For people with an entrepreneurial spirit and a burning desire to create something awesome, affiliate marketing is a great way to start making money online.
The barrier to entry is relatively low, and unlike many other types of businesses, you don't need much startup capital at all.
People have founded successful and profitable affiliate sites with a total starting budget as low as $30.
For that reason, it's one of the most popular first business ventures among aspiring entrepreneurs.
To do this, of course, you need to learn about it first.
From copywriting tips and WordPress advice, to ideas for untapped but profitable niches, to comprehensive online courses and webinars, there's a huge market out there that consists of experienced marketers and entrepreneurs teaching other people how to start a successful online business with affiliate products as the main source of revenue.
A lot of these resources are free.
To learn the basics and get an understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how it's done, you don't need to spend anything at all.
The information is out there for free from reputable sources.
But, you may eventually reach a point where those free resources don't have much of anything left to teach you.
At that point, you may want to start looking into paid training options.
While free resources are geared toward broader and more general-level knowledge, it's hard to find anything that really gets down to the nitty-gritty when it comes to actual tactics and specific strategies.
For that sort of thing, you'll generally need to pay.
But not all paid affiliate marketing courses are created equal. There are a lot out there that are absolutely fantastic and worth every cent.
But for every good one, unfortunately, there are dozens of straight-up scams.
If you're new to the world of affiliate marketing, you need to protect yourself from people who would take advantage of you. One of the most common kinds of scam is the “pay to play scheme,” which is basically nothing but a pyramid scheme.
In a recent blog post, ShoeMoney (one of the reputable places where you can find infoproducts for sale) explains how to spot this kind of scam, so you can run the other way before they relieve you of most of your disposable income.
The Pay to Play Scheme
So, you wanna be an affiliate marketer, huh? Well, according to some…cough…scammers…cough, you must pay to become one.
These pay to play scammers hope you don’t understand how affiliate marketing works. The money is supposed to trickle downward, ya know, like water?
If it’s going upward, that some pretty nicked up magic if you ask me.
Run away! Run away!
Affiliate marketing works like this: you put in the work to gain an audience. Each time someone buys something from your affiliate through your site or channel, you get a commission.
It’s cheap advertising for the company providing the affiliation. They are essentially “hiring” you to amplify their reach.
Do you have to pay your employer to be an employee? If you do, I’d seriously question why you’re at that job.
Your suspicions should be the same when approaching an affiliate program that charges you to be an affiliate.
Charging to become an affiliate is double dipping. They’re making money off your work twice.
Not cool.
Check out the full article over at ShoeMoney for more common scams to steer clear of.
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