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Sunday, August 3, 2008

Using Affiliate Marketing To Kickstart Your Business

If you want to get to know how online businesses work, start with affiliate marketing.
Most brick and mortar businesses require a lot of start-up capital, personnel and infrastructure costs. Affiliate marketing is the most cost effective ways to get going because you can produce income and learn how to run a business without the huge cost required to start and run your business. Let me show you the pros and cons of starting in affiliate marketing.
There are a lot of misconceptions about affiliate marketing. As an affiliate, you will be marketing other people’s products for a commission. The point of being an affiliate is to promote and sell another person's merchandise. You are responsible for the cost of marketing and promotion of the products. Depending on the product, the commission can be 30% to 50% on every sale that you make. You will be able to sell a wide variety of products and services without any boundaries or territories.
Affiliate marketing is a proven, tested method of increasing your website traffic. If you start your own Internet business, the best entry way is through affiliate marketing. It is an excellent guide for your own marketing strategy.
1.No product to create or stock in your garage – all affiliates simply link to the parent company sales page and website's shopping cart.
2.No shipping or handling to perform. All materials are either automatically downloaded by your customer or shipped by the parent company to the customer's address. The sales process is automatic. You get your commission within30 days.
3.The company provides website, domain name, sales page and shopping cart for your convenience. Like a franchise, all companies who use affiliates provide the promotional tools for their affiliates to ensure success. The promotional materials issued by affiliates include banners, ads, articles and links.
4.Initially, when you start an online business, you set up an online presence, a website, squeeze page, an auto-responder, a shopping cart or payment page. All these features (except the auto-responder) are provided for you by the company. Many people find this the best way to gain experience in online marketing because they only have to focus on the marketing portion of the business. If you're just starting or starting over, I recommend following this program to gain experience in online marketing.
5.As an affiliate, you do not have to worry about handling refunds. It is the product owner’s responsibility to handle any requests for refunds. You might need to look at any legal disclaimers in your affiliate contract to avoid any misunderstandings.
6.There are so many products and services for you to choose from. You can go to several websites that provide many affiliate options and tools. Go to the search engines to research the many sites that host hundreds of affiliate programs.
So what are the downsides? While it will sound trivial to mention that you will be working on your own and without a boss to monitor your work, it will be really tough for some people to work alone at home without the prompting of a supervisor or the regular schedule of a 9 to 5 job.
The temptations of home life can waste many hours and divert your attention from getting work done. Many people who aren't used to this type of life tend to fail because they overestimate their ability to be consistent and self-managed. As soon as their patience or their savings run out they give up and try something else.
Affiliates don't have much control over the process. They don't have a list after they've promoted the company's products unless they take the opportunity to create their own sales page and collect their leads prior to sending them to the affiliate page.
Affiliates must provide their own adverting and marketing outlets. Many people automatically start with PPC and Ezine ads to get as many people to their webpage as possible. Pay per click advertising can be very expensive and depending on the sales return, can put you at a loss. It is important to know your Return On Investment on your ad campaigns.
Affiliate marketing is therefore the best and easiest way to start making money online. Anyone can do it, and you can do it too! Get a copy of Push Button Profits today to get your affiliate marketing program off the ground and running smoothly. You'll also get a Free 30 day online coaching program to help you from day one.

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