Last Updated on November 28, 2022 by Chimezie Chidi
How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
One of the best ways to make money online is Affiliate marketing, and I will show you how to do this in focused and straightforward steps.
Affiliate marketing is popularly called Performance-based marketing, which means earning huge rewards would depend on the amount of effort, passion, patience, passion, and knowledge of how it all works.
We cannot, of course, teach you the kind of effort required, but we can provide you with tips, tricks, and secrets to set up your platform towards amassing substantial rewards.
And this is what we will do within this article.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing simply means promoting someone’s product on your platform in exchange for a reward which could either be a percentage of the sales or a fixed fee. Neil Patel calls it a revenue-sharing business platform. This is because, when you have a product and wish to reach more people, you can get in touch with promoters who will help you do this in exchange for some financial incentive.
Also, as a promoter, you can promote any kind of product you like in exchange for some rewards.
According to digitalnomadwannabe, affiliate marketing is all about making passive income and helping people in such a way that it is a win/win situation for both you and your readers.
The 4-party system
Affiliate marketing is made up of 4 different parties which include, the merchant, network, publisher and the customer. The merchant or product creator owns the product; they can be equally called the seller, retailer, vendor or even brand. The publisher or promoter or affiliate will place these products on their website, digital billboards or social media platform in a bid to reach more customers.
The network is merely the platform that connects the merchant to promoters. The consumer or customer is the endpoint of the circle but equally the most important. Without this party, there will be no commissions or revenues to hand out to other parties.
How does Affiliate Marketing Work?
So basically, you already know the parties involved, but have no idea how they connect. Here is how that happens, using a case scenario:
Mr. X owns a blog which happens to have a lot of traffic and would like to earn a bit more from it. He finds a DSLR camera and happens to like it, but would want to promote it to his customers. And he is in luck, the company who produces that camera has an affiliate program. All he needs is signup and request to become an affiliate for that camera. Once approved, he would have affiliate links generated which can be placed on his blog. Now, he can either do a review about the product, do a comparison skit or some sort of manual about using the product. Once he has created this content, he will add his affiliate links to the content.
Any time, a customer sees this content and through it develops an interest in buying that camera, this customer can just click on the link, which will take the customer to the merchant’s website, where the entire deal will be handled. As soon as the purchase comes through Mr. X, the affiliate will receive a certain percentage of money.
Why Affiliate Marketing?
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Potential Full-time Passive income
With Affiliate marketing, once you get your basis, contents and advertising right, you can relieve huge rewards, which will not be a one-time payment deal but a lifetime affair as long as that affiliate program and its links exist. Also, you can make money even while sleeping or away on a trip.
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Flexible Work Schedule
What better way than to create a platform that pays you anytime, any day without requiring that you monitor it or have a rigid work schedule. With a lovely affiliate platform, you can work anytime you like.
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No Face-to-Face selling
We all know that it is never easy to sell something to someone face to face. Sometimes the problem might be your timing. With Affiliate marketing, you would not have to worry about this at all. It is a business model that would have your website or digital space do all the selling for you 24/7.
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No need for prior experience
Affiliate marketing is not a business model that requires you to undergo practical sessions for months to kickstart. Also, you do not need to be a nerd, computer programmer or have a vast knowledge of the internet. However, you do need to learn all about the platform to create effective marketing strategies.
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Marketing for everyone
There are no restrictions to who can make money on this platform. Anyone with passion and dedication can build their own passive income cocoons.
Making Money as an Online Affiliate Marketer
Becoming a successful affiliate marketer requires a few critical steps. Once you understand and apply these steps, you can begin earning lumpy sums.
Step One: Becoming an affiliate
To get into the affiliate marketing scene, you would have to become an affiliate. This probably means you will have to sign-up for an affiliate program.
The affiliate program is the agreement between you and the merchant concerning how their services and products will be promoted, the tracking system and your payment schedule. These programs might require third-party networks such as CJ, Amazon or you might deal directly with the merchant.
However, standard affiliate marketing programs will ensure you receive information on:
- The kind of payment you would get (percentage, flat fee, etc.)
- Cookie duration that exists (this means the number of days after someone clicks on your link that you can still get paid for any sale from that customer)
- The countries you can promote to
- How and when you will be paid
- The kind of platform you can use to make your promotions ( e.g., Blog, social media, email, etc.)
After signing up, you will receive links and resources which allows you to make these promotions. A lot of affiliate links use specific codes which are unique to you so that the program can track the traffics that come from you.
Step Two: Picking the affiliate program
There are a lot of affiliate programs that exist. However, you should be cautious about the platform that would work best for you.
The commission percentage is a factor, but you should also consider, the kind of website or marketing you have, your audience, and how well known is the brand who owns the products.
It is highly recommended that as an affiliate, you select programs that have:
- Have a big commission percentage
- Long cookie duration.’
- Provides products and services to a significant part of your audience
- Offers products from well-recognized brands.
You should know that many affiliate programs might select you, even when you do not have high organic traffic at the moment. However, a quality website is the selection criteria.
Step Three: Pick the right niche
We hear this a lot of times, but this is a critical concept that must not be overlooked. Picture having a readership that is made of up technological enthusiasts and trying to sell travel gear to them.
Eventually, some of your readers might pick your products, but it might not be as high as you would have made if you had decided to promote smartphones and tabs.
Step Four: Review products in your niche
Once you have your niche all figured out, it is time to make reviews about products in them. Remember you should not focus your reviews mainly on products you wish to sell. Use plenty of products and ensure you give honest reviews and narrow your reviews to a specific platform.
Also, note that your articles and videos should really help your viewership find the right products and not merely try to sell something to them.
Step Five: Get the right people to it
It is entirely possible, you already have fantastic traffic to your website or digital space, but a little extra can’t hurt. Moreover, you want the right people to see them.
This means you have to do a lot of advertising and there are many ways to do so even when you are on a budget. According to Niel Patel, email marketing should drive lots of traffic, but you can also use Social media ads to do so.
Therefore, you have to research marketing strategies available to you and begin working your way forward.
Step Six: Educate
Your audience is the central point of your incomes, so you have not just to create reviews or comparisons about products, but go the extra mile and keep your audience engaged.
One lovely way is by using webinars. Webinars are live presentations, that is, they can be videos about you using those products.
One difference between webinars and other video sharing models is that it is a live presentation. Also, your audience can ask you questions about these products.
All you need do is post an advance notice about the day of your webinar on your social media page, and you will be surprised about the traffic or sales that can be generated through it.
Step Seven: More practice
Once you have nailed the first six steps, you will begin seeing affiliate commissions. However, the best way to learn is by tracking your success and learning from the mistakes made as you go on. With lots of practice, you can finetune your online business in a lovely direction.
However, tracking your progress literally means looking at the following key areas:
- Number of clicks on your affiliate links
- Pageviews on the posts
- How many people actually buy after clicking these links
- Income
With a good idea of these areas, you can spot challenging positions and improve on them.
Strategic tips
Accomplishing a successful platform would take a bit of effort. However, some tips should help you as a beginner.
- Use call-to-action on your affiliate links: They can immediately move your visitors towards getting those products after your engaging and interactive content. Take advantage of this.
- Select the right affiliate program: You do not need lots of affiliate programs to earn a lot of money. All you need is the few right ones that are just appropriate for your readers. Therefore, even after ensuring the affiliate programs are specific to your niche, take time to check out other programs, if possible, signup and try them out. A few trials and you can finally select the programs that are excellent for you.
- Keywords are essential: Adverts are great ways to get traffic, but the search engine can also bring lots of this traffic. Take your time to find the right google leads that should bring the large affiliate commissions.
- Consistency is critical: You must invest education and hard work to gain a lot from this program. Therefore, take time to hone your skills and ensure to build a reputable, consistent and reliable network so your readership will never doubt the products you are promoting.
- Transparency: Many affiliate marketers do not tell their readership about their affiliate links. While this is not necessary, it can help build trust in the hearts of your readers.
- Write evergreen contents: Older contents, as well as newer ones, can be valuable. However, not many readers know this. Therefore, you should create contents that are not dated and can be improved from time to time. When you consistently, review older contents, you can improve your search engine rankings.
- Patience is golden: Attaining the desired minimum payout may take some time. However, many platforms offer lifetime payouts. This probably means you may earn lots of funds for old contents as well as your new ones with time. All you need do is focus on building a popular platform and soon you will smile to the bank.
The Bottom line.
Affiliate Marketing is an effective way to make lots of funds on the internet. According to Neil Patel. 99% of marketers use this platform.
However, you will have to make the extra effort to beginning earning huge rewards.
With the steps and instructions in this article, I am sure you can become an expert in no time!
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