Let me get to the point. I have divided the business opportunities into four categories.
Work from home businesses
Single affiliate
Super affiliate
Merchant
Work from home businesses
These include doing surveys, mystery shopping, and data entry work.
From my personal experience, these opportunities produce little income for
time spent. Many of these sites offer prizes and/or cash, so be prepared to read the fine print
on each site. Yes, it requires little or no capital up front, but your time must be worth something.
If you enjoy giving out personal information to questionable companies in hopes of being rewarded,
then continue pursuing the home based businesses. The success rate is very low.
Single affiliate or merchant
A single affiliate/ merchant is one who chooses a single opportunity and markets it in a number of places. The
difference between an affiliate and a merchant is the affiliate directs traffic to a merchant site and is rewarded when
a sale occurs within a certain time frame. The merchant carries the product and usually takes care of the sales
transaction. The advantage in marketing one product is the little or no start-up costs and sometimes there is no
website to maintain. The disadvantages are the limited number of places to advertise and the competition from
other single/ super affiliates as well as larger merchants. Becoming an affiliate or merchant is a good place to start
and get your feet wet. Remember, there are many marketers out there, some marketing similar products all
competing for a few seconds from a viewer. Take the time to go through some of the affiliate/ merchant business
networks available or if you have an idea, put the words in your favorite search button and gather information.
What should someone be looking for when choosing a single product? Visit the site where the opportunity
originates and look at the web site's aesthetics, user friendliness, product info and customer service. After finding
that one opportunity, feel free to use the resources available in the third step to promote that product. The success
rate is low to moderate. Here is a list of networks that carry single products.
Super affiliates
A super affiliate is one who chooses many opportunities and markets them in a number of places. This approach
usually requires a website or blog page. See step 2 for more information. The advantages to marketing many
products are an increased chance that one or more products will do well and that the consumer has more choices
available in one place and holds the consumer's attention for longer. Many directories, a key to broader marketing,
will only allow web sites to submit their link. See step 3 for more information. There are many more marketing tools
available like banner links, flash links and even product links, creating more marketing options. The sales
transaction is usually taken care of by the merchant, so there is less paper work for the super affiliate. The cost to
get started can be as low as 5 dollars a month. Super affiliates have more control over content and marketing
approaches than single affiliates/merchants. One disadvantage is the large amount of time spent researching and
setting up your site. Furthermore, there is also a lot of time to spend maintaining, changing or adding to your web
site. If you choose to find and use free marketing avenues, it will require time to submit your ad and wait for a
response, if you even receive one. You have to rely on the merchant to complete the sale receiving only a
percentage of the sale. If you choose to host a web site and become an affiliate, take the time to go through some
of the affiliate/merchant business networks available. Find a web hosting company you are comfortable using. I use
Yahoo web hosting and have had an all round great experience. The costs can be very minimal, but will require
many hours of time to set up and market. The success rate is moderate to excellent.
Merchant
There are two types of merchants. A whole sale merchant is one who operates in between a producer and a retail
merchant. A retail merchant (or retailer) is one who sells products directly to consumers. Becoming an online
merchant can be difficult and time consuming. An attractive, user friendly site, focusing on product presentation
and customer service, can reduce much of the difficulties. Many of the advantages of super affiliates are enjoyed
by merchants also. The added bonus of being a merchant is the control of the sales transactions and finding many
avenues of marketing from signing up affiliates to having paid advertisers on your site. The cost to start a
merchant website can be reduced by doing some or all of the work yourself. There are sites like Amazon or Ebay
that help with site hosting. Also many affiliate networks have product feeds and other link products. As a merchant,
advertising costs will occur; it is finding the right places to use paid advertising and monitoring the traffic where ads
are running that will help with the cost. If you are planning to build a merchant site yourself, my advice to you is take
your time, have fun, ask questions and learn from others.