Selling other people’s products is commonly referred to as ‘affiliate marketing’. This is where you earn a commission for referring sales, and the best part is it is very easy to do.
There’s many times you would have bought a product online through an affiliate and not even realised it! Let me give you an example…
Whenever you’ve been in the market to make a significant purchase have you ever done a search for a comparison of available products? Recently my mobile phone plan expired and I wanted to make sure I was getting the best deal so I did a search on Google for ‘compare mobile phone plans’.
One of the top results was a site that listed all the different mobile phone plans available and what their different features were; plan price, calls included, data included, etc. Next to each of the phone plans was a link to the company’s website.
What you may not realise is that no matter which phone plan I decide to go with, the review site will earn a commission from that company.
How?
The review site owner has an affiliate agreement with each of these phone companies. For every new customer that they refer, the website owner earns a commission. This could be a flat commission or a recurring commission.
You might be wondering how the different phone companies can know which affiliate is sending them new customers? This will be discussed in greater detail in the next chapter.
But before we go there, let me explain to you why affiliate marketing is the best way to get started out making money online…
a) No capital required
Because you’re selling other people’s products, you don’t need to carry inventory at all. Whether you’re promoting someone’s digital or physical product, you don’t need to purchase it in advance and then resell it. The vendor takes care of all of that for you!
All you need to do is to use your unique affiliate link to send visitors to the offer 🙂
b) Don’t need a website
This is a big reason why most people never go into an online business. They think that they need a website and don’t know how set one up.
The great news is that you don’t need a website to make money online! You don’t even need to know anything about how websites work, website programming etc (though it does help).
In fact, there’s some very successful Internet marketers that I know that don’t know how to write one line of code!
c) Never stuck with unwanted stock
If you’ve ever run a physical business you’ll know what I’m talking about. When you buy products to resell, or if you have created your own product, you can be left with stock that you’re not able to sell. Stock that you had to pay for or spend your valuable time creating.
Affiliates never have to worry about any of that!
d) Easily move from one offer to another
Let’s say you’re promoting a product, as an affiliate, and you find a similar or superior product in your chosen niche that is much more profitable. You can easily switch to promoting the new product and not have to worry about the old product anymore.
e) Sell as many relevant offers as you like
As an affiliate you don’t have to restrict yourself to promoting one or even a few products. You can promote as many relevant, quality products as you like within your chosen niche.
f) Don’t waste time on product creation, sales letters, merchant accounts, etc
The biggest benefit of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to spend ANY time at all on coming up with a product or service to sell, creating that product, the sales letter, the download pages, product support, merchant facilities for purchasing, refunds, etc.
Most people don’t realise that there is a LOT involved in selling your own products.
Out of the three methods discussed in this chapter on how to make money online, the best, easiest and cheapest way to get started is the third option, selling other people’s products.
Have you tried affiliate marketing? How much success have you had with it? Leave a comment below!