So What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Basically, affiliate marketing is promoting goods and services online. An Affiliate (You) sends visitors to the advertiser’s website (vendor) to purchase their products. In return for each sale made, the affiliate is paid a fee or commission for their effort as the affiliate has advertised the vendor product through various means (ie. Website advertising, paid ads & email marketing).
There are numerous benefits and dangers related to this on-line business model. Allow me to compare this on-line business with a traditional workplace job or different enterprise. This could help you decide whether or not Affiliate Marketing is a viable option for you.
1. Minimal Entry Cost
Most people are afraid to start out a new business due to the capital that’s usually required.
With affiliate marketing, you remove most of the usual costs associated with starting a business. And yes, it is a business. The cost to start is minimal by most standards. There are of course, free options for those on a very tight budget I would recommend picking and choosing which free options best suits your needs. Do a bit of homework as Free isn’t always worth it!
2. No Stock Required
In many traditional businesses, stock control is one of the most critical, costly and time consuming aspects. In most circumstances, it’s vital to hire staff to deal with your stock and storage to house it. However with affiliate marketing, you aren’t required to handle or deliver stock. That’s all handled by the vendor and in many cases the stock is digital so there are no physical goods. The fact that you don’t have to worry about ordering, storing and delivering stock is a huge benefit for the affiliate marketer.
3. Limitless Revenue
If you’re a profitable affiliate marketer then you possibly can earn limitless income. Especially when your business reputation grows over time, you can expect to get increasingly more sales with the passing of time. After what you are promoting is up and working effectively, you often don’t need any extra funding. Unlike the traditional business where your earning capacity is at all times restricted and you may well need that extra financial injection to promote your product to a wider audience.
4. Worldwide Enterprise
With affiliate marketing, your market isn’t restricted to your local region or even your own country. Affiliate Marketing can be carried out worldwide with very little restrictions. You are an international business servicing client from all corners of the globe.
5. Time Intensive
As you may realise, to start out advertising and marketing as an affiliate marketer you aren’t required to outlay any enormous financial cost upfront. This makes it a digital danger free enterprise. That is the reason why more & more people are getting into the business each and every day. The one warning with this type of business is that it is ( especially when you first start) very time intensive. You can spend a LOT of time and energy and encounter many frustrating periods to get this setup correctly. If you fail to set things up properly, you will find yourself with nothing to show for your months of hard work.
6. 24 hours a day sales
As I’ve mentioned, if you are an affiliate marketer, the whole world’s population turns into your potential clients. Your affiliate marketing business continues twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Because of this, you can easily go to bed, wake up in the morning and find that you have made $10’s, $100’s and even $1000’s while you were sleeping.
7. Coaching & Mentorship
To help the initiates, there are numerous free articles, training course, discussion groups, forums and of course social media platforms available – mostly FREE.
A good coach/mentor is a very handle thing to have. These are generally not cheap. But in the scheme of things they really can set you on your path to success and achieve you financial results much sooner.
There are also a good number of FREE workshops & webinars available which provide invaluable information and guidance. Two such webinars are;
8. Conclusion
Affiliate marketing has many advantages over traditional business which is why so many people turn to it. The main advantages are that very little upfront capital is required and you have potential sales every minute of every day. However not all affiliate marketer make a decent living from it. In fact, many fail to make a single cent from it because it requires persistence, focus and choosing the right products to promote.
