Learning how to start an Online Marketing Business at Home is invaluable and well within the capabilities of most people. I know that idea engenders enthusiasm and excitement and perhaps a bit of trepidation also.
Trust me! I relate to all of these emotions. I was somewhat skeptical and fearful myself at the start of my personal online journey until I discovered the resources and supportive community that made my online marketing business a reality. But since that discovery, excitement has exploded and fueled my success.
Many of the readers I engage with are baby boomers like myself. Hence, the trepidation and the concerns with this Internet thing. Have a quick chat with your 15-year old grandchild and see your fears met with total disbelief.
Why?
They’re intimately familiar with Facebook walls, tweeting, and finding anything and everything on the Internet. “Online” is a way of life for them that’s completely comfortable and familiar. Not so for us “boomers”! But I hope you won’t let a bit of discomfort hold you back because running an online business really is an amazing experience and anyone can do it!
So, pour yourself a fresh cuppa and let’s dig right into online marketing, shall we?
What is an Online Affiliate Marketing Business?
Affiliate marketing is a business venture that entails promoting the products and services of others in exchange for a fee. The best part about this business is that you connect people with stuff they’re already searching for. Therefore, it’s more of a service than a hard sell.
You need a blueprint, access to solid training, and some basic resources to get you rolling. I know you’re thinking that sounds expensive but it’s not. I launched my business on a shoestring budget. In fact, I started with a free account and we can talk later in this post about your option to do something similar.
Let me say at the outset that there’s nothing to prevent you from marketing your own products and services. I do recommend that you go the affiliate route first simply because it’s quicker and less complicated to get started for those who haven’t completely fleshed out product ideas or who don’t want the hassles of dealing with inventory.
Here’s a high-level overview showing how affiliate marketing works:
4 Steps – How to Start an Online Marketing Business
We’ve all heard the phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words. The expression may be overused but it’s also so true! So let’s examine a picture of the steps involved in building and growing your online marketing business.
Turn Your Passion into a Profitable Business By Choosing The Perfect Niche For You
What products or services can you market as an affiliate?
Almost anything! There are literally tens of thousands of possibilities! You need to pick an area of interest and identify a niche market that shares your interest. Once you know and understand the interests and passions of your target market, you can provide rich content to draw readers to your site and satisfy their needs for information
I chose to focus on seniors, just like myself, who are seeking opportunities to make money online as my niche. I love connecting with my market because I recognize the challenges, needs, hopes, and desires of my readers. Why wouldn’t I when I’m one of them?
I take enormous pleasure in introducing opportunities, reviewing helpful products and addressing the many queries of my audience as they strive to achieve financial freedom. My niche is a perfect fit for me but you need to find that perfect fit of your own.
What excites you and gives you pleasure? I enjoy doing research and then blogging about attractive niche ideas, the best affiliate programs, and how to rank posts in Google. You may already have a lengthy list of hobbies and personal pursuits to select from but if stimulating niche examples would help get your creative juices flowing, try these.
Niche Ideas to Explore
- How to Make Money Selling Essential Oils
- CBD Oil Affiliate Programs – How to Make Money With CBD Oil
- How to Make Money with Pet Products and Affiliate Programs
Build a Fabulous Website
Your website forms the cornerstone of your profitable online business that you will run from the comfort of home. You can quickly build the basic structure of your website in minutes with four mouse clicks. Think I’m exaggerating? Check out the video on my build a website page and watch the action in real time as a website is created using WordPress.
That beautiful website can be yours a few minutes from now. Just sayin’! 🙂
The most technically-challenged amongst us can create a WordPress site to serve as an online storefront where prospective customers will be offered helpful information such as product reviews, tutorials, or “how-to” guides. A website is open for business 24/7 and represents an ideal communication vehicle.
Attract Visitors With Engaging Content
Affiliate marketing is all about finding a group of people searching for a solution. The stats tell us that more than 3 billion people regularly conduct Google searches. What do you plan to promote and to whom? Your unique answers to this question will guide your content creation efforts.
I’m not promoting some “rags to riches” scheme here. Rather, I’m introducing a legitimate business opportunity which means I’m looking for entrepreneurial-minded individuals who recognize the need to invest some hard work to achieve a viable business.
Building out your website by adding rich content that attracts the eye of your target audience is exciting. But I’m not going to sugarcoat this aspect. It’s also a lot of work! You will not see overnight success. The road to prosperity will take months or even longer.
But then, we baby boomers are not strangers to hard work, are we? And the rewards are worth the effort! Success loves determined people who are decisive in their approach and consistent in their efforts.
Earn Revenue By Successfully Connecting Consumers and Merchants
A successful affiliate marketing website is devoted to meeting the needs of its target market for general information, relevant tutorials, and solutions to problems. Oftentimes, problems can be addressed by finding the best products or services.
For example, photographers may be searching for the best DSLR camera or the perfect place to sell their photos. Pet parents may be searching for the best online training programs for their dogs, and so on.
Hence, online marketers serve the needs of their audience by joining reputable affiliate programs, promoting legitimate products, and sharing in the revenue when a sale occurs.
Learn How to Start an Online Marketing Business at Home in 4 steps
Why Online Marketing?
The power of online marketing is already calling your name or you wouldn’t have kindly read this far in my post or even performed the Google search that brought you here in the first place. But let’s spell out the incredible advantages of this business model, shall we?
If you haven’t made that commitment yet and built a website to launch the online business you desire, you may still have a lingering doubt or two. So, I want to spell out the overwhelming advantages of taking this leap because there’s no better time than now to follow your intuition.
5 Reasons Why Online Affiliate Marketing Works in 2019 and Beyond
- Consumers crave the convenience of online shopping! I do most of my shopping online these days and I’ll bet that’s true of you and many of your friends and colleagues as well. Savvy shoppers can do comparison shopping with ease as they comfortably sip a latte at home. They can also investigate rebates through rewards programs like Swagbucks that can make those deals even more attractive.
- Affiliate marketing is experiencing staggering, exponential growth with expectations for 2020 exceeding $6.8 billion based on a study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of the Rakuten Affiliate Network.
- As an affiliate, you can choose to promote over 500 million products. Do you think that might give you sufficient options, lol?
- Major online brands including the likes of Amazon, Apple, and Best Buy make extensive use of affiliates to dramatically increase their market share and reach. Pick a consumer product at random and I guarantee you will find Amazon affiliate websites that promote that product.
- The number of affiliate programs is exploding in large part because affiliate marketing is performance-based. Commissions are paid as sales occur and represent a sharing of profits. Thus, there are strong economic incentives to expand affiliate programs rather than incur fixed costs for marketing execs or in-house staff that are not tied to performance.
For all of these reasons and more, affiliate marketing is here to stay!
Get Affiliate Marketing Training & Resources That Work
Wealthy Affiliate (WA) has robust training and all the resources you need to accomplish each of the four steps involved in starting an online marketing business. Me and tens of thousands of other Internet marketing “wannabees” got our start with a free Starter Membership in Wealthy Affiliate.
This unique online community offers a supportive eLearning experience where you’ll rub shoulders with both successful affiliate marketers and complete newbies like yourself. You’ll meet retirees looking to supplement their pension income, stay at home moms and dads seeking a second income, would be entrepreneurs, and quite a few of those highly adept teenagers who may make you a little envious. 🙂
The training walks you step-by-step from ground zero to a fully functioning, money making website. You’ll watch how-to videos and work through task-oriented lessons while building your website one step at a time.
You’re never alone unless you want to be because there are classrooms where you’re encouraged to ask questions and a live chat room where you can seek help 24/7. It’s a global community so someone is always in the chat room.
The owners of WA drop into chat regularly as do many other experienced marketers. Members try to pay-it-forward because they’re grateful for the help they received early in their careers.
Join the Webinars
Oh, and I don’t want to forget to mention the weekly webinars. Jay Neill of Magistudios offers weekly webinars where he shares his tips and secrets from more than 10 years as a successful affiliate marketer. A long-time WA member, Jay presents live training sessions each Friday evening (or Saturday evening depending on where you are in the world).
These webinars are also recorded so there’s a massive library of incredibly powerful insights that you can draw upon at your convenience.
What is a Wealthy Affiliate Premium Membership vs a Starter Membership?
Everyone initially joins Wealthy Affiliate as a free Starter Member. This affords new members ample opportunity to explore the WA platform, build a website, complete the first 10 lessons, interact with the community, and make an informed decision as to whether the organization meets their needs and expectations.
You can remain a Starter Member for as long as you choose during which time you retain your website (2 in fact) and can complete the free lessons on your timeframe and continue adding content to your site.
But if you are serious about affiliate marketing, you will want to upgrade to a Premium Membership because this opens up far more training and vastly enhances your ability to grow a successful business.
Here is a comparison of the two membership levels.
The membership grid highlights 2 things clearly. One, the starter membership offers newbies a lot and is a sweet deal at no cost. Two, the paid premium membership naturally offers far more and still represents an excellent value.
For the budget-conscious folks (like me), it makes sound financial sense to select an annual premium membership rather than a monthly membership. Annual membership is $359/year which equates to less than a dollar a day.
Bonus
After joining as a Starter Member, if you decide to upgrade within 7 days (that’s a choice, not a requirement) I can offer you the first month of premium membership at a discounted price of $19. I know I jumped at that chance when it was offered to me. But you’ll have to draw your own conclusions.
Summing Up
I sincerely hope you found this discussion of how to start an Online Marketing Business at Home to be both enlightening and motivational. But achieving success requires that you take that next step and join me inside the WA community.
You have nothing to lose but you might just change your life for the better!
Over to You
Can I answer any additional questions for you? If so, please post them below and I’ll get back to you shortly.
Like It? Please Share It!
Thanks so much for that informative article Linda. As a fellow member of WA (full disclosure) I can certainly say that I have no regrets about taking the plunge into online entrepreneurship. I’ve learnt so much and have so many ideas now that I have to walk around with a journal most of the time. What was the experience like for you when you first joined up? I’m thinking of suggesting this to my Mom, but she’s sometimes awful shy of technology.
Hi Joshua,
I appreciate your comments and your interest in my site. I’m glad to hear your experiences with online entrepreneurship and Wealthy Affiliate have been positive ones. I was very excited when I first joined and I’ve maintained that excitement. I also have many ideas swirling around in my head on a regular basis. I do a lot of niche research in part because I feel it provides helpful info for my target market. But I also explore different niche opportunities for myself. As you know, WA premium members can host up to 50 websites so I’m always investigating new markets.
I hope you will encourage your Mom to give the free membership a try. Lessons are designed to take individuals from a complete newbie status to a prosperous webmaster role. She can advance at her own pace and spend as long as necessary in completing each lesson. She can also pose questions and interact with other members of the community. No need to be shy!
Thanks for dropping by my site and best wishes to you as you develop your business!
I have been fortunate to find Wealthy Affiliate and after a year of sitting on it while remaining confused, I decided to jump in on the $19 deal. Now I am definitely planning to upgrade to the yearly plan. I didn’t even realize that this equates to less than a dollar a day! This article should be very inspiring to the person who desires to build an online business and should even help to persuade those who are skeptical. Thank you!
Hi Ririj,
I’m glad to hear you’re moving forward with your online business plans. Based on personal experience, I truly believe it’s a wonderful opportunity. I strongly urge everyone who has a dream of working online from home to explore a free membership. Try it out and see if it’s right for you. Test the waters so to speak. I mean, what’s not to like about free? 🙂 Move forward at your own pace once you’re convinced that it’s a good fit for you.
Best wishes for your success and thanks for visiting my site!
Hi Linda!
Very good information about affiliate marketing. I myself have tried my hand at affiliate marketing for a while.
Yes I have received instruction from WA and must say that I never thought that there was such a place online. You say there are several million products to promote online.
But many of them are cheap products and will not provide as much benefit if I promote them.
So what I want to ask is how do I find a niche that is very profitable in the long term?
I hope you understand my question.
Steen
Hi Steen,
Based on my experiences as an affiliate marketer, I am convinced there are endless choices of profitable niches. It’s true that affiliate marketing commissions are calculated as a percentage of the selling price of the product you are promoting. As such, the sale of more expensive products will result in higher commissions on individual sale transactions. But I would suggest that you consider a different view of marketing. Total revenue is always a function of both selling price and volume. Many businesses, both online and offline, have achieved enormous prosperity marketing inexpensive products because they rely on higher volumes.
Right or wrong, my theory is that affiliate marketing is only very secondarily about selling products. At its core, affiliate marketing is about identifying a niche (or target market) with products needs, unanswered product questions, or specific pain points. Define your niche, understand your audience, research their questions, and focus your efforts on providing massive value. Develop credibility and trust with your target market and your traffic will grow. More traffic equates to greater potential sales volume.
If you stick with your passions, identifying the right niche for your online business is a far easier and more rewarding task. I would caution you against selecting a niche based solely on profitability assessments alone. I know I don’t want to ever place myself in the position of developing content around products or services that don’t interest me.
I hope you find a niche that is near and dear to your heart. Thanks for dropping by and engaging!