Let’s face it. Affiliate marketing is nice. It can give you an income without the hassle of creating your own product, generating a sales process, taking in orders, etc. The basic challenge is to find which product to promote, and you share a piece of the sale.

It would even be better if you come up with your own product since you keep all of the sale. However, you are only selling one product at a time. After that one sale, you need to attract more customers in order to have more income, which is not recurring.

Now let’s take a look at membership sites.

Membership sites are probably the most lucrative form of online businesses out there due to:

• Recurring income – once someone signs up, there is a greater chance that that customer will stay with you. Sure, there will be unsubscriptions, but make sure that you offer quality content in your membership in order to keep your customers as paying members
• Relationships – once they sign in as your members, this is your chance to build lasting relationships with your subscribers. Once trust is built, it will be easier to promote other offers aside from your membership site

This post about membership sites is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure there are a lot more people who know more about it than I do, and that’s why I’m still in the process of learning the ropes. I would like to share with you this free report on membership sites by Yaro Starak. Believe me  it’s good. (click the link below)

Membership Site Mastermind

This might come in handy too. It is a free membership software you can use in case you’re planning to create your own membership site.

Memberfire

Note: Both of these are free, but if ever you do pay for one of those, then I’ll earn a commission (which is nice, hehe…). But I sincerely hope that you get value from both, and you can do this even without paying. Enjoy!

In a news article published by cnet.com (read full story here), online sales for the past holiday season totaled to a whopping $27 billion! Truly, selling online has never been more lucrative, as more and more merchants are harnessing the power of the internet to achieve more sales.

You can grab a piece of this online pie by becoming an Amazon Associate. When it comes to affiliate marketing, Amazon is one of its pioneers. And with their wide range of products, you can be sure that you will find at least one product that fits your niche.

Here is how you can do it:

1. Go to this link to signup. (it’s free)
2. If you have an existing website, you can get links which you can post on your website. When people follow these links and make a purchase, you receive a commision from Amazon. or…
3. If you do not have a website of your own, you can create an a-store using your account dashboard you can access when you login. Get the url of your a-store and promote it whichever way you like – emails, forums, offline promotion, etc.

In a nutshell, that is what affiliate marketing is all about. You get a reward for every customer you refer to a merchant, and it results in a win-win-win situation for the merchant, the affiliate, and the customer.

I hope you find this post helpful. Here’s to your online success!

(for another free online store option, you can click here)

What exactly is affiliate marketing? Some of you may have heard of it and have an inkling of what it is, and some of you might have no idea at all.

Well, imagine you are an owner of a product, and you want to sell your product online. So you put up a website and start generating a modest amount of traffic and pick up a few sales now and then. But you want to sell more of your product and make more money online. How would you do it?

You get other people to promote your product! You entice other website owners (webmasters) to promote your product, and in return, you pay them a commission for every sale of your product made through their website.

So you, as the owner of a product, gets more exposure for your product (since other webmasters are promoting it for you), and the affiliate (for example, me), make money anytime someone buys your product from my website. So, it is basically a win-win situation for both you and me.

Affiliate marketing offers many advantages: if you already have a website and want to make money from it, just find products to promote through your website. You do not have to worry about stock keeping, order fulfillment, shipping and handling, and so on, because the product owner takes care all of that. All you have to do is to promote your website, or if you do not have a website, promote the product through other means (like email, post ads). Not a bad idea for an online business right?

(To receive a free website, you may want to check this out)