybe, but probably not.  Consider, even if you are building sites as a fund raising effort to feed starving children in the Sudan, if you don't understand that your sites are all about the money, how successful do you think those sites will be?  If you do understand the money issue, just think how many more children you'll feed because of it.  My point, here, is that hard nosed business logistics are not necessarily in conflict with ethical/moral standards.  The bigger point, though, is that if you and I are really in business, then we need to cut loose all the baggage that isn't about making the site as effective a money maker as it can be.

Understanding that your business, or website, is about making money can be liberating.  People who come to online business, Internet marketing, or ecommerce with a business background already know this.  Those of us who come to online business fresh, without any real business knowledge often take ages to have that epiphanal moment that what we are doing is business.  And business is business whether or not you are doing Internet marketing, ecommerce, or running an online site to promote your brick and morter retail store.

Along with understanding that it's all about the money, it is crucial to know what your business is.  I know this sound simplistic, but you'd be shocked to discover how many people supposedly in business don't really know what their business is.  As a result, they focus time and energy of directions that don't keep them solvent.  I'll say it again, you must know what your business is.  If you understand that, then you'll be able to align and target the many activities necessary to remaining solvent and making a profit.  In other words, you'll be able to focus and better ignore the many distractions that present themselves day in and day out.

Sticking to your business does not mean that you must do only one thing or that you must not diservisify your income streams.  Far from it. You can have as many business models and streams of income as you have time to manage and money to develop.   However, without a business plan to unify your diversified efforts, you'll remain a piker, an amateur.  Now matter what your success, you'll need a business plan to sustain and grow your income. 

Now, its possible that you might be one of those rare individuals who has a complete intuitive grasp of business logistics and planning.  However, if you've never seen a business plan before, you might want to check out examples at the Fed Small Business Administration website. This has great information.  And its free.  My advice, before you spend big bucks on lots of Internet marketing products, learn something about business. 

Many people coming to this site will be arriving after having been exposed to Internet marketing sales letters about how to make money online.  No matter how good those courses or people behind them, the one thing you can be sure of is that the successful people behind the sales letters understand business.  The one thing that most Internet and online home business products don't tell you about is business or the importance of understanding business basics.  With an understanding of business basics, you will be in much better position to know how to use the wealth of information that is particular to Internet marketing and making money online.

Affiliate Marketing–Home Business Strategy

Affiliate marketing is essentially the marketing, or selling, of other peoples' products and collecting a commission per product sold.  I don't want to over simplify this because affiliate marketing, as with any business model, requires skill to be consistently successful.  However, one of the reasons this is attractive as a home business is that it can be incredibly inexpensive to put into action.  Having start-up funds is beneficial, make no mistake.  At bottom, though, you need only your imagination and products to sell.  You really can get started on a shoestring.  And some manage to start with nothing.  What you do need, however, is a plan, and by plan, I mean a business plan.  More about that later; right now I want to talk about affiliate marketing.

As mentioned above, with affiliate marketing you are selling other peoples' products in exchange for a commission.  If you ask, "What sort of products?"  Almost every product available can be and is sold as an affiliate product.  Every product that you find in your grocery store from pasta, cheese, wine, and steaks, every product found in Walmart, Target, Best Buy , Home Depot, Lowes, can be sold as an affiliate product.  Browse through Amazon or eBay.  Every product you see is sold by affiliates of those two sites.  Take a hike through a Walgreen's or CVS.  Everything there can and is sold by affiliate marketers.  Digital products, or information products also sell very well as affiliate products.  Examples of information products would be e-books, downloadable videos, and audio recordings.  Software is another sort of digital product in which there is a thriving affiliate business.

You can see that this is a huge area.  For this reason, it is important to have some idea of a business plan in order to focus the direction of your marketing.  I would mention again that you do a little research into business planning so that you have a notion of how to implement this as a business as opposed to a gimmick or some random activity.

It is not necessary to rely on the Internet to do affiliate marketing.  You can do this effectively with offline advertising, but the Internet is gnerally so easily available and has so much easy access to traffic–that is, potential customers–that it would be a shame not to use it or be able to use it.  Even if you have no computer or Internet access yourself, most libraries do have such access and can serve as a jumping off point.  We're talking about really bootstrapping it, here.  Naturally, if you have your own computer and access to a broadband connection, so much the better.

The Internet is helpful not only in providing access to buyers, but in giving you access to affiliate programs.  To save you time, three of the biggest affiliate programs are run by Commission Junction, Pepperjam Network, and Linkshare.  There are hundreds of affilate products between those three companies.  Share a Sale is another affiliate resource.  Your job, then, is to research your products and create a portal by which means buyers can be directed to the sales page(s) of the company actually selling the products.

By portal, I mean the way in which you direct potential buyers to the seller.  This could be done by email, with links in the body of the mail.  I'm not talking about spam email, but email directed to people willing to receive your mail.  Normally this is done by developing a list of interested, potential customers who have given you permission to send them email in exchange for receiving a newsletter or in exchange for some product you may have offered.  Another sort of "portal" might be online classifieds that direct visitors either to your site or to the vendor's sales page.  Newspaper ads directing potential buyers to a website could also be considered a sort of porta.  Normally, in Internet marketing, a portal refers to a site that you have set up for the purpose of directing buyers to the vendor website. 

I know of one very successful business woman who does this by setting up Wordpress blogs devoted to a particular niche area, such as health care, education, or weight loss.  She populates the blogs with relevant posts, develops traffic of interested readers and potential buyers, and with sufficient traffic the blogs start earning income.  This is one example of a particular sort of portal, which works very well for this person's business model.  How you choose to direct buyers to a vendor site will have a lot to do with your own business model.

I'm not going to try and fool you into thinking you that you will make money with no effort.  Affiliate marketing requires skill to make money consistently, and you have to work it as a business to make a viable means of self-support. 

I've provided a low cost affiliate marketing course to show you the basics and to help you see how to focus your efforts.  The course includes 12 videos plus a 40 page report that expands upon the points in the videos and elaborates on how to build traffic to your sites.

One of the basic affilate marketing strategies relies on the following steps:

• product research (as described above)
• keyword research to develop ideas for site content
• building a portal site
• building auxiliary sites via squidoo, hubpages, blogspot, and so forth
• article publishing
• link development
• RSS feeds
• selected social bookmarking
• selected social news sites
• press releases 

The particular business plan I'm discussing here really relies on setting up a website (either free or your own domain) and then supporting it through a variety of methods.  Some of the standard techniques used to bring traffic and search engine recognition include the following (paraphrasing the above):  publishing 10 or 20 articles, building a number auxiliary sites, and announcing your content via social bookmarking.  This is an almost entierly Internet based approach in which you attempt to create a sort of funnel directing buyers to a vendor site.  You can supplement this by using offline promotion, such newspaper classifieds and even radio announcements.  How you choose to promote your portals will depend on your business model.

Personally, I really like the affiliate model simply because it is so easy to set up and for the vast, practically unlimited number of products.  It is also a model in which you can start making money within 30 days.  I don't want to mislead you into thinking that you'll be able to replace a day job or create a free standing second income in 30 days, but it is definitely possible, with a few hours of work a day, to see your first sales within 30 days.  I give affiliate marketing a big thumbs up as an income maker as it is relatively easy to get started and requires very little initial set-up other than access to an Internet connection.

Personal Success, Home Business, and Making Money Online

Talking about peristing in the face of adversity . . . . I just wrote out a draft of this post, hit enter, and this vile open source WordPress program wiped the post clean.  My true feelings about open source software are the subject for another post, and if I continue on, I’ll devolve into variations on a popular four letter expletive.

Well, persisting in the face of advesity has everthing to do with making money online because starting an online business and then nurturing it to where it actually brings in income means that you have to carry on no matter how bad it gets. Success requires that you persist.  It helps to have a plan, but you’ve got to persist.

Now, earlier, I asked the question, "Do you like yourself well enough to succeed?"   Yes, I know, I have an wrote a post on this subject, perhaps a bit sententious, but I have got to bring it up again because it is important.  Do you like yourself well enough to believe in yourself enough that you can allow yourself to succeed?  Once you lock your sites on a goal, you can rest assured that obstacles will present themselves.  Everything under the sun can and may very well happen with the purpose that you give up.  In order to carry on, you will need the proper measure of self-belief.  I don’t know what the proper measure is, but whatever it is, you need it.

When you are discouraged and frustrated, your best weapon against true despair is your self-belief.  Yes, it helps to have at least one or two people who believe in you, but in the end it is self-belief that will carry you through.

As I develop this site, I will be publishing more and more information on how to start making money by developing your own online business, but you must want success badly enough that you make use of the tools.  Now, I suspect that because my site is about making money online that many of you want me to hand over the tricks that will bring in cash in the next 24 hourse.  Although I could probably show you a few gimmicks, that ’s really not what I’m about, and tricks and gimmicks by themselves do not constitute a business.

At bottom, you’ve got to have goal and be willing to take action.  Even if you no idea what you are doing, in my opinion you are making a good start.  The next step, of course, would be to learn something about business, and that would help you know how to make the best use of how you take action.  However, there are even more basic concepts undercutting business know-how:

• cultivation of right behavior
• cultivation of ethics, or understanding of right and wrong
• cultivation of personal health and hygiene
• development of your awareness and sense of other and your environment
• culitivation of your own sense of personal integrity

Granted, this is a tall order, but these traits are essential for any personal success.  You have got to have the discipline to be able to constently and reliably do the actions, or behaviors, necessary to implement a business plan.  You also have to have an understanding of right and wrong that is sufficiently devoloped to guide you through the invevitable ethical tangles and complexities you will or may already be encountering.  Your personal integrity is perhaps the most important thing you have.  Some would argue–me, for example–that this is more important than your immediate life.  That is for you to decide, but your strong personal integrity will allow you to hold your ground, stay the course, and earn the respect of others.

If you are reading this post, you may be very concerned and distracted  by the need and/or desire to make money right now.  And I have to ask you to take a breath and calm yourself.  Give yourself some space and distance.  Give yourself time and place to act.  Read and reread the 5 characteristics in the bulleted list above. 

Do You Like Yourself Well Enough to Succeed?

So, do you like yourself well enough to succeed?  I was asking myself this as I drove to work this morning.  I’d started off thinking, "How much do you have to like yourself to succeed?"  And, of course, I was thinking about what it takes to start a home business, in this case a solely Internet based business.  It seems to me that before you even start thinking about business planning, if you need to ask yourself at least once if you like yourself enough to succeed–to stick it out through the teething of starting your own home business.

And yes, up above I mentioned that I was driving to work, because I do work.  The truth is, there are some conveniences to keeping the day job.  For one thing, inspite of the aggravations, I do like many of the people I work with.  And second, more practically, it solves the health insurance problem.  I also work in an area that I know quite a bit about, and that also has some advantages.  Now, having said that, there I was driving to work on a day that I really did not want to be going to work.  And that conflict is what many of us–you and I–bump up against.  In having the "job," we lose certain choices.  Or rather, the choice to have a job entails certain consequences and obligations that restrict other choices.

I know many, me included, may sometimes say that having a job isn’t a choice, but to my way of thinking, no matter how coerced I may feel by necessity, nevertheless, at some point I do choose.  It is a hard pill to swallow, having to accept responsibility for what we often seem to have no control over.

Choosing to start your own home business is not the same choice to quit your day job.  I suspect that many reading this are motivated to think about starting an Internet business as a replacement of their day job, but that doesn’t have to be the case.  What motivates you to want to quit your day job?  Bad pay? Lousy boss? Dull and repetitive? At odds with your personality?  You want more money?  A bigger game? More responsibility?  Just what is it that makes you want to fire your boss?

Are you successful at what you do?  I’m making a guess here that people who are generally successful, or at least good at what they do are probably more confident and more likely to like themselves enough to allow themselves the chance to succeed.  Let me ask you this, "Do you feel too big for your job?"  In that case, perhaps it is time for a change.  The question is, then, do you have an exit strategy? 

Hmm, exit strategies . . . . I do not recommend  burning bridges, if possible.  I say that because I, personally, am a bridge burner.  I’ve tried to change over the years, and I think I’m better about this, but there is a part of me that wants to do Sherman’s march to the sea when I leave a job.  We bridge burners do not always do the best exit planning.  So, a word a caution, before you dynamite the "bridge", have something waiting for you on the other side.

 

How Do I Get a Tax Identification Number?

Burning question for those wanting to make money online by starging their own Internet home-based business.

How do I get a tax identification number?  The answer is short and sweet.  After you read the answer, please pay attention as I explain why this may not be necessary for you.

Here it is.  The SBA (Small Business Association) says,

For a Federal Tax ID number, please contact the Internal Revenue Service for Form SS4. This Form is available through their web site at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fss4.pdf.  You may call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 and ask for the Small Business Tax Kit #454.

Tax information for starting a business can be found by going to http://www.irs.gov/businesses/index.html. You will need to contact the Department of Revenue for state taxes (if any). Please consult your local telephone directory in the "State Government" section for the office in your state.

That last line about consulting your own Department of Revenue is pretty important if you are going to need a sale tax permit.  I won’t go into this right now, but getting such a permit is free and generally very easy.  In many cases, such as in my State, Iowa, you can get it online and be up and running in 15 minutes.

Why you may not need a Tax ID number.  Generally speaking, a small home business that does not have employees will not need a Federal Tax ID.  A sole proprietorship generally does not need an EIN, or Employer Identification Number.  If you are going to incorporate, you may need an EIN, or Federal Tax ID.  Most of us, operating as single or two person home, Internet businesses, will not need an EIN to start with.

Also, do not automatically buy the general advice about incorporating as an LLC.  Although there is no harm in doing so, it may simply not be necessary.  Just about all of the business advice I see out there for Internet marketers tells you to incorporate.  Talk your plans over with an business attorney to figure out the best course of action for you.  Starting a business, especially your own home Internet business, is not a case of one size fits all.  Every situation is a little bit different. Please don’t let the self confessed Internet pundits tell you otherwise.

Writing a Business Plan–Basics You Must Know

Whenever I start publishing about the need to understand something about business, I worry that the subject may seem so overwhelming that you might just give up.  Remember that business is action.  While business planning is important, the point of the planning is to help you take effective action, not to bog you down.   Read more

Essential Elements of a Good Business Plan

Even if you are starting your home Internet business as a single person that you are running from your bedroom, you still need a business plan.  I’d like to take a moment and suggest what I think are some of the essential elements of good business plan.  also keep in mind that a business plan may be a work in progress.  In fact, you may have started on the Internet trying to make money without ever thinking or having thought of yourself as a business.   You may have discovered that over time, bit by bit, you began thinking of your Internet activities in the context of a business.  Without realizing it, you started developing and may still be developing a business plan.  So a business plan can originate and take shape from practical day to day activities.  And it can change. Read more

Your Internet Business–Strategic Planning

In the context of this blog, starting an Internet business belongs to same subject family as starting a small home business.  However, starting a home Internet business is not necessarily the same thing as making money online.  Of course, you and I start our home Internet business with every intention of not just making money online but making gobs of it. Read more