Affiliate Marketing

How to nail affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is selling other people’s products online. Products that you can sell through affiliate marketing can be found in affiliate programs such as Clickbank and CJ Affiliate and many others. Just about any product can be sold online.

When you sell vendors’ products, you get paid a commission which varies depending on the product and the program you are selling through. Affiliates can be anyone from individuals to companies, and introduce their website visitors to vendors through links, banner ads, blog posts etc.

Affiliate marketing allows you to set up an online business with little overheads unlike bricks and mortar businesses. With low overheads it provides a better return on your investment and as income is performance based, returns are dependent on how much you put into the online business.

Income

Income from affiliate marketing is paid when your sales reach a certain amount, sometimes $50.00 or $100.00. Payment maybe by cheque, PayPal, direct deposit or some other payment avenue. Also the timing of payments vary from a couple of weeks to months, this allows for cancelled orders or returned orders.

How much you earn depends on the affiliate program, or product you are promoting. Amazon affiliates receive a small percentage of their sale, where other affiliate products provide commissions of 30% or more.

What is required for affiliate marketing?

To start an affiliate website, you require a hosted website. A free website is not suitable for affiliate marketing for several reasons, usually free websites don’t allow affiliate links on their sites. Also free sites are not yours and you have little or no say in when or where they host your site.

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Once you have your hosted website and determine which niche or subject you wish to promote, you setup your website and start writing useful content that is of value to your visitors. Most web hosting companies have tools and software to get your web site up and running very easily. WordPress is available on all the popular web hosting sites, and is usually a couple of clicks get your website setup.

Affiliate marketing programs

Once your web site is online, you need to find products to promote. Affiliate products can be found at affiliate programs such as Clickbank, ShareASale, CJ affiliate and many more. Products you use can also be affiliate products to promote. Such as your domain register, web host, software you use and anything else you can think of.

When you find a product you wish to promote, you will require a unique affiliate code to link your affiliate ID to the product, which your affiliate program or network will provide. You then insert your unique affiliate link into your blog or advertising. This unique link will enable your sales to be tracked and your payments to be made.

What does it cost to join an affiliate program?

Joining an affiliate program doesn’t cost anything. Costs involved with affiliate marketing depends on how you promote your products. Using a blog post to promote your products cost nothing more than your web site running costs, whereas advertising or email marketing costs the current rates.

Check out my post on how to make a favicon for your website HERE

Do I need qualifications to become an affiliate marketer?

No, you don’t need any formal qualifications, however marketing skills come in very handy. If your marketing skills are not the best, you can get some great tips and help on YouTube to develop your marketing skills.

Can you be an affiliate marketer without a website?

You can become an affiliate marketer without a web site, however it is a very slow method of affiliate marketing and may not produce the desired results, lots of sales!

With your own web site you have plenty of control over how well you promote your affiliate products.

What are the best niches to promote?

The affiliate categories that usually bring in the most income are

Health and fitness/weight loss
Self-improvement
Wealth building
Dating and relationship
Pets
Beauty
fashion

There are thousands of products in these categories which anyone can promote.

What are the best affiliate products to sell?

The best products to promote are the ones you use and can recommend. However there are products that are trending now such as drones, virtual reality, phone accessories, home automation and wearable devices.

Many affiliate marketers promote products they don’t use, but if you are in for the long term, it is much easier to promote products you like, and this will show through your marketing techniques.

Digital products are easy to sell online as they can be distributed online. Physical products require storage and inventory, however with affiliate marketing these are usually taken care of for you.

How much time is required for affiliate marketing?

The time you put into your affiliate marketing business will show in the results you achieve.

To start with it will take many hours of work that may not show any or little return. The beginning will require time to setup your web site, decide on your niche, produce blog content that will be of value to your visitors and assemble the products you wish to promote.

Many people give up before they see any results from their affiliate web site as they are chasing fast returns. Traditionally most affiliate marketers won’t see a return on their time and money for around 6 months. After 12 months they usually have started to get some sales and after another 12 months they are getting a reasonable return on their investment.

Passive Income

It is important to realize that it takes a time to achieve a passive source of income. Passive income is not the easy source of income many believe it is. To reach a level of passive income, you must either invest money or time.

Affiliate marketing takes many hours of unpaid work to start, but once your web site starts to produce an income, you may be able to settle back and enjoy the fruits of your labour for years to come. If your affiliate products are stable products that don’t change on a regular basis, you can look forward to a passive income. Products that change seasonally or yearly as well as tech products that are always getting updated require constant input to keep your web site and links up to date.

Is affiliate marketing worthwhile?

Definitely!

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest online businesses to run. Products are available that you don’t have to store or worry about holding in storage.

Overheads are low and returns can be impressive.

The hardest part of affiliate marketing is in taking action. Nothing happens without action. Many worry about getting all their ducks in a row before starting, this is usually an excuse.

Get started, you will probably make mistakes (these are actual real world lessons), you will have a steep learning curve if you’re like me and not very good with computers. However you are being constructive and producing content that others can use and learn from plus help others solve a problem with your product or content.

If you have gotten this far, YA, I hope this post has been of help to you.

Thanks