The Making Money Online Dream
Does making money online from home seem like an impossible dream? If you think that, you are one with many, many people. Take comfort from the fact that the internet is a door into a whole new world where anyone - and I mean anyone - can make money online from their own home.
It is not just that there is a huge market out there (with China, India and Africa coming online, things are becoming fantastic). The internet provides opportunities to earn money that just do not exist offline. We started our business to help people make money online. We have chosen to specialise in four different ways to help you with your online project. They are:
1) Affiliate Marketing,
2) Drop Shipping,
3) Starting Your Online Business and
4) Moving Your Existing Businesses Online.
You can work with one, two, three or a mixture of all four approaches as you learn to make money online. In this article I will focus on the first method, Affiliate Marketing, which provides a fantastic opportunity to make money online or create an online business.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Let me use an example to explain how Affiliate Marketing works.
Joe Bloggs opens a website selling fishing equipment. He finds that he is not selling enough so he signs up with an Affiliate agency (we'll talk about Affiliate agencies later). He offers to pay 10% commission to his Affiliate partners on any sales to customers that come to his site from the Affiliate 's site.
Spotting an Opportunity
Chris Jones is really interested in fishing and knows a lot about it. She sees an opportunity to create a small home business using ecommerce.
Plan
She browses Joe's website, making sure it is well designed, easy to navigate (they call it feng shui in the furniture business) and that things work on the site (links, shopping carts etc).
When she is sure Joe has created a great site and runs his business efficiently, she signs up as an Affiliate and starts putting together business ideas.
Act
She creates a blog about fishing. She writes articles about the waters and the fishing she knows. She writes with passion and her humour and experience shine through.
She works hard at marketing.educationeasy.net online Marketing; knowing it will make the difference between success and failure for her project.
Soon she has many readers coming to her blog. Chris has 'monetized' her blog (doncha hate business jargon) by putting links to various items on Joe's website. As her visitors (friends) come to trust her, they follow her recommendations and click through to Joe's site, buying equipment, clothing and books.
Review
She can use lots of tools provided by her own site and by the Affiliate agency to review the actions of her browsers. She can tell what goes down well and what people ignore. She uses this knowledge to improve her site, her Marketing and her commission rates.
That is Affiliate Marketing.
You are not selling anything. Your job is to get people to like and trust you, so that when you recommend something, they buy with confidence. Of course if you don't do this with honesty, you won't last long as a profitable Affiliate. So by writing about something you love, you make commission. This is really a win-win situation.
The browser gets to learn a lot about the product and why they should be interested in it before they even get to the fishing site.
The seller gets a whole lot of free Marketing and pays nothing unless they get a sale.
You get the opportunity to earn money from your hobby/interest.
Why Do It?
You can:
Build an extra cash-flow by spending a few hours a week writing (or talking) about things you love
Make an income without having to sell anything
Try out the business of online sales without investing a penny of your own money
Get involved in ecommerce without having to deal with staff, stock, orders or deliveries
What are the disadvantages?
You personally:
Need to learn a whole lot of new skills. Even if someone else does a lot of your technical online work for you, you will have to understand why you are doing things.
Need to keep your blog or website live - that is it is no good writing three articles and thinking that will do. It must be updated regularly with new information.
Need to follow the 'plan, act, review' phases to get the most out of your businesses.
Will have to give up time to do this. TV will tend to go down the drain.
Those who might want to build an income from online activity include:
People who don't yet know much about working online or ecommerce, but are totally excited at the thought of finding out.
People who know a bit about business (on or offline) are ready to begin their own venture.
People who want to expand their world, get involved in new stuff and just do
How Does it Work?
Once you have pinpointed your passion (and there are many free resources on the internet and on our website to help you do that) there are three key steps to take:
Sign Up: Sign up for the programmes or products that most interest you.
Market: Create a way to market that product - for example a website, a blog, e-mail Marketing, forum posting, a Facebook page etc.
Monetize your Site. There is more than one way to eat an elephant, and part of your job is to find them. In our example above, we had Chris earning commission from Joe's site. But she could find other, complimentary sites for which she could become an Affiliate. She could market books about the subject through Amazon. She could allow adverts to be put on her site.
Affiliate Agencies
We said earlier we would talk about Affiliate agencies. There are many Affiliate agencies where you can sign up and decide on one product or a range of products you want to become an Affiliate for.
The agency provides the link between the vendor of the product and the Affiliate (you) and takes care of all the admin. They give you a personalized link for each product you are interested in. You create a way of Marketing that product (for example a blog) and put the link on the blog.
Agencies can make life easier because through them you can set up your program, sell as many of their products as possible and have it all laid out for you on one site.
You can work with as many agencies as you like.
Independent Programmes
Independent Affiliate Programmes are run by many large companies including Amazon who are sometimes credited with creating the Affiliate market.
Are There Limits to the Affiliate Business?
While you are surfing online, you may come across a site that you would like to be an Affiliate for, but which does not have an Affiliate programme. DON'T PANIC!
Many people running businesses online have not heard of Affiliate programmes, or do not know about the potential benefits. But that does not mean you can't become an Affiliate for them. Contact the owner of the business and ask them if they will sign up with an Affiliate agency so that you can become an Affiliate for them. It hardly takes any time, but is bound to benefit them.
Research, Research, research.
Like everything else connected with the internet, please make sure that you do your own research and do it carefully. You will have to hand over a certain amount of sensitive information so a method of payment can be set up. Making sure you are safe online is very important so research is vital.
Do I Have to Pay to Join an Affiliate Programme?
Our recommendation is that, as a beginner, you should absolutely stick with programmes that do not require payment to join.
Alternative Approaches
If Affiliate Marketing does not ring your bell, there are three other articles describing different way to make money online. Drop Shipping, Staring Your Online Business Putting Your Business Online
If, once you have read about all these methods of making money online, you are not sure which t is for you, it does not matter - you can use them all. Consider some of these examples:
You could add Drop Shipping products to your site and have your own sales page. You could source or create your own products and sell them on your site. How about putting your own existing offline business online, You could put all four approaches on one site.
The point about this is that you are here to enjoy yourself and to make money online. You should try different approaches to make sure that you are not missing the thing that would push your site into the stratosphere.
Onwards and upwards friends!
Dee MacDonald at [my-businesscoach-online.com] is a Business Adviser, Consultant and Learning and Development Specialist who has worked with over 400 small and medium businesses to help them make their business much more fun and far more profitable.
Dee has recently started her second online business, and runs a blog at my-businesscoach-online.blogspot.com my-businesscoach-online.blogspot.com. She took all the learning from that experience and has put together a course that shows anyone, no matter how inexperienced they are online, how to set up a variety of different types of on-line businesses by following her simple step-by-step instructions. Dee works with expert associates to present live, interactive, fun, hard but extremely practical seminars alongside the online coaching and development courses offered on her website. She comes from the Isle of Skye, Scotland. She has lived and worked in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East and is currently based in Hampshire, UK.
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