In life, the first thing you must do is decide what you really want. Weigh the costs and the results. Are the results worthy of the costs? Then make up your mind completely and go after your goal with all your might.
Alfred A. Montapert
Today I will expand a bit on making extra money with the assumption that some folks would not mind making money via some sort market based system. One such system is:
Affiliate Marketing
One of the easiest ways to earn home-based extra income is through what is commonly called affiliate marketing. With these programs you can choose the product you wish to be associated with and to sell. Normally these companies provide you with a free website, called a gateway website. These sites give you a no cost promotion tool to generate prospective customer. Once directed to these to these sites customers can find out about and hopefully buy your product. These affiliate companies’ do the heavy lifting, they take care of processing the orders, handling payments and any customer problems that might come up. You simply promote your site and the rest is done for you. One special note, when choosing a company to partner up with make sure you are getting commissions from 35% to 75%. Normally there are different tiers of commissions. The rule is, the more you sell the more you make. When the checks come in you have the hard job of cashing them.
As an aside, don’t worry just yet if you don’t have your own website. That will be a future step and for those interested I can help you out by covering the topic in a future issue or you can contact me.
For a technical explanation of affiliate marketing check this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing
- Some things you want to check out.
- We are all about saving and making money, so make sure that you can participate in your chosen program for free or a very low price for as long as you want.
- There should be no long-term agreement that traps you in something you might find out is not for you.
- Are you provided with a personalized website for FREE. There should never be a fee for a company gateway webpage.
- Is there a mentoring system or at least a responsive Q&A system?
- Make sure the company handles shipping, at least to your location. The company should handle customer service, returns, and other problems. (Some organizations have you take care of payments; while others do not, this is up to you. Both are legit)
- Is marketing local, regional or international. This choice will impact later decisions about advertising and promotion.
- Does the company have a good reputation and a physical location if you are dealing with tangible goods? There are forums, websites, and the BBB you can check with. Just remember when running into complaints. Read them knowing that some legit companies get their share of complaints simply because some people are not willing to put in the work. Some folks are just looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
- Is there training?
- Is your future income tied to residual or onetime sales? This is a fundamental concern. It will be up to you to make this call. There are pros and cons on both sides. One-time commissions tend to be higher while residual lower but are repeated over time if the customer is retained.
- Is it simple for you to do? I am not saying easy; get over it, nothing is easy. But if it is understandable by you and you can see yourself trying it, I say go for it.
- Do they pay regularly? Once established as an active member you should be getting paid at least once a month. Many pay weekly once you reach a certain point in an organization. As long as the checks cash it’s all good in my book.
In conclusion, affiliate programs; sometimes called MLM for multilevel marketing is the easiest and most affordable way to start your own business. We will be discussing this and other endeavors as we go along in this blog. Blog at ya next time
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