You want to start an online business, but don't have what it takes to start with your own products. You have the option of starting with affiliate marketing, selling other peoples' products for a commission. Affiliate marketing provides online entrepreneurs the chance to market products even without having your own product to sell. All you have to do is to sign up with a vendor who has an affiliate marketing program, and choose the products you want to promote. As an affiliate, you are paid by the merchant for your services on a commission basis, whenever you've directed a visitor to the merchant's site and the visitor actually buys something. Becoming an affiliate is usually quick and easy, and for most affiliate programs, signing up is free. In fact, if it's not free, then just don't join. There are more than enough no cost choices you can make. But despite all the benefits of affiliate programs, many people are still hesitant about getting into affiliate marketing. One of the reasons is the lack of a website to start marketing their affiliate products with. This begs the question of whether a website is really necessary. Actually, you can start promoting affiliate products without a website. There are stategies that permit you to do this. But don't make any mistake about the fact that it's a great advantage to have a web site. You can consider starting without one, but plan to eventually create a web site. There's only one strategy that you can do without ever needing a web site. Your income may be limited, but if it suits you, then go for it. The answer is in PPC, Pay-per-Click advertising. I know people making almost as much money using Google Adwords PPC ads, as my web site makes. Other strategies you can use without a web site, include email marketing, offline promotions, writing e-books, and engaging in online discussion forums. Email Marketing Email marketing, usinging email lists, is actually the second most popular marketing strategy that works without a website. What you basically do is maintain a list of your prospective customers and email them information articles that are relevant to the affiliate products you're promoting. Just how could you achieve this with no web site? With an autoresponder! But an autoresponder service costs from $20 to $30 per month. This is actually more than the cost of hosting a web site, many of which include a limited autoresponder at no extra cost. Offline Promotion Among the common ways to promote your affiliate products offline are classified ads, brochures and flyers. Classified ads would generally work best compared to the other two, because classified newspaper ads have a wider reach. But as you can imagine, these offline methods are all expensive compared to the modest cost of owning your own web site. Distributing Free e-books or Reports Write an e-book or have one written for you by a ghostwriter. This is a good way for you to promote your affiliate products, as long as your affiliate links are in the ebook for the selected topic. You could distribute the ebook via your autoresponder service. The viral effect of a well written and useful ebook, is quite astonishing. Just be sure to make the content of your e-books relative to the actual affiliate products you are promoting. And just as in email marketing, you can just place text ad links throughout your e-book. Publish a Free Ezine Ezines are online newsletters that inform your subscribers about the specific topics. If you don't have a website and yet want to be an affiliate, you can use your ezine to promote your affiliate products. If you have a website, your ezine article would be archived, and becomes content for your site. Another advantage to having a website. Online Discussion Forums With or without a website, you just can't ignore discussion forums because they are great venues for marketing your affiliate products. Most forums won't allow sales promotions, but you will find some that do. With all these strategies, it may appear that you really don't need a website to start marketing your affiliate products. Well, starting in an affiliate program without a website may be do-able, but being successful is another thing. While you can achieve some success without a website, it is rare. Greater success requires a web site, if not now, then maybe in the near future. Again, having a website is not mandatory, but with the advantages presented, I'm glad I do have one, because it really makes affiliate marketing a lot easier for me. You should too! Good luck with your affiliate venture. Fred Farah
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