The straight answer to this question is yes, it can. Using affiliate marketing as the business model, this is what you can do to make money.
You can join practically any affiliate marketing program free of charge. Within a matter of only a few minutes you can have an affiliate id number which is coded into an affiliate website.
Through your promotion of this affiliate website you make sales and earn yourself commission on each transaction. The cost to you is nothing, only the time it takes for you to promote the affiliate website.
There are, however, just a few things you should be aware of before you think you have got it made.
1. Directing traffic to your affiliate web page is not quite as easy as it sounds at first. It will take hard work and you will need to familiarize and master methods to generate traffic to your website such as article and forum marketing, classified ads, blogs, etc.
2. How do you make yourself stand out from all of the others who are using the same product with the same affiliate website given to them by the merchant? This can prove to be a difficult way to make money when there is so much competition.
3. Whether on line or off line a customer will need follow up after follow up before they decide to take the plunge and buy, as most people these days always think things over before committing to a purchase.
If you endorse your affiliate website all you do is send the customer to a page which does not give you the opportunity to follow up at a future date. Your viewer will look your page over and then move on. You have made all this effort for nothing
So how can you avoid this happening? The answer is simple. You have to create your own website and send the readers to visit it. You should use the effective method known as building a list by creating a landing page which will hold all of your visitor's names and email addresses in an autoresponder. You can also create a pre sell page, supplying the visitor with a personal testimonial about the product you have on offer.
Even though this is not for free and it will take a small amount of money to set up a website and an autoresponder, it still costs very little in comparison with setting up a traditional business and you are sure to do much better than your rivals who will still be using the same old affiliate sales pages
