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When you think of running a home based business it probably conjures up images of stacking boxes in your garage and spare rooms overflowing with stock.
But more and more home based businesses are appearing and they don't hold stock or even produce a product themselves.
They are the silent masses doing affiliate marketing from home.
Affiliate Marketing For Home Based Business
Affiliate marketing is basically like being a commission only sales person for another company, but you get the opportunity to not only sell one product, but many across a number of networks.
That's why this method of home based businesses is really taking off. You don't have to hold large amounts of stock in your garage which not only takes up space but also ties up money until it's all sold.
No stock required
You don't have stock because you're selling products produced by other companies.
There are hundreds of retailers that offer an affiliate commission for helping them sell a product. Products can be physical goods like products from Amazon who have give affiliates a cut of any sales they help bring to Amazon, or they can be digital goods like software, audio files, online courses and more.
No product or service of your own required
Another great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don't have to have a product or service yourself. You can make quite a good living in your home based business selling other people's products.
Don't get me wrong, it can take a little time to ramp up to a full time income with affiliate marketing, but the opportunity is there and it means you don't have to invest lots of money into product development.
Cheap to startup
While we're on the topic of investing money into your business, affiliate marketing businesses are among the cheapest to start.
There is no product or service development costs and you can run it from home which will cut down on office costs. The bare minimum you'll need to invest in is a computer and internet connection, but we also can't help but mention it helps to invest in an affiliate link management tool if you're running a number of websites.
Getting Started
Many people are looking into this business model because of the attractive commissions and low start up costs. Our advice is to get started today.
Your income from affiliate marketing might be low at first, but it will increase with time and dedication and as your knowledge about the business increases.
Investing in tools like ThirstyAffiliates will help you optimize your campaigns and get your ahead faster.
How To Start An Affiliate Marketing Business
As mentioned before and if you have the option, start your affiliate marketing business as a part time venture. It's unlikely you'll make it to a full time income straight away, but it's something you can grow into.
Starting can be as simple as finding products and services that you have used yourself and checking if they have an affiliate program.
This is exactly how I started in the game by advertising the web hosting service one of my websites was running on. For each new customer I referred I was able to get $65 in commissions.
True, that's nothing huge to write home about, but to this day that one website brings in a few hundred dollars a month which was enough to spark my interest in affiliate marketing.
Starting A Website
Once you figure out what product you're going to promote you need to figure out how you will direct people to it.
Most people start a website around the product or a group of products that are all similar.
We recommend using the WordPress blogging/CMS software for creating your website which is something you can install with a couple of clicks using web hosts like Bluehost.
If you're using WordPress you can also take advantage of our tool, ThirstyAffiliates. It lets you organise all of your affiliate links in one place which is an absolute must if you have more than a handful of affiliate links.
Directing Traffic
The final piece of the puzzle is directing traffic to your affiliate marketing website. This is something that stumps a lot of affiliate marketers.
There's basically two options, you can pay for traffic or attract traffic naturally from search engines, social media and other websites.
This is a topic for a whole other blog post in itself which we're going to post about soon (make sure you subscribe over there in the sidebar).
Best of luck!
While it all seems quite easy running an affiliate marketing business from home, it's actually a tough business to succeed in. But I guess that depends on what your definition of success is.
It might be that you're just trying to find some extra beer money each month, in which case a casual approach to affiliate marketing will be enough. Start a website you're passionate about, blog about it prolifically, get search traffic and find products to promote to your audience.
If you're getting into it with a view to expanding it and maybe going full time one day you might need to be more methodical, but essentially the formula is similar. Start a website around a topic you know has good potential for promoting products via affiliate marketing and attract traffic to that site.
Whichever way you go, make sure you check out our tool, I'm sure it will help you on your journey in affiliate marketing and be sure to sign up to our blog in the sidebar there for more posts like this one.
