Contents
Is Affiliate Marketing Right for Me
6 Reasons To Try Affiliate Marketing
Is Affiliate Marketing right for me ? – is a question that many people find themselves asking when they are first looking at all the different money making opportunities online. With so many potential opportunities for making money on the internet it’s hard to decide which one is the best for your own individual situation.
If you’re new to online marketing, your head may be swimming with all of the potential business models you have at your fingertips. The reality is that a lot of people get discouraged trying to determine exactly which is the right path for them to be able to take action.
You realize you would like to go after something that you fully understand. And you really want to be generating an income -together with an option that has absolutely no upper limit as to how much money you can make. Well,this is what online affiliate marketing is all about.
Affiliate marketing is one branch of the Internet profit tree you could tap into – and it’s perfect for newbies, advanced marketers, and those who want to go at their own pace (slow or fast).
You can easily absorb all of the lessons to help your income soar, regardless of whether you’ve spent three minutes – or three years trying to learn the ropes of online marketing. So let’s go over the criteria to see if affiliate marketing is the right fit for you or not:
6 Reasons To Try Affiliate Marketing
Table of Contents
- No Cost To Very Low Costs For STARTUP
- Do You Really Need A Website To Start Affiliate Marketing?
- No Need To Be Concerned About Creating Your Own Product
- Diversity Is Important When Considering ” Is Affiliate Marketing Right for Me “
- Affiliate Marketing is Newbie Friendly and Easy To Master
- No Need To Worry About Customer Service
1. No Cost To Very Low Costs For STARTUP
One thing that is always nice to know, is whether you have a shoestring budget or you are you working from nothing, affiliate marketing is a business that doesn’t ask much of you from the beginning when you start.
You can basically start affiliate marketing with no cash, and the only upfront investment that you’ll be making is by using your own effort. In other words the amount of hard work that you put into starting up your business.
Of course for anyone who wants to jumpstart the return on their effort you can always do a little investing in things that cost a little money, like a domain name, hosting,and maybe some advertising if you really want to, but it’s not a necessity to get the ball rolling.
Sometimes when you’re just getting started working online there are so many different business models and opportunities to choose from that you may not be sure if you’ll even enjoy it or even profit from your effort.
When you consider the fact that affiliate marketing has no to very little cost for start up it makes it much easier to see if you really like this type of business model.
Most businesses require a large investment up front. If the business fails or maybe you find that you’re not really enjoying what you’re doing then you’ll not only find that you wasted your time and effort but you have also lost hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Another awesome thing about the nonexistent start up costs associated with affiliate marketing is the fact that you can be just as successful using hundred percent free promotional efforts as you would be if you used a paid platform.
2. Do You Really Need A Website To Start Affiliate Marketing?
Answer: It is possible to do affiliate marketing without your own website.
There are quite a few ways to begin affiliate marketing right this minute without spending a single dime. For example, you can use the blogging platforms to start writing about your niche topic and you can then refer you readers to the items that they may want to buy so that you can get a commission.
There are many different places that allow this aside from blogging platforms, there are places like, HubPages, Squidoo, Zujava, Weesley, Infobarrel and Sirgo just to name a few.
All of these writing platforms are free to use and they welcome affiliate marketers who can create good content. You have to remember though that your content must be unique before submitting to these places.
In future posts I’ll be reviewing many of these writing platforms such as Squidoo, Zujava, Weesley and let you know how they work.
You can also begin posting on a free blog if you want to – but you have to be careful because if you’re too promotional, sites like Blogger or WordPress might shut you down.
The best practice is to always try and go with your own domain. You can find great deals on domains. For example, you can do a Google search for a coupon code for your favorite domain registrar like GoDaddy.
For you to be successful online you really need your own website. There are quite a few free affiliate website builders but one of my favorites is SiteRubix and the hosting is free. So this is a another great way to first start as there is little to no cost to begin.
Just enter something like “Godaddy coupon” and then the month and year that you’re searching. Sometimes this can knock a domain’s price down from over $10 to just a dollar or two!
And hosting isn’t much at all. Hostgator has great deals too – and you can get a plan that costs under $10 a month.
If you’re worried about building a website, don’t be. There are people who offer free blog installations so that all you have to do it log in with a username and password and start publishing content as an affiliate marketer.
If you go with SiteRubix you can sign up for a free membership and get all the help you need. I can vouch for this membership as this is where I learned everything I know about online Internet Marketing. Or, you could follow the instructions on how to install WordPress here and do it yourself.
But again, it’s not necessary. You can get started without a website and begin putting some of your earnings back into your business later if you want to take that approach.
You don’t even need sales experience to become a great affiliate. Your job isn’t to sell to the customer, but to connect them through whatever platform you’re using, so you won’t have to worry about websites or copywriting to make a profit.
3. No Need To Be Concerned About Creating Your Own Product
Creating a product can be daunting to newer marketers. You have to learn all sorts of things – niche research, product creation through multi media platforms, how to launch a website and create high-converting sales copy, and more.
Plus, there’s no production costs involved – like paying for graphics, launching on a paid platform, and paying for a tool that delivers your product to the target audience.
With affiliate marketing, you’re not burdened by all of these inconveniences. All you’re doing is being the middleman.
That means you go into a niche hoping to bring together buyers and sellers. You’re the liaison between the two. This can be just as rewarding as being the one who created the product.
So for instance, let’s look at how an affiliate marketer would be the primary go-between:
Let’s say you pick the growing tomatoes niche.
Your job as a product creator would be to provide a product that helps people grow the perfect tomatoes.
But if you’re an affiliate, your job is to find the people who need help with growing their own tomatoes and point them in the right direction to where they can find good help – to the sellers.
The key to becoming a super affiliate is to build a list of subscribers (they have free list building tools until you can afford a paid one) and become their go-to person whenever they need advice.
Someone they can trust.
You’re not actually providing the advice – you can if you want – but you’re just saying, “Oh you need help with growing tomatoes? I know of the perfect product for that – here’s the link.”
Of course, building a stronger rapport with your readers will increase conversions. If you take the time to review and maybe even implement products and share your results, that will help you convert even better.
When it comes to product creation, you’re limited on time and the creation process. It might take you months to take a product from conception to completion.
But as an affiliate marketer, you can instantly begin promoting from a catalog of hundreds of products with a wide range of opportunities for your readers. You’ll be profiting on all of them, not just one income stream.
4. Diversity Is Important When Considering ” Is Affiliate Marketing Right for Me “
Here’s one of the BEST perks of pursuing affiliate marketing:
Diversity.
You get to dip into dozens, possibly even hundreds of niche markets to see what works best for you.
You’re going to get to determine:
- Whether it’s easy to compete in that niche.
- How much you can potentially earn.
- Whether or not you find it satisfying.
All three of those are very important factors for your online success as an affiliate. Some niches will be harder to break into than others, so as an affiliate, you can test the waters to see how easy it is to dominate before you buy a domain and pour your heart and soul into it.
Potential earnings will be of concern to you. If the traffic’s coming, but it’s hard to convert the visitors into buyers, then you might prefer to go with another target audience.
Personal satisfaction is what this career path is all about! Online marketing in general is about being your own boss – not having to pursue tasks and topics that don’t fulfill you.
As an affiliate marketer, you can dabble in many niches all at once – getting a feel for what satisfies you. You’re going to probably hear a lot of advice about keyword volume and competition – but it’s important to pay attention to which niches make you feel like getting up out of bed early just so you can get engaged with your audience!
One of the best ways to do this is to use a site like Squidoo, where you’re allowed unlimited accounts and unlimited pages. You can literally test everything (within their TOS) – like the pet niche, health, careers and more.
5. Affiliate Marketing is Newbie Friendly and Easy To Master
A great perk of affiliate marketing is ease of use. So many people find it intimidating to go into product creation because there are so many behind-the-scenes elements involved – including many technical skills you need to know.
But as an affiliate, you’ll need to learn some basics that are easy for any level of marketer, including things like:
Blogging
Blogging is simple when you’re on a free platform. You’re basically going to pick a name and URL for your blog and start publishing posts. It’s good to learn what people want in terms of blogging.
One of the biggest factors is personality. They want you to share insight, opinions and advice with them. Blogs are a great place to review products and share your results and they rank well in search engines.
Video Reviews
If you’re comfortable with video, then you will want to start using YouTube and maybe embedding those onto your blog. In your videos, you can talk about the niche problems and solutions that you advise them to purchase through your links.
Web 2.0 Platforms
Web 2.0 platforms are sites like Squidoo, Zujava and Hub Pages. Those sites, plus article directories, let you publish free content using your affiliate links. The sites are easy to master if you just take your time and read the instructions on how to set up your pages.
Social Marketing
Social marketing is all about sharing. You’ll be using sites like Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook and Pinterest to share your blog posts and links to good products that you think will help your niche audience.
6. No Need To Worry About Customer Service
One of the most time consuming tasks when selling online is handling emails and requests from customers. They may have download issues, need clarification about the product, or want other help.
As an affiliate, none of that is your problem. It all rests on the shoulders of the product creator. It’s their job to handle the customer once you send them there, so you can continue working on what matters most – converting new customers.
Conclusion
I hope this page has helped to answer your Question: Is Affiliate Marketing Right For Me ?
Affiliate marketing is right for just about everybody. Even product creators adopt an affiliate strategy to complement the product development branch of their business. If you are wanting to try your hand at affiliate marketing and don’t know where to start than you should read my Get Started page.
If you have any more questions please leave them below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
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