Aaah, my life was so much simpler back when I was only an affiliate marketer and my online business consisted ONLY of affiliate sites. 🙂
My affiliated merchants handled everything related to orders and I had no need for a personal assistant to manage the customer service end of my business.
I could literally take off on vacation for 6 weeks and know that the sales and checks would keep coming in.
I wasn't surprised therefore when one of my clients mentioned that he was moving AWAY from selling his own products and going BACK to marketing online as an affiliate to enjoy the simplicity and freedom.
Although there are dozens of advantages in addition to freedom and simplicity, here are 17 good reasons to choose affiliate marketing as a way to make money online.
-
Low Cost Set-up
Compared with building a store offline, becoming an affiliate marketer is cheap. You probably already have a desk, an Internet-connected computer and word-processing software — which is all the equipment you may need.
-
No Production Costs
The cost to develop and produce a new product is prohibitive for almost anyone who wants to start a home-based business. With affiliate programs, production costs aren’t an issue. The product has been developed and proven – all on the merchant’s nickel.
-
No Fees or Licenses
Those who sell products in the ‘real world’ must often pay for a license to distribute products within a limited geographic region. Affiliate programs, on the other hand, are usually free to join, and geographic market reach is limited only by the affiliate’s ability to promote his web site.
-
Sell Almost Anything
What isn’t sold online? That list must be shorter than the one describing all that IS sold online. There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs selling every product under the sun. That makes it easy to find products related to your current or planned web site.
-
No Sales Experience Required
When I started my affiliate business, I had absolutely no sales experience. That wasn’t a problem, however. The companies I affiliated with provided excellent marketing material and selling tips. Many merchants will go out of their way to help their affiliates increase sales.
-
No Employees
Employee salaries are the biggest business expense. Although you may need or want someone to work for you on occasion, you’ll never have to worry about hiring full or part-time employees while working as an affiliate marketer. When you have a project you want to hire out, it is easy to find specialists in every computer-related field who can work for you from the comfort of THEIR own homes. You pay only for the project, and never have to worry about ongoing employee-related benefits and deductions.
-
No Merchant Accounts
Setting up a merchant account is time-consuming and costly. However, affiliate marketers don’t need merchant accounts. Merchants bear all the costs for payment processing. As an affiliate, you’ll never lose sleep over chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account.
-
No Inventory
As an affiliate marketer, you can sell large items without storage concerns, even if you live in a small one-bedroom apartment.
-
No Order-Processing
Forget the problems associated with collecting and storing names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. The merchant does all that!
-
No Shipping
The cost and hassle to prepare and ship products to customers worldwide could be staggering. Affiliates never have to worry about packaging supplies or postal rates.
-
No Customer Service
Do you hate the prospect of dealing with nasty people or customer complaints? Don’t worry about it! The merchant handles the snivelers.
-
Make Money While You Sleep
What other business allows you as a sole proprietor to keep your doors open and keep making money even when you take breaks or after you go home for the night?
-
Worldwide Marketplace
The Internet is the world’s largest marketplace. You can drive more visitors to your online store in a day, than a small-town merchant will see in his or her brick and mortar business in a year.
-
Work from Home
Working from home is considered the best advantage to having an online business by those who despised a long commute to work or prefer to work in their pajamas. Parents, in particular, value having more time to spend with their children.
-
Work Anywhere in the World
An online business is perfect for those who love to travel. I’ve used my laptop to maintain my affiliate business throughout North America as well as from remote locations in South America and China.
-
Minimal Risk
The product you chose isn’t making money? Dump it. Take down your links and promote another! It’s that easy. There are no long-term contracts binding you to products that don’t sell.
-
High Income Potential
If you have a job, your salary or hourly wage is probably pre-determined. Maybe there’s not much, other than working overtime, that you can do to increase your income. With your own affiliate business on the Internet your income potential is limited only by your desire, effort and imagination.
Relatively low outlay of resources with huge potential returns truly makes affiliate marketing on the Internet an outstanding business opportunity.
Did you find this post about affiliate marketing advantages informative and useful? If so, please share it with others! If you have a comment, question or suggestion, please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
All good points Rosalind, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd. On our website (it’s a review website of sleep related products like mattresses) , we take our time with each piece we publish and it’s always based on talking to experts and testing the products (which mean extra expenses and time).
Then, you publish the post and nobody can find you because giant websites like Washington Post etc. publish a piece on your topic and they skyrocket in front of you in the search results.
Another thing – if your main operation is not in the USA (and ours is not) you’re facing extra hurdles. For example, our application just got declines by one of the largest affiliate networks and I can think of no other reason apart from not being based in the US.
Any experiences or thought on that (the latter issue)?
Thanks
Hi Bob,
Regular posting of articles on your primary topic will eventually pay off as Google rewards consistency.
As regards not being accepted by US merchants because you are not in the U.S., you need to be persistent. Furthermore, you can trust that other merchants will come along who will be happy to accept an affiliate who is devoted to his topic.
Best of success to you!
Cheers,
Ros
Oh. This seems to be the excellent list of things which you can get if you are an affiliate marketer. I always wish to learn this thing but have not got good team to learn it in a proper way than getting the help of internet. These 10 reasons which you have pointed out to kindled the fire in me to become an affiliate marketer.
Awesome! That’s just what I was hoping it would do, David. 🙂
Hi,
I’ve been an affiliate marketer for years and make a decent amount, but do you have any tips as to how to make that “next step”? It’s hard to think of ways to increase affiliate sales.