Below are a few of the many reasons why making the step into the affiliate marketing business might be good for you:

ANYONE CAN DO IT

Well that’s not entirely true. There are certain personal qualities that you need if you want to be successful. In a nutshell you need to be focused, patient, keen to learn and be passionate about what you do. Other than that, yeah, anyone can do it. You don’t need to have any previous experience or qualifications in order to start as an affiliate marketer. Once you have done your research and you know what you need to do to get the ball rolling, you can have your own business up and running within a day.

LOW START UP COSTS

Your essentials for starting in this business are a computer and an internet connection. If you have those then you are ready to go. You will need to make some small payments to get started, the main ones being buying a domain name and web hosting. You can find some very good deals out there which won’t break the bank and once you are earning through your affiliate site, then it will pay for itself. You should also remember that it is free to join an affiliate network, so that’s a saving right there.

IMPORTANT: If you are ever asked to pay to become an affiliate then walk away and find another network!

NO PRODUCT COSTS

Take any product you like. All of them will have had to have been designed, tested and finally manufactured before being made available to the public. Just think of how much time, effort and (most importantly) money went into that. That’s something that you don’t have to worry about with your affiliate business. All of the hard work is done for you.

WORK FROM HOME

In fact you can work from anywhere, at any time. For most people this is the key reason for entering into the world of affiliate marketing. Whether it’s from a desire to spend more time at home with family or simply because you are tired with your regular 9 to 5 job, affiliate marketing offers a whole world of freedom.

YOU CHOOSE WHAT YOU SELL

You can find almost anything sold online, and chances are you will find an affiliate program connected to it. By having such a wide choice of products that you can market, you are guaranteed to find one that will suit you. The best way for you to pick your product is to choose something you know that you would like creating your sites content around, because that is what you are going to need to do.

NO CUSTOMERS

Once you have led a customer to buying the product that you are marketing, they are out of your hands. You will receive your commission for making a sale, and it will then be down to the merchant to deal with them from then on. This means that you don’t have to worry about dealing with taking payment, shipping and if they arise refunds and complaints.

MAKE MONEY OVERNIGHT

This should not be confused with the bogus “get rich quick” claims that say you can make money overnight from day one of your affiliate career. It takes time before you start seeing the real cash start coming in. What I mean here is that you can earn money 24/7. Just because you aren’t sat at your computer working doesn’t mean that your website will stop making money. Particularly if you are promoting a product that is available globally; just because it is night time for you, the other side of the world is going to be up and browsing.

YOU ARE YOUR OWN BOSS

It’s a great feeling not to have someone on your back, always looking over your shoulder telling you to work harder and longer. Especially when the results of all your work aren’t reflected in your salary. With affiliate marketing you can be sure in the knowledge that everything you work for is yours (although do save some aside for the tax man!) But, and it’s a big but! Sometimes not having somebody else pushing you and setting you targets can lead to your affiliate campaigns stagnating. You always need to be pushing your campaigns, keeping them fresh, trying new ideas and exploring other possibilities. It’s all down on you to motivate yourself.

From taking a look at the list above, you can see quite clearly that the benefits of a career in affiliate marketing reach further than just making money. You will be able to find more information on the “how to” side of affiliate marketing, but the reasons here should be enough to make you want to go and find out more. Ultimately affiliate marketing is a lot of hard work, but if you choose your niche and products wisely it can also be a lot of fun.

The rewards are there if you work for them.

About the Author

Stuart Bourne is a full time affiliate marketer, and part time content writer forCPANetworkReviews, a site which offers unbiased information about the leading CPA and affiliate networks, as well as providing helpful tips and guides for internet marketing on the blog pages.

Launched in 2005, Squidoo.com is a web 2.0 website that specializes in hosting personal web pages for anyone who has 10 minutes to build one. Instead of referring to them as plain old “web pages,” though, Squidoo has dubbed them “lenses,” as each one focuses on a particular topic or idea. 

Anyone can create a lens, for any reason. Whether you want to share your opinion on the latest Jodi Picoult novel or air your grievances against the electric company, Squidoo gives you a quick and easy venue for getting your message out to the masses. And it’s so easy, even your grandmother can do it.

Squidoo lenses are ridiculously simple to set up, requiring absolutely no technical knowledge or programming experience.  And best of all, Squidoo offers easy add ins for bringing the Web 2.0 world together on your lens.  With a few click you can easily add youtube videos, Flicker photos, polling surveys, google blog searches, RSS and much more to your lens.

In addition to providing a virtual soapbox, Squidoo can also serve as a highly effective and risk-free marketing tool for your online. Below, I have compiled the top 9 reasons you should create a lens to help give your online business a boost:

1. To increase traffic to your site. Squidoo lenses can include inbound links to your website, boosting your site’s credibility in the eyes of search engines and increasing your overall link popularity. Plus, the lenses themselves are indexed by search engines, so your personal page can achieve a high ranking with strategic keyword placement.  Get a few links to your Squidoo lens and you can easily get your lens to rank in the organic search results for moderately competitive keywords.

2. To save money on advertising. Unlike costly print ads and direct mail campaigns, creating a personal Squidoo page won’t cost you a dime, ensuring your ROI will never dip below zero.  It takes about 10 minutes to build a Squidoo lens and you can really boost your credibility and brand yourself as an expert in your industry.

3. To highlight multiple aspects of your business. You can create as few or as many lenses as you want. It’s possible to have hundreds of different lenses focusing on different components of your business, all driving traffic back to your website. For instance, if you sell various models of barbecue, you can create a lens highlighting each model or model line.

4. To piggyback on other Squidoo pages. When your lens is nestled among hundreds of thousands of other interesting lenses, it’s more likely to benefit from the traffic generated by those neighboring pages. It’s the same concept as two houses for sale on the same street—there’s bound to be some overflow from prospective buyers who visited the other property first.

5. To generate royalties. It’s up to you whether you receive them as cash or roll them over into your favorite charity but you can get paid for your lens. Squidoo is widely renowned as a quickly growing fundraising mechanism.

6. To sell stuff. A great way to get your feet wet in the e-commerce arena, Squidoo lets you sell items from Ebay and Amazon and earn royalties from each sale.  It also lets you have direct affiliate links to any of the affiliate programs you endorse.

7. To conduct surveys for your business. Squidoo pages are a great way to gauge consumer attitudes and reactions to new products and services.  The Squidoo polling feature is really easy to set up and put you on the fast track to surveying your customers.

8. To test new branding strategies. If you’re considering a website redesign or company logo change, a Squidoo page lets you first gauge reactions to it before pulling the trigger.

9. To interact with potential consumers. Visitors to your lens can add their comments, links, and reactions. Every time an update is made, it makes your lens that much more appealing and relevant to search engines.

If you’re still on the fence about Squidoo, we’ve got just one question: what do you have to lose? It’s free and easy—two of the most desirable qualities in the arena of Internet marketing.  I highly recommend it!