The Online Business Starting Point

Most of the people who are interested in starting their own business and opt for online business, do not know where to start. There are many questions related to the starting point in online business. Such questions would be:

-Where do I start looking for an online business idea?
-Where do I start learning about marketing online business?
-Where do I start looking for online advertising media?

Then most people will go for the search engines and start typing in what they are looking for, hoping that they will find something that will suit them. There is nothing wrong with this methodology. The problem here is that in most cases people do not really know what they are looking for.

In this article we will try to give recommendations and guidelines on the things that a person should be looking for when searching for the online business opportunity he/she would be most relaxed with.

In a previous article titled “Choosing An Online Business Is A Tricky Business” we categorized the different types of online businesses a person could be involved in. We will not repeat them but our advice is to begin with one particular type and then move to the other types when the person feels relaxed with the idea on online marketing.

If a person is totally new to the idea of online business he/she should start with an affiliate program. An affiliate program is one that allows you to sell other people’s products and services in return for a commission. Yet a person should not be involved in just any affiliate program. There are special requirements that a person should be looking for in an affiliate program if he/she is still new to the idea of online marketing.

We will look list and explain each one of these suggested requirements:

1-Design and setup your own website: There are a lot of affiliate programs out there that give you an assigned web page that you can promote. Although it is a very good feature that saves you the hassle of building your own web pages, yet it is limited in the ways you will be able to market it as most online marketing media do not accept affiliate pages. Therefore, you will need an affiliate program that incorporates setting up and designing your own website; in addition to advising you on the hosting service provider you should get. “Your own website” means that you should own the domain name. I have written a complete article about the benefits of owning a website with comparative analysis with the option of not having your own website.

2- Provide a systematic training: Most affiliate programs provide you with what they call marketing tools. But if someone is new to the internet and to online marketing, then there is no way that he/she would be able to use those tools effectively. Therefore, the affiliate program that you should be looking for is one that has a systematic and detailed training that can take you by the hand to show you how to promote your business.

3-Systematic and not individualistic support: Most affiliate programs depend on the sponsor support for their team. This system is very weak. This means if the sponsor is away, ill, vacationing or for any reason cannot and would not answer the support questions, the sponsored team is lost and cannot proceed with their business. The affiliate program that you should be looking for must have the following support levels:

a.Sponsor Support
b.High traffic and high quality forum especially dedicated for the particular affiliate program you are thinking of promoting.
c.Help Desk

With this system a person might not even need a sponsor support.

I have heard many recommend having a mentor that will be able to teach all the ins and outs of online marketing. I completely agree with them, but would not include it in the above criteria. The above criteria are recommended so that a person can examine any affiliate program against. Thus, they will facilitate for anyone the decision making process for choosing an affiliate program to work with. Therefore, a mentor is not a must have in affiliate program for the newbie. Still, I would highly recommend searching for and getting a mentor, as a mentor can act in many dimensions especially on the motivational and technical aspects.

Make Money Selling Other People’s Products

A lot of people are now getting into online businesses and online marketing either to supplement their “real world” income or for it to become their primary source of income. Why? Because online marketing just provides them a lot of benefits!

First, you can reach just about anybody in the world who has Internet access if you market your products online. That means a wider market for you, which can translate to larger profits. Second, setting up an online business requires only a fraction of the cost required to set up an actual business establishment, which means a lot of savings for the business owner.

Another aspect that has attracted a lot of people towards online marketing is the fact that one doesn’t have to have his own products to get started. In online marketing, one can start making a lot of money just by selling, or even by just trying to sell, other people’s products. And getting started with this kind of marketing strategy is actually quite easy. All that one needs to do is to set up an agreement with an online retailer or merchant, and after everything is settled, one can immediately start making money by selling the merchant’s or the retailer’s products.

Incidentally, the most popular and the fastest growing method of selling other people’s products online is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing, in its simplest definition, is a relationship between an online merchant or retailer, who has products to sell, and his affiliates, who are willing to promote the merchant’s product on their website.

In a typical affiliate marketing set up, the merchant provides his affiliates with banners and text ads that links to his site. The affiliates will then get these ads posted on their website and they get paid whenever traffic or sales is directed to the merchant’s website. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other online merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee for the affiliate’s compensation.

Starting to make money online with affiliate marketing is relatively quick and easy. All that one has to do is to sign up as an affiliate for an online company that offers affiliate programs. An alternative method, and usually an easier one, is to sign up as a member of an affiliate network—a network that hosts a variety of affiliate programs for different online merchants or retailers. Signing up is usually free, although other companies and networks may require you to pay a particular fee. Such fees, however, are made as payment for additional services that the company may render, like providing you with tools and assistance to jumpstart your online business.

When you sign up with an affiliate marketing program, you are usually required to fill out a form containing information about yourself. Some affiliate programs may also require you to present the URL of your website and describe its contents. This will allow the retailers to verify that you actually have a website with contents that are relevant to their products. Some affiliate programs, however, won’t require you to have a website. After filling out the form and all, you are then allowed to choose the affiliate programs you want to promote.

After signing up with an affiliate program and being an actual affiliate, you are now ready to start making a lot of money by selling other people’s product online. How do you make money? There are actually a number of ways for you to earn money as an affiliate, and most of these ways depends on the type of affiliate marketing program you’ve gotten into.

Many affiliate marketing programs compensate their affiliates in either of three ways: pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-sale (PPS), or pay-per-lead (PPL). In pay-per-click affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever he directs traffic to the merchant’s site. PPS and PPL affiliate marketing programs work rather differently. In PPS, the affiliate only gets paid when his referral converts into an actual sale. In typical PPS affiliate programs, the affiliate would usually get 15% to 20% commission for each conversion. PPL affiliate programs work the same way, although affiliates are paid a fixed fee whenever his referral converts into a lead for the company.

Some affiliate marketing programs are two-tier programs, wherein the affiliate is also allowed to recommend other affiliates to the merchant. In such affiliate programs, the affiliate would not only be paid for the traffic or sales that he would direct to the merchant’s site but also for the traffic or sales directed by the affiliates who signed up with the program through his recommendation.

Yet another way of earning more profits with affiliate marketing is through residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs are affiliate programs where the affiliate gets paid a number of times for as long as the merchant keeps the customer the affiliate has referred to his site. One form of residual program gets the affiliate paid a commission every time the referred customer purchases something on the merchant’s site. Another form of residual affiliate program gets the affiliate paid a percentage every month for as long as the company keeps the referred customer.

With a lot of options available and a lot of ways to earn money, affiliate marketing is undoubtedly the most popular and the easiest way to make money by selling other people’s products online. As to how much money one can get from affiliate marketing actually depends on the affiliate. A dedicated and hardworking affiliate would certainly get more from the program compared to those affiliates who would simply sign up and forget about the program later.