There are thousands of different businesses you could start both online and offline, each of which is capable of making money for you.
There are challenges and problems with most of them though – and that is where you have to get creative if you want to achieve success and actually own your own money making profitable business of any kind.
The biggest hurdle by far for most types of business opportunities is the initial start up cost. Depending on what kind of business you want to start it could cost you thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get it operational – and all before you even stand a chance of making even your first dollar of revenue let alone any profit.
Even if you get it operational – there are no guarantees of your success. It might be profitable and it might be a financial failure that never makes any money at all – yet you are still on the hook for every dollar you sunk into it to launch it. For many people that means borrowed money in some fashion or another and it results in huge debts – adding insult to injury of a failed business venture.
That is point number one in favor of Affiliate Marketing – NO DEBT REQUIRED!
Affiliate Marketing is by far one of the lowest cost business opportunities that you have access to – and it can even be started totally for FREE!. Yet at the same time, the potential payoff is unlimited – as crazy as that sounds. Think about that for a moment. Here is a business you can literally start for FREE – no money at all, and certainly without any kind of financing or debt – yet it can potentially make more money for you than any other more typical brick and mortar type of business, and most other types of online businesses ever can!
There are other benefits to starting an affiliate marketing business of your own too. But before we get too much further into the discussion lets first talk a little bit about what Affiliate Marketing is.
Affiliate Marketing is Representing Products and Services for a Fee.
You select the products and the services you wish to promote and then market them however you like. You get paid when you produce results.
When you sign up to represent a specific product or service that company provides you with a unique tracking link that you use and that will tell the company you produced the sale or the action required when people click your link and buy. There are also cases where they do not even have to buy something for you to get paid – it may be another desired action such as signing up for a free trial or another offer.
To summarize;
1. Select a product to market
2. Market the product
3. Get people to click your links and take a desired action (like buying the product or signing up for a list or free trial)
4. You get paid!
That’s the basic concept. Of course, there are lots of steps necessary to get it to happen and plenty to learn to become very good at it – but this gives you an idea of what the business is anyway.
There are many nice things about this business too.
You do not have to create any products yourself, you will be marketing other products and services that have been created and made by other people and companies. You do not have to ship any products – they do that. You do not have to deal with any customer service issues- they do all that too. Nor do you have to handle payments and refunds and all the rest – they handle it all – and you just market, produce results and get paid!
Affiliate Marketing is a Win, Win, Win – for the Company, the Buyer and the Affiliate!
In traditional marketing, a company or individual seeking to market a product must pay for the marketing upfront and regardless of whether the marketing is effective or not. Whether it produces leads or no leads – it still costs money, takes up time and other resources.
When a company or individual chooses to use affiliate marketing it shifts the cost and the burden off the company or individual and on to the affiliate marketers who choose to represent their products or services for them. If the affiliate marketer is successful and produces results – then and only then does the affiliate marketer get paid.
So you can see the obvious benefits to the product or service supplier!
That is a win for them.
Next comes the purchaser who is looking for detailed information and answers to the questions they have as they seek out solutions to problems they have and look for the resources they want.
Your in-depth articles, videos, audio (podcast for example) and other ways you choose to use to get them the information they want and need are just what they are looking for. When you do a good job of providing information it helps them make a decision that the particular product or service is what they want or it isn’t. That makes affiliate marketing a win for the buyer!
Next, comes YOU.
When you are effective at creating content and choosing good products to market then you will help more and more people make decisions to buy or not to buy specific products or services.
When they do decide they like the products you are marketing and click your links and buy, then you earn a fee and it becomes a win for you too!
There Are Some Realities You Need to Know About Too
There is far too much talk about PASSIVE INCOME and far too little about the truth and the realities behind actually making any money at all online.
I get it too – Passive Income just sounds so enticing and is attractive, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t want that!
But the reality is that more often than not when passive income is mentioned it is just hype that is far too overused.
The reality is that before you will ever see any money coming in you are going to have to do some work. Work that is not passive at all – and is, in fact, hard to do and that takes time. That’s reality.
When you go at it the right way with reasonable expectations rooted in reality and know what to expect, then you are far more likely to be successful than you are if you go off in search of something you don’t ever find. When that happens what most people do eventually is get frustrated and quit.
Throughout life, I have heard people who have failed make all kinds of claims and excuses. That’s normal human behavior. While there are certainly things that don’t work and actual outright scams out there – in most cases the real reasons people most often fail at legitimate opportunities can be boiled down to a few things;
1. Inaccurate information and expectations about the particular work necessary, it’s risks and its actual realistic rewards
2. Failing to get adequate information, training, and support as needed to be successful
3. Failure to take consistent action over enough time to achieve success
The Good News is That You Can Eventually Get There…
But the work must come first and it will take time. The passive stuff comes after the work stuff – not before.
Once you have your website and blog built and a decent amount of content created and are comfortable creating new content on an ongoing basis it gets easier – it is still not fully passive – but it is getting closer!
Take for example – you build a site and a blog focused on camping and camping supplies. You write a 1500 word article about a camping trip to a lake near your home, and you link that article to your YouTube channel video showing some footage of your campsite and some of your adventure. In the description box of your video are affiliate links to some of the gear you used – and links and pictures are also in your blog post.
Once that content is created and posted you do not have to do much more to it and it will keep bringing in new readers and some of them may click your links and make purchases. That’s close to passive – even close enough I won’t complain about somebody even calling it passive income at that point!
Just remember you have to do all the work to get it to that point first – and even then you need to make sure your site is maintained and your links keep working, and you may want to promote that article/post again in new content – but I digress. I know you are getting the idea and that’s all that matters for now.
Keep in mind too that in this example over time as you build more and more content just like I mentioned – it will all become cumulative. You will have a few, then a few dozen, then hundreds and then eventually – if you keep doing it- thousands of different online assets (content) all working together and that is all driving traffic – and traffic is what you need to get conversions and ultimately profit.
You will need to consider building out multiple online assets (Website/Blog, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.) and using even more platforms, methods and tactics and interconnecting and interlinking them all to get better results. You have to consistently create and publish quality content on your platforms. These things all take time and effort to learn and then more time and effort to do the things you need to be doing to get results. Work and time produce results.
Remember that you do not need to do it all at one time – nor could you for that matter. But you do need to get started and begin building something and then the next piece and then keep adding to it and your affiliate marketing business will begin to grow!
While the barrier to entry is low – the washout and quit rates are high for the same reasons. Know this coming in. Most people will not be successful at affiliate marketing because they expect it to be easier and quicker than it is and so they quit as soon as they figure out that this is a real business and that it requires hard work and time like any other real business does.
Put in the time and effort. Treat your business like a business. Take it seriously and do the work – then I guarantee you that you will produce results over time.
Likewise, you can’t get anything out of something you never even start.
How You Can Get Started For FREE!
You will need to spend a little time and learn the basics of affiliate marketing. But don’t worry – it isn’t as hard as you may think it is and I know you can learn and do this if you really want to. That part you have to decide for yourself – so what do you think – do you want to do this or not?
If you are still reading I will take that as a YES!
Congratulations – you just made a decision – and one that very well may change your entire life!
There are millions of products you can represent – and I will tell you how you can learn more about that and how to find them at the end of this article. But for now, all you need to know is that you will need to select the initial products (and or services) that you want to market.
Then you will begin marketing them using a variety of different platforms, methods, and tactics to get your information in front of other people. You need to generate lots of attention from lots of people – in other words, you need TRAFFIC.
No matter what you market or how good you eventually become at it – not everyone will buy.
Some just don’t want or need whatever it is you are offering at the moment. Others want it or need it but just can’t afford it at the moment. Some just don’t yet trust you enough to take action and buy from your links. Others are looking at multiple different sites and sources and are just too distracted by all the shiny objects to notice your content and message enough to make that buying decision.
That leaves you with a small percentage of all of those who see or hear your content who will actually click your link and take action.
Those who do result in what is called Conversions.
You need traffic to get conversions and you need conversions – people to click your links and take action – and you need that to happen to get paid.
Now that we have that much established – back to how you can get started for free.
You can learn a great deal about affiliate marketing (and a ton of other critical to know business information too!) by joining my network on Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate is many different things – but at its core, it is really a massive Training Center with all the information you need to start, build and grow your own online affiliate marketing business.
Once you learn the fundamentals, you will then select something to market. Once you do that – and have your link, you have to get your information out in the world and in front of other people. There are a number of ways to do that too. To begin with – even with the free membership in WA – you are going to get a couple of free websites. That is where you start.
It will let you do a couple of things. One it gets your information out in the world in a way that you can link to it from other platforms and other social media accounts. Secondly, it starts letting you get real-world practice at building your own website and creating your own content.
Beyond that, there are multiple other free platforms you can use – in combination – all to generate more traffic and produce more leads you can eventually have more conversions. Some examples are YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Linkedin. There are also more advanced methods you can learn such as how to use a free platform to build and sell your own online courses (such as Udemy) and then use those courses to build your authority and drive more traffic to your own sites and other online assets which you will build over time.
That’s part of what I will teach you – how to interconnect and use all of these things together as part of an overall system to grow your business.
If you follow my approach you will start for free and make sure that this is indeed a good fit for you, something that you really want to do and are going to stick with it – and if it is you will do the work and put in the time and effort to make it start working for you.
Be forewarned though – this is a business and it requires real work!
There are too many people promoting false hopes and crazy claims of pie in the sky get-rich-quick garbage – and frankly, I do not like that. It simply does not work and 99.9 percent of those things are complete scams and predatory schemes that just take your money, waste your time, and give you nothing but more stress and frustration for your efforts.
The very few that do work are always made to sound so much more profitable than they are and far easier than they are in real life – and the result is the same. Most people will fail, quit and lose money – instead of making any money at all.
In affiliate marketing real profits are possible – but they require real work and some time. Just know that going in.
Once you decide that you are going to stick with this and make it work for yourself and that you will keep on working then you will want to do a few things. While the free sites are nice – you are going to want to have your own sites on your own domains you actually own and your hosting space.
WA can sell you your domains and then it will host them for you too if you like included with, and as part of your Premium membership (I highly recommend this!) and they will host up to 25 sites included with your membership and 25 additional sites they provide for you on their Siterubix platform. You will need to switch to a Premium membership in WA to get all of that (or you can buy separate hosting service somewhere else like GoDaddy or Bluehost etc.).
Short Learning Curve to Launch Your Affiliate Marketing Business
As I mentioned there are things to learn and things to do that take time and effort. But just to get to the point of launching your affiliate marketing business really is very fast. Keep in mind it will still take longer to begin seeing real results that are predictable and consistent – but once you know the fundamentals you can literally select a product, get a link and be marketing it within minutes.
It is getting that all-important traffic and the conversions you need that are going to take a bit longer.
How much longer depends on all kinds of other factors. It depends on the niche, the specific product, the methods and platforms you use, your content, your consistency and on and on it goes. Some people begin to get some sales almost immediately while others take far longer and have to put in much more effort and time before it begins to pay off – but it will pay off for you if you do the right things in the right order and give it time.
As you do you gain more experience and you get better and faster at creating content, while you also learn more about what works for you. Dial it in and rinse and repeat. Keep on doing it and as you begin to make more progress you can keep reinvesting back into growing your knowledge, skills, experience – and your business – on a continuous basis.
Think about that.
In just a few hours or less, you can have your own business – literally TODAY!
What other business can you start today – that fast – for literally nothing down to get it up and running?
While there are plenty of other good business opportunities that you can choose and plenty of actual brick and mortar businesses you can start too, that can pay off – they all require more money, more time to get them started and far more risk than starting your own affiliate marketing business does.
Many of them will require a business license and maybe even additional specialized licenses. Some examples include becoming a real estate agent or broker, insurance agent, truck driver, motor carrier (trucking company), freight brokerage, pest control technician, home inspector, physical therapist, medical assistant, chiropractor, etc.
Even then some of these things won’t legally allow you to start your own completely independent business until you have advanced experience and training that literally takes YEARS to complete. Until then you will have to associate with and work under the supervision of someone else who already has the necessary legal credentials to do so.
Even when you do meet all those other requirements you will likely need a business location, power, utilities, business phone system, security system, all kinds of insurance – not to mention an LLC, Corporation or S-Corp and all that is just to get a chance to try to go make some money – there are no guarantees there either. But there is a ton more risk and a ton more money required just to be able to try.
By the way… I am NOT saying that pursuing any of these things or any other such thing is a bad idea either!
Some of these and many others can, in fact, be very lucrative businesses and may be a great fit for you, but even if that is the case it is still going to take a while to get training and experience and a lot of money to get it all off the ground. If that interests you then go for it!
On the other hand – if you don’t have the money, the time or the other resources you need right now and you are too busy working just to make ends meet and survive week to week and month to month – why not try affiliate marketing to help improve your situation and make life better so that eventually you can afford to go after that other business you want?
Is Affiliate Marketing a Good Opportunity for You?
Look into it, and since you can try it for FREE why not at least try it and find out for yourself? That’s the only way you are ever going to really find out.
If you want my help you can get it by clicking HERE and joining me at Wealthy Affiliate. When you do that you not only get all the benefits that WA provides, and all the resources of a huge, friendly and very active community there – you get my personal help and support too. Not just with affiliate marketing either – once you become part of my network I will help you learn and apply Success Driven Systems that you can use to do better in every area of your life and you will become part of my personal alliance focused on continuously building a better life for you, for me and for us all together.
My passion is helping other people build better lives.
To do that I research, analyze, learn and then disseminate specialized information through my articles, courses, books, videos, podcasts, live events, and training using multiple platforms and methods to do it – and I teach my students how to do the same things I do!
If you are interested in becoming a specialized information entrepreneur, and in turn helping your own students and clients, then come and join me and start learning how to do it all right now. By the way, don’t worry either about it being overwhelming – you are not going to do everything all at one time. You will learn one thing, then the next, then the next sequentially step, by step by step… so relax!
Want me to help you? If you do then click HERE and let’s get started now!
Just so you know – I have been training, coaching and mentoring people since I was 18 years old (I’m in my mid 50’s now so you do the math!) and I have plenty of patience as well as the ability to clearly explain things to you in a way that will help you get faster results and still have fun at the same time.
Once you sign up you will learn about all the specific products and services you can market and how to research and select the ones you want to represent.
Whether you choose to join me or not – do yourself a big favor and try affiliate marketing for yourself even if you do it another way. It really is a powerful way to help you increase your income and help you change your life if you are willing to work at it seriously over time.
Always remember – you have the power and the ability to choose your own course in life and start building a better life – but you have to make decisions and you have to take action to make it happen!