There probably isn’t a single home-based business that is best for everyone, but there is one that is easy to start, affordable to maintain, and offers unlimited earning potential. If you are sick of working for someone else and never having enough money, what I am about to reveal may be your ticket to a better life.
Click to DISCOVER a Proven Path to Financial Independence!
Best Home Based Business.
I’ve been an internet marketer for nearly 9 years and, by far, the best home-based business in my experience is affiliate marketing. You can get started for free and get all the training you need, plus maintain your business, for about $50 a month. The downside of affiliate marketing is it can take months to learn the skills and put them into practice.
If you need to make money right now, this business might not be for you and I suggest you read this article about legitimate work at home jobs. However, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit and want your own business with unlimited income, keep reading.
Affiliate Marketing Defined.
The process of selling stuff online as an affiliate is called affiliate marketing. Typically, an affiliate marketer promotes a product and offers a link to where it can be purchased. With every purchase made through the link, the affiliate earns a commission. This buying process can repeat dozens, hundreds and thousands of times a day.
A Global Market Place.
To the affiliate marketer, the internet is a global marketplace where billions of people shop each day. It’s a source of infinite wealth and the affiliate marketer has the skills to tap into it.
Myths and Misinformation.
First, I want to address the myths and misinformation about affiliate marketing. It is indeed true that you can earn a phenomenal income as an affiliate marketer, but if you’re just starting out, don’t expect to make a lot of money quickly.
You won’t be making 6 figures in 90 days like some scams promise. That’s not realistic. If you work at it, you can get rich as an affiliate marketer, many people have. You just won’t get rich overnight.
The internet is not a lottery, and it is not your personal ATM. There is no secret sauce or magic software that will pour money into your bank account. The people who claim you can make big money fast on the internet are trying to sell you something.
Click to DISCOVER a Proven Path to Financial Independence!
Focus on Learning the Skills.
When you begin as an affiliate marketer, you will need to learn new skills. Learning these skills is essential. It is this set of skills that make you money and free you from financial worry. Once you know these skills, you will always be able to make money online.
In a moment, I’ll show you where to get the training, but for now, I want to emphasize the importance of learning the skills.
Too often, people starting out as affiliate marketers focus on the money and push themselves to make a lot of money quickly. This attitude is self-destructive and will only lead to unnecessary stress and frustration. It is impossible to make enough money fast enough, so why not relax and focus on learning? The money comes after you learn the skills.
In addition to making money, other amazing things happen once you learn affiliate marketing. Your confidence will soar. Not only will you make money, but you will never again have to deal with a boss. Plus, if you lost everything, you have the skills to quickly build it back again. You become financially bombproof.
Where to begin.
There are countless ways to make money as an affiliate marketer. It’s important to start with a solid foundation and build from there.
For someone without any marketing experience, I recommend that they start with an authority website or blog. An authority website or blog is one the search engines trust and rank highly. The search engine’s trust and high-ranking results in a lot of visitors coming to the site. The more people visit a site, the more valuable the site becomes and the more money it can make.
It costs very little to create an authority blog, but it does take time, effort and a lot of content. Building a site to authority status can take months.
What Good is Newborn Baby?
Your new website is like a newborn baby. It’s needy, and it’s a liability. At first, it won’t make money. At first, it will cost money.
I’m reminded of a phrase attributed to Benjamin Franklin. According to AmericanHeritage.com, in 1783, Franklin was in Paris when the first hot air balloon carried a man aloft. Referring to the balloon, someone in the crowd asked, “What good is it?” Franklin replied, “What good is a newborn baby?”
Just as babies grow up to be productive adults, your website will grow up to be productive too, if you keep nurturing it. At first, however, it will cost you. It doesn’t cost much, but you will need to pay for hosting, support and continued training. This will cost about $50 a month.
You’ll also need a domain name which usually costs about $15 a year.
Build a Solid Foundation.
For many marketers, an authority website or blog is all they want to do. However, the skills learned in building a profitable website have many other valuable applications.
With your skill set, you can build websites and sell them. You can also earn $50 to $100 an hour building websites for local businesses, promoting these businesses on social media and helping them rank high in the search engines.
You may also want to learn pay per click advertising. This is an advanced skill with a steep learning curve, but once you have it, you can earn $4 for every $1 you spend on advertising. It’s like making money on demand.
Where to Learn.
The biggest dilemma for an aspiring affiliate marketer is where to learn the skills they need. Most offers promising to teach internet marketing skills are useless or worse. They’re scams.
You cannot learn these skills from an eBook or a single course. Affiliate marketing is too complex and too dynamic to be taught in one course or book. The internet changes by the minute.
There is only one place I recommend for learning affiliate marketing. It starts with the Online Entrepreneur Certification Course. The first 10 lessons are completely free and teach the basics. Use this free training to determine if this is what you want to do and if you want to continue learning.
During the free training, you’ll be given the opportunity to upgrade to a paid level. The paid level includes everything you need to build an online empire except a domain name.
Click to DISCOVER a Proven Path to Financial Independence!
You Ticket to a Better Life…
Affiliate marketing can free you from the 9 to 5 grind and save you from financial uncertainty, but there is a price. The price is commitment.
Building an authority website is not difficult. It’s certainly easier than dragging yourself to a dead-end job each day, however, like any business, an affiliate marking business takes work. It doesn’t happen by itself. You must make it happen.
Every business has its frustrations and disappointments. The difference with affiliate marketing is the rewards are phenomenal, not just monetary rewards, but abundant free time as well.
If you want to make money online, I invite you to consider affiliate marketing. It’s an easy and affordable business to get into, and as your skills improve, so will your income.
The place to start is the FREE Starter Level of the Online Entrepreneur Certification Course. Enrollment is free and includes free training, support and one-on-one mentoring. No credit card needed.
To learn more about the FREE Starter Level of the Online Entrepreneur Certification Course, Click Here.
If you found this article helpful, or have experience to share, please leave a comment below. Thank you!
Hi Gary,
My name is Leander Crasto. I live in Mumbai, India. I tried enrolling for the free online Entrepreneur Certification Course. However, I was redirected to a page wherein I was told to pay a certain amount per month. The reason being that there are scamsters in our country. Well, let me inform you that imajority of the nternet marketing scams are conceptualised in the western world, and people from India, merely follow them. Unable to Understand this disparity…. Further, genuine guys like us, who would like to start internet marketing/ affiliate marketing, are the real sufferers, due to such anomalies.
I would appreciate if you could allow me access to your free course…..
Hi, Leander!
I understand your frustration, but the decision is not mine. However, if you will write to me at gary@scamavenger.siterubix.com, I’ll send you some training and mentor you via email.
Gary
Hi Gary
Can affiliate marketing be done with free
Hosting sites like WordPress.
Hi, Danny!
Yes, affiliate marketing can be done with a free WordPress site. However, it takes a lot more work. I wrote an article about how to make money with a free website. Click to read How to Make Money with a Free Website.
Thanks for stopping by,
Gary
AWESOME advice Gary! And definitely something that I need to keep reminding myself of. Patience, persistence, and having the will to succeed are essential. There are definitely a lot of scams out there that waste time and money with impossible promises, and for that reason I also appreciate what you do by trying to expose these and provide some direction.
The primary concern that I experience is just that I have chosen the wrong niche. Or more specifically, that I have chosen a niche that isn’t small or specific enough. My website is about movies, especially artistic films, indie films, and Oscar prediction. I do not yet know how to integrate products into that (like Home Entertainment Systems) as they are not directly relevant to my niche, but would merely interest the visitors I hope to someday attract.
Thanks again for the advice!
Hi, Jordan!
Yes, success in any endeavor, even kindergarten, requires commitment and persistence.
Concerning your niche. Keep in mind that the search engines do not rank your niche. They rank the content on your website. You can keep the same niche and as your website matures write more about peripheral subjects. In this manner, your website will grow in new directions.
Two affiliate programs you might consider for your website are Netflix or a similar company and GAIA.com. Gaia.com has a lot of categories, including the “Best of Film.”
Thanks for stopping by,
Gary
Great Article Gary. The biggest point I think you made is that your site will not make you money immediately. It takes time and effort to get to that point. Your recommendations on where to learn the skills of affiliate marketing were spot on as well. I am looking to learn pay per click advertising myself. Good stuff!
Hi, Chaddrick!
Thank you for your kind and encouraging words. I wish more people would realize that the internet is not magic. It’s amazing for sure, but it’s not magic. If someone wants to make money with the internet they will need to invest the time and energy to learn the skills. It may take months or years to build a business that generates the income they desire. To paraphrase Nietzsche, no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
The place to start is the Online Entrepreneur Certification Course.
Thanks for stopping by,
Gary
Hi Gary, you are so right with everything you say here. Affiliate marketing is not something you can learn over night, or from one book. I have found this out myself. I joined Wealthy Affiliate 6 months ago and the amount I have learnt in that time has just been astronomical… and I’m still learning every day. In fact, just when I think I know all there is to know, something new crops up. So like you say, the internet is an ever evolving thing and to stay on top of that you really need to be on a platform like Wealthy Affiliate. On there you will have all the access you need to the latest information, AND a community of well educated top affiliate marketers to help you out any time you have any questions (which you will…hundreds:-))
Hi, Stefanie!
I’m so glad you’re making progress with Wealthy Affiliate. It’s made a world of difference in my online business and it’s the only place I recommend to learn affiliate marketing.
Unfortunately, people who are unfamiliar with internet marketing often expect to make gobs of money right away and when they don’t, they quit and run off chasing a scam offer that promises them over night riches. Compared to traditional careers and businesses, the internet can make a lot of money quickly, but it can’t magically produce wealth over night.
Consider a doctor. A doctor might spend 8 to 12 years of his adult life and goes massively into debt to ultimately earn $200K to $250K a year. A committed internet marketer with the proper training and drive can earn this and more in 3 to 5 years without going into debt.
Thanks for stopping by,
Gary
Hello Gary:
Due to a recent layoff, I have been exploring the idea of generating income from an online business. As you probably know, there is a lot of material on the internet to help the process. Some of it is helpful and legit and others, not so much. I am looking at affiliate marketing as a possible avenue and that is where I am focusing my efforts. Thanks for providing detailed and helpful information, especially for someone like me just starting out. I’ll take a more detailed look at the program you recommended. Take care and best to you.
Mike
Hi, Mike!
If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, internet marketing an be a lot of fun and highly profitable. I wish I had discovered it years before I did.
The trick to success with an online business is to understand that it is a business. Getting any business into profit takes time. Fortunately, with an internet business, you can market to the world for about $50 a month. I don’t know of any other business with such a low cost of entry and with such a high earning potential.
Thanks for stopping by,
Gary
I’ve been looking for a way to make money online, and after searching through countless scams, and faulty promises of huge incomes, I had almost given up!
Thank you for enlightening me on the advantages to affiliate marketing. I will be following up on the training you mentioned to see if I can create a passive income for myself on the internet.
Is it reasonable to expect a small passive income within, let’s say, 6 months or so? I know that earning a lot of money never happens overnight, but I’d like to think my efforts will pay off sooner rather than later.
Thanks
Hi, Isaya!
I’m glad your found my article Best Home Based Business helpful. With the right training, it doesn’t cost very much to build a profitable online business, but it does take effort. I hesitate to call it work, because it isn’t difficult.
I’m glad you asked about how long it will take to earn a modest income online. That really depends on a lot of factors. I can only speak for my own experience. It took three months before my first website made a sale. When my first site was about six months old, it earned enough to pay for itself. At nine months, it earned $500 and the income continued to grow.
Because it takes about 3 or 4 months before the search engines trust a new website, expect it to take at least that long before a new site makes any money at all.
In the beginning, it is essential to focus on learning the skills you need to succeed online and trust that the money will follow.
Thanks for stopping by,
Gary
Hey Gary,
Nice informative article about Affiliate marketing. No doubt Affiliate Marketing is the Best Home Based Business.
You make some valid points when you insist on learning the skill in building a profitable website and commitment it needs.
With increasing trend in online shopping, affiliate marketing definitely has a bright future.
What a apt comparison between a website and a newborn baby, both needs constant care, nurturing and nourishment.
Thanks Gary:)
Hi, Shubhangi!
Affiliate marketing is easy to get started, and it’s easy work with the right training. The struggle comes when we expect to make money right away. It can happen, but usually it takes months before the first sale. It is essential to be patient and to have a long view of success. Success in any endeavor takes time. Affiliate marketing is no different.
Thanks for stopping by,
Gary
Gary,
Great review and post for home based businesses. I can tell you have done extensive research and know your stuff. I really like how you are upfront with folks and liken a new website to a needy baby, that’s hilarious! Plus it’s true. It needs a lot of love and attention and at first it’s not going to give anything back, patience is key. I think your point about focusing on learning the skills is spot on and something everyone should understand up front. In this day of instant gratification it’s thoughtful and insightful posts like yours that help folks figure out what the real deal is. Thanks again, mat A.
Hello Gary!
This article was very informative and as for someone who is new to affiliate marketing, I sure have learnt a lot from reading your posts! I like the part where you mention that it is not a get-rich-quick scheme because a lot of marketers tend to promote the overnight get rich scheme countless of times and continue lying. I cant wait to see progress in my affiliate marketing journey 🙂
Hi Gary,
Thanks for your post on this. I like the fact here that you’re highlighting that the skills you learn from affiliate marketing can actually turn into a business providing websites to other people as well. I’m only now just starting my journey so can’t wait to see what skills and knowledge I’ll have in a few years time!
Cheers
James