Hi, welcome back. Remember, this is an on-going series of posts, a guide for anyone wanting to set up their own internet home based business, so if you don’t want to lose the flow I recommend that you subscribe to the RSS feed. Each part of the series is numbered so if you have come in late and missed the earlier issues, you can pick the sequence up from the archives.

Just What is Affiliate Marketing and Why Become an Affiliate Marketer?

Many times you will have seen previously in this series that we have mentioned affiliate marketing as a great way of setting up an internet home based business. In this post we will provide a more in depth look at what it is exactly.

Affiliate Marketing is a method of promoting a product in which an affiliate is then rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer and/or sale provided through their efforts to the actual company selling the product. The compensation or commission that an affiliate gets may be based on a certain value for each exposure, visit (pay per click), new customer (pay per lead), sale which is usually a percentage of the item sold (pay per sale or revenue share) or it may be a combination of any of these.

Many companies like to use affiliate marketing because they do not incur any marketing expenses unless the desired result is realized.

There are also some e-commerce sites around today which run their own affiliate programs, while others use third party services. These provide intermediaries who will track traffic or sales that are referred to them from their various affiliates. There are many businesses online today who owe much of their growth and success to the use of affiliate marketing. It has been especially successful for small and midsize internet businesses

We have now looked at what affiliate marketing is, now let us look at some reasons as why it is a good type of internet home based business to set up.

No Production Costs
With an affiliate program, production costs are no longer an issue as the product has been developed and proven to be good. Best of all, it has all come out of the merchant’s accounts and not yours.

Do not need a lot of money to set up.
All you will need is a desk, computer, internet connection, word processing software and ideally a domain and hosting account to get started.

Costs Involved
Normally it is free to join an affiliate program, and all the set up costs and shipping costs will be met by the merchant whose products you are selling. Plus, as you do not need any where to store goods, this is another reason for joining an affiliate program. So even if you happen to live in a 1 bedroom apartment, you can still sell the biggest products going as an affiliate because all the goods are held by the merchant you are working as an affiliate for.

Choices
There are thousands of products and services that you can choose from. So finding the right products for either a website you have already or one that you are planning to build is immense.

No need to have a Merchants Account
This can be a time consuming and costly expense for anyone setting up an internet home based business for the first time. However, as an affiliate, the merchant you are selling the product for will bear all costs, as well as handle the processing of all payments. So you never have to worry about any potential charge backs, fraudulent purchases or losing your merchant account completely as an affiliate. Plus, no longer will you be concerned with collecting and storing names and addresses of customers along with their credit card details, as this is all done by the merchant who you are affiliated to.

Plus, no longer do you have to worry about dealing with awkward or nasty customers and their complaints. This is down to the merchant to deal with.

Probably one of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you can make money while you sleep.

Another benefit to get into affiliate marketing is that if the product you chose isn’t making money, then you can just dump it. Remove any links to the product and then start promoting another instead. This is because there are no long term contracts which bind you to selling one particular product, so the risk to you is minimal.

It is the ideal internet home based business opportunity. If you work hard at affiliate marketing, then the potential to earn a good income is high. It really depends on just how much you want it and how much effort you are willing to put in to the products you are trying to sell.

For an idea of just what kinds of products and services offer affiliate programs, check out Clickbank.com or ComissionJunction.com. Both of these sites are generally at the very top of most affiliate marketers’ lists.

Post 9 tomorrow will be about Online Payment Systems