Friday, May 29, 2009

Affiliate Marketing is the Best Online Business

Affiliate marketing is estimated to be a more than a $7 billion/year industry, and it continues to grow each and every year.

Some of the largest companies in the world rely upon affiliate marketing to fuel their e -commerce sales, and there are thousands of small and medium sized businesses that use affiliate marketing every single day to drive their online sales.

If you don't already know what affiliate marketing is, it's a merchant, such as an online toy store, will pay a sales commission to anyone who refers customers to their website.

This referral process is managed by using specially coded links that represent the referring affiliate whenever someone clicks on that person's link and then rewards them with a commission when that prospect makes a purchase.

In other words, these "affiliate links" keep track of who refers business to a website, and the person who refers this new customer is called an "affiliate".

Generating a part or even full-time income by running your own affiliate marketing business has many benefits. Here are the 10 reasons that affiliate marketing is considered the best home based business.

1) Very Flexible
You can make money promoting products and services in almost any industry or niche market you can think of. With thousands of available affiliate programs to choose from, you can promote toys this week, gardening tools next week, children's clothes the following week, and so on.

You can promote any type of products that you think people might be interested in, while earning affiliate commissions each and every month.

2) Run the Online Business Anywhere You Want
Because an affiliate marketing business is all conducted via the Internet, you can run your business from just about anywhere in the world - even while you're traveling. As long as you're able gain access to the Internet, you'll be able to run this business as though you were sitting in your office.

3) Low Startup Costs
An affiliate marketing business can literally be started for less than $100. Unlike other business opportunities that you may have been exposed to, there are no startup fees, or application fees to becoming an affiliate, because it's completely free.

4) Part Time Or Full Time
If you currently have a job that you'd like to replace with your own business, you can work and build your affiliate marketing business in your spare time, or you can dedicate yourself to affiliate marketing on a full time basis. The point is that you can work as little or as much as you want, and still build a profitable online business through affiliate marketing.

5) No Inventory
Since you'll be promoting products and services that other companies actually sell, you don't have to mess with the headaches of having to stock inventory.

6) No Shipping
Since you're not actually selling something to the end consumer, you don't have to deal with shipping hassles of actually having to get the item to the customer. Instead, you can just refer someone to your affiliate link, and when they buy the product, the whole ordering and shipping process is out of your hands, and the company that actually owns the product takes it from there.

7) No Payments
Since you're not selling your own product or service, you don't have to physically collect money from the customer, set up a merchant account, or any of that stuff. You simply refer people to your affiliate link, and then they pay the company for that product or service, and the company sends you your commission.

8) No Customer Support
This is a great benefit to you, as an affiliate, because you don't have to deal with the customers of the companies you promote, and this means you don't have to handle any complaints, problems, or any other types of problems that come with having to interact with customers.

9) No Selling
You may have seen claims from other business opportunities, such as with network marketing, that no selling is involved, but this is completely true with affiliate marketing, because the merchant's website is already set up to promote the products with proven web copy, testimonials, and so forth. All you have to do is get people to that website.

10) No Website Needed
We just covered the fact that the merchant already has the website that does the selling of the products or services that you're recommending, so you really don't even need a website of your own. Now, there are certainly some advantages to having your own affiliate website set up to help promote your affiliate offers, but it simply isn't necessary to do so in order to make money with an affiliate marketing business.

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