ethiozoo

Marketing: Lesson 1

November 24, 2009 at 2:43 PM Leave a comment

If you want to make money, make me money. 

Benjamin Chiu just earned his master’s in mechanical engineering, but he hasn’t bothered looking for a job yet. He doesn’t need to. The 24-year-old runs a website from his San Francisco condo that nets him upwards of $20,000 a month. Chiu is an affiliate for Amazon and dozens of other online stores. The best part? He doesn’t actually sell anything; instead, his website, bensbargains.net, hawks laptops, backpacks, and karaoke machines and refers all buyers to the merchants’ websites. Every click on a product and every sale that results is cash in Chiu’s pocket—and the seller’s. Everyone makes money off the deal, and that’s why it works so well. Amazon, eBay, Google, and Yahoo sit atop the Web’s food chain partly because they make everybody a salesperson. There are hundreds of thousands of affiliates like Chiu, who promote online auctions for eBay, flog products for Amazon and Yahoo, provide eyeballs for Google’s AdSense, and collect for each sale or click they bring in. The millions the big boys pay out for these services are just a fraction of what they make from them. The beauty of the model isn’t lost on the rest of the world: Hundreds of companies—from Macy’s to Best Buy to Marriott to Citigroup—have now formed affiliate networks of their own. To start your own on-line business click here: http://www.ebiz-u.com/28c73d3

Company                 Affiliate Sales                Affiliate Commission

Amazon.com                 $460 M                         $100M

Ebay                                  $300M                          $140M

Google                              $1.4B                              $$1.1B

Yahoo!                             $1.1B                                   $910M

*Estimates for 2004 based on financial reports and business 2.0 research **gross profit after cost of sales.

Source Business 2.0 December 2004.

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