Website Or No Website…That's The Question

Do you want to make money through the Internet but you don't have enough experience or capital to start your own online business? You don't have to worry, for a lot of online marketing options exist for you to start with. One of these options, and shall I say the best, is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing provides first time online marketers like you the chance to market something online even without having your own product to sell. All you have to do is to sign up with an affiliate marketing program, which is usually owned by an online merchant or retailer, and start picking the products you want to promote. As an affiliate, you are paid by the merchant for your services on a commission basis, that is whenever you have directed a visitor to the merchant's site and the visitor actually buys something.

Becoming an affiliate in an affiliate marketing program is often quick and easy, and for most affiliate programs, signing up is also free. But despite these and all the benefits being promised by affiliate programs, many people are still hesitant to get into affiliate marketing. One of the reasons why a lot of people remain hesitant is the lack of a website to start marketing his affiliate products with. This now leads us to the question of whether a website is required or necessary in affiliate marketing or not.

Many people say that one can do affiliate marketing even without a website to start with. Actually, one can really start promoting and marketing his affiliate products even without a website; and there exist a lot of ways on how this can be done. In fact, many affiliate marketing strategies that leads to success can exist without actually needing a website. Among these strategies are email marketing, offline promotions, writing e-books, writing ezines and engaging in online discussions like forums, chats, message boards and others.

*Email Marketing

Email marketing, or maintaining email lists, is actually the most popular affiliate marketing strategy that doesn't require the affiliate to maintain a website. In this affiliate marketing strategy, what you basically do is maintain a list of the email ads of your prospective customers and provide them with articles that are relevant with the affiliate products and programs you are promoting. Articles that you provide your contacts with need not always be promotional, for many individuals find such types of email annoying. Rather, it would be better if you provide them with something informative and just add small text ads that link to your merchant's site.

*Offline Promotion

There are many ways on how you can promote your affiliate products offline. Among the common medium used for such promotions are classified ads, brochures and flyers. Classified ads would generally work better compared to the other two because classified ads in periodicals often get a wider audience.

*Writing Free e-books

If you have a knack in writing, writing an e-book can be the best way for you to promote your affiliate products in the absence of an actual website. Just like in emails and newsletters, your readers would better appreciate your e-book if it is not too promotional but rather informative. Be sure, however, to make the contents of your e-books relative to the actual affiliate products you are promoting. And just like in email marketing, you can just place text ads or banners somewhere near the end of your e-book that links to the merchant's site.

*Writing Free Ezines

Ezines are publications or articles that aim to inform individuals about a particular topic. If you don't have a website and yet want to be an affiliate, you can well use ezines to promote your affiliate products or to insert links to your merchant's site. If you have a website, your ezine article may actually work well as content for your site. But since you have no website, you can just submit your free ezine articles to various websites that hosts ezines, like goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com and others.

*Online discussions (Forums, Chats, Message Boards, etc.)

With or without a website, you just can't ignore online discussions because they are great venues for marketing your affiliate products. In chats, forums, message boards and discussion boards with topics related to your products, you can easily find people who may be interested with the products you are promoting.

With all these strategies, it may appear that one really doesn't need to have a website to start marketing his affiliate products and promoting his affiliate programs. Well, starting in an affiliate program without a website may be easy, but getting successful in affiliate marketing without a website is another thing. While one can actually gain enormous success in affiliate marketing even without a website, it is a rare instance that "newbies" like you can reach the same levels of success.

Having a website is not really a pre-requisite in entering into an affiliate program, unless otherwise the program owner would require you to have one. But while this is so, I would still recommend that you have for yourself a website, if not now, then maybe at a later time. Having a website creates a lot of advantages in affiliate marketing. For one, it provides you a place where you can creatively promote not only one of your affiliate products but all of your affiliate products. With a website, you can also advertise your affiliate products to a wider market.

Again, having a website is not a requirement in affiliate marketing. But with the advantages that a website can provide, I'd rather have one for myself and make affiliate marketing a lot easier for me. read more.....

5 Things You Must Have to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing

The idea of being mere passengers on a ship meant to sail to the farthest points does not appeal to people who like to put their destiny into their own hands. They have the desire of maneuvering the ships themselves, of being able to be the ones to take it anywhere they want to. Being aboard a ship on its way to a particularly great destination is something each and every one of them dreams of, and the knowledge that they have the capacity to steer it themselves is what makes them actually want to.

Perhaps this is the reason why more and more people are succumbing to one of the most popular businesses around – affiliate marketing. It is because in this business, there are no bosses to order the employees around. There are no deadlines to meet and no clutter of work do to. One only needs to be equipped with the tools needed to succeed in a business such as this, and he is bound to get what his heart ultimately desires.

Just what are the things needed to be able to succeed in affiliate marketing? What must one have within himself to be able to do well in this industry? There is a lot of competition involved in affiliate marketing, and to be able to rise above the norm, one must be equipped with just the right stuff necessary to propel him forward. There are five things one must ultimately possess if he wants to achieve the glory he is yearning for in this business, and these five things are a must for him to possess to be able to stand out among the rest.

The very first quality one must possess if he wants to try his hand in affiliate marketing is the willingness to learn and be trained. Treading through unfamiliar territory is scary stuff if one is not properly equipped, and he might get lost amidst a jungle of the unknown. Learning the tricks of the trade is also an important aspect of the game, and one’s willingness to know it all will give him far better advantages in the business than he could ever imagine.

The second quality one must possess is the willingness to invest time and effort even if direct results do not seem at all apparent. Although several months may pass without good news, it is important for one who has his foot in the industry to hold on and wait. It is this quality which would save him from giving up after investing a lot of himself in the business.

The third quality one must possess is self-determination. If one wants to conquer the affiliate marketing world, he must have the ability to push himself ahead. Never having to say die is a quality each and every affiliate marketer should possess, and the ability to motivate oneself into scaling greater heights is an ability which would actually take an affiliate marketer there.

The fourth quality one must possess is discipline. If one knows how to teach himself to work everyday with all the energy he can muster, then he is close to achieving what he has set his heart to having in the first place.

The fifth and last quality one must possess is optimism. Negative attitudes and hearsays should not discourage an affiliate marketer from pursuing what he has to in order to make life better for himself and for everyone concerned. Neither should anyone influence his attitude toward the business, because once in it, it is a must for him to be the captain of his ship and the master of his soul.

The ingredients to success in a business such as affiliate marketing are diverse and manifold, but the most important thing one needs to be able to make it big lies in himself alone. It is he who has the capacity to do everything to be able to realize his prospects, and the desire which fuels his heart in doing so is the gasoline which should keep the engine going.

Affiliate marketing is all about putting one’s fate into his own hands. The right attitude is the key to being able to steer one’s ship into that part of the ocean where a certain kind of serenity can be found, one that permeates the atmosphere as the ship sails calmly on. read more.....