Affiliate Marketing Options

Have you been wanting to give your current job the shove for quite some time? Do you have the tune, take this job and shove it as your cell phone ring tone? Would you love to get into your own business but you’re afraid of the risk? Well the fears of risk are nothing to be laughed at. The vast majority of small businesses fail within the first year. There are a variety of reasons but the financial risk is incredibly high. To minimize the risk many look into the field of affiliate marketing. This takes about 90% percent of the risk factor away and allows you to set up a business for yourself.

As an affiliate, you do actually work for another company or merchant. You sell either products or services depending on your particular skills and talents. Affiliate program are great for those that are creative, self motivated and not afraid of hard work. When you become an affiliate, the corporation takes on the risk. You can sign on to sell products or you can sell services. You can work to increase website traffic to other sites and receive referral payments, or you can create your own sites ad make money through ad revenue. The choice is entirely yours.

IF you are just starting out, you may want to join and affiliate program that has been established. You won’t be competing with other internet giants and you’ll gain some necessary skills and experience. One well known affiliate partner ship is the one that exists between Bizrate and shopzilla.

Both of these two sites exist as separate entities. However they have combines their resources to make an excellent affiliate program. Bizrate functions as a comparison shopping site. If someone wants a certain item they can search for it via Bizrate. The site will tell you where to purchase it and how much it charges. They will give you a complete item description as well. Bizrate also lets the consumers know who is offering particular items for the lowest price and who offers the best value for money. Bizrate gives consumers a chance to check out merchant reviews as well.

Health Insurance Options Aren’t Limited to Government Exchanges

WITH so much attention being paid to the troubled debut of the Obama administration’s health insurance exchanges, another alternative has largely gone unnoticed: unless you live in Washington, D.C., or Vermont, you can also buy insurance outside the exchanges — by going directly to insurance brokers, agents or company Web sites.

In general, health policies effective Jan. 1, whether sold on the exchanges or off, must comply with the Affordable Care Act. That means they have to offer the same menu of essential benefits, like drug coverage and maternity care, and can’t deny you coverage if you’re already sick. And, insurers who sell policies both on and off the exchanges must sell the same plan for the same price.

Of course, the main attraction of the exchange is that plans sold there may come with subsidies that can substantially lower your monthly premiums. (Premium credits are for people making up to $46,000 for an individual and up to $94,000 for a family of four.)

Web-based brokers, like eHealth, are supposed to be able to help consumers enroll in subsidy-eligible plans by connecting to the federal marketplace to verify the consumer’s income, under government guidelines issued last spring. But that isn’t happening yet at eHealth, in part because the company is still testing its system, said a spokesman, Nate Purpura.

However, the site offers more than a thousand plans from 60 insurance companies that you can buy if you aren’t looking for subsidies.

To have their plans qualified to be sold on exchanges, insurers must follow rules like marketing their plans fairly, and must offer at least one plan in the “silver” and “gold” categories. Such plans have higher premiums, but lower out-of-pocket costs, than plans in the lower “bronze” category.

Plans sold off the exchange are also supposed to follow the same tiers as those used on the public exchanges, to indicate the level of costs you will incur.

Whether or not the policies you will find off the exchange are a better deal for you than the on-exchange plans isn’t clear yet, and will vary by market. “I don’t think we have a good sense of that,” said Robert Zirkelbach, spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group. But, he added, it makes sense to check.