The high costs and risks of starting your own business from scratch are an obstacle for many aspiring entrepreneurs. Work at home schemes need to be based on a solid business model to be successful. Affiliate marketing programs have opened up solid opportunities for people who want to make a living online. This article takes the reader through the thought process of deciding the best way to make money in a home office and highlights affiliate marketing as a solid work-at-home opportunity.

What are the benefits of teleworking?

We live in an incredible moment in history! Technology has given us the ability to communicate, be productive, and work wherever we have Internet access. But how do you get an employer to agree to let you work from home? That’s complicated. Most companies are still uncomfortable allowing employees to work remotely. One of the main reasons is that companies that allow employees to work offsite need to invest in and be vigilant about security breaches on the company intranet. Some companies now allow occasional telecommuting, but that hardly affects the issues that drive the desire to work from a home office, such as high fuel costs, long commutes, high child care costs and global warming.

How can affiliate marketing benefit me?

Another way to earn money online is to start your own virtual business. But trying to build your business from scratch is expensive and risky. A quick internet search will present a plethora of home-based business options. So how do you know which ones are legit? The answer is to look at the business model. A solid opportunity brings benefits to all parties involved. Affiliate marketing programs have gotten a lot of attention lately. This type of program is successful because businesses need help getting the attention of consumers who may be interested in buying from them.

Businesses have long known that referrals from a friend or other influential authority, such as a trusted business or association, are much more likely to lead to a purchase than those that come in arbitrarily. This recommendation breaks the initial barrier of mistrust between the seller and the potential customer. However, before the Internet age, companies had a hard time getting enough referral business to maintain their profitability goals. Therefore, they also used expensive media advertisements to attract additional customers and build their brands. With the proliferation of Internet use, companies began to divert some of the money from traditional advertising venues to website development and Internet advertising. This was a successful strategy when the Internet was still small. Today, there is an overload of information and advertising on the web. So how does a business stand out to customers who are interested in what they have to sell? They first start by improving their search rankings in an effort to get to the first page of search results on major search engines like Google and Yahoo. They can do this by optimizing for keywords and paying to appear as a sponsor when people search with pre-specified keywords. This is a necessary tactic, but any good salesperson knows that relying on a single stream of leads is short-sighted and risky.

A second tactic is to partner with other websites that provide content that interests your best prospects. This alliance is called an affiliate marketing program (or performance marketing in some circles). It is designed to create a network of targeted lead generators. The concept is simple: companies advertise related products and services to a website’s target audience. The owner of that site is rewarded for generating business for referring business to the company. Example: I am interested in cats and I build a site with cat stories. Cat food manufacturers, vets, and pet food stores advertise on my site. When my readers click through to the provider’s sites or make a purchase, I receive a commission. Although there are several models of affiliate programs, by far the most popular is revenue sharing, also known as cost per sale (CPS) or pay per sale (PPS). First, a customer must reach the merchant’s site by clicking on an ad on the publisher’s website. When that customer makes a purchase, the publisher of the original site receives a percentage of the sale. Another commonly used affiliate marketing program pays a set dollar amount per referral who performs a certain action, such as registering with the merchant’s site, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a form. This is called Pay Per Lead (PPL), Cost Per Lead (CPL), or Cost Per Action/Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

Is there any data to suggest that affiliate marketing is a viable business model?

According to Marketing Sherpa, in 2006, affiliate programs paid out approximately $6.5 billion in commissions. If there is so much money to be made, why can’t you be a part of this growing industry? Perhaps you are thinking that you need to be a web designer who is an expert in Internet marketing strategies. Once again, technology comes to the rescue! The Internet allows you to be in business for yourself without having to do it yourself. but how does it work? Where can you go for good advice? Work at Home Enterprises can provide you with detailed guidance on how to structure a home-based affiliate business and run it successfully.