Affiliate marketing as an income opportunity made easy !
By Darina • Jul 11th, 2007 • Category: For WAHMs, For WannabesI’m a big fan of affiliate marketing as an income opportunity, you promote a product, someone buys it and you get a commission. No stock to hold, no customer service or shipping to worry about, easy huh ! well in theory it is, the hard part like almost everything online is getting people to buy, promoting your preferred products and selling enough of them ! however it’s not impossible and when you work at it the rewards can be good.Â
Even if you have your own online business or shop you can easily add in affiliate marketing as another stream of income and here’s a real no brainer way to do it !
zlio allows you to open your own online shop and sell products (choice of over 2 million products all from reputable merchants) earn commission and all with a couple of clicks and for free !! They’ve been around for quite a while but are in the news at the moment because they’ve just raised $4 million in funding, so big plans.
Now it all sounds nice and easy (which it is !) and the bonus being it doesn’t cost anything to participate all you need is a paypal account to receive your commission. But there is a catch ! now really it’s not a bad catch it’s the same one with all online enterprises, they aren’t going to get the customers for you.. so no point in making a lovely shop with lots of great products and just letting it sit there, to get it to work for you, you’ll need to work on promoting and search engine optimisation. So it’s actually a good way to learn these things without investment and with possible rewards if you get it right !
So go ahead and give it a try, what have you got to lose?
If you do decide to open a shop with zlio here’s a couple of things to bear in mind before jumping in.
Think carefully about what you are going to stock in your shop and name it accordingly. Don’t necessarily choose your stock based on your current target market (if you have one) or even based on stuff you like and know. Do some research find out what’s selling on the internet, this is your chance to experiment, try lots of things, open a few shops !
Realistically with the merchants available you aren’t going to be targeting customers this side of the atlantic, so try and think bigger ! remember you don’t have to worry about shipping and customer service the merchant does all that.
With zlio you can sell everything from toys, clothes, books, electronics, games etc.. huge choice. They’ve even got a space where you can create a video to promote your products plus a very easy way to add the products to your blog if you have one
Here’s the link again zlio.com
and don’t forget when you have your shop open come on over to the “promote your business” board on iamawahm and let us know …
http://iamawahm.com/forum/index.php?board=29.0
(I’m working on my shop right now so as soon as I’m happy with it I’ll unleash it for the world to see !)
Darina
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Hi Darina
I followed your link and signed up for a Zlio shop but I don’t understand the apparent contradiction. On the one hand in the FAQ it says you don’t have to buy anything before you can sell it but when I go to add items it tells me I buy the product from the merchant and they sell it to me at the discounted price. Could you clarify that for me, ie do I have to buy the products from the merchant or do I just add them to my shop and I receive the commission when someone buys the product from my shop?
Many thanks.
No Wendy that’s just an option and a bonus if you want to buy it yourself you can still avail of your commission ! If you want to just sell the products yes you just add them to your shop and you receive the commission when someone buys it through your link, they will be directed to the merchants website to complete the transaction but you get the credit !
Hi Darina
Thanks for clearing that up. I shall go back and do some more product research now.
Wendy
Can you please tell me a little bit more about this. Firstly: How can I find out what sells best on the internet - are there some statistics somewhere?
Secondly: When I’ve gone into Zilo’s website it asks you what you want to call you shop, and the URL number before you have had a chance to register or to browse the products that are available. I have tried to register but I can’t know what to call the shop until I know what products I want to sell - any ideas please.
Thirdly: It says you need to aim for a global market, How do you advertise to a global market.
Thanks for your help
Anna Sterling.
Hi - another question, I now have a shop, but still can’t access the products and having looked at some of the pages, it looks very poor and cheap - not something I would want on my site, however, I might be doing something wrong - any ideas please?
Thanks would love an answer from someone.
Best wishes
Anna
Hi Anna
Thanks for your comments. To be honest I was just letting people know about this as a resource and a possible income opportunity, I don’t claim to be an expert in it ! nor can I provide support for it. However to try and answer your questions. First up with regard to finding out what’s hot and selling at the moment, you need to do some good research, there are a number of resource sites, forums and statistics about this, and if you do a search even with the basic words “what sells online !” you’ll find lots to trawl through. Here’s an article that might help http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/206/Whats-Selling-Whats-Hot-and-How-to-Find-It/
With regard to the URL, once you have your shop registered you can change both the url and the shop name depending on what you decide to stock. You do it through the “address” tab on the paramater icon in you shop settings.
You say you now have a shop but can’t access the products? I’m not sure what’s happening there, but I would suggest contacting the support team at zlio through the website. I’m sure they will be able to help. I’m sure they will also be able to help you with the layout etc.. particulary if you have browsed some of the other shops and see something which you like and would like on your site.
Hi Darina
If anyone is interested in learning the strategies of affiliate marketing please visit my site. The learning resources I recommend are the best available online today.
As an added bonus I am able to offer my own support to help you get started once you decide which option is suitable for you. For beginners I highly recommend The Rich Pom learning resource as it is layed out specifically for beginners.
Kind Regards
Cesar
Hi Darina
My URL is:
Work at Home ReviewsA work at home business resource that offers proven home business ideas related to affiliate and internet marketing strategies.
Regards
Cesar
Hello Darina,
First let me say thank you for your free ecourse. I found your site by accident and am very impressed by it. I am sure you have heard this story, search,enthusiastic,spend money,scamed,lose money,disheartened. So not being one to let go without a fight I signed up with Zlio.com. Now I play the waiting game. It is a great site and the best bit it is totally free. I would recommend it to anyone.I am also in the process of setting up another one. I would just like to share a tip with anyone from Ireland setting up a store with them, when it comes to setting up an account with Google Adsense. As we dont use postal codes in Ireland when it comes to that section of the form just type in a single number eg.1. It worked for me. Hope somebody will find this useful.
Regards Mary