I researched wholesalers that were willing to drop ship and found a few. I built a simple yahoo! site, created a merchant account, got my resellers license and voila, I was in business. Did I get a sale? Nope, because I did not know how internet worked with regards to website marketing. No one could find my site and I was a marketing failure.

Because my site didn’t sell anything, I gave up and continued on research path. I slowly learned about how to market my site but wasn’t sure I wanted to stick with drop shipping. My site costs combined with credit card merchant costs and plain old competition didn’t really leave me with much profit. I realized I still had much to learn.

I went back to research drawing board and joined a few forums to learn what else I might be able to do. At that time I learned about affiliate programs. I met people I trusted and admired who promoted affiliate programs. I asked a lot of questions and began my research. Affiliate marketing appealed to me. I didn’t need a merchant account, I didn’t need inventory, I didn’t need my own product and I could even get away without a website. Wow, how good is that? So off I went.

As I began to research I found best selling products were informational products and best commissions were internet marketing products. Because I was familiar with setting up a website previously I decided to set up another site to list of all my affiliate sales products. I fell into trap that most new web business owners fall into. Setting up a ‘How to Market on internet site’. I liked it because I was familiar with it and I had purchased some of products through my research. So why not? Well, simply put there is too much competition in that category. I still have my site today but my sales are minimal. I offer only products that I trust and many of them I use but it’s not a business path I’d recommend to someone starting out, particularly because many beginners tend to gravitate there. There are lots of other things that have good marketing potential. Affiliate marketing can be successfully applied to almost any product on net.

============================================================ 8 Reasons Why Affiliate Marketing Is Holy Grail Of E- Commerce

By Richard Adams

(c) 2004. All rights reserved. http://www.ebooksalesassistant.com ============================================================

For too long affiliate marketing has been seen as "poor brother" of other popular online businesses such as online auctions, ebooks, software or membership sites.

But to someone who earns a large percentage of my online income as an affiliate, I'm constantly amazed at what a great business this is.

Here, then, are just eight of reasons why I believe affiliate marketing is *best* way to start off online; indeed why in my eyes it's Holy Grail of e-commerce.

1) No Need To Create A Product To Sell

Most people start off in e-commerce by creating their own product. However, this route can involve investing a lot of time and money.

On other hand, I have set up affiliate sites in a matter of weeks for under $100 that now greatly exceed that initial set-up cost every single month - on autopilot. So it's a quick, easy, and cost effective market to get into.

2) Create Money Out Of Thin Air

As it's possible to set up an affiliate site with a tiny sum ($50-100) and let this multiply numerous times, you can then go on and invest in bigger projects in future.

3) No Customer Service

Depending on how you set up your affiliate business it *is* possible to completely dispense with customer service enquiries.

Indeed, I am now setting up simple minisites with *no* email address and no contact details at all. This saves me a huge amount of time each day answering questions and so allows me to concentrate on building more sites for greater profits.

4) Automatic Money - And Free Time!

Using right model, you can simply set up an affiliate site and move onto your next project.

I sincerely believe that it is possible as you gain experience to launch a site per month and, since you're not selling anything yourself or answering customer's enquiries, your site can run virtually on autopilot.

An occasional check is all that is necessary and my minisites take me less than 30 minutes a month to run.

It's like automatic money each month!