An increasing number of people want to start their own business and work for themselves.  And who could blame them?  Having to answer to someone else day-in and day-out can drive you crazy!  Most of us dream of winning the lottery and finally getting to tell our boss what we really think of them. It's an exciting prospect to answer to no one. 



If and when you decide to work from home, you probably will think of starting a small business and selling a product or service.  But that can be risky.  Many people believe that a business from home is somehow easier to operate than opening up a brick-and-mortar storefront.  That's simply not the case.  Regardless of where you open your business, you still have day-to-day operations and other basic requirements wherever you are located.

Affiliate Marketing on the other hand is a little different.  Your goal from home is to promote the products of other businesses online meaning your customer base is potentially the entire Internet.   Let's discuss 10 reasons why being an affiliate is an exciting and profitable work-at-home business opportunity.

1. Low Start-up Costs

When starting a home-based business, you are going to invest some time and money to get up and running.  You need to register a business name, get a business bank account with cheques, hook up a business telephone and FAX line, set up emails, print business cards, develop your product, gain suppliers, etc.  If you plan to have employees, such as in a home landscaping business, you'll need to look into wages and taxes.  As an Affiliate Marketer, all you really need is a desk (or a lawn chair on the deck!), a laptop, and a website which you can create with any number of graphical website design programs. If that's not your forte, you can purchase a web template from a site like
2. No Product Development or Warehousing

As an affiliate, you will be promoting the products of other companies. Therefore, you don't have to design and develop your idea into a working product which can take a great deal of time and effort. You won't need patents or have to find suppliers and buyers nor will you have to test or market the product to target consumers.

By promoting products already in demand online, you can completely eliminate the need for a warehouse because the merchant is responsible for maintaining the product. And they do the market research to set price points.  You just promote and recommend what they have already established.  This makes it easy on the majority of us who don't already have a million dollar concept in our heads! Even if you plan to offer particular services, you still need to establish what those services are and how you'll sell them to your customers.

3. Open 24/7

When you have a business, you earn income only when you're working and open to customers. And because you can only work so much, there's a limit to how much you can make. When you're sleeping, your business is 'sleeping' as well making little or no revenues. Affiliate Marketing takes place in the cyber world of the Internet which is open 24/7 to a global market. As long as your website is up and running, someone around the world could be buying from one of the merchants you've referred them to. Instead of being tied down to each and every sale and only when the store is open, you make revenues around the clock.

4. High Product Diversity

There are millions of products online that you can promote and make commissions from. If a merchant you're affiliated with happens to go bankrupt, you don't go down with the ship like you potentially could with your own business. You simply join forces with a different affiliate! If you get tired of a certain type of product you're promoting, try something else.

 

 Almost everything you can imagine is being sold online and the merchant may be looking for affiliates (even if they don't discuss it on their website, most businesses are open to providing a finder's fee for new customers). And because there's so much product diversity online, you can most likely find the right mix of products to promote to your customers.

 

5. Lower Advertising Costs

If you're running a business, you'll need to advertise your products and services. Offline advertising can become very expensive and rarely targets your market. Most often an ad is placed in the newspaper, located on a bus shack, or  delivered to each door in the neighbourhood via a flyer. Most of the people who see it aren't interested in what you offer.

 

If you take out an ad in the Yellow Pages, you're locked into a contract for an entire year limiting your ability to adapt to market trends. Your ad most likely will become a generic box with a phone numbe so that's applicable for the entire year. As an affiliate you have a great deal of flexibility in how you promote your website(s) and you're rarely locked in to a long-term contract. You can find related sites and pay for link inclusion and use pay-per-click (PPC) like Google AdWords where you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. Moreover, you can go into forums and onto blogs and advertise your affiliate business, all from the comfort of your home.

6. Speed

Let's face it, businesses that can capitalize on market trends first are the ones that succeed. Affiliate Marketing allows you to follow customer demands for new products and technologies. Let's use an example of a new, revolutionary diet being talked about today on Oprah. Within hours, you can quickly set up a website and be promoting the diet, ready for customers searching for it online.

This is something you could never do if you had a product line or service. You're basically locked in to what you already offer and adding new products or services takes careful consideration. When demand for your products decline, it may be difficult to recover. Affiliate marketing allows you to follow profitable niches and be adaptable.

7. No Customer Support

Okay, this one is my favourite. It's not that I hated talking to clients. It's that talking to them took me away from everything else in my business. And let's face it, most customer support is answering basic annoying questions that the customer should have read  on the FAQ page before calling.

The thing is, when you run a business, customers are your life blood - the things that make your business a success. You need them. Affiliate marketing actually eliminates interaction between you and customers. The customers aren't yours so you don't have to deal with them. You are paid to bring them to the merchant and it's up to them to keep them happy. Therefore you don't need a phone or a support team. And best of all, no listening to complaints!

8. No Sales, just Pre-Selling

Some people are just born to sell. They love putting on a smile and hitting the pavement to make a deal. Not all of us are like that however. Affiliate Marketing can be the answer for the those non-salesman types because it requires no face-to-face selling. You don't have to meet clients at coffee shops to sign Agreements. There's no cash register with money and Interac to worry about. There's no refunds or exchanges either.

The merchant you're affiliated with does the selling because it's their product. They handle payments, returns, refunds, and exchanges and you just bring them customers. Affiliates pre-sell and 'warm' the customer up to get them interested in the product so that when they get to the merchant, they convert and buy. That's all you have to do!

9. Potential Residual Income

If you open a small business, you'll most likely earn income when you deliver a product or service to your customer. It's like working 40 hours a week and getting paid for 40 hours. This is known as linear income because you get paid once for a certain amount of effort. Even if you provide monthly subscriptions and the customer keeps paying, you'll need to make an ongoing investment into that customer via support, delivery, or product upgrades. Therefore it's still linear income.

While many affiliate programs offer a single finder's fee where you're paid once for bringing the merchant a new customer (CPA = linear income), an increasing number of merchants are offering residual income (lifetime commissions, passive income). Residual income allows you to earn commissions for effort you did in the past with no additional effort. So, you continue to earn commissions with no additional work for as long as the customer you sent to the merchant, keeps buying or subscribing. This is a great long-term solution and easily incorporated into a successful affiliate's arsenal. For residual income affiliate programs appropriate for your website, see the
In Conclusion

Affiliate Marketing is now a viable business opportunity for those of us who wish to work from home, even those with little or no Internet knowledge. You can quickly and easily affiliate with a merchant and start promoting their products. If you've been considering Affiliate Programs, dive right in and start earning income from home. You have nothing to lose and so much to gain.