Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

Our very first online adventure was seven years ago selling beanie babies on the Internet. (stop laughing) We didn’t have a shopping cart program we just took phone and email orders and sent the product out via US Mail. It was very small operation but we did however sell butt loads of beanie babies.

Looking back there sure was a lot of work involved in finding the beanie babies, maintaining the inventory levels, taking orders, verifying the shipments and then finally shipping the merchandise.

A couple years back we had a decent size (500 products) website that sold medical supplies and equipment. If there is one thing I learned from owning and operating your own ecommerce website is it’s a lot of work. Then I discovered affiliate programs and the easy money.

Why are affiliate programs easy money? It’s simple… you deliver the traffic and a vendor handles the rest. No taking phone calls that last 30 minutes just to sell a $2.95 gauze. The great thing about affiliates is you can actually make money while you sleep or play golf. Of course you need to work hard at get traffic to your website… traffic is the big key to success.

Right now we use three affiliate programs one of which is Amazon. Regardless of what anyone says Amazon is not dead… they don’t always pay the greatest but there is a trade off. Conversion can often be a little higher as people know they are dealing with a major company that will deliver what’s ordered.

Of course contextual publisher advertising (Adsense & YPN) bring in good money but having a good affiliate is the icing on the cake. The best part is you don’t have to hear a 45 mintue story about some old man’s colostomy bag.