Affiliate marketing

Definition: an affiliate is a business or an individual that is owned or controlled, in whole or in part, by another business or individual.

As a product owner

you can have affiliates selling your product on your terms and conditions.

you can accept or reject, at your discretion, which affiliates will sell your product.

As an affiliate

you can sell anyones products at your choice

you can sell a company's products on their terms and conditions.

In both cases you are self-employed.
You work at your own expense and at your own risk.

Affiliate marketing is very different to normal sales methods because you will always be self-employed. You will always work at your risk, your expense and always through your sales outlets.

You can be an affiliate(salesperson) of a company like Amazon. You will then promote their products on your site and earn a commission under their terms and conditions.

You can have your own product and offer it for sale online. Part of your sales tactics would be to recruit affiliates (salespeople) to promote and sell your product on their sites subject to your terms and conditions.

Which is better?

• Having my own product
• Selling someone else’s product

There is no one answer to cover all. Selling other people’s products is a quick and dirty way to test the system, and to learn from your mistakes and observation without penalty. You might even be lucky and start to see an income. The first time you see a deposit on your PayPal statement will be one of the aha moments of your internet life. From this point forward many things become possible.

However, if you have written your own e-book on say Yoga, your site would be much more attractive with well chosen affiliates selling their products on your site. Developing a healthy diet would probably interest your readers more than dog training, so choose your affiliates carefully. If you have four or five suitable sites selling on your site, you would potentially attract more happy readers and develop a reasonable side income.

AFFILIATE MARKETING SHOULD BECOME A BIG PART OF YOUR INTERNET BUSINESS EFFORTS.