by: Robert J Farey

You want to make some money? Sell something.

The biggest seller on the net is information, or info-products as they are often called.

Info-products cover a wide range of sales, from small scraps of time sensitive information, through news-sheets and regular newsletters, all the way up to full sized electronic books.

The beauty of it is that there is no stock-holding to bother about. You don't need to fill the spare room with mounds of paperbacks. All that you need is a little space on your hard disc to store the files and a way of passing on copies of these files to your customers.

You keep the original to sell and sell again. Once you obtain the right to sell, you never have to order new stock of that particular item. If the information is something that you have written yourself, you own the copyright. It is yours to do with as you wish.

The easiest way to get started is to join an affiliate program. There are some good ones out there. Be selective. Don't jump in with two big feet with the first one that you see.

Choose something that you are interested in. Something that you would like to own and read. It is always easier to sell something expensive that you like, rather than something cheap that is of no real interest to you.

If the item on offer is real value for money, the price is of no consequence. It will sell.

Affiliate programs have their good and bad points. The good points are:

Everything is set up ready for you to start trading.

They have their own expensive website.

They set up their auto responders to send out extra sales copy to your prospects, encouraging them to make the purchase.

They maintain a database of everyone who has enquired about the product. And another one of those who have made a purchase. They are prospective customers to buy another product at a later date.

The down side:

You only get in the region of 50% of the proceeds.

You don't have a record of who has made a purchase due to your efforts. You have no way of making further offers to existing customers. This is the number one downside. But if you read on there is a way of overcoming it.

The company you are working with may go bust and leave you with a lot of expensive advertising that has to be paid for.

That is about all that I can think of on the downside.

A lot of people are making a lot of money using affiliate programs. If you go about it in a business like manner you can run several affiliate programs at the same time provided that they are all on a similar theme you can set up your own website to advertise then all.

That way you can capture the names and email addresses of your prospects and customers. You will need to set up your own database and auto-responder but that is not difficult.

When you get to this point and you have gained a little experience, the obvious step is to obtain the resell rights to some books so that you can sell and keep 100% of the income that you generate.

Affiliate programs are a very good training ground; use them to gain experience and a list of prospective customers. Then is the time to branch out on your own and build your business but if the affiliate programs are still earning you money via a website, keep them going, they are one of your best assets.

Who knows; you may end up with your own affiliate programs, with hundreds of members selling things whilst you claim 50% of the profits.

Others have done it. Why not you?

YOU CAN DO IT. Give it a try.