How to Start an Online Business From Home

Back in the day, only the privileged few could start their own businesses. Starting capital had to be significant, while outside funding was scarce (unless you had a ‘commerce-savvy family). Today anyone can start and scale an online business, regardless of their professional background or past entrepreneurial experience.

Benefits Of Starting an Online Business

You may be wondering why to start an online business in the first place. Because starting an online business has several advantages. Here are the four main ones.

[1] It is Fairly Inexpensive to Start
A lot want to start a business but are deterred by the investment required to get it off the ground. You have to pay for a lease, purchase inventory, and budget for employee salaries. What if you invest all that money in your business but it doesn’t work out? This can ruin you financially.

However, with an online business, all you need is:

Computer. You probably already have one.
Domain name. You can get one for less than $10 per year.
Website Builder: Monthly plans start at $29.90 per mo.
In other words — it’s feasible to launch an online business with $100 as a starting capital. Of course, the more starting money you have, the more online business ideas you can pursue. But the point is that you don’t need to risk your life’s savings to become a successful online entrepreneur.

[2] Flexibility
Having an online business enables you to operate and handle it from any corner of the world. This great benefit of having an online business lets you have the freedom to operate your business from anywhere by not just being stuck to a physical location. You can easily conduct your online business from anywhere all you need is a solid internet connection. Among the different benefits of having an online business, the flexibility to operate your business from anyone is the favorite of online business owners.

[3] 24/7 Availability 
Without the internet, it is next to impossible for your business to provide its services for 24 hours. With the help of the online website. you can let your customers visit and know about your services at any time from any corner of the world. This can not be possible with an offline business. Your clients and customers can read about your products and place orders as per their convenience.
Imagine how beneficial it can be for your business to provide its services for a longer period of time and even during the holidays! It is just like making money even when you sleep because the internet is there for you. In order to maximize the profit, your business must be available to those buyers as well who prefer online shopping over offline

[4] Access to a Worldwide Market
The beautiful thing about an online business is the ability to run it 24/7 without boundaries. There are no geographical boundaries and there are no specific hours of operation — an online business can produce revenue around the clock, even while you sleep. With a well-thought-out social media plan, search engine optimization, and paid media strategies, an online business can thrive. You have access to the entire world right at your fingertips. The luxury of being able to target specific states, regions and countries gives an upper hand to online-based businesses.

Getting started with affiliate marketing

The Affiliate Marketing industry is a multibillion-dollar industry with exciting professional opportunities for beginners. It’s fast becoming a common way to market products and services. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online from home. It’s a great way to supplement your income from home and it’s easy to get started.

Affiliate marketing is a sales model where a company pays a third party to sell its product or service.  In exchange for recommending products or services to their audience, they get a commission off of any sales that result in their referral.

After you choose an affiliate marketing program, you’ll receive a unique link or code that will allow the companies to track every customer you send their way. When a customer purchases the product through your link, you earn a commission.

You don’t have to create products or worry about fulfillment, customer service, or bad reviews.  Your only job is to get the right customers in front of the right offer, and take a commission when they buy. And you can do it all in an hour a day from the comfort of your home or anywhere else.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing
[1] Decide On a Niche
[2] Product to Sell
[3] Create squeeze page
[4] Send Traffic

[1] Decide On a Niche
Decide On Your Niche means you should find the very specific activity or position that sets you apart and in which you can find success or fulfillment.
5 steps you can use to find your niche. [1] Identify your interest and passions [2] Identify the problem you can solve [3] Research your competition [4] Determine the profitability of your niche [5] Test your idea

[2] Find Affiliate Products to Sell
Affiliate marketing wouldn’t be possible without products in need of promotion. The good news is, the internet houses millions of items to choose from. But where do you find the best affiliate products to promote?
As an affiliate marketer, your mission is to find popular products within your niche that will best serve the needs of your audience. You should select a digital product that is high in demand in your niche and solve the problems of your subscribers. And ultimately purchase with the help of your marketing efforts.
There are three most popular niches to promote. Make Mooney Online, Health and fitness and relationship. There are three affiliate networks I like to suggest to you for digital products to promote. ClickBank, WarriorPlus, and JVZoo

ClickBank is a popular affiliate network with more than 500,000 members worldwide.  As you can imagine, when it comes to finding affiliate products to promote, they make it easy. ClickBank’s major source is digital sales and information products. ClickBank’s site is packed with thousands of products. You can review reports in real-time, as ClickBank provides constant data on sales, cancellations, refunds, and so on.

Anyone can become a ClickBank affiliate — it’s free. When you find a product that you wish to promote, either by searching the ClickBank marketplace or at a vendor’s website, you will be provided with a unique link that you can use to direct customers to the product page.
First, sign up for a ClickBank account. Then find a product to promote.  Log into your account and access Marketplace. The ClickBank affiliate marketplace is actually pretty straightforward because there’s really only one goal here: finding a product to promote.

And how do you do that? There are two main ways to find a product:
Method 1: In the sidebar on the left, you’ll see a big list of product categories, which then open up into subcategories of different product types. These make it easy to find products based on the niche (or topic) that you’ve chosen for your business.
Method 2: Another way to find a good product is to skip the categories and just browse “all products” instead. To do that, hit the little magnifying glass search button at the top to see every marketplace product in a list – by default, the results will be sorted by Rank.
Analyze a ClickBank product listing. Every product on the ClickBank marketplace has its own gravity score, but what does this number actually mean? A high Gravity score proves that the product can convert (ie get sales), but it also indicates a LOT of competition from other affiliates for that same product. You’ll have to decide what level of Gravity is a good fit for your approach as an affiliate – but honestly, when you’re first starting out, it can make sense to pick one with a more modest score in the 20-100 range.

Now that you understand where to find products and what some of these stats mean, it’s time for you to create your first HopLink!
As we’ve touched on so far, you get a commission when someone clicks your special tracking link and then purchases a product you’ve promoted. At ClickBank, we call this affiliate tracking URL a “HopLink.” You’ll need a hoplink to make money with ClickBank as an affiliate.

After you select the product, click on “Promote” You will see the HopLink Generator for this product. All you have to do is enter your chosen account nickname and an optional Tracking ID (not necessary for now), and then hit the “Create HopLink” button. ClickBank’s HopLink Generator will immediately generate a new HopLink that’s tied to your account nickname.

You can easily copy the HopLink by hitting that little button on the right or highlighting and copying the actual text in the field.
And that’s your first HopLink! Way to go!

I usually save my HopLinks in the Notes app on my MacBook so that it’s easy to keep track of them, but don’t worry if you lose track of your special link – you can always go back and generate a new one.

[3] Create Squeeze page
A Squeeze Page (also known as a “landing page” or “lead page”) is a webpage designed specifically to collect email addresses from visitors. The “squeeze” name stems from the fact that the page provides limited options, which can “squeeze” an email address out of potential subscribers

You will need an auto-responder to collect your email addresses.  There are two companies I would like to suggest to you.  Aweber and Getresponse.  You can open a free account with any of them.
They provide templates to create a squeeze page. As a beginner, I highly suggest you use the help of Fiverr service. It is not expensive. They will make your squeeze page and connect the squeeze page with your autoresponder and set up everything. Also, connect your affiliate link with your product sale page.

[4] Send Traffic to Your Squeeze Page
In the realm of online marketing, “traffic” is a catch-all term referring to a volume of users or site visitors.
The two pieces of any successful online marketing campaign are traffic and conversion:
1. Traffic gets people where you want them to go!
2. Conversion moves them from prospects into customers!

So as you can see, getting traffic is VERY important.
The nice thing about being an affiliate is, you only have one job to focus on: sending traffic over to your squeeze page where visitors will give their email addresses and they will be collected in your autoresponder and will be redirected through your affiliate link to your product’s sales page. As long as you get the right traffic and pick a high-converting offer, you can make money without worrying about the conversion part!

How to Get Traffic (Free vs Paid!)

Now, the question is: “How do I get traffic?”
Everyone always asks us this question – and it’s probably something you’re wondering too!
Well, there are two main categories of traffic: free and paid.
To understand this, think of a highway with a destination that you’re heading toward. Along the road, you can choose to drive a modest Toyota Corolla that’s affordable and reliable, but slower. Or you can hop into a fancy Ferrari that’s a lot more expensive, but also gets you where you want to go much faster.

That’s basically the difference between free traffic and paid traffic. They BOTH will move you to the same destination, which is sending users to pages containing your affiliate links so they can click through, make a purchase, and earn you a commission.
But which should you choose? It ultimately comes down to personal preference: how fast do you want to get there (and how much money do you want to spend along the way)?

There’s no right or wrong answer here. In fact, many of the best marketers choose “all of the above,” because free and paid traffic sources each have their merits! But as a beginner, it can make sense to start with free traffic to build a foundation before moving on to paid sources.
Now, let’s briefly cover a few of these traffic sources you can use to start making affiliate commissions.
When it comes to free traffic, a better term to describe it is “organic traffic.”
As inexpensive as these sources of traffic are, they aren’t 100% free – but most of what you pay is in time and effort, not money.

Here are the top 3 free traffic sources to be thinking about for your affiliate business!

1) Google search: One of the fundamental “free” sources of traffic is Google search, which you can take advantage of by building an affiliate website or blog. When you do keyword research, you can find both informational and commercial keywords related to the affiliate product you want to promote

 2) Social media: Another great free source of traffic is social media – think Facebook posts, Facebook Groups, YouTube videos, Pinterest, tweets, LinkedIn posts, Reddit threads, Instagram Stories, and so on.
There are so many different social sites where you can get free traffic that it’s difficult to narrow down sometimes. Here’s my advice: when in doubt, start with Facebook and YouTube. If you’re targeting millennials or younger users, consider Instagram,  and TikTok. By producing content for social platforms, you can get in front of your ideal audience.

3) Email: Another fantastic source of free traffic is email marketing.
Now you are building a list if emails by sending your free or paid traffic to your squeeze page. Your audience knows that subscribing to your email list means they’re going to be sold sometimes – but if you focus on adding insane value to your emails, most people are fine with the occasional pitch.

Three Examples of Paid Traffic
The counterpart to free traffic is paid traffic.
This is like the Ferrari on the freeway. It has the potential to get you where you want to go a lot faster – as long as you know how to handle it, of course!

To get results with paid ads, you’ll need to spend dollars to get the ads in front of an audience that’s receptive to your message.
Another way to think of paid traffic is more “transaction-oriented.” Often, you’re getting traffic by appearing in someone’s social media feed or before their YouTube video and trying to grab their attention.

For many affiliates, the entire job is crafting ads that get cold traffic to an offer – and trying to make more money in affiliate commissions than they spend on ads. Here are the top 3 paid traffic sources that your affiliate business might use!

[1]Facebook Ads
The holy grail of paid ads is still Facebook, though it’s not without its fair share of headaches, such as your ads manager account getting shut down or your ad getting denied. This has been happening to six and seven-figure media buyers as well!

On the plus side, Facebook has a massive user base, tons of data, sophisticated AI, and strong tracking tools through Pixel. Facebook Ads allow you to micro-target a set of users with a highly specific offer.

[2] Native Ads
Native ad networks like Taboola and Outbrain have really taken off in the last few years, and for good reason: they give you a lot of the benefits of a platform like Facebook, but without a lot of the problems.

So, what are native ads? A native ad is a display ad that appears on a website and blends in with the other content on the page. When a user clicks it, they’re taken to your content.

Because native ads are displayed on popular websites instead of on a central social media platform (like Facebook), you have more leeway in your choice of messaging, creative, and landing page. It’s also a beginner-friendly option for getting into the world of media buying.

[3] YouTube Ads
YouTube Ads are a solid way to build your YouTube channel or bring an engaged audience into your email list.
There are different types of ads on YouTube, so you’ll want to play around with them to find the format that’s best for you. For pre-roll ads, you should make sure your messaging is front-loaded and can hook viewers in the first 5 seconds.

Discovery ads are another good option – they can work well once you see which of your videos the audience is engaging with the most. Then, create subscriber magnets by seeing which of your videos perform the best, and paying to appear in relevant search terms to grow your audience.

Tips for successful affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. It’s a process of selling products or services
through links that you’ve earned, usually through advertising. There are a lot of affiliate programs
available, so it can be hard to choose the right one. Here are some tips that will help you make money
through affiliate marketing: 1. Choose a program that is relevant to your industry and has high
commission rates. 2. Be patient – affiliate marketing takes time to build a successful business, so be
prepared for a long journey! 3. Create quality content and promote it through effective marketing
campaigns. 4. It’s important to research the different affiliate marketing programs before signing up.

Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online by selling products that someone else has
created. By following a few simple tips, you can make affiliate marketing a great experience for you
and your website. Make sure to bookmark this blog and refer back to it whenever you have questions
or doubts about affiliate marketing. We’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest affiliate marketing trends so you can make money online the right way!

Don’t forget if you want to start an Affiliate marketing,
Click Here to Get Free Affiliate marketing Webinar Training

This is a guest post from Bharat Shah if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.