E-Commerce : 9 Affiliate Marketing Networks you can use

What is E-Commerce?

The internet has made it easy for us to buy things online. This means that without leaving your home you can order everything from a brand new laptop to delivering a flower bouquet to a friend. This is essentially what e-commerce is all about. Selling and buying products and services online.

How does a virtual shop work?

Your virtual shop is essentially nothing more than a website. It is equipped with special features which allows people visiting your website to browse through what you are selling and buy it online. You have products displayed with their image and description. The cost is given along side. The customer will pick what he wants and add it to his virtual shopping cart. This will then be taken to the virtual check out where they use one of the electronic payment methods such as a credit card or paypal.

What are the advantages of online selling?

There are quite a few advantages of selling online. The virtual shop or website is much easier to set up than a real shop. It is cheaper and easier to maintain. You do not need to sink in a great deal of money to get the project started. Plus you can sell 24/7 from a website without being available all the time like you would have to in a regular shop. It is sort of like running a shop on auto pilot. This does not mean that you can just let it run unattended. There are some issues with selling online which would not exist in the regular world.

What are the problems and drawbacks?

The biggest problem is the internet connectivity. If the people hosting your website have down time, your shop is off road. People may wish to buy from you but will not be able to access your site. You lose business this way.If the site is regularly down you will lose more customers than you make sales.

Another problem is the delivery of the physical product. Once the customer has made the payment you need to ship out the product right away. This means that you need to have a basic inventory with you at all times. So if you don't have a product with you it needs to be taken off the website display as well.

Then you need to consider the competition. As it is so easy to set up a virtual shop you have a large number of websites selling stuff online. To make your website truly stand out in the crowd is a major challenge for e-marketeers. This is where other factors like SEO, domain name, and quality assurance come into play.

Where can you sell your products online?

There are two basic ways to make money by selling products online. The first is to set up your own virtual shop. This is nothing more than getting a website of your own. The second is to set up a virtual shop with an established market place online. This is like opening an account for selling with a website like ebay.

No Products to Sell?

If you don't have a ready made product of your own, you can make money online with an affiliate product. Basically you sell some one else's product and get a cut on the sale. There are physical products and digital products that you can sell as an affiliate. Also you don't have to stock an inventory as the delivery is handled by the main merchant.

Head over to Click Bank and pick out any number of online digital products to sell. Or if you don't find anything there check out all the networks below.

Update - Feb 2011 - There have come to my notice a number of other affiliate network services from which you can sell products. Again I must repeat that I have personally not used any of these services as I am not into affiliate marketing. However I like lists that offer a number of resources and this is precisely what I am trying to build.

Linkshare - is a company which allows you to sell affiliate products online. You get paid by cheque or by direct transfer. To be eligible for a direct transfer you need to reside in specific countries mentioned on the site.

Commission Junction - A fairly well known affiliate company which has a decent reputation. It has been around since 1998 and is part of the ValueClick group. They have a good online name amongst affiliate marketers.

Link Connector - This is another affiliate site that you can use. As with the above two there are no fees for joining the network but you need an active site to be approved as an affiliate. So do make sure that you have a good site up and running before you send in applications to any of these sites.

Share A Sale - Is yet another affiliate site where a number of merchants can be found. Not supported in all countries so you will need to check if you are eligible to become an affiliate with them. The list of valid countries is easily seen on their website.