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Why Start An Internet Business?
An internet business, and particularly an affiliate online business, is one of the most cost-effective businesses there is today and it costs little to get started!
As long as you have an internet connection, a desktop, laptop or another mobile device, you can operate your internet business from anywhere – from home, while traveling or even while on holiday.
The most popular and consistent earning opportunities online that exist in 2017 come under one category – Affiliate Marketing. There are literally thousands of ways to earn online, but they are not all equal. However, Affiliate Marketing has consistently proved to be a winner and those who earn a living from it are usually doing so because it gives you the freedom to move about and it pays well.
What Does It Cost To Start?
Back in the day, when people started to explore the earning potential using the internet there weren’t the tools and know how there is today. Those early internet pioneers in had to figure it out as they went – it was costly and time-consuming. Today it’s all changed. Even for the most technically challenged novice, it is dead simple to get started with the tools, training, and technology of today. This is what I spent in just under 2 months when I made my 1st sale from my website – a total of $65 US dollars.
10 Affiliate Marketing Business Models and Earning Strategies
Don’t worry if you are not familiar with these terms and strategies. You don’t have to know it all to have a profitable online affiliate business. A successful affiliate business will use at least two of these strategies in combination.
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- PAY PER CLICK BUSINESS MODEL
- CONTENT MARKETING BUSINESS MODEL
- SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION BUSINESS
- PRODUCT REVIEW
- BLOGGING MODEL
- SHOPPING MODEL
- INCENTIVE REWARDS
- SOCIAL MARKETING
- EMAIL MARKETING MODEL
- DIGITAL DISPLAY MARKETING
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Build Your Own Internet Business – Step By Step
STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR NICHE
If you have a passion, an interest or a hobby, you can turn it into a business. This is how most affiliate marketers get started. And it’s the smart way for you to get started if you have not experienced affiliate marketing before. If you are passionate about something and know a lot about it, the more likely you are to succeed in Affiliate Marketing. Knowing your subject well, having used or have had experience with a certain product or product range the more authority you will have and will come across to your audience.
STEP 2: BUILD YOUR NICHE WEBSITE
It all starts with a website – These days with all the latest technologies, IT IS DEAD SIMPLE TO BUILD YOUR OWN WEBSITE. I’m sure you have seen all the ads on TV or on youtube from various companies advertising their website building platforms. But don’t jump in so quick to these companies as while building a website on their platform may be straightforward and or even cheap, there is a lot more to earning an income from your website – in the end, you can pay a lot of money to these companies for UPSELLS to get you to the point of earning a decent living online.
Having your website hosted securely – The last thing you want is to have a hosting server that sucks! Crashes, hackers, technical issues all lead to downtime or times when your website is not operational. So, this can cost you your business and livelihood if you’re not careful. Choosing a SECURE KICK-ASS HOSTING PLATFORM to run your business from in the first place, will go a long way to ensuring you have a solid foundation to build a ‘skyscraper’ of a business on!
STEP 3: GET RANKED AND GET VISITORS TO YOUR NICHE WEBSITE
Now that you have a live, functional, securely hosted website, it’s time to get jiggy with your website’s content. Content comes in many guises – written text, audible text, video, animation… It should always be relevant to your niche for several reasons – the first reason is your audience who are visiting to get the information they are looking for about your niche. The second reason is getting ranked in the search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Without relevant content and rankings, you will have a tough time getting anywhere! If you think that you’re rubbish at writing, the good news is you can learn how to get loads of ideas relevant to your niche, from KEYWORD SEARCHES as follows.
You may even prefer to voice record a piece of content and type the article up later or have someone type it up for you – like dictation. I myself have used this technique successfully. Other online marketers will outsource and have someone else conduct the research and write the article for them for a few dollars – but it’s always better that you become an authority on the subject of your niche as this helps to form a trusting relationship with your audience. So, you should always know your topic.
STEP 4: SELL OTHER PEOPLES STUFF FROM YOUR WEBSITE & EARN COMMISSION
Monetizing your website is the last step. Merchants are providers of products and services. You earn a commission from the products and services you sell from your own efforts, via your website.
Product Example:
Amazon is the biggest internet retail outlet in the world and you can apply to them to become an Amazon associate, in other words, an affiliate – a product you might promote on your website would be relevant to your niche (interest and passion).
Service Example:
This could be internet services such as web-hosting, classes, counseling services etc.
How much can one earn from the internet?
The answer to this lies with you. With the right training and support, it’s reasonable to say that the more effort you put in the better. For this reason, you can’t put a figure on it. Less than two months in I started earning from my website, and it’s been earning more and more ever since. I have never done more than 20 hours of work a week since starting. This is why it has become one of the most popular types of modern day businesses across the globe.
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Hi there,
This is a well written tutorial on how to start a home based business from the beginning. More and more people are looking for ways and means to escape the dead-end jobs and are looking to create a life-style that will be more rewarding and fulfilling that the dreaded 9 – 5.
The beauty about WA is, it does’nt cost the earth and they can be assured that its genuine and will cater for their needs, if they are willing to give this a good chance to succeed.
Well done again and best wishes
Cheers Phil Browne
Thank you Phil for visiting, and for leaving your thoughts. Affiliate marketing is a very flexible business in terms of where you can operate your business from, so, is appealing for many different life-styes. This makes this option a popular choice.
regards 🙂
The place where you need to choose a niche for yourself is the trickiest part for me. I find it really difficult to choose something that I would really never get bored writing about.
How did you choose your first niche? Any tips on sharing how you got your niche figured out and since then were you able to move into different niches?
Hi Shrey! Thanks for dopping by.
I would say stick to what you are passionate about – I am very passionate about social enterprise including environmental improvement, so both my niches reflect this.
If you think you will get bored writing about something, perhaps you are not as passionate about it as you think you are – however, in saying that, there are many ways to find topics to write about for your niche if it has an audience and people who are searching online for things related to your niche. The alphabet soup method for example, can help you find loads of topics related to your niche. The other tool I use is Jaaxy, a very useful free trial keyword tool which will save you loads of time.
My first niche is Permaculture, an environmental subject I am very passionate about and helps the world and people living in it.
My second niche also reflects my passion for Social Enterprise. Namely, by improving the economic means of those in our communities who are at risk which led me to online marketing, as it is low cost entry and low risk.
Hope this helps 🙂
Hi,
Great post on starting an internet business from scratch. When I first started I have plenty of doubt and it is really hard for me to earn money through online platform.
I strongly agree with you that finding a niche is crucial to success. Without a good niche, it is hard to proceed on. Wealthy affiliate is great community where people offer good advice and sharing their personal experience. This helps me to start mustering my courage and start earning a few bucks.
I wonder what is the best affiliate marketing strategies do you recommend among the list?
Regards
Kevin
Hi Kevin! Thanks for stopping by.
I recommend you start with CONTENT MARKETING, the BLOGGING MODEL and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION when you are just starting out.
Once you know what products you want to promote from your website then add the PRODUCT REVIEW strategy, the SHOPPING MODEL and the DIGITAL DISPLAY ads to promote the product/s.
SOCIAL MARKETING & EMAIL MARKETING would be the next two to add as by now you are writing with authority, and you are ready to promote your websites content to social media and to offer the products you are promoting to people who have given you their email.
Once you are ready and are well grounded in the knowledge of how to write content that is attracting your niche audience and your website has been built out to receive serious traffic, then PAY PER CLICK can also be added.
The INCENTIVE REWARDS strategy is used when you have others (affiliates), who promote your product for you (the merchant) through their efforts – it’s usually used by very experienced online marketers who have the systems in place to cope.
I hope this helps Kevin 🙂
I’ve been Surfing for a month and Studying articles or blog posts throughout the internet that have landed me here I have some issues About marketing and promotion. Your information helps me a lot please keep updating this.
Hi Gaurav and thanks for stopping in and for your comments. I’m pleased that you have found the information helpful. If you have questions especially in regards to marketing and promotion issues as you mentioned, I am happy to answer them for you. Affiliate Marketing is a great online earning strategy and with the right training and support, there is no reason why you can’t succeed at it. Also, keep an eye out for new articles posted by me here on the website.
regards 🙂
Hi great article in setting up a online business, before I joined Wealthy Affiliate I had no idea what affiliate marketing was nor how to build a website, the internet provides great resources to work in a different way, however it is very hard to know what is genuine and what you really need to get going, as you say many sound cheap to get going however to get where you need to can take additional costs, do not get me wrong eventually you will need to invest some more money to grow your business, I think it is great you can start a business at such a low cost and there does not need to be any borrowing involved, no instant debt. There is quite a bit to learn if you are totally new, but it is well worth it.
Awesome to have you call by Katie. You have made very valid points regarding what it takes to succeed in affiliate marketing. Like any business online or off-line, there should always be an expectation of investing some amount to get started and then to grow or to scale up – this also means putting back what you are making into your business initially anyway, this might be for example running a PPC campaign to boost traffic numbers to your site and therefore increasing conversions. And as you say, it is well worth it.
Regards 🙂