Are you wondering how to make money with affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative and consistent way of making money online — however, you need to understand the nitty-gritty of this business model if you want to be successful.
With affiliate marketing, you can make money by simply promoting products and services online using personalized links that will be given to you. The most interesting part of this type of online business is that you can earn a passive recurring commission for life.
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What Is Affiliate Marketing
It is safe to say that affiliate marketing is not a new business model — in fact, it is one of the oldest models of business. It is a business model where companies and business owners pay a certain amount of commissions to those who refer their products and services to purchasing customers. This means, you only get paid when someone makes a complete purchase.
Affiliate marketing is the easiest and cheapest way of marketing — since you don’t need to create and sell a product or even take inventory. The only thing required to make money as an affiliate marketer is your unique referrer link. It is very important to note that you need a platform for promoting your links to become successful.
Read also: Affiliate marketing best practices: The Do’s and Don’ts
How to Become an Affiliate Marketer.
To become an affiliate marketer, you need basically two important things. One is the company you want to work with — and then the second which is most important is the platform you want to use for promoting your affiliate links.
There are many companies you can work with and I will introduce you to some of the best later in the post. Once you have seen a company to work with, the next thing is to go ahead and register with the company. Fill up the registration form and sign up. Once that is done, you become one of their affiliates. And you will be given your own unique tracking links for promotions.
Most importantly, before registering, ensure you have a platform. — this could be a blog, website, YouTube channel, or social media account with lots of followers.
NB: Promotional channels are usually required by most affiliate companies if you must be accepted. It is imperative you have a platform like a blog or YouTube channel.
Ways to Earn From Affiliate Marketing
Below are the most recognized ways of earning from your affiliate program.
Pay Per Sale (PPS): In this method of affiliate marketing, you get paid a certain commission a customer makes a complete purchase of the advertiser’s product — without any returns. Once the advertiser marks the purchase as complete without returns, your percentage will be paid to you.
Pay Per Click (PPC): This method allows you to make money online depending on the number of visitors you send to your advertiser’s website.
A purchase is not really necessary in this model of affiliate marketing.
Pay Per Lead (PPL): For a PPL affiliate marketing model, the advertiser only needs you to generate a qualified lead. Leads simply mean a user who completely provides his/her contact info on the advertiser’s website.
Top Affiliate Networks/Programs to Join
To make money from affiliate marketing, you need to join a program or network.
While an affiliate network is a platform that provides you with different types of affiliate offers/advertisers, an affiliate program is basically owned by the advertiser. Below is the list of platforms you can join.
- Amazon Associates: My number one recommendation for starters is Amazon Associates. It is the largest affiliate sales program in the world and offers reasonable commissions. This program deals with products and you can find varieties of products to promote on Amazon with ease.
- ShareASale: ShareASale gives you the opportunity to register with as many affiliate advertisers as you wish. However, you should make sure the advertisers are in your niche. And also promote affiliates that deal with your niche. ShareASale affiliate network offers both products and services to their affiliate.
- CJ Affiliate: Commission Junction or CJ for short has lots of reputable affiliate advertisers you can work with. Just like ShareASale, they give you the opportunity to join different affiliate programs from one platform.
- Shopify: Shopify offers an affiliate program that enables you to promote both products and services to your audience.
- ClickBank: ClickBank is one of the biggest affiliate networks and they offer both products and services in the network. It is easy to join ClickBank, but you need to know how to promote their products and services if you want to really be successful.
How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
Now that you understand a bit about affiliate marketing, let’s now see how to make money with affiliate marketing. You need to understand that affiliate marketing is a passive income source — you can make money even in your sleep. Although it may be competitive, it can also be very rewarding. So, being successful requires some learning curves as you progress. Know what works and what doesn’t as you journey through. Below are some tips to help you become successful.
1. Choose Your Platform
Before you even start your affiliate marketing journey, you need to know the platform that will work best for you. This is the building block of your success in this business model. Choosing the wrong platform will cause you to struggle, while the right platform will make everything smooth and easy.
There are three major platforms you can use to promote your affiliate links, these are social media (eg: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc.), a YouTube channel, or a blog.
2. Choose Your Niche
Remember that you can’t be a jack of all trades — this will make you a master of none. To become successful and make money as an affiliate marketer, you need to be specific about everything you do. Especially your niche. Choosing a niche will help you stay focused and become an authority in that field.
Of course, people want to hear from the experts, not from some random person who is just about everything. There are several niches you can work with in affiliate marketing, for example, food and nutrition, beauty, travel, weight loss, making money, gadgets, automobiles, home improvements, office, kitchenware, etc.
These are all great niches, however, know what you are comfortable with before making your conclusion.
3. Create Quality Content
Affiliate marketing enables you to make money online by referring purchasing customers to advertisers’ websites.
As stated earlier, you can use your social media or YouTube channel to promote your affiliate links. However, the most effective and efficient way of promoting affiliate links is through your own blog.
Once you have a platform, the next thing to do is to create quality content. Remember, quality content is key. Always create content that resonates with your audience, engages, and also educates them.
If you are using a blog, ensure to publish high-quality content that attracts and engages visitors and also motivates them to continue to the product’s website to complete their purchase.
As an affiliate blogger, it is important you create a mix of both informational and promotional content this is the key to getting great results.
It is a best practice to create about 70% informational content and 30% affiliate marketing content. This will help you build content that has authority and can drive more traffic in the long term. Most importantly, make your content evergreen.
4. Join The Right Affiliate
You don’t want to be caught in the middle, — either promoting products and services that do not work, or not getting paid after your hard work. This is why it is important you join the right affiliate network or program. I have listed some of the best at the beginning of the post. Do well to check them out. If you want something else, ensure you research before signing up.
Remember, if you promote a product and people purchase it and are not happy with the end result, that will leave a negative impact on your blog and other products you share. And this will impact your credibility as well.
5. Choose Products That Resonate With Your Audience
It would be a huge mistake to promote everything that you see on the advertiser’s website, for instance, Amazon. You only have to focus on the products that will interest your audience. This will help you create more time for the product review and also focus deeply on them, by doing a thorough review that will prompt your audience to take action.
6. Be Patient
Every business needs patience and time to grow. When you start your affiliate marketing journey, don’t see it as a get-rich-quick scheme, — else it won’t work and you will quit easily. Understand that it needs time, and be patient with yourself.
While you are being patient, try to continue providing quality content to your audience, and most importantly ensure you are making progress. Also, try to acquire more knowledge on the business, ask questions, find out what’s working and what’s not and implement as you grow.
Attend webinars, affiliate marketing events, and seminars, and try to join an affiliate marketing forum or online communities to meet new people. And also make your own contribution to those groups/communities. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make recurring and passive income online, but you need patience if you must succeed with it.
7. Find Products that are in Demand
To make the most from your affiliate marketing links, and increase your commission, you need to promote products that are in high demand. To do you you need to do in-depth research. Use social media, forums, blogs, and search engines to find products that your audience is looking for. You need to spend time to find these products, know how they work, and their pro and cons, and also put in good work when doing your review. Most importantly, don’t be biased about it.
8. Stay Up-to-Date
To make passive and recurring income with affiliate marketing, you need to always publish evergreen content. However, there are times your content will be outdated due to an upgrade or update in the product or services you are promoting.
If you don’t take care of this, it might cost you a potential commission. So, always ensure your content are up-to-date. That’s not all, also do well, and stay up-to-date with your advertisers, affiliate network, or affiliate program. You don’t want to miss out on an important update from your affiliate networks/programs.
9. Work on Increasing Traffic
Traffic is a vital aspect of making money online. Without traffic, you will struggle to make a penny online. However, it is important to note that the quality of your traffic also contributes a great deal. Hence you should always work on generating targeted quality traffic, especially from tier-one countries.
Three main ways of generating traffic are organic, social, and paid traffic. While the organic method can be targeted, the social may not be in most cases. This is why it is important to pay attention to where and how your share your content links.
You can use resources like Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Reddit, and other social media platforms and forums to drive traffic to your blog.
10. Optimize Your Affiliate Links
Optimizing your affiliate links will help you increase sales. And as you already know, the affiliate links are how you make your commissions, — so, it is important you optimize them and make it easy for readers to click through to the advertiser’s product.
The way you place your links on your blog post matters. Always try to place the links in areas where it is easy for your reader to click without obstructions. And also, do not make your posts all about links, where you just place your links everywhere in your post. This will bore your readers.
Other ways to increase your link click-through rate are by using banners, and email marketing strategies.
Read also: Jumia and Konga affiliate Programs Review
11. Use Tools
Every successful blogger knows the importance of blogging tools. While some tools help you create rich content, and others help you write faster, — there are some that will help you increase traffic, generate better thumbnails, build an email list, and even share your content across social media.
As an affiliate marketer, you will surely have competitors in your niche. So, you need tools that will help you conduct both market and competitor research. You also need SEO tools if you want to generate content that will rank on the first pages of search engines. These are the content that will help drive targeted traffic to your content.
Conclusion
Making money with affiliate marketing shouldn’t be rocket science. The process is very simple yet most people make it look difficult. The most important thing is to know who you are, your capabilities and what you are comfortable doing.
While some people use video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, others love using blogs and websites. Once this is taken care of, the next thing to do is find out who you want to reach out to, and what they would love to see.
All of these are really simple, — if you follow the steps I have outlined here, your affiliate marketing journey will be easy, simple, and smooth.
Finally, don’t forget to put in the work, and always be patient with yourself. Remember, it’s a journey and not a race. You will arrive there successfully if you are patient and hardworking.
