10 Great Videos on Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the best online money makers for home based businesses. You can use knowledge you already possess to promote other peoples' products and gain a commission. Start up costs are low, and you can concentrate on marketing without the additional tasks of producing and dispatching products, tracking payments and so on.

Of course, there's a lot to learn and understand to make you an effective affiliate marketer.

Below I've pulled together ten great videos on affiliate marketing from people who know the business. They will get you started and give you a real insight. When you've done watching them, read further about affiliate programs.

What is affiliate marketing?
A quick introduction by Joel Comm

How affiliate marketing works
Excellent overview from Rosalind Gardner

Finding niche markets
Tools you can use to find niches

Niche markets and Clickbank
Using the popular affiliate programs on Click bank - Jason Siebold

Using Commission Junction
How to sign up with another favourite affiliate site.

Choosing the right affiliate product
There's more to it than how much they pay.

Pre-selling your affiliate products
With the right approach, you can increase sales.

Sugarrae aka Rae Hoffman
Affiliate marketing insights from this well-know marketer

Affiliate marketing in a recession
Excellent thoughts and advice from Rosalind Gardner.

Sponsored link - Site Build It!
They've helped many people to success - are they right for you?

Found these links useful? Please mark and share this page ....

Eight ways to make money writing online

If you enjoy writing and can turn out readable prose there are several ways of making money writing online. Here are some ideas.

Blogging - Write your own blog. It's free at blogger.com and wordpress.com. Many people believe it is better to host a blog on your own website rather than have it hosted on these sites. Get the wordpress software free at wordpress.org. Make money from your blog with affiliate products - either hosting affiliate ads or better still, text links from your posts - or pay per click such as adsense. You could also link to your other money-making sites such as your Amazon shop.

Blogging - Paid per post. Get paid for each post you write. Sign up with Pay Per Post. They advertise companies who pay you to write posts about their products. The amount you get depends on the company, the product and how well-read you blog is. You can use your own blog or have one hosted by Pay Per Post.

Articles - Promote your own product. Write lots of articles and post them online at article directories like ezine-articles. Articles are most often used just to generate links to your site. But if the link points to your product page you can make money directly, just make your article informative and not 'spammy'. You are unlikely to get a huge number of click-throughs, but it may be worth it if your product is high value. Most directories will not accept affiliate links.

Articles - Write articles for other websites. If you can show real expertise in a subject, email webmasters of suitable sites or online newsletters and offer to write articles for money. You may have to do some for free at first, unless you are well known in the field.

Articles - Go freelance. Sign up on sites such as elance and guru and post your CV/resume. People wanting articles and other writing work done tender for work on these sites and you can bid to do them. Know your own worth and don't continually accept low paid stuff. Once you've done some work, look for repeat work from the same client.

Squidoo and Hubpages - Write your own pages. Create pages (called lenses on Squidoo and hubpages on ... well, you guessed it!) on subjects of your own choice and post them free to the site. Make money with affiliate links, Adsense, Amazon shop and so on. Hubpages rotate your Adsense and theirs so that you both make something. Squidoo put some Adsense on your lens as well as yours, they take a bit of the revenue and give the rest to charity. A nice touch is that you set how much you get and how much the charities get. These sites have a great social feel and there is lots of help and advice.

Cafepress - Write and publish your book. Write your best seller, How To guide or whatever and upload it. Cafepress handles the printing, binding and dispatch. You decide on the design, size, how many and all that. Costs vary according to what you want to do. This is the only method in this list of making money writing online where you have to pay out in order to earn.

eBooks - Write and sell. eBooks, particularly of the How To type, are very popular because they are relatively cheap and can be downloaded instantly. Write your eBook and convert it to .pdf. Then upload and sell it from your website, online store such as Payloadz, or through affiliates on Clickbank (you'll need your own micro-site for this).

Was this useful? Please mark it and share it ....

5 Causes of business idea failure

It is a sad fact that many home based businesses fail to get off the ground. Even more fail to prosper as well as they should. Sometimes it's the business idea or business model that is at fault. Here are just some of the reasons why people come up with ideas that are not so hot.

1. Not identifying the customers. Whether you start an online or offline business, you should identify exactly where your customers will come from. Don't try to sell to everyone, at least at first. Instead, try to identify a section of the population that you will serve. Maybe it is people in a particular area, or who work or do certain things at a particular time. Maybe your customers come from a certain age or status group, or hold particular opinions. Will your product appeal to people with specialist interests? Start thinking broadly and focus in. You may identify more than one group. Do you need a different approach for each?

2. Not identifying a unique selling point (USP). What is it that you will do that makes you stand out from the rest? This doesn't have to be a totally novel idea or new product. It just has to provide to a group of customers a solution that isn't provided by anyone else, or at least by few enough people that there is room for you. It could be offering an online solution to businesses that don't usually operate online. It could be a simpler, more direct or quicker way to deliver your products. Maybe different opening hours or a unique location.

3. Avoiding competition. If there is competition, there must be a demand! You need to focus on your customers and on your USP, but you won't be able to avoid competition completely or for long. Even if you start with no competition, if your idea is any good you will get competition. Being afraid of competition can lead you to operate in an obscure niche where there just isn't enough trade to make your idea a success. You can't avoid competition, but you can stand out from them and be a success.

4. Thinking more about solutions than needs. Businesses become successful because customers have a need for what they supply. If people don't need what you provide, they won't buy, even if your idea is fantastic. Of course, there are different values to 'need'. People need food to survive, their need for a great dining experience is about pleasure, social interaction, status. So needs are identified by the customer and will change over time. How many people 'needed' a MP3 player ten years ago?

5. Being inflexible. When you've just come up with a world-beating idea, it can come as a bit of a blow to find that no-one else thinks it's so hot after all. It calls for a bit of fine judgement as to whether you stick to your guns in the face of mounting scepticism, or modify or, in the extreme, scrap your plans. Getting your market research right will help you to decide. Market research doesn't have to be elaborate - at it's simplest, it's just about talking to people. But the more evidence you can gather, the more you will be able to determine whether your idea needs to stay, alter, or be shelved.

Was this useful? Please mark it and share it ....

10 Best Home Based Business Ideas

It's a frequent question: what are the 10 best home based business ideas? Of course there is no real answer, but here are ten home based business ideas for online start ups. They pass some basic tests to make them accessible to most people. They are simple and inexpensive to set up, can be started part-time if necessary, and with much of the work done at times to suit yourself.

None of these need extensive business knowledge to at first, but the more you know about starting and running a small business the better. You'll find information elsewhere in these pages and links to more outside help to get you started in your own home based business. None of these are get rich quick schemes or home working scams. Usual note: all businesses need dedicated hard work to succeed.

10 Best Home Based Business Ideas - no, but well worth considering, and in no particular order.

1. Art and photographic design sales - open your own free online store, where you can sell your art designs or images on various media. Two good sites are CafePress and Zazzle.
   
   
2. Craftwork or handmade goods business - sell your craftwork or handmade goods through your own free store on a website dedicated just this kind of enterprise. Find out more at Etsy.
   
   
3. Writing - there are many outlets for people with writing skills. If you want to publish your own work try Lulu. If you prefer to look for freelance work and post your CV online, look at Guru or elance.
   
   
4. Freelance services - many people choose to use their existing professional or personal skills as freelancers. Once again, Guru and elance are good starting points for finding work and advertising your skills
   
   
5. Sell ebooks - selling ebooks and other virtual goods is attractive because you can sell an item again and again. You can write your own or buy them with 'master resale' rights to sell again. Or you can acquire ready built stores with a stock of ebooks from, for example, Website Deals orInstant Pay Sites.
   
   
6. Affiliate marketing - affiliate marketing is where you advertise other people's goods and services in return for a percentage of the sales receipts. There is a whole range of marketing methods you can employ. Learn more about affiliate programs.
   
   
7. Use your pastimes - people use the internet to find information on their pastimes and interests. They are also interested in buying products to go with those interests. Find out about starting a business based on your pastimes.
   
   
8. Start an online service - such as a dating agency, auto sales and so on. Website Deals have a range of off the peg sites for sale.
   
   
9. Online stores for offline goods - ebay is probably the best know - they have stores on their site as well as the auctions. Note: for the UK you need ebay.co.uk. For other countries, follow one of these links and find your own country at the foot of the page. An alternative to ebay is creating a store on your own website with inexpensive online store software to get a fully functioning ecommerce store.
   
   
10. Write a blog or Squidoo lens - write a regular blog on a any subject for free at Blogger or WordPress. Squidoo 'lenses' are web pages you write and publish for free. Again, they can be on any subject, and you can write as many as you like. You can make money on blogs and Squidoo by affiliate programs or Adsense.