A Guide to Working from Home: Amazon
The home computing revolution
and the advent of the Internet has made the dream of “Working from Home”
a very real and lucrative possibility for millions of Americans. And
this does not only apply to those who have found they can now
"Telecommute" in their chosen professions. Many have been bitten by the
next wave of entrepreneurial spirit that is sweeping the nation, and are
actually leaving their jobs to start their own home based businesses.
But choosing the right home based business can be a challenge.
Amazon.com is probably the most
successful e-commerce site certainly it is the most well known. Amazon
is generally recognized as the pioneer that really started the whole
“click and shop” marketplace. Now they are making it easier for anyone
to leverage their success in an attractive and easily started Home Based
way to supplement or become a primary source of income.
AT A GLANCE
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|
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Expected Hourly
Income |
$20 – 40.00 per hour |
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Start-Up Costs
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High, Moderate,
Low |
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Start Up Degree of
Difficulty |
Easy, Moderate, Difficult, Very
Difficult |
|
Potential Problems |
Blocked Ads |
Getting Started
Amazon has sort of combined the
best of both worlds of eBay and Google Adsense, by creating a program
called Amazon associates that allows those who qualify to both benefit
from pay per click type revenue such as with Google Adsense, and make
money as a direct e-seller of books, music and other products on Amazon
like with eBay Auctions. Much like with Google Adsense all you really
need to get started as an Amazon associate is to have a website. It
works very simply, Amazon provides you with formatted links to sales of
specified products on their site. Advanced metrics measure any traffic
that comes to Amazon and makes purchases through that link, and you
receive a percentage of the sales. This will do two things; it will
generate income from the sales through the links placed on your site,
and it will help drive traffic to your site with interesting and
compelling content. Amazon also offers Associates other marketing
options like aStore, where you can set up an actual “on-line” store to
sell Amazon product. In addition you can list any number of approved
products for sale on Amazon much like eBay. If you do not already have a
website you will have to create one, but you can follow the simple links
on this page on how to do so. The best part about becoming an Amazon
affiliate or associate is that it is completely free. It does not cost
anything to apply, and you can be up and running once approved in just a
few days. You can get more information and apply at
http://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/ref=sv_hp_2/102-9720610-3408111
Start-up costs
Since the start-up materials are
minimal for adding Amazon Links to your website, start up costs are also
minimal. There are no membership fees or application fees to become an
Amazon Associate. You do however need to have a website, and there is
the cost of Web-hosting, however there are several sites that offer free
website templates, and web-hosting with many services for under 10.00
month. Such as
www.1and1.com. As with any Internet business, if you do not already
have a high-speed connection you should consider upgrading, it will make
working much easier. Good deals on broadband connections abound and can
be had for as little as 25.00 – 30.00/month depending on the ISP’s in
your area. As in any Home Based Business – if you have left work to
pursue Amazon opportunities as a full time income, and do not have
access to health benefits through a spouse, you need to include the cost
of health benefits in your monthly budget. More information on Insurance
for the Self-Employed can be found at
www.insurancebudget.com or
http://www.nase.org/
Hours and Income
Like Google AdSense being an
Amazon associate has the “set it and forget it” advantage of passive
income. Add to that the extra earnings potential of opening and
maintaining an aStore and applying some of the other marketing
techniques suggested by Amazon and some of the other links on this page,
and Amazon offers a nice return on time spent. Amazon offers two fee
structures, a flat fee or 4% of any sales, or a potentially very
lucrative performance based structure where up to 8.5% in commissions
can be earned based on volume of sales. Bottom line? Being an Amazon
affiliate may not make you rich but at an average or 5% commission, that
is only means you only have to generate $400 in sales for every hour you
put in on working on your site and building traffic to earn $20.00 and
hour – which is not bad working form home.
Potential Problems
There are no real pitfalls to
earning an income as an Amazon Associate other then learning how to
build and maintain your site to its maximum potential. To truly succeed
this may require some training in webdesign and HTML, you can find many
on-line webdesign courses at
http://www.docnmail.com/learn/WebDesign.htm
The only other problem with
Amazon Affiliates is the same with any affiliate marketing program- some
security and “blocking” software, in the process of protecting against
spyware, viruses and “pop-up” ads - also may block legitimate banner ads
and cookies on which affiliate marketers rely.
Other Resources
More on Building Amazon Income:
http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/homebasedbusiness/ht/amazonaffiliate.htm
http://affiliate-blog.amazon.com/
Conclusion
Associate marketing is the wave of the future, and Amazon Associates
being one of the first is still one of the best.
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Fed
up with the rat race?