Affiliate Marketing means selling other peoples' products for a percentage of profit. Offline it is called: Selling on Commission. But it is much easier Online since you don't have to talk to anybody face to face, or bother anybody with your unwanted phone calls.
You can easily use internet marketing and advertising methods like pay per click advertising, articles writing and distribution, ezine marketing, blog posting, banners and all the other known Internet marketing and advertising methods for promotion.
Here belongs also what is called Affiliate Brokering where You find valuable products and recruit other people with lists to sell for you like a 2nd tier affiliates.
2.) Contextual Advertising
Basically Pay Per Click method from the "opposite" side. You place a little code on your site and you get paid when somebody clicks on one of those little ads.
One of the Most Passive streams of income.
The most known are Google's Adsense, Yahoo Search Marketing ads, but there are so many more contextual advertising companies and styles that there could be a whole book written about them.
3.) Auctions and Classifieds
You most likely heard at least of Ebay, and other auction sites, or Craig list and other classifieds. You can sell items on those without ever having to send one newsletter.
In a case of Classifieds it is usually even Free.
4.) Lead Generation and CPA offers
Also similar to Affiliate Marketing however here you don't get paid per "sale" but per "action" people will take, i.e. fill-in a form, download a free trial or for getting a sample - can be free or just a for a small shipping and handling fee.
The difference is that Cost Per Action deals are fully online based, Lead generation can be also a 100% online, however the most profitable method is to sell the leads you get through your online marketing to the Offline Companies.
This can be quite lucrative as almost every business has a need for more fresh targeted leads and if you are able to deliver you can make quite an amount of money.
5.) Selling Text links
If you have a high trafficked site you can sell "Premium" links on it.
Use brokers, or sell your own - either you contact other owners in your niche or they contact you.
6.) Creating Directories or Forums
The idea goes like this: you create a Niche Directory - be it an Article Directory or a Link Directory, or a Forum, then promote it so it gets a High PR rank and then either sell Premium Links on it, or put Contextual ads on it, or even banners!
7.) Blogging
Many influential bloggers are making Very good money these days.
So How do you do it? Create a niche blog, update it often, don't be afraid to express your view/opinion, submit it to blog directories, and to other Web 2.0 sites to make your blog visible and known.
Then of course put advertisement on our blog, be it for products you get a commission for, or contextual ads, or text links or any other form of online advertisement.
These days you can also get paid for being a professional blog "reviewer" where other people/companies will pay you for the review of their site, products or services.
8.) Widget creation for Web 2.0 sites
This is a very good, mostly underutilized method of making money. If you are capable of creating a little "widgets" or "gadgets" for those immensely popular Web 2.0 sites like MySpace, Facebook etc. you can make lots of money as the widgets become popular and people will pass them on.
When you create a widget you always embed info about your site or the site you are promoting into it, so as the widget becomes more and more popular, more and more people will be exposed to your message or link.
Usually the widgets are free, but could be also paid if they are highly targeted to the particular site users. Usually just for a small fee which people won't even think about. Or have a free version to get people used to it, then charge for a "Pro" version when they become addicted. ;-)
If you are not capable of creating one of these little applications by yourself you can always hire someone to do it for you.
9.) Professional "Content Creator" - Freelancing
This is one method not too many people are thinking about. There are many ways how to be a "professional content creator" - how I call it.
The most known is creating Private Label Right products and sell the Master or Resale rights to others, however there are also many other ways how to get paid for Content creation:
You can become a Content creator for hire where f.e. you offer manually post comments to influential targeted blogs, or popular forums.
If you live in USA you can also get paid for your articles. Visit AssociatedContent.com for more info.
You can also offer to do a Customer support (= a Highly sought after skill!), Tutoring or even your Offline skills you have to your local market. Again, you Don't need a mailing list for freelancing.
You can utilize sites like rent-a-coder.com, e-lance.com, proper forums, even Auction or Classified sites for offering your skills.
10) Domaineering = selling sites for profits
The idea goes like this:
You buy an established domain name - usually expired, you develop it and then sell for a profit later on. Kinda like Real-estate selling offline.
There are people who are making millions with this method, which also means that an ordinary person usually does not have a chance to snap a "good" expired domain name, however there is also another option anybody can use.
Basically, buy a catchy domain name in an interesting niche, then simply develop that site over the time as much as you are willing to and Then offer it for sale. Fully developed sites have much Higher value than just plain domain names.
By: Dagmar Rakos
