Making money on the internet as an affiliate marketer or network marketer are two of the top ways to make money online. You don’t need any special skills or talents to succeed as an internet affiliate marketer, the cost of getting started can be zero, and the earning potential is unlimited. Internet marketing can be learnt by anyone who possesses average intelligence, some patience and a willingness to learn.

Affiliate marketing

Internet affiliate marketing means selling other people’s goods or products online. You can do this by sending prospective buyers direct to the sales page for the product, or you can send the buyers to your own website where you can “pre-sell” the product. Pre-selling can take many forms but one of the most popular methods of pre-selling an affiliate product is to write a review of the product and post that on a website or blog of your own.

Some affiliate marketers go on to produce and sell their own goods or programs, but the vast majority are happy to earn money without the hassle of research, product development, testing etc.

Promotion

The heart of affiliate marketing is learning about promotion. Effective forms of promotion include placing classified ads, pay per click advertising on search engines, placing banners on other websites.

Article marketing

The finest form of free website promotion is what is called “Article Marketing”. This means you write a short article (or pay a ghost writer to write an article for you) on a subject relating to the affiliate product you are promoting, and submit it to free online Article Directories. The article will be accompanied by an author’s “resource box” which contains a link to a web page of your choice.

The main article directories are given high ranking status by the search engines. Therefore, an article posted on your website or blog which might never see the light of day in searches, can appear at spot number 1 on an article directory.

People looking for information about the product will read your article and some will click the link to your website in search of further information. Some of those visitors will make a purchase through your affiliate link and you will get paid commission.

An informative well-written article can continue to bring visitors to your website for years to come and you can potentially earn thousands of dollars just from publishing one article.

Articles for backlinking

As well as directly introducing visitors to your website, the link in your article resource box provides what is called a one way “backlink” to your website, thereby increasing its stature in the search engines. (click the following link to read more about how backlinking works)

The viral effect

Articles published at online article directories are often picked up by other webmasters and posted as content on their websites or blogs. In return for the use of your article as content, the webmasters are required to include your resource box to provide a live link back to your website, thus giving you more links without any additional effort required on your part.

Your articles might also be used by ezine (ezine is short for “electronic magazine”) publishers as content for online or email based ezines. Again use of your article is conditional upon inclusion of your resource box, so anyone reading the article can choose to visit your website and they might decide to make a purchase through your affiliate link.

Network marketing

Network marketing is often called Multi Level Marketing (“MLM” for short). The way you make money with MLM is by joining a network as an affiliate for a product. You promote the product and earn commission on all sales you make. You also introduce new members into the company network and you will be paid commission on all sales made by the people you have recruited. Your team of recruits introduce more members and you will also receive commission on their sales.

The majority of MLM companies promote one product. You have probably seen advertisements for people to join opportunities to make money promoting various health related products (notably berry juices), weight loss aids and cleaning products to name but a few.

Network marketing is a legitimate way to make money online. You can also promote MLM products offline if you enjoy selling to people face to face.

MLM is frequently promoted as a source of ongoing passive income. The idea is that you will build up a large sales team and, when you retire from active promotion, all you need to do is continue to pay a membership fee and the network will carry on making money for you.

MLM can be a good way to make money, and it has the advantage of being easy to learn. One drawback with MLM as a business model is the fact that you will be relying on other people for your retirement income. If the owner of the company decides to retire and close the business down, your retirement income that you spent years building up will be gone in a flash.

My advice would be to enjoy the income you get from MLM as you earn it, but don’t bank on it producing an income forever. The internet is not the place to invest your retirement fund.

Article marketing has the advantage of bringing faster results (and, therefore, earlier cashflow) than MLM. Article marketing also puts you in control of your business. Given these facts as well as the unlimited cashflow opportunity, I would recommend article marketing as a better source of income than network marketing.

Free Report For Your Success...

Click here for free report "Ten Essential Secrets You Simply MUST Know About Article Marketing Before You Start Any Article Marketing Campaign ..."