How To Make Money At Home: Be Your Own Boss
If you’re looking to increase your income or even replace your day job, then you might be considering how to make money at home and not having a boss tell you what to do. Perhaps you like the thought of being your own boss. There are a number of options available to you, however, today I’ll be focusing on just one of them… Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate Marketing is in essence promoting someone’s product or service on your website and then getting a commission if anyone purchases that product or service using your unique link. The good thing is that you won’t have to worry about packaging and shipping and all that comes with a normal business. The product owner takes care of all of that. All you have to do is send a hungry group of people who are in a buying mood to their website. That’s it! When they buy, you get paid!
Now, commissions can vary depending on the company/owner of the product, but they can be anywhere from 2 or 3% of the sales price, all the way up to 75% of the sale hitting your account. That’s definitely not to be sniffed at! Even at the lower end of that spectrum… you may think well that’s not really worth my time promoting a product for such a small piece of the pie. But… If the sales price is high enough, it can definitely be worth it. (Think high ticket items here) Also, if you can shift enough units, that smaller commission can add up into bigger amounts and be very lucrative.
So as you can see, it’s not always about getting the biggest commission as you may imagine. There are lots of products out there, all with different commission levels and lots of affiliate marketers making varying amounts of money.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that once you get going and have a good amount of content ready, the sales should start coming in. It’s then just a case of adding to that content and building it out cumulatively. I’m being very general with this description here deliberately. I just want to open your eyes to what affiliate marketing is and how it’s possible. We can and will get into more detail later on.
The main point to promoting a product/service is not to be salesy. That’s the fastest way to fail and turn people away. People see straight through it. You would see straight through it. If all you’re interested in is making money then this isn’t the game for you. You have to be committed and you have to want to help people. See, the big secret to doing well in this industry is helping people solve their problems. It’s a case of being passionate about the niche you want to be in and knowing how you can best help those people in that niche. You have to identify what problem it is they are trying to solve and bring them together with the best solution, so that they can improve their current situation.
As an example, if a person has a destructive pet, say a dog who constantly chews up all the furniture, or that may bite other dogs or even people. That’s a problem the pet owner is going to be thinking and worrying quite frequently about. They love their pet and don’t want to have get rid of it, have it taken away or worse. So if you can get in front of that crowd who have the problem and you know of a company/product owner who has an ebook course to help people with destructive or biting dogs and how to train them etc., then you can show the benefits of that product to those people on your website. If they like your review enough they may want to go to the owners site and buy that ebook, at which point you make a commission on the sale. It’s that simple. You don’t have to be a good salesperson. Really your job is not to sell, it’s to help people by giving them a choice and leading them to something that will help solve their problem.
Just another point here…. most affiliate product owners that I’ve seen are very pro-active in helping their affiliates and so will offer all kinds of extras to help you get more sales along the way. Ultimately it benefits both parties if you do well and if they help you do well. You build a working relationship and get resources from them to help you create content for your site, for your email lists and the long term etc. It’s a win-win.
Now, I don’t want this all to sound like it’s too good to be true, because it’s not. It’s true that there are many very successful affiliate marketers out there and more and more are making their first sale everyday. However, this is not… repeat NOT a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. This will take work and effort on your part and you may not see any return on your hard work for a few months after your site is up and running. Some people see sales come in after only a few weeks, but if you think of it as a longer term strategy, you’ll have a more realistic expectation. Think of it as your new business and as such, businesses need time to grow and blossom. The key is being consistent.
Really you’ll need to be passionate about a niche or at least have an interest or something that you think you could consistently talk/write about. You’ll need this passion/interest to make life easier for you when creating content for your site in the long run. If you enjoy your chosen niche then this won’t feel like work at all. Hence why it’s important to pick the right niche. If you enjoy it, it’ll be so much easier for you and plus, your readers will appreciate your enthusiasm. It’s much easier to listen to someone who’s passionate about something, than someone who couldn’t care less. They are polar opposites and the more passionate, the better!
If this sounds like something you could do and maybe have some ideas of what niche you could create a site around then you’ll be pleased to hear that there’s a place where you can get full training and help at every step of the way. If you’re concerned that building a website is out of your comfort zone then fear not. In this day and age, not only is it much simpler and faster to build a website, you really don’t need to learn HTML code and you can actually build a basic site in 30 seconds. Really it’s all done for you, you just have to add the content. Not only that but you can do it for free. Don’t believe me? Go have a look for yourself.
Wealthy Affiliate University is an amazing community of helpful affiliate marketers at all levels of the game. There are plenty of new starters all the way up to those making full time incomes and beyond. Everyone is in the same boat, on the same journey (albeit in lots of different niches) and all have the same goal of helping people through their own websites, with the bonus of making money along the way.
If you think you’d like to test the waters you can create a free account and get started building your free site. If you decide its not for you, then you don’t have to hang around and you can call it quits. At least you can see for yourself how genuine this community is and how much free help there is.
