What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is one of those concepts that come across so foreign to the average person.  By average, I mean someone that seldom uses the internet for anything other than emailing and checking Yahoo news.  If a person frequently does Google searches or watches YouTube videos, then they would have likely come across the terms, work from home, make money online, work from home or make money from home.  I say this because of what I experience when I talk to people. I hear them say how they would love to work from home but they don't want to get scammed.  I laugh (on the inside... because I have been there, done that).  Lets just squash the myths... and get some real answers on the table.

What is affiliate marketing?
It is basically the ability to refer a person to a business, product or service and get paid for it.  If done correctly the income potential is limitless.  It allows a newbie who might have no website, no product and no former skills to still snag a juicy chunk of the web-based money pie. I wrote about this more extensively in another blog post.

Have you ever seen one of those ads on the web that tries to sell you a "program" that will teach you how to work from home "placing ads"?  You have to give your email and a credit card for a 5 or 7 day trial membership right? Then you will be billed monthly for $20 or more. The ad makes you feel like you can only get this special information from them because they will connect you with hundreds of businesses that are hiring ordinary people to post ads all over the webs and BOOM, you are instantly paid.  The ads make you feel as if you can start making money today.  It offers to send you a kit or grant you instant access to some kind of special members area right? I know. I laugh at those ads.. There is nothing wrong with them. Truthfully, it is more lucrative to be on the selling end of that ad as an affiliate than to be the customer.  Why? Well you would be buying into a product or service just to get information that is readily available on the web FOR FREE!!. On the other hand, if you are selling the product in that ad, you could make a little extra cash.  I don't shun those ads or the vendors who create them. They have something very valuable to contribute to our world as marketers.  In fact, I am curious about a recent website that I came across one of my competitors that offers a great system for making money on the web.  I will have to inquire and publish my review about it in the next few weeks. Besides, I am sure that I can still learn something new and share it with my own subscribers. A marketer's research is never ending.
Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, let us get some things clear:
With affiliate marketing, you should never have to do any of the following:

• Pay money to become an affiliate and market anyone's product, service or website
• Purchase a program that will connect you with businesses who want people to write ads for them
• Be told that you can only work with one company as an affiliate. Most businesses dont care who else you sell for as long as they are not seeing their ad on your website that promotes porn, gambling and other similar activities.  (The terms and conditions usually state this... however there are affiliate programs offered by companies who own gambling sites.)

Ok great, with that understood... what might you need to consider paying for in order to succeed with affiliate marketing online:

• You might want to purchase a domain name for a website  ($10/yr. minimum)- this enables you to have "www.yourname.com"
• You might need to purchase cheap hosting (it is relatively inexpensive- $10/month or less)
• You must be willing to spend a couple of hours per day or per week learning what to do (Let's face it.. time is money)
• You might want to buy some software or services that can help automate some of your marketing efforts.
• It would help if you could find or buy a nice inexpensive video tutorial that can help you with creating or editing videos or other types of content.  

In a nutshell, for less that the cost of eating fast food a few times each month... a newbie can be set up to make money with affiliate marketing in no time.

What if you have absolutely no money to get started? Not a dime..zip, zero, zilch?? Is it possible to make money on the internet?
My answer (from experience) is 100% YES.   It takes some time and I always advocate keeping your day job (or night job) until your internet efforts pick up profits consistently.  However, you can have no computer, no money, no car.  As long as you have a somewhat stable living situation (being homeless can impose frustrating and depressing distractions) and you can make it to a library computer... you can throw up a blog, monetize it, start getting a little traffic. Then you rinse and repeat.

What else is helpful?
It is nice to have a resource on the internet that can help you avoid the pitfalls and lighten the learning curve. Suddenly, what seemed like a hard learning curve can be a wonderful journey of skill acquisition and training.
The biggest truth is that anyone can do affiliate marketing. If you can tell a friend how great a pizza is at Tony's Restaurant, then you can do this.  Why isn't everyone doing it if it can yield so much money? Well unfortunately, not everyone believes it is possible, a lot of people are instantly discouraged and they do not have the proper resources to guide them. Plus, a lot of people are just use to making money by working for someone else and they have become comfortable with it.

In conclusion.. I have had several people ask me over the past few weeks if I recommend that newbies purchase a product  that can help them to earn profits even faster. I insist that a person who is willing to learn and research can have a zero cost start up using a free Blogger platform. However, there are some awesome new products out there that have good reviews and they over-deliver on the value of information in the online income niche. The Work From No Home System is one such offer.  It is different from the type of ad I described above because it teaches HOW to do affiliate marketing - the right way (just like I do), not just charge you money to connect you with companies.. The title is based on the premise that a person can work from anywhere and this is absolutely true. They have a reasonable price for their product that is jam-packed with useful, up-to-date and juicy techniques that even a monkey could probably follow.  For more information before even considering a visit to their website, you can catch my thorough skin-off-the-bones review of this product coming out this weekend.