Make Money Online With Very Little Financial Investment

No Money? No Problem
Make money online from home. Read for 4 free different ways you can earn money online.

Affiliate Marketing
The first thing I should say is that if you want a free short introductory course to Affiliate Marketing, get it here.

Amazon is credited with creating the affiliate market and since most people are familiar with Amazon, I will use them as an example to explain the concept.

Amazon has a wide range of goods and services for sale. Even an organisation as big as them would have difficulty marketing everything they sell .

Instead they allow you to market their goods for them.

Lets say your greatest interest in life was bird watching. You could set up a blog about bird watching that other interested people would like to read. You mention various bird watching books throughout the site and each mention contains a link to Amazon.

You are not selling the books. You are getting people so interested in the books that they go and look at Amazon's site. If they click through to the Amazon site from your, like the product and buy, you make commission. This is really a win-win situation.

The seller gets a whole lot of free marketing and pays nothing unless they get a sale.

You get the opportunity to earn money from your hobby/interest.

The person searching on the internet gets to know a lot about the product and why they should be interested in it before they even get to the bookshop.

What are the Pros and Cons?

What are the pros and cons of building an online business rather than an affiliate business or a drop ship business?

Pros
You:

• Can find out if you have the drive to make money online without investing a lot of your capital.
• Can work out where your best market is.
• Sell what you are passionate about. 
•  Manage a business without having to manage staff, premises etc. 
• Earn an extra income by working from home.

Cons

You personally:

• Must do all the research involved
• Decide what products/ services to invest in
• Give up some of your leisure time.   

Who Might Want to Build An Income From Affiliate Marketing?
Anyone who:

• Don't know much about any sort of business but want to learn.
• Just want a bit of extra income.
• Haven't got too much money to splash around. 
• Wants to take a bit more control over their life.
• Has lost their job, savings or investment.

How Does it Work?
Once you have decided what particular area you would like to make money online from (and we will cover look at niches in detail later) there are basically three steps to take:

• Sign Up: Sign up for the programmes or products that most interest you.
• Market: Create a way to market that product – for example a website, a blog, e-mail marketing, forum posting, a Facebook page etc.
• Monetize your Site.  Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat (sorry cats and cat lovers), there is more than one way to earn money from your site. Make sure you have checked them all out and have a strategy that will get the site earning the most money, without putting visitors off.

Affiliate Agencies
There are many 'affiliate agencies' where you can sign up and decide on one product or a range of products you want to become an affiliate for.

The agency provides the link between the vendor of the product and the affiliate (you) and takes care of all the admin. They give you a personalised link for each product you are interested in. You create a way of marketing that product (for example a blog) and put the link on the blog.

Agencies can make life easier because through them you can set up your program, sell as many of their products as possible and have it all laid out for you on one site.

Independent Programmes

Independent Affiliate Programmes are run by many large companies including Amazon who are sometimes credited with creating the affiliate market.

Are There Limits to the Affiliate Business?

If you come across a product or service that you would love to be an affiliate for, but they have no programme, don't worry.

A lot of people who are out there selling things on the net have not even heard of affiliate programmes, but that does not mean you can't become an affiliate for them.

Contact the owner of the business and ask them if they will sign up with an affiliate agency so that you can become an affiliate for them. It takes a few minutes for them and it is a win-win situation.

Research, Research, Research
 Like everything else connected with the internet, please make sure that you do your own research and do it carefully. You will have to hand over a certain amount of sensitive information so a method of payment can be set up, therefore research is vital.

We do not recommend one affiliate programme over another, but I will never mention a programme if I know anything bad about it,

However, if you have decided to go with a programme that has not been mentioned in our materials, we would love you to go to our forum and let others know what you think. Or just go there and join in any conversation that interests you!

 Do I Have to Pay to Join an Affiliate Programme?

Another question that often comes up is in two parts. The first is whether you have to pay to join an affiliate programme. The answer is that you do not with most affiliate programmes. Most of them are free to join. They make their money from a share of the commission when items are sold.

 The second part of the question is, if an affiliate does charge, should you pay to belong to it. My feeling is that you should not. There are so many free programmes available from good organisations that it seems strange that any programmes should be set up where you have to pay to belong to them. Reading some of the descriptions, you might think it worth paying because the returns appear to be so good, but there are two things to keep in mind.

• You still have to do the work to market the product / service – if it sells itself, why do they need affiliates?
• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

At My Business Coach Online we offer information about three other ways of doing business online, and you can read about them on later blogs:

Drop Shipping,          Starting Your Online Business                    Put Your Offline Business Online  

Remember you can get a free introductory short course to affiliate marketing here.

Is This All I Can Do?
If you are not sure which type of online business is for you, it does not matter – you can use them all. Consider some of these examples:

• How about putting your own existing offline business online, and adding a range from a drop shipping warehouse
• You could have a drop shipping site with some links to affiliate goods.
• You could have your own online business with a range of drop shipping goods and a few affiliate items as well
• You could put all four approaches on one site.

 The point about this is that you are here to enjoy yourself and to make money online. You should try different approaches to make sure that you are not missing the thing that would push your site into the stratosphere.