One of the easiest ways that you can make money with an online business is to become an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing appeals to a lot of stay at home moms as it is very easy to get started and you don’t have to worry about taking care of customers.
It is a lot easier to be an affiliate marketer than it is to create and sell your own products. You can be up and running with an affiliate marketing business fairly quickly. You can join affiliate networks for free and they will provide you with some useful tools for your business.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a very simple concept. You promote other people’s products or services and when a sale is made you receive a commission for your efforts. Most companies that sell products these days have affiliate programs that you can join.
You can promote physical products for a commission, digital products or a combination of the two. A physical product is something that is tangible and this can be anything from a CD to a car. The commission percentages on physical products tend to be low starting from 3% and upwards. Between 5% and 30% is probably the average range.
A digital product is intangible. It is a computer file that could be a document which shows people how to do something or a video training course or even a software program. You can expect higher commissions with these products. Usually you can earn between 50% and 75% with digital products.
How to get started in Affiliate Marketing
We recommend that you choose a niche that you want to work in. Let’s say that you have a passion for parenting. There are a number of products available for babies and young children that people can purchase from Amazon. If you join the Amazon Associates Program then you can make commissions for referring people to make purchases.
Take a look on Clickbank.com to see if there are any digital products for the parenting niche. We know that there are so you can take a look at them and promote any of these that appeal to you.
When you join any affiliate network they will provide you with a unique link for the products that you want to promote. When one of your visitors clicks on your “affiliate link” and goes on to make a purchase you will receive a credit for the sale and will be due the appropriate commission.
Check how often an affiliate network pays its affiliates. Amazon affiliates have to wait a couple of months to receive their commissions. Clickbank pay their affiliates every week. Some affiliate networks will pay their affiliates instantly via PayPal when they make sales.
Promoting Affiliate Offers
We recommend that you create your own blog or website in your chosen niche. So if you are interested in parenting and found some good products to promote then you can create content around the different parenting subjects and recommend specific products.
If you can write your own content then this will be easy for you. You can always outsource the task of content creation to a freelance writer. Do some keyword research to find out what search terms people are using to look for information about parenting. Create your content around these keywords.
