How To Make Money Selling Other People's Stuff

Congratulations! With your search on how to make money selling other people's products online, you already are some great steps ahead in sorting this whole make money online thing out! So much internet hype but at the same time so many people failing online – how could one figure out what business model really works?

First things first, with the concept of selling other people's offers online you are on the safe side: This is not only a very newbie friendly way to make money online, it is also proven in success by thousands of online marketers with awesome, real income results.

In the following I will show you how in detail the process of making money with other people's stuff works in online business. And you will get some extra tips and alerts that can help to make your start into this business a smooth one.

What's so fancy about selling other people's stuff online?

I guess we all fancy things that are much bigger in results than in the effort we have to put into. I don't say there is not much work to expect by selling products of other people online. But compared to creating and maintaining your own product, it is way more slender in the business process.

Here is just a short list of things you don't have to take care of, if you choose a smart way of selling other people's products online:

no own product to create and maintain
no product brand building to handle
no online shop to handle
no storage of items to manage
no shipping to handle
no customer service to handle
no technical issues to manage
no additional staff necessary

All these time and money consuming things above are none of your trouble when selling items of other people. But how does this slim, newbie-friendly business work in detail? How do you come into play between the product owner / supplier and the one buying products, when you are uninvolved in all the tasks above?

The ultimate approach: affiliate marketing

You come into play through affiliate marketing. And actually your part is not selling things, it's a value added promotion of things, to be more precise. The exchange of money for the (physical) delivery of a product or service happens directly between the supplier and the buyer, without your direct involvement.

Your role in affiliate marketing is to give the buyer valuable guidance along his way to the purchase. You provide helpful information about products or solutions the buyer is searching for. And you refer him to online spots where he can find the best offers for his query.

Need an example? Okay, let's say you have a blog about running shoes for women. You provide a wealth of information all around the topic of running for women. Maybe you have some great experience with what the best running shoes for women are.

Next step could be writing a review on your 1st choice running shoe for women on your blog. In this review you offer a link to a shop where your visitors can make best deal for the shoe you recommend. If your visitors follow this link to buy the shoe, you'll get a commission for referring your visitors to that shop.

That link in your review is an affiliate link, which entails your referrer ID. That way, the supplier knows what visitors come from your links, so he can pay you the commission if they buy something.

What's the potential of affiliate marketing?

Since more and more products and services are bought online, the potential of affiliate marketing is tremendous. People tend to do some research before they buy something online. And very often, they seek for helpful information about a product from a user's perspective and find that on an affiliate marketers blog.

The massive growth of online shopping offers you the opportunity to start your affiliate business in almost any niche (link to how to find a niche page) you want. Whatever your passion or profession might be, it's pretty sure that you can build ad decent affiliate incomes around it.

Amazon is a very good example to see the full potential of online shopping: If you join the Amazon Affiliate Program, you can promote over a million products. And Amazon is only one out of thousands of affiliate programs you can join to promote products and earn commissions.

This freedom of choice regarding the topic you want to build your online business in, is a huge advantage of affiliate marketing. And you really should make use of this flexibility.

With a topic that sets you on fire, it's much easier to overcome struggles in day-by-day business. Cause even if the affiliate business is accompanied with a wealth of advantages – you still have to do some hard work there too, just like in any other business you want to achieve great results!

But affiliate marketing is not only big in the potential of topics you can choose from. If you bring in the work, you can also leverage a huge potential of income streams. The affiliate model can be scaled to a very high extent. It is not a get rich quick scheme, but if you set it up properly, you can really make it a 6-figure plus business in the long run.

Is there a key to success?

I would not call it the only success key, but whether you succeed in affiliate business or not, depends very much on the attitude you drive your business with. Those who are sluggard and just drop their affiliate links here and there, won't succeed in the long run.

And those who always think about selling and nothing but selling while they do their affiliate business won't be lucky in this field either.

Successful Affiliate Marketing

Successful affiliate marketing is not about selling, it's about helping. Your main mission should be to help people. It sounds plain, but still, that's what makes the difference.

With all the content you create, you should always ensure that it's of great help for your audience. That's why it's very important for you to know your audience and all their troubles very well. You should take every opportunity to solve problems of your audience.

And if a topic is not about trouble shooting, try to entertain and capture your visitors with very excellent content you provide.

If you stick to the rule to help with all that you do, the selling part will be the side effect of all your efforts. That's what I and many other marketers have experienced over and over again, trust me on this one.

Why so many people fail in this business

Even though the affiliate model for doing online business is very attracting, many people fail in doing it. And there are many different reasons for that.

Against its image, affiliate marketing is not a shoot from the hip business. If you want to survive and more importantly succeed in this business, you have to build it on a solid foundation. You have to act very service-oriented towards your audience. And you have to prove you are a very useful source for something, not only in front of your audience but also towards the search engines.

This creation of your authority in your chosen niche takes time and many newbies don't have enough staying power for that. Persistence and patience are absolutely crucial if you want to make it in this business!

Next to a strong mindset your success is depending on the skills you have to find and apply to your business. You can easily get distracted by the wealth of information you find about affiliate marketing online. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of information is misleading and of no good help.

Learn more about the most common reasons for failure in affiliate marketing here.

Watch out for scams!

No busy place without confidence trickster. And affiliate marketing is a very busy place! Newbies who search for helpful sources to learn the business will come across TONS of shiny offers pretending ultimate help. Unfortunately, scammers are very successful in ripping off internet novices.

Whatever offer it is that sounds too good to be true, stay away from it, cause it's very likely to steal your money for nothing in return.

Illegal pyramid schemes and MLM networks try to make their fraud programs look like legit affiliate programs. Whenever an affiliate program wants to charge you for joining it, don't get your hands dirty with it. Legit affiliate programs never charge you to promote their products!

Scams are really a pest in online business and another big reason why so many newbies fail. The sooner you learn to detect and avoid them, the faster you find the good, helpful sources that can really help you make good progress in building your business.

Want to get started but don't know how?

Although there are a lot of scams around, you should not shy away from the whole industry and the opportunities it can offer to you. Just be careful with offers that are promoted with too many superlatives and manipulative scam lingo.

Whatever resources you might choose to learn affiliate marketing, always make sure you can take a deep look inside the program or product, before you buy anything.

I hope you have found some helpful information about how to make money selling other people's products online. Are you already into affiliate marketing? Then please share your experiences below in the comments!

If you have any questions, please leave them below in the comments and I am happy to get back to you!