One of the most popular online business models is affiliate marketing.
For those who are new to this term, affiliate marketing basically means promoting other people's products while getting a certain percentage of the profit generated.
Real case example - Amazon.
com, Amazon.
com has an affiliate program, if you would like to earn some money, you could just sign up for their affiliate program and start promoting their products on your website.
If someone buys the products you're promoting, you're going to get a commission for it.
As simple as that.
I've been involved in affiliate marketing for 4 years now and it's still my favorite way of making money online.
Why? 1.
Simple - Like the example above, all I need to is just sign up for an affiliate program or a network, pick something I would like to promote, grab the affiliate links and I can start promoting them by placing them on my sites, forums, recommending them to friends etc...
Simple but may not be easy.
2.
No Need To Stock Inventory - Pretty self-explanatory, you don't need to keep stock and deliver any goods.
Everything is done by the merchants themselves.
3.
You Can Choose To Promote Whatever You Want - This is awesome, with affiliate marketing you can easily promote pretty much anything you want, something you're passionate about.
If you love golf, you can just promote golf related products like books, golf clubs, membership sites etc.
4.
Doesn't Cost Much To Start - Unlike other business models where you'll need to spend thousands of dollars to get started, you can start doing affiliate marketing with literally no money.
5.
No Need To Handle Customer Service - This is big for me, no customer service involved because you're not the vendor.
6.
Great Way To Test A Market - A big advantage of affiliate marketing is the opportunity to test a market.
When you want to get into a certain market and you don't know whether it will work or not, you could just promote some of the products as an affiliate first before spending a ton of money building a full-blown business just to find out that there's no money in the market.
I'm sure I left quite a few benefits but like anything else, there's no such thing as perfect.
There are downsides to affiliate marketing as well but I'll save it for another time.