20 Good Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer

Many internet entrepreneurs are looking for ways to make some extra money using the Internet.  For most people though, there are many obstacles in the way to achieving online success.  I am not going to cover all these reasons in this article, but instead will be discussing why Affiliate Marketing may be a great option for anyone who wants to start their own business.

Basically, Affiliate marketing is to have someone that produces a product or service paying you to promote/sell their product.

1. Be Your Own Boss: With affiliate marketing you create your own opportunities. You don’t have a boss telling you what to do. You choose how much you want to earn   and you can work accordingly.  You don’t have a boss standing over you telling you to do and when to do it. You choose to do things that interest you.  If you’re in a job that isn’t going anywhere or you’re without a regularly paying J.O.B. can go as far as you like with affiliate marketing if you’re willing to work.  With being your own boss comes responsibility, but for most affiliates the benefits far outweigh the negatives.  Being your own boss means you can be directly rewarded according to the amount of effort you put into a job.

2. Work from Home: You will not need to commute to work any more. You won’t lose hours of your day sitting in traffic jams and add more stress in your life. With affiliate marketing, you can work wherever you want – in your home office, in your kitchen or at the pool. The only limits are the ones you impose on yourself. All you need is to make sure that you have a fast and reliable Internet connection (which rules out Comcast – sorry, bad joke).

3. Set Your Own Schedule: You decide when you want to work. You can work in the morning or in the afternoon. You can even work at night if you prefer. You can take vacations whenever you want, and do whatever you like. You don’t have to work if you don’t want to and you can take vacations when you need them. (Please keep in mind though that you need to treat this as a business, not a hobby or you will not succeed.)

4. No Employees Needed: The fact that you can have a business with no employees is another advantage of affiliate programs. Employee salaries are the biggest business expense. Although you may need or want someone to work for you from time to time, you’ll never have to worry about hiring employees while working as an affiliate marketer.

5. Low Set Up Costs: Starting a home-based business is relatively inexpensive. It costs very little to get started as an affiliate marketer. Joining affiliate programs is free. In all seriousness, you can become an affiliate and start earning commissions without spending a dime. Most affiliates, however, will make an initial investment for web hosting services and a domain name for their first website.  Hosting will cost you around $10 per month and a domain name is about $10 per year.   There are lots of free ways to promote your website. (After October 10, 2009 I will use hosting from Teamwork Revolution.  It is $30 a month but comes with A LOT of other stuff making it a huge value.  http://globalmarketingtalk.com/mark.html)  Being listed in the natural search listings of the search engines is free. Generally you will end up spending money buying some marketing tools you can use for when you want to save time. If you are the patient type and/or short of money you can do all of the tedious marketing tasks yourself. You probably already have a desk and an Internet-connected computer.  You can get an HTML editor, web-designer and word-processing software for free which is all the software you should need to start making easy money from affiliate programs.

6. No Fees or Licenses: I sometimes compare doing business as an affiliate marketer with trying to sell a line of products in the real world.  Usually, the biggest difference is that a distributor or reseller must often pay for a license to distribute products within a targeted geographic region. Affiliate programs are different – they are usually free to join and there are no geographic limits. Your market is wherever the Internet is.

7. No Sales Experience Required: When I first started affiliate marketing I had absolutely no Internet sales experience. That wasn’t a problem, however, as there are so many sources to get free courses online.  Forget paying for a course when you get all the education you need for free. The companies I affiliated with provided excellent marketing material. Using their sales copy and marketing tactics I was able to get my first affiliate site up in less than a day.

8. Available to Everyone: Affiliate marketing does not discriminate. You’ll find affiliate marketers of all ages, from all different countries, with all sorts of backgrounds, skills and interests.  All you need to get started is internet access and you can operate from any country. (There are some countries that restrict access to certain networks or payment providers, but there are usually ways around this.)  You don’t need to be an expert web designer, writer or marketing guru: These things will give you a slight head start, but for the most part affiliates all start at the same level and just learn by doing.

9. Thousands of Products: Can you think of anything that isn’t sold online? It must be a pretty short list. There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs selling every product imaginable. That makes it easy to find products related to your interests. There are thousands of different markets you can promote your products to and there are many different methods for promoting products. In fact one of the largest problems facing many new affiliates is too much choice!

10. Minimal Risk: The product you chose isn’t making money? Dump it. Take down your links and promote another! It’s that easy. There are no long-term contracts binding you to products that don’t sell. You’re not tied to any particular product If a product isn’t performing, or if you see a different product you’d like to promote, it’s can be as easy as changing the links on your site. You can try lots of different products and see which ones work for you.

11. through 20: Please refer to 20 Good Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer – Part 2 for the rest of the story.

Affiliate marketing is a huge business and offers numerous advantages to the individual business person whether you are a beginner or advanced Internet Marketer.  Affiliate marketing is here to stay and is getting bigger and bigger every day. Affiliate marketing is a really good way to earn money online from the comfort of your own home. Do you know any other money making opportunity that allows you all of these advantages?  If your answer is yes, I’d love to hear them.

You can read Part 2 at http://megarich.org/20-good-reasons-to-become-an-affiliate-marketer-part-2/

P.S. Discover how to build a Social Networking Spider Web

.