Affiliate Marketing - The Only No Bars To Entry Online Business?
Is affiliate marketing truly the only no bar to entry online business model?
I believe it is.
To start out in affiliate marketing all you really need is enthusiasm, time, £20 an a little know how. If you don’t have the know how it is easy enough to pick up on the key points following tutorials and advice on forums.
£20 = a years webhosting from many companies. This may not be the best or most scale able BUT it is a very good starting point.
So if you have an idea or passion, preferably that you know others will share and has a good product base behind it it takes just 30 minutes to setup and configure a wordpress install from a server that has fantastico built in - maybe an hour first time to do this without.
That’s it, add content - making it relevant and link to relevant products using your favourite merchants.
Ok. there is a lot of jiggery pokery that you can do with seo, link building and social networking, I am not covering that here. But the basics are as stated above. Passion / website / content. If the content is good and you start plugging to your friends, submitting to directories etc you will start to get sales. Then it is just a case of reinvesting the profits and repeating with another topic. Once you have a few sites under your belt it is time to start getting bolder with your ideas.
This is a slow grow process. But a lot can be achieved from that initial £20 and time.
I cannot see any other business on the internet that can start so small and potentially build so big.
I have seen a lot of people making the mistake of starting an online shop (using oscommerce or similar) putting in their £20 and either dropshipping or spending a fortune on stock then hot having the budget to promote the site.
Yes you can go for the slow grow approach as in the affiliate marketing example above, but you still need to source those products and allow for depreciation if you are holding stock, even with dropshipping you may be required to make a minimum sales a month or pay a fee to access the products.
People have tried for subscription sites and forums. These don’t work without some fantastic content, which could cost the earth to licence, produce, or buy in. The internet is awash with free content. Magazine sites online are supported by advertising rather than subscribers or donations.
What else is there?
Ebay trading, probably, people do make money buying and selling online. You still need stock, but this could be your own belongings that you no longer require.
Domain name trading, not for a newbie. Well unless they are extremely fortunate, or have insider knowledge.
I suppose that the second question is, is affiliate marketing still no bars to entry? Some big voucher site startups had the initial push of a press campaign, which may be very cost effective would still require a good few hundred pounds to get started. Cashback sites, though extremely lucrative need investment is software and staff (customer service on these types of sites can be very time consuming).
My two open questions then:
- Is there another online business that could be founded with just £20 and time?
- Is entry to affiliate marketing still just time and a few quid for a domain / simple web hosting?
