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Local Business  » The Home Based Business Opportunity You Can Start Tonight.

The Home Based Business Opportunity You Can Start Tonight.

Submitted by: John Lee

WorldWideReviews

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Admit it ... selling something online, from the comfort of your

own home office, would be great. More specifically, selling

something from your own home office that you don't have to

stock, that you don't have to ship, and where you don't have to

deal with customers would be great. This sounds like the perfect

job, doesn't it?

But what if you have nothing to sell? Let's say you're not an

author, and you are not a professor, nor do you manufacture

anything. Can you still make money by selling things part time

from home?

Yes, and it's called Affiliate Marketing. And it works

something like this:

A person registers with some company's (merchant's) affiliate

program (retailers such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Vonage, etc).

This person then "drives" or "refers" Internet traffic to these

merchants. When a referred visitor purchases some product, say a

book or piece of software, the person who referred the visitor

is paid a commission for generating the sale.

The person or company that owns the product will be responsible

for stocking it, getting it to the customer and dealing with any

customer service issues. You, as the affiliate, have nothing

more to do with the transaction except cashing your check.

What a job!

You're first step is to decide what to market.

Deciding what to market has been made a lot easier by the

emergence of Affiliate Networks. Affiliate Networks are also

know as "Pay for Performance Networks" or "Marketing Solutions

Providers". They all provide basically the same service, which

is to allow affiliates to search for and market the products of

the companies ("merchants") in their network.

The process works basically like this:

1. A person who wishes to sell something signs up with an

Affiliate Network. They now become an "affiliate".

2. The affiliate searches or browses the Affiliate Network for

products that they think they might be able to sell.

3. When the affiliate finds a product they want to sell, they

are given their own "affiliate link" to the website where a

customer can purchase the product. This link is encoded with the

affiliate's uniquely identifying number.

4. The affiliate sends or "drives" potential customers to the

company's website via their affiliate link.

5. If a customer purchases the product then the affiliate gets

credit for that sale and earns a commission.

6. At the end of the pay period (defined by the Affiliate

Network) a single paycheck consolidating all commissions for all

products sold is issued to the affiliate.

"Driving" customers to the company's website is where the

real fun resides. There are two main methods for driving online

traffic to these companies:

* Build a large or small website. Place various links, banners,

and products on this website. When your visitors click through

on these links and purchase a product you will get a commission.

* Send potential customers directly to the companies using

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) networks. When these people purchase a

product you will get a commission.

It takes more time to build a website with all of the affiliate

links. However, you can use your website to "pre-sell" the

company and/or products that you are promoting. In addition, you

can capture the email addresses of your visitors. These can be

used later to offer more products and generate even more sales.

Luckily, there are software programs available that can make

building a website a breeze.

Affiliate Networks are free to join.

They make their money by charging the merchants a percentage of

their sales. Some networks will allow just about anyone to join,

while others are more particular ... maybe requiring that you

own a website that receives a certain number of visitors each

month.

Some of the most popular Affiliate Networks are:

* ClickBank

* Commission Junction

* LinkShare

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ClickBank is one of the easy ones to join. They offer mostly

downloadable products (i.e.; ebooks, software, etc.). They also

allow you to browse their product directory before you signup.

In addition, affiliates are not required to even own a website

to join. That makes this a perfect starting point.

You can do affiliate marketing full or part time

One great aspect of this business is that you can put as little

or as much time into it as your schedule allows. Many people

start by just doing a few hours a week after work or on

weekends. Just have fun with it and the money will come!

Much, much more...

This has just been a very basic overview of affiliate marketing.

For those people who want to grow this into a full-time

"at-home" business there is much more they can learn to do.

Topics such as ad placement, search engine optimization, link

building, auto-responders and other are very important, but

beyond the scope of this article.

For more information or resources pertaining to this

article, please visit WorldWideReviews Work at Home Archive at http://www.worldwidereviews.com/blog/Archive.htm<

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Copyright © by John Lee

Staff@WORLDWIDEREVIEWS.COM

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John Lee is owner and publisher of the acclaimed

consumer reporting website WorldWideReviews.

A free product review and watchdog service.

Work at Home Archive

http://www.worldwidereviews.com/blog/Archive.htm<

/a>

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

About the author:

John Lee is owner and publisher of the acclaimed

consumer reporting website WorldWideReviews.

A free product review and watchdog service.

Work at Home Archive

http://www.worldwidereviews.com/blog/Archive.htm<

/a>