If you want to work from home, the affiliate business opportunity is certainly worth considering. A profitable affiliate program can generate great business for you, even when working from home. So let's explore this opportunity in a little more depth…

There are many ways in which you can make money on the internet, via your own web site. In a previous post we looked at the 'infopreneur' monetization strategy:

We looked at two case studies: Elad and Luisa.

Both are successful Infopreneurs who make healthy, steady incomes by writing about their chosen topics.

Let's just recap what it means to be an Infopreneur:

Infopreneurs basically write about subjects that interest them, and make their money through affiliate programs and pay-per-click advertizing, such as Google Ads. Infopreneurs don't necessarily choose to sell anything directly to customers themselves (although they can if they want to).

Infopreneurs don't have to worry about stocking or shipping products.

Neither do they have to worry about customer service.

They just write the content, keep building their site, and let the affiliate programs and programs like Google Ads, do all the hard work. (We'll cover Google Ads in a future post.)

As mentioned in a previous post, it's always a good idea to have multiple streams of income. And one popular way of 'monetizing' when you're an infopreneur, is via affiliate marketing…

Affiliate Marketing - What Is It?

Affiliate marketing is where you promote other peoples' products and services. If, for example, you follow the C-T-P-M strategy, you would promote other peoples' products and services to the people who visit your site.

I use the word 'promote' loosely because, if you follow the C-T-P-M strategy described in the video-tour, you should be preselling (as opposed to writing pages full of hype and pushy 'sales jargon'). But the topic of 'preselling' is for a later post…

Back to the topic at hand…

Affiliate marketing goes something like this:

Affiliate Marketing In A Nutshell…

1. You find a merchant whose products and services you like. If they have an affiliate program, you join it (free).

2. They will give you a special link. When you click on that link, you get taken to their site. This link is special because it can be tracked. Within this link, they've embedded your own special affiliate code, so that the merchant will know that it's your link.

3. You insert the code for the link, in strategic places throughout your site.

4. Say one of your visitors click through to that merchant's site (via your special affiliate link). If they end up buying something, you get commission*.

*How you receive your commission (and how much) will depend on the affiliate program's Terms and Conditions.

OK that's an over-simplified version and there's more to this than those four steps but that's affiliate marketing in a nutshell.

Okay, so to rephrase the process:

• A merchant has an affiliate program. You like its terms and conditions (more on this in the next post). So you join.
• They give you the code for your own special affiliate link.
• You place that code on your web site.
• If a visitor clicks on your link and BUYS from that merchant, the merchant will pay you commission*.

* Now in the example above, you receive commission once your visitor has clicked through via your link, and actually bought something from the merchant. But that's just one example. More on this in the next post…

If you wish to work from home, the affiliate business opportunity can be a very worthwhile source of revenue.  Promote the right affiliate programs and your business can thrive, even from home. 

To learn more about affiliate marketing, check out this free ebook…

The Home Business Geek