Affiliate marketing can help you earn thousands of dollars per month by recommending original products and services that can actually benefit your audience.
Yes, that is the power of affiliate marketing mixed with great content and a trustworthy brand.
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It's a great strategy to earn great passive income with little initial effort so you can make money while you sleep. You can make profits from someone else's product or service without the hassle of building it.
Due to the flexibility and convenience of working from home and earning good money, affiliate marketing has become popular.
According to Statista, affiliate marketing expenditures in the US could reach $8.2 billion by 2022, from $5.4 billion in 2017.
So, if you want to make money online without much investment, then affiliate marketing can be a good option for you.
Let's understand what affiliate marketing is and how to make money with it.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a marketing technique in which you, as an affiliate, earn a commission on marketing or recommending a company or person's products or services.
It is like a referral program where you can refer or promote the products and services you like to your audience on your blog, website, social media channels or YouTube channel. And if your audience buys a product or service through you, you'll get a small commission from that sale.
Commissions can be on a percentage basis per sale, or a fixed amount and sales are set through affiliate links given to you by the product/service owner.
If this sounds confusing, let me simplify it for you by explaining how affiliate marketing works and what are its main components.
How does affiliate marketing work?
In short, you can join affiliate programs that are relevant to your niche and audience. You can either contact such programs through direct partnerships with brands or join affiliate networks. And when you join an affiliate program, the affiliate brand or network will provide you with a unique link to include in your promotional materials, such as your blog or YouTube channel.
Therefore, you create content around the product and embed links within it, allowing your audience to click and purchase the product or service. When a sale is made through your link, you get a small commission from that sale.
Affiliate marketing involves many individuals who create and promote a product or service. The main components of affiliate marketing are - product owner, affiliate, consumer and affiliate network (optional).
Let's explore their relationships and roles in affiliate marketing.
Product owner
As the name implies, the product owner owns the product or service to be marketed. It could be a large organization, a small and medium-sized company, or an entrepreneur who created the product.
The product can be anything tangible like a refrigerator, cosmetics, etc., or something intangible like an online course. Similarly, the service can be a web hosting service, car rental, etc.
For example, a product owner could be a web host who wants to expand his audience base by reaching more people through a blogger whose readers can be the web host's potential customers.
Affiliate Marketer
An affiliate marketer is a publisher that can be a company or an individual, such as a blogger or YouTuber. The affiliate marketer promotes the seller's services or products on their platform or site by persuading the audience. They can do this by creating compelling content about the product or service, and explaining its benefits.
If readers or viewers like the product or service, they can check out the mentioned product links and click on them to purchase. When a sale is successful, the affiliate marketer gets a percentage of that sale. Success as an affiliate marketer requires a brand that their audience can trust enough to consider their recommendations.
Consumer
Affiliate marketing targets consumers. Consumers can be the ordinary audience such as blog readers or YouTube channel subscribers who regularly review creator content to find information. When they find the content useful, along with the recommended product or service, they can buy it.
affiliate network
Although you can directly associate with a brand to become an affiliate company, you can make the process easier by doing so with the help of an affiliate network like Amazon Associates. They act as intermediaries between the merchant and the affiliate and handle things like product delivery and payments to simplify the process.
In fact, some merchants only run their affiliate programs via an affiliate network. In this case, you will have to go through the network to promote the service or product. It can also give you various options to choose products and services.
Is affiliate marketing worth it?
Sometimes, marketers may wonder why they should become an affiliate marketing company just to earn a small percentage of the sale they made.
Is it really worth it?
Why affiliate marketing when there are so many ways to make money online?
Well, affiliate marketing is one of the most inexpensive ways to make good profits without going through the hassle of creating and selling a product yourself. All you have to do is recommend the product to your audience and earn money.
Let's take a look at the benefits of affiliate marketing to explore why you can consider it.
passive income source
Unlike a regular job that requires you to work regularly to keep earning, affiliate marketing allows you to earn money while you sleep. With some initial investment of time and effort, you can consistently earn a lot when someone buys through your link.
low investment
It usually costs some money to start a business. If you want to create a product, you will need a lot of things - an idea, money to manufacture, a team to market and sell the product, and other investments.
However, getting started with affiliate marketing will not cost you any money. You just need to invest effort and time to create content about the product and convince your audience with it.
Work from anywhere
Affiliate marketing works online; Thus, you can work from wherever you want to create content and embed links. This is it. Your content will keep you earning as long as affiliate links work. This is an excellent option if you hate the office environment and love working from home.
Better performance, increased income
Usually, the job pays a fixed amount of salary if you work 40 hours a week or 45 hours. Although you can get some rewards based on your good performance, it is still limited.
However, affiliate marketing completely depends on your performance. The more efforts you put into your content and building your brand and audience, the more you can earn.
How is the commission paid and how much?
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The affiliate marketer is paid in different ways:
- Pay per click to redirect customers from your blog or marketing channel to the seller's website where the product was originally listed.
- Pay per sale to get a small percentage of the product's selling price
- Pay per lead to get paid according to the number of conversions from leads when you sign up for a newsletter, download a guide, go for a free trial of the product, etc.
Now, the interesting question - how much can an affiliate marketer earn?
Well, there is no limit. You earn based on your effort, payment model, and your chosen niche or industry. You can earn from a few hundred dollars to tens and thousands of dollars every month from your affiliate programs (of course, if you do it right). Your earnings will also depend on the number of affiliate programs in your niche, your followers and subscribers, the quality of your content, and your reach.
For example, Ryan Robinson, blogger and affiliate marketer, earned around $44,000 in June 2020.
Also, according to PayScale, the average annual income of affiliate marketers is about $51,217.
How do you get started with affiliate marketing?
Getting started with affiliate marketing requires a few things:
- Content creation platform
- Choose the products and services you want to promote
Create a marketing platform
To be able to talk about a product or service that you can recommend to people, you need to have a platform where you can create content and do promotions. It could be a website, blog, YouTube channel, or a social media profile like Instagram.
Opening a YouTube channel or a social media profile is not a problem or need an investment. But, if you want to start a blog, you may have to invest some dollars in it. You'll need a domain name, web hosting, and a site builder like WordPress - effortless for everyone, even beginners.
You can get help from this guide to easily build your WordPress site without coding.
Selection of products/services
Once your site or marketing system is ready, you will need to choose the products and services to promote. For this, you have to know what you actually want to promote or start your blog or channel.
Always choose products and services from your niche to keep your audience engaged, rather than confusing them with products from an entirely different niche.
Here you have two options - you can either link directly to a seller or join an affiliate marketing platform. If you are a beginner, the latter might be easier for you. They will connect you with merchants and help you earn good money.
Here are some affiliate networks you can consider:
Amazon
Amazon offers the Amazon Associates Program for bloggers, publishers, and content creators to monetize their traffic. Choose from millions of products and use simultaneous links to recommend to your audience.
You will earn a certain amount for each eligible program or purchase. Simply sign up and join the community of thousands of bloggers and creators and post product details to educate your audience about a product and increase sales. Amazon gives you a commission of up to 10% for every purchase and eligible program. You can also customize the anchors to create a unique product link to help visitors open the product page directly.
ShareASale
Monetize your content through the ShareASale partnership program and create a profitable, long-term partnership by recommending relevant services and products to your readers.
ShareASale helps creators and influencers attract more audiences and generate income by partnering with favorite brands. Media partners can also use the affiliate program to manage, build and find relevant brand partnerships.
You can track the performance of your affiliates with powerful and transparent reports. In addition, you can attract more customers by returning them some incentives on their purchases.
Awin
Promote products and/or services to your audiences through Awin affiliate links and create profitable partnerships with leading brands. It offers an easy-to-use and intuitive platform with consistent and faster payments. Whether you are a media partner, web page owner, blogger or publisher, connect with the right brands, promote them and earn a commission.
Create easily trackable links to share with your audience, stay on top of offers and promotions, and track your performance to improve it. You also get advanced tools to improve your performance.
Rakuten
Join the Rakuten community for free and start earning today. Rakuten works with a variety of stores and redirects you to the product page where you want your audience to buy and earn yourself a commission as cashback. Open a free account within 30 seconds, shop on an extension or app, and earn cash.
You can withdraw cash back either by check or PayPal. Rakuten can also make shopping fun by letting you earn money while you shop. From restaurants to rides, clothing to electronics, Rakuten finds the best deals for you to shop with ease.
Shop a minimum of $25 within 90 days of joining and earn a $10 welcome bonus.
CJ
Connect with global brands by joining CJ's affiliate marketing program and monetizing your content. CJ pairs with innovative solutions and tools with strategic direction to help you grow your business. You get powerful tools to understand and connect with your audience with the latest products and offers to improve your user experience.
CJ makes strategic recommendations based on distribution model, business volume, verticality, and region. Its intuitive platform helps you start your membership effortlessly to earn commission on successful purchases. You can also use actionable insights to discover the right brands and the latest technologies for growth.
Use the Deep Link Generator to generate direct links from a site or convert existing URLs into links. It offers two payments per month, and you can track commissions and historical payments from the affiliate dashboard. Additionally, analyze affiliate performance from commission metrics based on promotional characteristics and product type. CJ's API provides flexibility to manage relationships, discover products, access offers, view program performance, and promote products. ClickBank ClickBank is one of the leading marketplaces that earn high commissions on quality products. Featuring over 4,000 high-quality products from thousands of affiliate marketing retailers. ClickBank device-level tracking helps you get paid for every sale. It also ensures reliable payment delivery and offers the highest commissions in the affiliate program industry, including CPA and Revenue Share. Plus, its platform educates new affiliates with in-depth training by experts and a comprehensive library of actionable strategies to grow your affiliate marketing career.
Impact.com Understand your audience choice, engage with brands, and start your affiliate journey to making money from Impact.com. It allows you to monetize your content with products that match viewer preferences, tracks devices, and provides control and flexibility to develop profitable, long-term partnerships. Withdraw your amount once per month on the specified day when your balance reaches a certain level. Whatever currency you choose, get paid instantly via BACS, PayPal or direct transfer. You can also get personalized SMS messages, email alerts, and insights easily and quickly respond to changes with campaign reports. 4 steps to making money online with affiliate marketing Here are some affiliate marketing tips to help you make money with affiliate marketing after you've chosen your preferred marketing platform, whether it's your blog or the aforementioned networks.
Choose your specialty Getting started with affiliate marketing is easy, but there is a lot of competition. To stand out, you need to be specific about what you are going to talk about and recommend to your audience. So, pick a niche and build your brand around it. It helps you build a focused brand and an audience that knows what they can expect from you. And when they encounter a problem or seek guidance on that topic, they will come to you to find product information or recommendations and advance your affiliate efforts. For example, you can choose technology as a niche if you like the field and have some knowledge of it. You can review related products like web hosting services, cyber security products, SaaS software, etc. Find related affiliate programs You can find many affiliate programs, but join programs that are relevant to your niche and match your level of experience to be comfortable talking about them. They can: High salaries with low sales volume
Low salaries with high sales volumes
High salaries with high sales volume
If you are targeting business, you can choose high paying software with low sales volume as it depends on a specific niche like web hosting, software products, etc. But if you are targeting consumers, you can choose low salaries and high sales volume because you will be promoting tons of products with mass appeal. Similarly, products like credit cards come with high payments and high sales volume. And if you'd like to recommend a product you love, you can also reach out to the company and ask if they have an affiliate arrangement.
Create valuable content Creating high-quality content is fundamental to the success of an affiliate marketing campaign. Whether you're writing a blog, creating a YouTube video, or IG TV videos, make sure you provide valuable information that solves your audience's problems and benefits them. Also, promote products and services that you truly believe in before recommending them to build your audience that trusts you. For example, if you are a beauty blogger, you can review products that have helped improve your complexion or solve skin problems. Traffic driving Once you start creating quality content and building some audience, it's time to increase your traffic so that you can get more people to click on your affiliate links. You can do this by following the following methods: Create an email list for your readers or audience. Send them useful information, promotions, newsletters, webinar links, etc. to get them to keep visiting your site and see more sales.
Perform search engine optimization (SEO) to improve your web pages, so that they rank higher in search engines, such as Google or YouTube. For this, identify the keywords that consumers are searching for, strategically add them to your content, and build links.
Use PPC ads where you pay for site traffic. It is good if you have high paying affiliate links and have a marketing budget.
conclusion I hope this information helps you to make good money with affiliate marketing. You can either work directly with a brand and promote their products and services to earn a commission or choose an affiliate network you like the most and make money online while you sleep!
