A staggering $2.1 billion in affiliate marketing fees were paid to blog and website owners in 2008. This finding in a recent study by Jupiter Research confirms what many savvy Internet marketers have known for a while: Affiliate marketing has become one of the top business opportunities online because the startup costs are so low and the income you generate can be mind-blowing.
Affiliate marketing involves having your own site and sending your traffic to someone else's site to buy their products or services. For every sale initiated by a link from your site, you earn a percentage--an affiliate sales commission.
Affiliate marketing can be done on a part-time basis, and many are so successful that they've made it their full-time job. Equally exciting, you can get in the game in just a few hours. But how successful you are is based on the amount of time and effort you devote. Here is how you can make money online with these three tips:
1. Create a website or blog
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| Create Blog |
To start as an affiliate marketer, you must have a site on which to place links to the products or services you recommend. There are many inexpensive website services such as Hostgator and GoDaddy. It's also easy to set up a free blog through services such as Google's Blogger blog network. I also use Namecheap for domains and Hostnine (get a reseller account) for hosting.
2. Know your competition and customers.
Study up on both competitor and complementary brands (i.e. if you are selling a fire alarm, then look for “house safety” websites). Widmer says your customers will be hanging out on websites for both competitor and complementary brands. He recommends using search tools such as SimilarWeb and Google’s related-search results (located at the bottom of every Google search) to see what sites your prospective customer may be visiting.
Other free research tools to get to know your market, suggests Brandon Schaefer, CEO of MyVirtualSalesForce, are LinkedIn (to see who competitor brands are connecting with and what types of updates they're posting),Google Alerts (for brand mentions and keywords) and Google Trends.
3. Do as much yourself as you can.
The DIY mentality will usually save you money if your budget is limited. Also, it allows you to control the process and brand, explains Callinan, who built his ecommerce site from scratch by talking to others who’d already done ecommerce sites successfully. Don't farm out jobs you can do yourself, especially in the beginning.
If you need on-demand expertise from entrepreuners with a track record, try clarity, say widmer. The service allows the user to get specific, consultan-level advice for a fee.
How to make money at home on your laptop
