10 Important Factors When Choosing An Affiliate Business
Lots of people are interested in home businesses to make a little extra cash, to help pay the monthly bills, or to create financial freedom and security. Either way, an internet business can help you.
There are a few good ones, but unfortunately, there are lots of “scams” – so be sure to do your homework. The trick is to find a good one; don’t waste time or money chasing empty promises or pipe dreams.
I used the following model to choose my internet marketing business – a comparable process should work for you as well.
1. Legal?
Always do your homework first – make sure the opportunity is a legitimate one. If in doubt, check with the Better Business Bureau.
2. Desirable Product?
Would you buy this product? Would your friends or family members? You’ll need a large potential market. Are there lots of people who might buy your product? If not, you might want to reconsider?
What we want is a large, hungry, market that will buy from us now; and buy additional products later as well.
3. Huge Profits?
Can you make a decent profit? Expenses will eat away at your profit margin – be sure to consider them. Remember to consider the impact of advertising and start-up expenses.
4. How Much Competition?
Is your price competitive?
Similarly, it is very difficult to make a sale if you can’t even get your potential customer’s attention.
5. Fair Commissions?
Can you make a profit without an army of customers? Is that reasonable?
Is the proposed commission reasonable? Will you get paid fairly for your work?
6. Automated?
I’m looking for a business that will be able to run on autopilot after start-up. I’m ready to “semi-retire”; I want a business that will be largely independent of my personal time and energy.
The best home businesses I’ve seen have systems and processes that will work for you 7x24x365 – whether you’re spending the day at the beach with your kids, laid up in the hospital, or sailing around the world.
7. Qualified Traffic?
Every internet business requires a constant supply of new prospects. For online businesses, the key is targeted traffic.
Will your up line help send you quality traffic?
8. Generaous Training?
Don’t try to re-invent the wheel, take lessons from the experts and seek out training. Trying to do it all on your own is not the best pathway to success.
So, another key is to make sure that your sponsor provides adequate training.
9. Available Technical Support?
Any business these days requires computers somewhere along the way. For online businesses, that computer will likely be yours.
For internet marketing businesses, a lot of the technical support will be needed up-front, getting your system set up before you can even start doing the business. Technical support, or the lack thereof, can make a huge difference in your ability to get your business off the ground, keep it running, and become profitable.
10. Follow-On Customer / Sales Closing Support?
Regardless of the product you sell, there will likely be problems, returns, changes, upgrades, etc. involved. Be sure that you have adequate back office support from your up line so that you can deal effectively with any problem that might come up with your customer’s use of the product(s) you’ve sold them.
Look for businesses that also include customer and sales support. Opportunities that provide sales support score high with me.
Winners act; losers don’t.
Join the winners, use this checklist. Action is the thing that separates winners from losers.