Can you Really Earn Extra Cash on the Internet?

If you find yourself having to stretch every penny till it hurts, you may be one of the many people looking for ways to make some extra cash. The internet is one area to look for extra cash, and it’s true that you can earn cash online. Unfortunately there are some problems to this, notably knowing how to do it, how much time you have available to do it, and your expectations on how much you can realistically earn.

Like everyone else, you probably receive e-mails, see site pop-ups or read web pages that make amazing and grandiose money making claims such as; “I made $5,000 today,” or “earn a million this year working only 10-minutes a day.” I’m not saying all such claims are scams or cons, just pointing out that you should think it through before acting on such claims. Ask yourself, “If someone has learned how to make such fantastic sums of money without work, why are they working so hard trying to get me to buy their ‘special’ software or new ‘cash cow’ method?” 

The truth is that there are ways that you can realistically earn extra income on the internet, but, like everywhere else, to make money online takes some planning and work on your part. This said, one of the easiest and most realistic ways to get a little extra cash is by becoming an affiliate and earning sales commission.

To realize just how popular and easy being an affiliate is, you see their work on almost all web sites you visit, on blogs, on social media pages, in newsletters that appear in your e-mail inbox, and even on some private e-mails. Almost all of the ads, banners and sales links you see online or in e-mails are put their by affiliates to make sales commission.  

However, if you are thinking of becoming an affiliate you must be realistic. Understand that unless you are very lucky, you probably won’t make $5,000 a day or even a month through sales commission. A much more realistic figure is a few hundred to a thousand or two a month - depending on how much time and effort you put in.

What is an Affiliate?

Put simply, Affiliates are people that market and help sell someone else’s products or services online and they earn cash by being paid a sales commission. They can do this in many ways: having links in their e-mails, on message boards, in articles, newsletters, on their Facebook, Twitter or other social media pages, and of course, by having links on web sites.

Becoming an affiliate to earn commission is a popular way to earn cash as wherever you are in the world it is a proven way to provide a realistic additional income source. You can earn cash as an affiliate whether you’re a housewife, student or retired expat. It’s mostly non-technical and you don’t need expertise as a graphic artist or webmaster. In fact, the only things you really need are access to the internet and some spare time.

What do Affiliates Do?

As said, an affiliate earns cash by marketing someone else’s product or services. This can be anything from an e-book to a second hand car, a cooking course to a tax accountant. To give an example we’ve placed banners for just a tiny fraction of the varied goods and services available for affiliates to market at the side of this page.

The company wanting to sell its product or service (the vendor) wants as many people as possible to know about and hopefully buy their goods or service. To do this, venders either pay affiliates to get the word out to large numbers of potential customers, or more normally, pay the affiliates sales commission for every paying customer they bring into the vendors web site.

As an example, take a product developed by Able Ads, the owners of Angelesxtra.com. Able Ads are a professional publishing and media company. Among other publications, they developed an e-book called, ‘The Philippines Expat Survival Guide.’ Obviously they want to sell as many copies as possible, so they need the guide marketed to as many people as possible. The problem is that Able Ads core-business is developing and printing publications - and they don’t want to use their work time marketing, so they use affiliates. The affiliates job is tell others about the guide, and for every person that buys the guide from the affiliate’s link, Able Ads get a sale and the affiliate earns commission.

The list of products and services that companies want affiliates to help sell is almost limitless – as are the marketing opportunities and methods affiliates use to boost sales and earn commission.

How do Affiliates Market a Product?

The actual number of ways affiliates can use to promote products and services to earn commission is limited only by the affiliate’s time, creativity, effort, and in some cases, e.g. if operating their own web site, basic technical skill to set ad banners on site to earn sales commission.

The simplest way affiliates can get the word out on a product, and one that requires no technical skill or ability, is to join an affiliate program such as ClickBank. Through this you can pick a vendors product or service. You can also find out how to earn commission with that vendor, and exactly how much sales commission they pay. You can then begin to send out e-mails telling your friends about it and suggesting they buy or try it. This is also extremely easy to do via facebook and other social media sites, and of course on web message boards and chat rooms.

Once you have the required vendor’s link, as an affiliate you just write your email or web post, include your affiliate product link to ensure you get any sales commission, and send out the e-mail or put the post on a message board or social media site.

While these examples cost nothing but a little time, there are some drawbacks. An obvious one is numbers: How many people do you have in your e-mail contacts list and how many ‘friends’ on your Facebook or Twitter account? The less people that read your e-mails or web posts, the less are likely to buy the vendors product and the lower your sales commission.

Another drawback is making sure not to ‘spam.’ Spamming is where you send unsolicited e-mails to people you don’t know, or simply place blatant sale ads on message boards and in chat rooms. Not only are these types of spam not very effective (and remember, as an affiliate you only earn commission from actual sales), but most vendors and affiliate programs (e.g. ClickBank) will remove affiliates who spam because it get the vendors a bad name and reputation.

To avoid spamming, the trick is to e-mail and suggest a product or service only to people who may be interested. If using message boards or chat rooms, only post the link logically. For example, if you were an affiliate for Able Ads “Philippines Expat Survival Guide’ and you were on a message board for Angeles City or the Philippines. If someone put a post up asking for info on say the cost of expat living, what visa they should get, how a foreigner could buy property, avoid problems on moving, etc., a reply giving very basic info – and suggesting that more details can be found in the Philippine Expat Survival Guide - with your affiliate link to the guide site, is not spamming, it’s a ‘normal’ post. It answers the person’s question correctly but hopefully also has them and others clicking on your affiliates link and maybe buying the guide, so earning you sales commissions. 

If you become an affiliate and want to do more to market a vendor’s products or services (to make yourself more sale commissions), it really is just a question of the your available time, creativity, and maybe learning a little web savvy. Apart from the examples already given, a couple of other common ways affiliates use to get their links out are through:

• Articles and Blogs – if you enjoy writing articles, you can write articles relating to or with some info on a vendor’s product or services. End the article or blog with your affiliate link to encourage people to visit the vendor’s site. These articles can then be distributed online via the many free article websites or on one of the many free blog sites.

• Web Sites – with the many advances in software, it is now very cheap and easy to make your own website (or even have someone make one for you). On your own website you can put just about anything you want: articles for niche markets, web banners, etc., the choice is yours.

How do I avoid being ripped off?

A major concern of everyone who uses the internet for business is being conned out of their sales commission. Happily, if a reputable intermediate company such as ClickBank is used, both vendor and affiliate are protected. ClickBank is a secure online retail outlet for more than 50,000 digital products and 100,000 active affiliate marketers. All of the links set up through them have unique affiliate and vendor codes, with every click and sale fully recorded and available for immediate review. To ensure no vendor suddenly ‘disappears’ before paying out sales commissions, all payment are through ClickBank itself, not the vendor. So affiliates earn commission no matter what happens.

A word of warning; there are some websites that falsely portray themselves as for affiliates. Some of these sites charge to set up affiliates with vendors, or say that to join you must pay for some special software or web space before you can earn commission. Reputable affiliate sites earn their money from receiving a tiny percentage of the sales commission only after a sale has been made, so you should never pay out for any set up or service up front. Also know that a reputable vendor will never ask you for any money, for any reason. 

How do I get ideas and do vendors give affiliates any help?

Vendors only make money from the sale of their product or services, so they obviously want you to make lots of sales (they only make money when you make money!) This means that many vendors provide free affiliate tools, such as; ad banners, graphics, marketing suggestions, sales literature, etc.

Again using Able Ads ‘Philippine Expat Survival Guide’ as an example, take a tour of the guide affiliate site. It’s filled with details on the product, earning potential, lists sales commission, gives tips of target markets, information on how to become an affiliate and earn commission, and a host of links to free tools provided to help affiliates make better sales commissions, such as; a graphics page with around 40 different graphics from product logos, to guarantee seals, to buttons and product photos. An ad banner page with 21 different banners of all shapes and sizes; links to book reviews of the guide, testimonials, related text articles, sample pages – even a video!

All of this information is provided by the vendor to help affiliates make sales – and earn commission - because for any reputable vendor to make money, they need sales. And the win-win of affiliate programs is that for every sale a vendor makes, as an affiliate you make extra cash from each sales commission.     

In Closing

Becoming an affiliate probably won’t make you a millionaire; but no matter where you live, each month it allows you to use some of your spare time to realistically bring in a bit of extra cash from sales commissions – and that can make a world of difference to your overall finances. 

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