My wife and daughter are out of town today, so I was going to catch up on my favorite TV shows: Supergirl, Flash, Supernatural, and Legion.

I definitely like superhero series. I grew up watching Christopher Reeve’s Superman movies and reading comics.

But when I got home, I decided to take a nap…

…and that nap turned into sleeping through the night!

Remember, yesterday I gave you a taste of how internet marketing works. Click here if you missed it so you can catch up!

I know there is one that will follow your interests and complement your skills.

Actually, the Internet can bring you countless possibilities in business and profit. I will focus on the most proven.

These have been known to launch thousands of internet businesses around the world and have helped local brick-and-mortar businesses see profits early.

And today I’m going to start looking at 3 Internet Marketing (IM) models for you to choose from, starting with affiliate marketing.

This model is all about joining forces with an online seller or retailer. I will refer to them as merchants in the rest of this article.

The revenue will be shared by you and the merchant.

How exactly does it work?

Well, revenue is usually generated through visitors clicking to your landing page via an ad you posted. Or through purchases from customers who have visited your landing page.

How you are ultimately compensated depends on one of three types of affiliate marketing you choose to work with:

1. Pay Per Sale Affiliate Marketing – This will allow you to earn income from completed sales through the ads you run.

Merchants will monitor your activity through these sales.

Every time they close deals from your ad, you will receive a percentage of the revenue or a flat commission, depending on the number of sales made. An example is ClickBank.com.

2. Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing – This model involves linking the merchant’s website to your own website. Say the country of the merchant to post your ad on their page. Every time a visitor clicks on the link that leads to your affiliate merchant’s page, he will earn a fixed amount.

3. Pay Per Lead Affiliate Marketing – In this case, you will accept ads posted on your website. When leads originate from ads or links on your website, you will receive compensation.

How are payments made?

Payments are made instantly, weekly, biweekly or monthly. The payments you receive will be determined by the commission rate your merchant gives to affiliates.

Personally, the Dahl Integration Marketing affiliate program prefers to use Click Bank for payments. I have it set up to pay us weekly.

There are several ways to get your payments:

One is through electronic banking through financial or payment websites.

Money can also be transferred through your personal or business bank account; this can also be done online or through direct bank deposits.

A regular check can be sent to you.

Another popular way to receive payments is through PayPal.

What skills are required to start an affiliate marketing business?

You need to know pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, and copywriting.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing:

1. Generally speaking, you don’t need to spend a lot of cash to get started. Most affiliate programs are free, although they will ask you to do so.

That being said, there are premium affiliate programs where affiliates pay a license fee of $1,000 or more.

2. You can earn money while you sleep. Who doesn’t want to win more cash in the middle of the night?

When this first happened to me, it felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders because income was not always dependent on my time.

3. It’s one of the easiest ways to earn an income (when compared to creating and marketing your own products) because it shortens time to market.

When you create your own products and services, you are required to prove that you can sell. This initial test campaign can cost thousands of dollars to test the viability of your offers.

Instead, you can simply promote a popular product that has already proven successful and skip all the trial and error and initial cash outlay.

Whether you’re in it as a part-time income earner or a long-term business, affiliate marketing is still one of the best ways to earn income without all the typical hassles of running a business.

4. If you are successful, you will always be up to date with what is happening in the world of internet marketing. This is a great opportunity for you to find or create different products and services to include on your website.

5. You will also have the opportunity to work with other affiliate merchants and increase your earnings together.

The Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

Although you can make a living from affiliate marketing, there are a couple of downsides to this model that you should be aware of.

Once you have all this information, you can change plans to help you avoid these potentially costly issues:

1. As an affiliate, you may be the victim of shady dealings, and in turn, you may be accused of cheating customers.

To make sure you prevent this from happening, you should test all of your merchants. Check their products and check if their real businesses are legit.

A general rule of thumb is to first become a customer of the merchants you plan to work with. Plus, it’s always easier to sell a product or service you believe in, because you’re a customer and can speak from your own experience with the product.

You should also read the fine print in the affiliate contract before finalizing the deal.

2. You will stop earning without prior notice. This can happen if you don’t communicate regularly with your merchants.

Merchants can stop or discontinue product production without informing their affiliates (and in some cases go out of business), so be sure to keep in touch with your merchants to avoid this problem.

Today I looked at the ins and outs of affiliate marketing and tomorrow I’ll look at the opportunity that exists in online shopping malls for you.

Namely, eBay and Amazon.

Stay tuned for tomorrow…

In the meantime, if you want to take the guesswork out of growing your business online, click here for the ultimate shortcut.