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Points To Consider Before Starting an Affiliate Home Business

What to Consider before starting an affiliate home business?

1. Do You Have Any Internet Marketing Experience?

It's all very well deciding to start a business from home in internet marketing or more specifically as an affiliate marketer but you're going to need to gain some knowledge in at least the fundamental skills of online marketing before you can expect to make a decent monthly income. You might have seen the many "sales pages" out there offering the latest piece of "just one click" software which makes you thousands each day without even having a website or any prior knowledge. But if you want my advice, stay away from those. If it really was that straightforward, wouldn't everyone be investing $39.00 to buy the software? The ClickBank screen shots you see are actually their earnings from the thousands of sales they've made from their $39.00 piece of software. In reality, you need to be prepared to invest in yourself and get trained in internet marketing.

2. Do You Own Your Own Website?

Whilst it is possible to earn money with some affiliate programmes without, you will increase your earning potential greatly by having your own website or blog with which to market the products or services you are planning to become an affiliate of. Better still, you should look at creating a website in order to start promoting yourself, You Inc! If people come to know and trust you as an honest genuine person (which I am assuming you are!) then they will be more likely to buy from you than the next person they come across who is recommending the same products as you!

3. How Much Time Do You Have For Your New Business?

It's important when you get started to know exactly what time you do have to put into your new home business. Map it out in a DMO (Daily Method of Operation). Get a blank week view of a diary or calendar (you could create this in a spreadsheet). Plot your current commitments like your job e.g. if you work 9-5, mark out that part of your diary or calendar as JOB. If you have dinner with your family between 5-6pm, mark it on the diary. If you go to the gym every Wednesday after work, mark it in the diary. When you are finished, you should now have a clear view of how much time you have to spend on building your business. If you have very few time slots left on the diary, then you will need to consider whether you can sacrifice any of the other commitments in favour of more time for your business (I don't recommend you drop your family time!) or you will have to market with more of the paid methods that take up less time but will of course cost you more money which brings me to my next point.

4. Do You Have Any Money To Invest?

It is possible to build an income online with very little marketing budget but you should be prepared to invest some money upfront whatever opportunity you partner with. The best affiliate businesses are the ones that offer top tier products of high value that people need and are interested in. Let me ask you this, would you rather try and find 100 people to buy a $40 product for a $15 commission a time or sell one product and earn anywhere from $1500-$16000? I know which I would rather do. Find an affiliate business with high ticket items.

5. Which Products or Services Are the Best to Refer

We've already covered this in part. Look for high value products, something that you would be happy to purchase yourself. Without purchasing and using a product yourself, you can't hope to be any good at referring it.. Would you refer a restaurant to a friend if you hadn't even eaten there yourself? What about a film at the movies that you hadn't even seen? Find a product that is within a growing market or trend. In this economy more people than ever are looking for ways to make the most of their money and earn more of it or have it working for them so financial products and wealth creation education is a popular trend. Internet marketing education of course is another huge market.

6. How Much Do You Want to Earn?

Goal setting is important in any business whether you are working for a boss or running your own affiliate business from home. Even more so in the latter case because you are accountable to no-one but yourself. So if your plan is to replace your job income with your home business so that you can sack your boss or pay off some debt then write it down and work the figures backwards so you know exactly how many products you need to sell per day/week/month to realise your goal. Of course if you are in a job earning $2000-$3000 per month and you have chosen a top tier direct sales company to refer products for, then it's not going to take many sales to quit your day job! Refer back to Point 4

7. Are You Serious About Replacing Your Job?

Many people talk about quitting their jobs, escaping the rat-race but never actually do anything about it. Or they start a part-time home business but don't treat it seriously enough for it to grow to a level where they can comfortably leave their job. Whether it's part-time, full time, home based or a brick and mortar business, building a successful business requires consistent time and effort. Put a plan together, create a DMO like we talked about in point 3, set some goals and work hard. The reason most people fail is because they just don't want it bad enough. If you want to "get out" badly enough, you will do whatever it takes.

8. Have You Considered All The Options Out There?

There are many options out there when it comes to earning money online but this article assumes that you have made the decision you want to start an affiliate home business versus joining an MLM for example or starting your own ecommerce site. So when it comes to affiliate marketing, there are hundreds of options out there. You can join marketplaces such as ClickBank and Plimus for example and promote low cost items like digital products, ebooks etc. There are other networks you can join to refer physical products. Many of these large marketplaces and networks have low cost products and therefore the commissions per sale are small. A lot of large well known companies are now using affiliate marketing to increase their exposure. On the other hand, you can sign up with companies like Amazon as an affiliate. In fact, many of the services you might buy on the internet when you start learning how to market probably have affiliate programmes attached to them. Domain hosting, bookmarking services, article submission software, the list goes on. Then of course there are the high value, top tier products from which to earn high upfront profits. This would be my recommended business model.

9. Single Income Stream or Multiple Income Streams

Of course, you want multiple streams of income. If you have any kind of website where you offer value that you use in your marketing efforts, why not have a Recommended Resources page that lists all the tools you use to grow your business, with a link (your affiliate link of course) to the main sales website for each particular product. Affiliate marketing in it's simplest form! Banners on your main website for relevant brands work too. If you are building a list through your website, you can broadcast offers of other related products to your subscribers as part of your marketing plan.

10. Are You Up For It?

It takes discipline, belief, desire and consistent effort to build a successful business. Three of the four things I just mentioned are about having the right mindset. The other one is just about putting it into practice. So working as hard on yourself as you do on your business is also vital to your success. If you are not prepared to spend time studying and reading to improve your mindset, then you may as well resign yourself to the 9-5 of your job for the rest of your working life! All it takes is 15 minutes per day - so do you have what it takes to grow a successful affiliate home business?



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