There is no denying the fact that Internet has opened up a bundle of opportunities for people to build a business. There are many billion-dollar businesses that have been possible only due to Internet.
For instance, websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Yahoo are multibillion dollar businesses and these are in existence only due to Internet.
If there was no Internet there will be no such business. There are many other types of businesses that can be built online.
For instance, one can start selling own products and services by opening an e-commerce shop. Similarly, one can start selling products by drop shipping the products. Also, there is a highly growing business of designing websites as well as providing other services that are delivered digitally.
Over the years, one particular online business model that has become extremely popular online is affiliate marketing business. One of the biggest reasons of its popularity is that the person operating the business does not need to store any inventory of products for selling. Also, there is no dealing with the customers as this business revolves around selling products and services of others for a commission.
In simple terms, existing online businesses hire affiliate marketers to help them sell more of their products and services and these online businesses offer certain predetermined revenue percentage or fixed bounty for sales or leads. Also, affiliate business can be scaled considerably and there are many big websites that make seven or eight figures annually with the help of affiliate marketing only.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing Business
Monetization of the website that has traffic has always been an issue. Webmaster can try out CPC advertising networks such as AdSense or CPM networks to sell ad space and generate some revenue. However, it has been often seen that it requires a lot of traffic to make any decent money from these type of monetization practices. The advertising rates are extremely low when it comes to CPC or CPM advertising.
On the other hand, affiliate marketing is very lucrative as it does not take a lot of traffic to make decent amount of money with affiliate business. Content websites that already have a lot of traffic can easily add affiliate links to the existing content to send targeted traffic to other websites selling products and services.
Since the beginning of the Internet, people have been accustomed to getting content for free and therefore, it is extremely difficult to get people to pay for premium content. However, such premium content can be easily monetized with the help of affiliate marketing claims as people are always looking to buy relevant products and services related to the content.
Similarly, it is not easy to start an e-commerce business as it requires a lot of investment in terms of time and money whereas affiliate marketing does not require investment in any kind of inventory as the business owner takes care of inventory, shipping, returns and other related issues.
Another big benefit of affiliate marketing business is that there is no customer support to be a provided as the business owners take care of the customer support. Therefore, there are almost zero overhead costs associated with running an affiliate business.
However, it has been seen that just like other industries, most of the affiliate revenue is generated by only a few of the top guys in each vertical but there is enough scope in this field for everyone to build big businesses.
Type of Websites for Affiliate-based Business Model
Websites with a lot of content are a natural fit for building an affiliate marketing business model. As mentioned above, people love to buy physical or digital products that are related to the content.
Blogs
It won’t be wrong to say that blogs are a natural fit for affiliate-based business model. A blog requires the blogger to post useful content on a regular basis. The opinion of a respected blogger is taken seriously by the readers as they continuously benefit from the recommendations made by the blogger. It is natural that people start respecting the opinion of another person when they benefit from the products or services recommended by that person.
Bloggers can successfully sell physical products or digital products and services by writing a blog about a new service, book or product that is a perfect fit for their blog. A blog offers the possibility to bloggers to write in-depth about the product including its benefits and the ways it can help the readers of the blog.
There is no better way to promote a product then writing a positive blog post about it telling the readers everything about the product that they may want to know. It is important that bloggers give their honest opinion about a product without really caring about the commission they can get from selling the product. It is extremely important to protect the reputation of the blog to ensure that the readers keep trusting the information provided on the blog.
There are a number of bloggers who have successfully monetized their blogs by selling a lot of stuff as affiliates. Also, it is not necessary to keep recommending products in every other blog post. There are many bloggers who rarely recommend products but when they do recommend some product or service, it is viewed as a genuine recommendation and they end up making a lot of money on that offer.
Community Websites
Community based websites that revolve around content in a particular niche are also naturally suited for affiliate-based business model. One of the biggest advantages of this type of a website is that a lot of people are involved in creating free content for the marketers. However, developing such community websites take a lot of time and marketers do not have any control over the type of content that is posted on their websites.
Some of the best examples of these types of websites are the social media websites such as Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and other such websites. All of these websites allow users to have followers and they put the content posted by users in front of their followers. It means that users can drive a lot of traffic from these social media sites to their own websites or to their affiliate links when they provide relevant content to the users.
Similarly, forums are also particularly suited for affiliate business as they allow the users to post content related to the needs and such content can be easily monetized.
Niche Websites
Nice websites is the name given to the websites that are focused around a specific niche in a particular product category and recommend products in that category. For instance, one can start a website that reviews and recommends products in the woman shoes niche. On this site, the Webmaster can review a variety of shoes that are available various online websites such as Amazon.
When the readers click through their affiliate links to Amazon or other such websites that are selling these niche products and buy those products, the Webmaster earns affiliate commission that is usually a fixed percentage of the sale price of the product.
Common Mistakes Made by Affiliate Marketers
Affiliate marketing business can be a very lucrative business if it is done in the right manner. However, some marketers make some basic mistakes when they stop caring about their audience and only think about the money they can make through affiliate marketing.
One of the biggest mistakes made by the marketers is to offer useless content to their readers that is wholly focused on earning affiliate commission for the Webmaster. People can see through it and such websites quickly lose all of their traffic.
Another common mistake made by marketers is that they create websites around a niche in which they have absolutely no experience. It is very difficult to create content in a niche where you are not aware of the things to be discussed.
Affiliate marketers also fail when they start recommending unrelated products on their blog solely for the purpose of earning affiliate commissions. One should never make this mistake as it lowers the brand value and breaks the trust of the readers.
Affiliate-based business offers an exciting opportunity to everyone to build a real business based on their expertise without requiring any substantial investment in their business. It is recommended to start small by building a content-based website and building an audience before trying to monetize the site with affiliate links.