Of all the ways to make money online, affiliate marketing is probably the best. That’s why learning the basics of affiliate marketing is the perfect place to start if you are new to the whole process of making money through the internet.
Successful affiliate marketers are out there today, requiring only a laptop and internet connection to earn their full time income, much of which is entirely passive.
Money can come in from affiliate marketing while you are strolling on the beach, once your strategies are implemented and you’ve put in the initial work.
Affiliate marketing is simply the process of selling products you don’t own in return for a commission.
Here is all you need to do to make money with affiliate marketing:
- Sign up to an affiliate program
- Find one or more suitable products to promote
- Get your affiliate link(s)
- Drive traffic to your affiliate offers
The majority of large online stores have an affiliate porgram that lets people become affiliates and promote their products for a certain commission rate. Usually it will be a small commission rate but some places have much higher rates.
Two examples of online market places with affiliate programs would be Amazon and Clickbank.
Amazon offers an affiliate program but the commission rate is about 5%.
Clickbank is well known by affiliate marketers and sells digital porducts with high commission rates from about 50-75%.
The beauty of promoting digital products is that many of them come with monthly subscriptions meaning that you as the affiliate can earn recurring income.
However, Clickbank certainly isn’t liked or trusted by everyone, even though it is legit and it is much smaller than Amazon of course.
Often, when you buy something online or look at a product review before purchasing, you are clicking on an affiliate link.
Affiliates are required to have an affiliate disclosure if they are promoting offers as an affiliate. But as far as costs are concerned, to the buyer it’s all the same; they pay the same amount for the product they purchase whether it’s being promoted by an affiliaite or not.
Common Strategies Used in Affiliate Marketing
The trick to making money with affiliate marketing is simply getting traffic. Traffic means eyes on your offer and all the better if it’s targeted traffic and not the kind of traffic that sees your offer but doesn’t want it.
Affiliate marketing can be done using paid methods such as running ad campaigns or using free methods which often require some form of content creation, such as blog posts or YouTube videos.
A common method people use to do affiliate marketing is to create a blog around a spesific niche that interests them.
As they build out their website, adding content in the form of blog posts, they gradually attract traffic from the web and can then promote offers on their site using affiliate marketing.
This method requires a person to be able to write good quality, valuable and engaging content. They also need to make sure their articles are SEO-friendly and that they have done their keyword research before creating content.
Related: Content Creation Checklist: 9 Does and Don’ts
Ideally for an affiliate marketing business, you want to use and master both organic and paid methods to drive traffic and make sales.
It is generally not recommended to start out with paid methods since this is risky and expensive, making it difficult for beginners to make a good ROI.
Also, most successful affiliate marketers have multiple income streams, meaning that they promote several to many different products and sometimes focus on multiple niches.
Here are some examples of common ways to generate organic traffic:
- Niche websites monetised with affiliate links
- Email marketing (leads can come through any platform that is getting free traffic)
- Facebook groups and pages
- Online forums (but you need to be careful to provide value and not to be spammy)
- YouTube and other video making platforms
- TikTok (once you have 1,000 followers you may use an affiliate link and with Link Tree you can have several links)
- Pintrest & any other platform that allows you to grow a following and use links.
Here is a list of common ways to generate paid traffic:
- Google PPC ads
- Microsoft (Bing) ads (more affordable than Google ads)
- YouTube ads
- Facebook ads (these are difficult since accounts often get banned for one reason or another)
- Solo ads (these are never a good idea in my opinion since the traffic tends to be poor quality and expensive, plus you do not know where it is coming from)
- Influencers and any other form of paying someone else who has a large following to promote your affiliate links for you.
The truth is that there are very many ways to go about affiliate marketing, however, most people do not succeed with it.
Challenging Aspects
While the process is quite simple, the marketing aspect is what many find to be challenging.
Most people just don’t do things properly; they are mislead or try to learn everything through YouTube videos and a big mistake they tend to make is looking for easy, fast ways to make money.
Scammers are well aware of this and they exploit it all the time, selling people rubbish programs that newbies think are amazing and will make them a load of money in a short time.
Affiliate marketing is a real busines that works but for that very reason, it doesn’t get you rich quick. Real businesses take time and the development of skills along the way, Oh, and a Lot of Work!
The good news is though, working on an online business can be enjoyable and fulfilling, especially if you are working on a niche website that helps people.
A niche website should be a site in a niche that you yourself are passionate about.
Or if your main focus is on YouTube, this can also be enjoyable and fun.
But affiliate marketing isn’t about a cop out for those who don’t want to work.
This is another problem. Many people see the things they need to do in order to be a success but they won’t take action.
Some of this is down to laziness and some of it could also be a lack of self-conficence, doubting that they can really do it and procrastinating, still hoping to find a push-button way to money.
Anyone who is serious and is prepared to do what is required, should invest in proper training. They should avoid getting done-for-you systems and get-rich-quick schemes and all that nonsense.
With the right training and resources available, anyone who wants to do it, can become successful at affiliate marketing.
Where to Learn Basic to Advanced Affiliate Marketing
I was someone who was checking out all these hyped up programs that I believed could help me make fast money and become rich.
It was a mistake and I lost so much money in the process. It was also highly frustrating and so many things just didn’t turn out how I thought they would.
It wasn’t until I discovered Wealthy Affiliate that I finally learned how to do things properly. It taught me how to create niche websites in any interest of my choice. It also provided all the tools and resources I needed such as:
- 2 lengthy, in-depth training courses (featuring text and video) with action points after each lesson
- Expert help available 24/7
- A lively, friendly and supportive community of like minded people
- Technical support (a dedicated team I reached out to several times and always got speedy solutions from)
- A keyword research tool, Jaaxy, created by experts in SEO and all things keyword related
- Live webinars and training tuturals created by experienced members
- Hosting for my websites
- A personal WA blog that can be used to update members on how you and your business are getting on, etc.
The Wealthy Affiliate formula is by far the best I’ve seen so far in my attempts to figure out how to build a successful online business in affiliate marketing.
I hope this post has enabled you to learn the affiliate marketing basics if you are a beginner and given you some ideas of where to go from here.
Let me know if you need anything clarified further. There is a comment section below and it would be great to hear from you.