Most Local Business Owners only think of selling their own products and services but never give much though to selling those of other businesses. One of the ways of monetizing your local business website is by promoting affiliate links. These are links to other businesses that if they result in a sale or conversion, get you a commission. Affiliate Marketing can be a very profitable venture and provide a constant stream of revenue to your local business.

 

Here are three reasons why you may want to consider Affiliate Marketing as a Local Business Owner:

 

1. If your business is service-oriented, it may not be as easy to make sales online compared to a local business that deals with physical products. As a service-oriented business, your business often has to rely on walk-ins and personalized service. This is true for food and beverage service businesses such as Restaurants and Bars, for medical businesses such as Nursing Facilities, Dental Practices, Hospitals or even professional businesses such as legal practices.

Affiliate programs can help you sell digital and physical products related to your niche from reputable individuals, companies or affiliate networks. For example, a Bakery may sell baking equipment, pastry books, instructional DVDs on cake decorating courses or a product line by a famous pastry chef. This will make the bakery website more engaging and result in visitors spending more time on the site.

 

2. Another reason you may want to consider Affiliate Marketing is that it provides you an opportunity to provide products and services that your local business may not focus on, but for which there is a demand.

As an Affiliate you will only need to point your visitors in the right direction and not have to deal with managing these clients and their orders, but still get paid a commission for your efforts. For example, if you are Family Law Attorney you can have a Joint Venture with a Criminal Attorney and provide links on your site to his site and get paid for each lead you generate.

 

3. Some types of Affiliate Marketing don’t even require a sale so they are a relatively easy way to generate commissions. They are known as CPA offers or cost per action or cost per acquisition offers. All you need to do as the Affiliate is to have people complete a required action such as entering in their email address or zip code or signing up for a trial offer and you get paid a certain fee per lead.

Although the commissions can be low at around $1 -3, they can quickly add up to some good commissions if your local business site has good traffic flow. Since your visitors don’t need to buy anything, they are more agreeable to filling in their information to get access to special deals and offers.

 

Consider this avenue … As a Business Coach, I recommend different options to grow, build your business, and live the life that you have dreamed of … Hope this article gets you thinking …