Affiliate marketing is one of the best internet business models to start because you can start your online business with very little investment and quickly start making huge profits. Here are the 4 things you will need to start your business:
A product –
your cost? Zero dollars! That’s how it is. With affiliate marketing, you will be selling a product created by someone else. That is the beauty of this method. You have no upfront costs associated with the product at all: you don’t have to make it, you don’t have to inventory it, and you don’t have to handle the money. All you do is collect commissions from your sales. The seller does all the rest.
A Web page –
your cost? You can start with a free website at Blogger.com, WordPress.com or any of the other free web 2.0 sites like Squidoo.com or HubPages.com. However, your best bet is to host your own site as quickly as possible, which means buying web hosting from a reputable site like Hostgator.com or GoDaddy.com for as little as $10 per month. Some of the free sites will limit your bandwidth and worse, limit the types of products you can promote.
A domain name –
If you’re hosting your own site, you’ll also need a domain name. You will want a .com or a.net name if possible and it will cost you $8 – $10 for a year.
An email service –
your cost? Approximately $10 to $20 per month. You won’t need this to get started, but it’s best to add an autoresponder series to your website as soon as possible so you can start building an email marketing list to promote your products.
A marketing plan –
If you’ve never been involved in affiliate marketing before, you won’t have much success just winging it. In fact, all you’ll really do is waste what little money you’ve invested. You need to find a reliable marketing plan that will teach you step by step everything you need to know to get your site up and running and making money as fast as possible.
Your cost in this plan It will depend on the program you decide to go with, but it is one of the most crucial aspects of your business. Without a plan and guidelines to follow, most experienced salespeople will quickly swallow it and you will have no chance of success.