Young Adults with a vision – Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing a widespread global method of promoting products & services online through a website, in which a website owner (Affiliate) is rewarded for every sale provided through his efforts.

Well, my son who is at University, his younger brother and cousin excited about making money using the internet, approached me for some advise. I listened as they explained that instead of companies paying huge amounts of money on global advertising, they could promote and sell these companies' products for free.

I was obviously excited about their enthusiasm. I explained to them that Service Delivery in cyber space is of paramount importance, customers continue to demand even greater products and services seeking a constant lowering of costs. We must deliver greater value to our customers or create comparable value at a lower cost while ensuring financial sustainability.

I covered the issue (as potential partners), that the importance of achieving fundamental performance lies in the ability of the partners to have a vision of the future and to make the appropriate moves through commitment and involvement, striving for excellence when supporting the merchants and its customers. I went on to explain, it is essential that a combined effort is required towards retaining and growing customers and introducing new Merchants and their products and services using ICT.

My BIG question to them was, how are you going to ensure as partners, that your company will be successful? I again asked, what is your product and service offering? What is the market potential and many such questions followed.

I advised them to draft a business plan to answer the above questions. We typically covered the topics required to write a business plan. 21 pages pages later working with this team they had drafted their final business plan. As parent, I must say it was wonderful to see how much our young adult children have grown over the past few years.

What did impress me is this key statement in their business plan - I quote “Our affiliate business is about linking buyers and merchants via our website (i.e. meyersonlineshop.com). Visitors (i.e., potential customers) to our website are expected to use the links provided on our website to access the merchant’s website where they are able to view the merchant's products or service offerings.”

I now understand the key technologies employed by their company, is website hosting. This is done in partnership with BlueHost (See company website URL – http://www.bluehost.com).

Having full insight to the business plan, I understand what the purpose of the business is and what they aim to achieve.

Well done to Jonathan, Nathan and cousin Brendon.