By Bruno Delepierre
If you have a website or intend to build one,
you should consider affiliate programs as a source
of income from your website. It may even become
your primary one if you are unable to attract
paying advertisers and don’t sell a product
yourself.
It’s extremely important to realise that
you should only adopt affiliate programs that
are consistent with the theme of your website.
Currently, there are thousands of affiliate programs
available offering a variety of products and services.
Now, why should you join affiliate programs?
1. No R&D costs.
Joining an affiliate program is easy and above
all, it’s free. With an affiliate program
you do not require your own product. The merchant
takes care of that. You simply sign up to the
affiliate program and place links on your website.
You don't need to do any long and often costly
research
2. No Stock Required.
The merchant whose affiliate program you are promoting
holds the stock of the products. You don't participate
in the actual sales process: you don't have to
worry about shipping issues, payment methods.
All you do is provide the merchant with a customer.
3. Low Operational Costs.
As you don't have your own product and you don't
need to hold stock, your costs are highly reduced.
The biggest savings come in staff costs, rent,
customer support and insurance etc. All you need
to do is run your website and market it so more
people visit your site.
4. Lower risk and diversification.
Combining different affiliate programs will create
multiple streams of income. That's how you can
also diversify and spread your risk. If you consider
promoting multiple products, a loss of profit
with one product will be compensated with profit
from the other ones. Also if you have your own
product you can sell products that are complementary
with your own one. This will not only offer extra
value for your customer but also extra profit
for yourself.
5. Flexibility.
If you wish to change your product offering (i.e.
affiliate links), you can simply replace your
links. It's quick and easy.
6. Focus on marketing.
As you are free of most of the hassles of having
your own product, you can concentrate 100% on
marketing the product and getting traffic to your
website...Once your affiliate links are in place,
your main concern is getting more people to your
website.
7. Easy Payment.
When you sell your own products or services you
need to bill, handle checks and cash and even
follow up payment i.e. credit control. With affiliate
programs you receive a regular payment from the
merchant. If you use an
affiliate network, you can even combine income
from different merchants allowing you to receive
all your money at once.
8. Certainty. When
you provide your own products and service you
run the risk of failing. Affiliate programs promote
products and services in demand. If you have a
well visited website you are almost certain to
earn commission.
There are many more reasons why affiliate programs are a wonderful method to earn a living with your website. Once you have started with affiliate marketing, you'll know what I mean...
RESOURCE BOX:
This article has been written by Bruno Delepierre,
head of Actualaffiliate.com,
the one stop website for affiliate marketers.
Actualaffiliate.com
provides affiliate marketers with products, services
and free information to increase their web revenue.
