I have a question for those who have an online business working with other company affiliate programs. I am interested in having an online business selling other company’s products, but are you able to have multiple affiliates on your online business? If so, how does that work?

For example, if I become an affiliate with Amazon, I can post products from their website, then they handle the transactions and providing me with a comission in a bank they have until it is ready to be mailed to me. They also prepared reports and sheets for me to see my profits or credits, etc.

Will this happen for every affiliate I have on my site? – where I will end up with different reports showing my profits/losses/etc from each affiliate I work with?

Also, I know Amazon checks out your website first before they allow you to become an affiliate with them. If an affiliate company sees I am working with other affiliates, does that make it harder for them to work with me or not really?

Thanks!

You are able to work with as many affiliate programs as you think you can handle, each one has their own benefits and drawbacks. Too many affiliate links on any one web page makes it look too cluttered, however. These companies understand the need for more than one income stream and do not insist they are the only links allowed. To give your affiliate income a boosts, check this out and watch the video.

I am interested in starting an online affiliate marketing business where I sell other businesses’ products and receive small commission on each sell that was generated through my site. I don’t plan on making this full-time or anything huge, just something on side to make a little extra income.

However, I have seen some of these affiliate website businesses where it’s a real online business with the name on top of the site, products separated by category (tv, computers, accessories, etc) and I have also seen websites that are more blog sites, where someone blogs about a certain topic or product and then they have a link to a product for one of their affiliates.

In either of these situations or any other kind of website similiar, are these companies required to set up as a business with a EIN and pay taxes on their earnings? If so, how do they go by doing so?

Thanks!

I believe if you are doing affiliate marketing, using companies such as Clickbank, then you can just use your SS# and get paid. You don’t have to be a company. You’ll obtain a domain name from go daddy or someone and use that name as your "company name". However, these customers aren’t paying you directly, they are paying the vendors you are promoting. You affiliate program, such as Clickbank, pays you as an Independent Contractor. So, no, you don’t need an EIN, but you will be an independent contractor and will pay taxes. You should get a form at the end of the year from the affiliate program you are using I believe. Hope that helps!