Business Opportunities vary from programs offering affiliate status and activity to programs that help you build a downline of referrals. The real importance of this Affiliate Advice Centre is that it will attempt to show you that BUSINESS involves a lot more than just having an idea and sitting waiting for money to drop from the sky, or constantly chopping and changing to the latest, brightest pie-in-the-sky affiliate business opportunity!

The greatest advantage of the word wide web is the ability it gives us to interact with a far wider audience than ever before, from a screen on our desk or laptop, and on the flip side of that coin, some people see that as it's greatest curse, opening the door, as it does, to a never ending plethora of business opportunities that vary from 'too good to be true' to downright lies!

The real challenge comes from the need to balance the ability to recognise genuine potential for business success, with the business acumen to approach the job in hand in a professional way. Read that last sentence again, slowly, to get a true idea of the complexities involved as we try to  put affiliate success into context. The following programs have been chosen as a wide cross section of the different program areas that come together to ensure success when working from home, and the title is the active link in each case.

SFI

Make money working at home. No gimmicks, no pie in the sky, no bull. Proven, 20-year track record: Best thing is, SFI is totally FREE for affiliates to join, and there are NO one-time-only special offers. Lot of interactivity, from tutorials to gentle guidance so you pick a FOCUS to concentrate your efforts.

 MY POWER MALL

The idea of a program based around shopping has been bouncing for some years, with various attempts at doing it, but as online shopping has become more of an everyday thing for large numbers of people, this could well be the program that makes a reality of the idea. One thing it undoubtedly proves is that some of us are better shopkeepers than others!

IMPLIX

Make huge sales with one of the best Autoresponders on the planet! GetResponse from IMPLIX is used by more Pro marketers than any other autoresponder. And they know that follow-up is the key to making a stale web site become a winner! Get your free account now!

PAGESWIRL

Advertise one single URL address for all the websites you are promoting! PageSwirl creates your own personal rotator web page and  when visitors access that URL, PageSwirl automatically transports them to one of the web pages you've chosen to advertise. This is the only rotator allowed by most Traffic Exchanges.

TRAFFICHOOPLA

Probably the first company that set out to improve and increase traffic distribution by producing a weekly ranking table report to monitor the effectiveness of the exchanges. Also one of the first genuine downline builders.

FREE CLICK THRU CLUB

Another of the original downline builders, with lots of advantages and the single disadvantage that being free means that people are not necessarily committed to the work it takes to make this program successful. A brilliant example of the difference between potential and aspirations when we are looking at work and earning on the internet, but listed here because of the innovative ethos behind the program.

MARKETING POND

Paid-to-click and Paid-to-read refer to the biggest growth area of 2007, with a huge increase in the number of programs offering advertisers the opportunity to get their ads read or clicked at relatively low prices, and offering low payment to those doing the clicking of ads or reading of emails. Marketing Pond offers membership of a large number of these programs, with active monitoring by a very busy admin and excellent communications thru the program forum.

Other off-shoots of PTC and PTR include Paid-to-promote, Paid-to-join and Paid Survey schemes, but the overall truth is that these are particularly beneficial only to people living in North America. One other thing to mention...these programs ALL use the same main selling point.... namely the large rewards available if you get others to sign up as your active referrals....in other words, you are not going to make any significant amount until or unless your recruitment efforts are successful!

CLIXSENSE

Uses the slogan ADVERTISING THAT PAYS, which sums up one of the best of the PTC programs, and the real value comes in the fact that you can exchange your earnings for credits to place your own ads. Best for North Americans, but highly viable for most of the rest of the world. North America with the biggest potential market for advertisers simply offers the best chance for good earnings, because good business requires enough of the one to benefit the other.

AGLOCO

Typical of the growth in confidence of the business community when considering the potential offered by e-commerce, this was a brave 2007 attempt to marry advertising to your desktop with a downloaded Viewbar to show the ads. To repeat their mantra, this is 'a Global Community that is owned by its members', and you can't argue with the ethos, but it will probably go down as another GREAT idea that didn’t take off, because of the ever widening gap between hope or aspirations, and economic reality!

PAY-PER-PLAY

Follow-on from Agloco is yet another firm looking for a way to link the advertising world and the  ever increasing internet participation. This time the idea is to play 5 second audio ads....that’s right, 5 second ads. Here is some blurb from their own promotional material.

V2P Communications Inc. has two main Internet
audio websites; Voice2Page.com and NetAudioAds.com.
The Voice2Page website’s primary purpose is to
distribute and sell Record-by-Phone Internet
audio monthly subscription services, while the
NetAudioAds site places Internet Audio Advertising
strategically across the Internet.

We are an Internet-based communications company.
The Company’s primary focus is introducing
innovative Internet Audio Services to the
general public.
 

Get on board....go check, and a thought while you're looking....future plans include offering 30 second ads in addition to the 5 second starter ads. They hope we will even make special pages to take advantage of the obviously more lucrative longer ads. Meanwhile, the battle continues over YAHOO....will they join Microsoft or sell out? my advice? keep your eyes on the ball.

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Finally, it could be argued that Pay-per-click thru the search engines should be featured on this page, but for the potential affiliate, this area is covered mainly  by the Adsense program offered by GOOGLE, since that program offers an affiliate status, compared to straightforward Pay-per-click in their Adwords program, which compares to similar PPC programs run by most search engines. The interesting talking point at the moment is the debate about whether Google has already taken the lion’s share of the market, especially when you compare the relative efforts of Yahoo and Microsoft, the next two in line in the table of search engine use! On the other hand, new companies in this field are immediately obvious, as you should have realised by now with the many distinctive ad blocks that you will see as you surf the net.

Reading these words should have opened your eyes to the variety available when we use the term Business Opportunities, but whether you are looking for programs offering affiliate status or advice to improve your current level of activity, the real secret is your level of application. Your priority must always be to maximise the business opportunity to ensure your affiliate success, and that quite often means going the extra mile to do more research, exploring best marketing options, spending wisely on promotion and advertising. It is worth remembering that work at home is work, this is business, and more often than not, you have to spend to make money which is why the PRO option is usually more productive than the FREE version!