A few days back I wrote an article about keeping the possibility of having multiple “part-time” careers in mind when looking at a way out of a job you don’t like.  Affiliate Marketing is one of the ways a person can make some money online fairly easily.

Before I go on, I have to qualify the words “fairly easy”.  I don’t mean to imply that Affiliate Marketing is for everyone and that it’s super easy and you just wave the magic wand and money starts rolling into your bank account.  You do have to learn how to do it properly and just like everything else, you have to treat it like a business to make money with it.

However, what I mean by “fairly easy” is that you don’t have to build a whole company from scratch to make money.  For example, lets use my AquariumFishWorld.com Blog as an example.  Lets say I want to get into the whole “Freshwater Aquarium Fish” business.  Well, in the old days I would basically have to start my own “Fish Store”.  What would that involve?

Well, here’s some of the things starting a “Fish Store” would involve (not necessarily in order):

• Incorporate a new company
• Come up with a name for it, design logo, create a brand
• Look for and find a physical location for your store
• Sign a lease for 3-5 years
• Setup the store with necessary furniture, shelves, aquariums, lighting, etc.
• Get an alarm installed
• Create a marketing plan, design brochures, flyers, etc.
• Hire employees
• Setup accounts with wholesale inventory merchants and purchase initial inventory
• Purchase and stock inventory
• etc. etc. etc.

So basically 3 months and $50,000 – $100,000 in investment later, you’re now in the “Freshwater Aquarium Fish” business.  You are now ready to start accepting customers.  Congratulations, within the first 2-5 years of starting this business you statistically have a 95% chance of going out of business.  How exciting!

When I was talking about looking into a “Polymathic Career Path” having multiple streams of income, I wasn’t talking about starting 5 or 6 of these types of businesses at the same time.

What I was talking about is more along the lines of this:  Let’s say I want to get into the “Freshwater Aquarium Fish” business.  Well, I simply go and purchase a domain name (Less than $10), setup a new Blog (Piggy back off my existing hosting account, so FREE), and begin writing articles.  I take pictures of my fish tanks and post them on my site.

Then, I go and find affiliate programs from already established online fish stores and I send them traffic from my site.  So, for example the other day I purchased a new filter for my aquarium.  While setting it up, I took some pictures of it and I wrote a review of the filter.  A review like this brings value to people looking for a filter online, and if they end up coming to my site and reading the review, they MAY end up clicking on my link to go to the online fish store I am affiliated with and purchase the filter from them.

There are no guarantees.  People might come, they might read my review and then go and purchase the filter from their local pet shop.  It doesn’t matter though.  Once I have that page created and up online, it’s sitting there 24hours / day, 365 days a year acting like a “Net” for me catching potential customers.  Whenever someone comes across the page, they may end up purchasing a filter and I will make a small commission from the online pet store because I’m an affiliate of theirs.

In this way, I have just put one of my toes into the “Freshwater Aquarium Fish” business without having to invest 3 months of my time and $50,000 – $100,000 in startup capital to get into it. Of course I can invest more into that website/Blog if I want to… for example spending some money on Pay-Per-Click traffic or banner ads on other websites to drive traffic to the website, but I’m 100% in control how much I want to invest into it.  If I want to invest more time and resources, I can.  If I decide that the “Fish Store” business is not for me, I can move onto something else with very little risk.  Of course I can always leave the Blog/Website up even if I’m not updating it anymore and it will still earn me some money as a passive income stream.

Are There Really Affiliate Programs Out There That Will Pay Me Money?

Almost everyone I have spoken to about Affiliate Marketing over the last 6 months has absolutely NO CLUE that there are literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs out there which you can promote if you wanted to.

Lets say that you are an expert in gardening.  Did you know there are THOUSANDS of products and offers you could promote in the gardening niche?

There are affiliate programs out there for pretty much every single product you could ever think of.  Everything from Aquarium Filters, to Barbie Dolls, to Car Loans, to Weight Loss Supplements, to Children’s Books, to Travel Offers, to pretty much anything you could ever think of.

One of the best ways to see just how much variety there is out there is to join some of the Affiliate Networks out there to see what kind of offers you could promote.  It doesn’t cost anything to open an account.

I have just partnered with one of the Affiliate Networks out there, Amped Media, to create the Inspired Affiliate Marketing Challenge on my InspiredAffiliate.com Blog where new affiliates can compete to win prizes by earning money as affiliates through the Amped Media Affiliate Network.

If you’ve been thinking about the possibility of getting into Affiliate Marketing, this would be a great time to setup an account with an affiliate network like Amped Media to see what kind of offers are available for you to promote.  Each offer is different, but generally speaking you could promote offers by putting links or banners on your Blog/Website, by setting up Pay-Per-Click campaigns or even by sending out an email to a list of people you may have who are interested in an offer.

My InspiredAffiliate.com Blog would be a great place to stop by if this interests you and if you do decide to make some money as an affiliate this month by promoting offers through Amped Media, you could qualify to win one of the prizes in the competition.  Right now it’s wide open and anyone can win even if they are just starting in Affiliate Marketing.