Tip 1: Try The Product First

Have you found an affiliate product you’re interested in promoting?

We strongly urge you to try it yourself first.Then you’ll be able to offer an honest recommendation. Talk to other people who have purchased it as well. Make sure you are recommending a high-quality product from a company that is reputable enough to back up what they sell.

And check their customer service too. How do they treat you over the phone? Do they put you on hold for hours? Then you should be concerned that customers you refer to them will have similar experiences.

Tip 2: Hold Out For Generous Commissions

It’s perfectly reasonable for you to expect to be paid 20% to 50% of the profits on each product sold. If the company only offers 5% to 10%, keep on looking. You should only do business with affiliate companies that understand the “lifetime value” of new customers you refer, and appreciate your efforts enough to offer the commissions you deserve.

Tip 3: Look For A High Sales Conversion Ratio

Before you join a company’s affiliate program, make sure the company’s website is turning a reasonable number of visitors into sales. If their website doesn’t have a decent conversion rate, then all the effort you put into directing traffic to their site will be wasted.

Look for sites that have at least a 1% conversion ratio (in other words, 1 out of every 100 visitors makes a purchase). Check out their website and their salescopy to see if it makes YOU want to buy. After all, it’s your job to send them targeted traffic — but it’s their job to turn these prospects into paying customers.

Tip 4: Make Sure You’ll Get Credit For Every Sale

Before you join a company’s affiliate program, find out what kind of tracking software they use. Look for a program that uses reliable affiliate tracking software that tracks all of your sales.

You want to make sure that they track phone, fax, and snail-mail orders, as well as any that are made directly on the website. Many companies only track online orders — which means their affiliates don’t get credit for anywhere from 5% – 10% of the sales they help the company make!

Also, make sure the affiliate program you join uses “cookie tracking.” This ensures that you’ll be credited for the purchase made by people who don’t buy on their first time to the site, but return to buy something on a future visit.

Tip 5: Make Sure They Offer Sales Statistics in Real Time

When you join an affiliate program, the company should give you a special username and password that you can use to access your own personal affiliate sales information on their website whenever you want. These should be real-time statistics that allow you to see exactly how many sales you have made.

With real-time statistics, you can discover exactly how well different banners, text links, and recommendations are doing. For example, with a bit of testing, you might discover that a product review on your Reviews page doesn’t pull nearly as well as a personal recommendation on your blog.

That’s the kind of information you need to ensure that your affiliate marketing efforts are yielding maximum results.

Tip #6: Make Sure They Offer Resources to Help You Generate Sales

A good affiliate program will provide you with everything you need to be successful. They’ll provide you with traffic-generating banners, text links, and recommendation letter templates. They’ll tell you which techniques work well in which circumstances.

Because their success is linked with yours, the affiliate program you join should be ready, willing, and able to teach you everything you need to know to start earning excellent commissions.

You can make money online by…

1. Selling and shipping products while someone else does all the work.
   In the Internet world, this is known as drop shipping. And it’s a great
   way to sell physical products without having to stock, ship, or fulfill
   orders. Instead, you hire a drop-shipping company to do that for you,
   so you can concentrate on marketing your website.

   The
   downside is that you have to pay a percentage of your profits to the
   drop-shipping company. But if you have your heart set on selling a
   physical product, or don’t have the time or money to develop your own,
   this is a good option.

2. Recommending products.
   When you become an affiliate for someone else’s company, you can start
   earning commissions very quickly just for referring visitors to their
   website. Again, there’s no need to stock products or fulfill orders.

   You will have to be prepared to do some pretty hefty promoting if you
   want to create a money-making business primarily as an affiliate. But
   it’s definitely the fastest way to start earning an Internet income.

3. Getting the right to sell other people’s products. A third way to make money online in record time without developing your
   own product is to buy the reprint or resell rights to someone else’s product.
   When you purchase the rights to an established product, you get (depending on
   the kind of rights you purchase) permission to sell someone else’s product for
   them and keep a percentage of the sale. Or the right to buy someone’s product
   outright and resell it, keeping the entire proceeds of the sale. And in the best-case
   scenario, you can even purchase the right to sell the purchasing rights to other
   people!

   You can find out how to get the rights for products like eBooks by
   approaching authors directly, or using a search engine to find out
   which rights would be best for you. This can be a very profitable way
   to make money online, but it does require an up-front investment.

These are all great ways to start your own money-making business
on the Net… and you can even mix and match them to create an even
bigger Internet income. Just keep in mind there are other Internet
profit models that will allow you to keep even more of your profits if
you’re willing to put in the time and effort.

Try out BeBiz – our easy website builder that guides you through each step of building a profitable website.

I’ve been feeling bad all day, because yesterday I may have broke a woman’s heart (don’t worry, Coralynn, it’s completely innocent!

You see, I was chatting to a woman while waiting for my car at the service center, when our conversation turned to business…

… and when she found out what I did for a living, she hit me with THE question (the one SO MANY people ask):

"I’d LOVE to make money on the Internet, but I really don’t want to waste any time on it…

What’s a FAST, EASY way to get online and making money – without doing any work?"

It’s my answer that broke her heart:

"There ISN’T one, and if you don’t want to do ANY work, then an online business isn’t for you!"

 I admit it… I was pretty blunt about it, but I just tired of people assuming that you can start an Internet business while sitting around watching television!

When I got back to the office, I began to regret being abrupt…

… and then I started thinking about the ways you actually CAN make money online quickly, without doing too much work (though you still have to be motivated, apply yourself, and spend a reasonable amount of time on it). (I need to say this again – you need to make sure whatever you sell has a market. That’s why a staple of my BeBiz business builder is the research tool.)

So here are THREE ideas for a FAST and EASY online business!

1. Have someone ELSE store and ship the products FOR you

One option for getting online and making profits FAST, is to sell products using a drop shipper.

Here’s how it works…

You choose a drop shipper who carries the kinds of products you want to sell on your site. Then, when you make a sale, you charge your customer, and send their shipping information to the drop shipper.

The drop shipper sends the product to your customer, then bills YOU for the order, at LESS than what you charged your customer. Your profit is the difference between what you charge the customer, and what the drop shipper charges you.

Drop shipping is one of the quickest and easiest ways I know to start selling online, because, with no stock to buy or store, there’s very little advanced setup required.

And there are other GOOD reasons to consider drop shipping:

• Affordability — There’s no product to develop, so no costs involved there, and because there’s no stock to buy, there are also NO storage costs.
• Flexibility — You can sell products you otherwise wouldn’t be able to stock yourself.
• Better customer service — Your buyers are still your customers, and you remain their point of contact.
  

Really, the only time-consuming part of setting up a drop shipping business is actually finding a good drop shipper where you can get the kind of products you’re looking for, at a price you can profit from.

Here are some resources I recommend to get you started:

• Worldwide Brands: www.marketingtips.com/worldwidebrands
  
• Doba: www.marketingtips.com/doba

There are also many companies online that provide extensive listings of drop shippers, like Aid and Trade (www.aidandtrade.com), and The Thomas Register (www.thomasregister.com)

2. Earn commissions recommending other people’s products

Recommending other people’s products is another great way to get started online quickly and easily.

As an affiliate, you promote another company’s product or service on your website (or to your opt-in list using email marketing), and for every paying customer you refer to the company’s site to purchase, you get paid a percentage of the profits in commission!

And the BEST part is that once you’ve done the research to find a solid market, it only takes SECONDS to set up an affiliate relationship, and start earning commissions!

Other reasons to consider starting an affiliate site?

• It runs itself — Once you’ve completed the setup, you can automate the entire process, so you can earn commissions day and night, year round!
• You can earn MULTIPLE commissions — Because there’s no customer service or payment processing required, you can get away with spending very little time working on the site, so you can easily set up MANY affiliate sites to MULTIPY your earnings.
• As with drop shipping, you have to do your research and find a good program (or programs) relevant to your business.

There are a number of web-based resources for locating affiliate programs. The best include:

• www.associateprograms.com
• www.refer-it.com
• www.affiliatematch.com
• www.cj.com (Commission Junction)

Of course the more traffic you send, the more money you make, so you do need to put some work into creating a site that gets lots of visitors.

3. Join the world’s LARGEST online marketplace

If you REALLY want it FAST and EASY, there’s no better way I know of to start making money online (potentially thousands of dollars each month), than to start your own eBay business!

$2,000 worth of merchandise changes hands on eBay every SECOND, so you’ve got a built-in market just waiting to buy what you’re selling! This is actually my FAVORITE way to start making money online as quickly as possible, because, unlike drop shipping and affiliate programs…

… you don’t even need a website to start making BIG profits!

There are other reasons to consider eBay if you’re looking to start making money right away:

• No start-up money required — You can easily create an account with eBay, get your first listing up, and start making serious profits, for just a few dollars
• No business experience necessary – You don’t need to know ANYTHING about running a business to get started on eBay, so it’s perfect for people who are just beginning to work for themselves
• You don’t need to be computer savvy — If you know how to check your email, you have all the computer skills you NEED to start making profits on eBay!

ANYONE can start making money quickly and easily on eBay…

… but to make really BIG money, it helps if you understand the more advanced strategies (the ones that very few other "eBayers" actually even know about).

I’ve been working with my in-house team of elite eBay mentors to develop a three-step system that anyone can follow to start making money on eBay…

… and I’ve put them into an online video training series that you can watch FOR FREE!

In the videos, I’ll show you how to AVOID the number one profit-killing mistake that nearly every new eBayer makes… my secret three-step formula for determining if ANY product will be a HOT seller… and review how to use eBay’s new rules to outsell even your TOUGHEST competitors!

You can get instant access to the FREE videos right here.

To your success,

Derek Gehl