Affiliate Marketing for College Grads Who Have No Jobs

When we were kids, not only did we have to walk five miles in the snow to work in a salt mine, then swim through a tar pit to get to school which was held in a dirt-floored outhouse and our teacher was a toothless, mustached woman who used to beat us with tree branches, but we also believed that graduating from college meant that we could get a halfway decent job.

Today's kids may have Facebook status updates, and they may tweet until they're blue in the face, but they ain't got no jobs when they graduate from college. According to CollegeGrad.com, fully 80 percent of 2009 college graduates moved back home with their parents after graduation.

Affiliate marketing, due to its low cost structure and techno-centric tool set, presents a possible solution to the problem of massive young college grad unemployment.

However, if you have no job, live at home with your parents, and want to get into affiliate marketing, you must do it right or not at all. Here are a few tips on what doing it right means:

Take Your Affiliate Marketing Business (and Yourself) Seriously

The most difficult thing about graduating from college and not having any prospect of getting a halfway decent job is the blow to your confidence. Just yesterday, you were partying with your friends, taking Jagermeister shots off on ice luge or whatnot, and now you're back at your parents' house watching the same SportsCenter this morning that you watched last night.

Then your aunt comes over for coffee with your mom and she asks what you are planning to do for a living. Ahem, you are…uhm…thinking about doing…uhm…online business…uhm, like, uhm, like, uhm, like, like like like, uhm…affiliate marketing or something.

Get ready for the good old, "AHAHHA, you're not serious, are you?" Because that or something like it is the exact response that you will get when you present your affiliate marketing business in a half-assed way. Trust us, that's what happens when you're 22 and they're 55; they mock.

In order to avoid having your confidence completely destroyed, and more importantly so that you can start building confidence, practice your pitch as to why your affiliate marketing business is a good idea, i.e. your blog about the nightlife in Toledo is not a total waste of time.

Take your business and yourself seriously. Even if your affiliate marketing business doesn't work out long-term, the confidence that you'll build "acting as if" will work out long-term.

Make Clear That There's Something in It for Them, Such as Tax Benefits

One thing any business owner either learns early on or doesn't survive long enough to learn is that in order to succeed in any business, you have to get other people to help you out, such as give you money.

When you're living at home with your parents and feeling a bit like a loser because you just graduated from college and apparently that means nothing anymore, getting people to give you money for your affiliate marketing business is challenging but essential.

Not that affiliate marketing is a terribly capital-intensive business, but you will need a bit of a budget for web hosting, design software, maybe some Google AdWords, a few ebooks, and assorted other goods and sundries.

The quickest way to accomplish the whole get money deal is to make it clear that there's something in it for your parents (or your aunt) if they can help you get started in this business. And by something in it for them we mean cold hard cash, not just pride that you're an entrepreneur.

Yes, that's right, you may want to cut Mom and/or Dad into the business at this early stage (so long as they fund it). At the very least, you could suggest that setting up a home office in that unused third bedroom could offer considerable tax benefits to your parents--which it could.

Creating a legitimate home office that your parents are involved in could enable them to deduct part of their mortgage, utilities, cable and Internet bill, and even mileage to their regular jobs.

Moreover, selling your parents like this will help you sell visitors to your website on your affiliate marketing partners. Practice makes profit, kid--you can take that to the bank.