How to earn money from affiliate marketing?
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Abdul Wadood
In this blog, I’ll show you the best ways to earn money from affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest and the most popular business model, and there are several reasons for that, such as the location and time freedom it offers.
I know you guys are interested in learning the ways to make money from affiliate marketing. OK, now let’s get into the topic!
Topics to be covered in today’s blog:
What is affiliate marketing?
It is a win for the company with whom you’re affiliated with because they will pay you only if you make a sale.
It is a win for you because most of the affiliate programs are free to join, and you also get a wide range of products that you can choose to promote.
It is a win for the customer because they’re getting the right product.
What are the best affiliate marketing programs to join?
Almost all the major brands in the world have an affiliate program in which one can join.
An essential point to note while joining an affiliate program is to check the commission they offer. The commission varies from companies to companies. You should choose the company that pays you the highest commissions.
Software companies, in general, tend to pay a higher commission than others. Most of the software companies also offer recurring commission, meaning that you will receive a fixed amount of commission every month (the period varies) until the person whom you referred to cancels their plan.
Affiliate programs like Amazon Associates has a wide of products that you can choose to promote, but the downside is that they offer low commissions.
Keeping aside the downside, the upside of promoting products from Amazon is that they have a strong customer base, and people trust the products they sell, which you can use it as an advantage.
How affiliate marketing works?
Once you join an affiliate program, they will provide you with an affiliate link. You can place those links in the places you wish, and if someone purchases products from your merchant through your link, you will earn a commission.
First of all, you should understand that affiliate marketing is all about providing value. Your primary job as an affiliate marketer is to help people make their right decision. For that, you need to address a problem and provide a solution.
Many newbies to date do not understand this concept, and they are spamming their affiliate links. They do not provide any kind of value to the viewers, and as a result, they fail in their business.
When promoting any kind of product, be honest and ask yourself, “Whether will I buy this product?” If yes, then you have correctly promoted your product. If no, then make the necessary changes that are required to make you answer ‘Yes’.
Ok, I hope you have clearly understood the basics of affiliate marketing. Now, let’s dive into the details of promoting the products.
How to promote affiliate products?
Free Traffic
Website, YouTube videos, email marketing, and social media are some of the most popular sources of free traffic.
Sources of Free Traffic
The following are the sources of free traffic.
1. Website
Creating a website is a simple job, and fortunately, we no more have to deal with any coding while designing a website. Nowadays, creating a website is a drag and drop process, and anyone with some amount of computer knowledge can do it.
Some of the costs involved in creating a website include buying a domain name and hosting. I suggest a platform called HostGator, where you can buy hosting and domain name for $2.75/month. HostGator lets you choose a domain name that is free of cost for a year.
Ok!
Many consider writing to be one of the most challenging jobs to do. Yea, being honest, it is a difficult job.
Blogs are all about writing.
To promote an affiliate product, you should write blogs that explain them. As I said before, your blog should be so informative, and if it is so, then there is a good chance for people to buy one of the products that you have linked on your website.
2. YouTube Videos
YouTube videos aren’t as effective as blogs to promote affiliate products. But it isn’t a thing that you should avoid either, because once you have grown and built a strong community, you can bring in a good amount of sales through YouTube.
Similar to other methods, you need to provide value in all the YouTube videos that you upload. Initially, your views and reach will be non-existent, and as a result, your sales will be zero. But once you start growing, the number of viewers viewing your videos will increase, so there is a chance for your sales to increase as well.
Apart from this, you can also use YouTube to earn additional revenue. That revenue can be in the form of sponsorship.
I strongly don’t recommend earning through YouTube ads, though it is one of the most popular ways of making money online. This is because you will not have control over the ads that are displayed on your website. As a result, you might end up promoting the wrong products and advertisements.
3. Email marketing
Email marketing is another huge topic that requires a whole blog to cover.
I will not get into details about email marketing, as it will make this already long blog to be even longer. But I will explain what it is and how it works.
Email marketing is an act of sending emails to potential people to sell or upsell your products, enhance your relationship with the customer, and to send them advertisements.
Building an email list is a time consuming and challenging job, but it’s worth it. It’s a one time job, and the money you make from it is passive.
A big plus of email marketing is that you don’t have to mail your customers individually. You will only need to create a piece of information like a book or course. Once you have done, you need to set up your mail list using an email marketing service like GetResponse, and your email marketing service will take care of the remaining process.
If someone is interested in what you have to offer, they will provide you with their email ID. Then, your email marketing service will automatically send the piece of information, a book or course in this case, to them.
In return, you get their email address, which you can use to sell or advertise your products.
4. Social media
As you all know, social media is one of the places where people spend most of their time.
Social media isn’t that good of a place to promote products directly; however, it can act as an excellent source to drive traffic to your blogs.
I suggest opening an account on platforms such as Facebook, and Instagram, as it can act be a social proof once you start growing.
Paid Traffic
Paid traffic is the traffic that is driven through ads. Though paid traffic is not as effective as free traffic, it can still account for a good number of sales
Moreover, paid traffic becomes a must if you want to grow your business quickly. Apart from this, if you’re going to sell products that are high ticket, then you should run advertisements so that you can convince people to buy the products you promote.
There are various ways to run advertisements, which seem overwhelming, especially if you’re a beginner.
To solve this problem, below, I have listed some of the most popular advertisements with examples.
Types of Advertisements
The following are the types of advertisements.
1. Google search ads
Google search ads are one of the most popular and effective forms of advertisements. It is PPC (pay-per-click), meaning that you will pay for every click that you get. These types of ads appear in the Google search engine when you search for something.
2. Social media ads
Social media ads are the ones that you come across when going through your Instagram and Facebook feed, or when watching a YouTube video. It can be either PPV (pay-per-view) or PPC (pay-per-click), depending on the platform you advertise and the type of ad you choose.
3. Display ads
Display ads are the ones that you come across the most often. They appear to be pretty everywhere in the online. The advertisements that appear on a website are an excellent example of display ads.
I don’t like display ads because they don’t convert well, especially for affiliate marketing. But it can be quite useful if you’re doing some other type of business, for example, real estate, because your brand can reach out to people.
Google search ads, social media ads, and display ads are the ones that suit the affiliate marketing business the most. Aside from this, there are other types of advertisements, such as influencer marketing (promotions that you come across influencers and theme pages on Instagram), sponsored ads (promotions that you hear from YouTubers), and of course, affiliate marketing (you heard it right).
As an affiliate marketer, you’re, in general, advertising the products of the company for whom you’re an affiliate.
If you’re a beginner affiliate marketer, I recommend you stick with free traffic, because running ads can be expensive. If you run ads without proper knowledge, then you might end up losing a lot of money.
I hope that you have understood the ways of promoting the affiliate products.
Is affiliate marketing legit?
OK! Now some might have a question of whether affiliate marketing is legit.
The answer to the question is a big, YES! affiliate marketing is a legit business model, from which there is a potential to make lots of money.
But, affiliate marketing involves lots of hard work, dedication, and patience to succeed. Many fail in affiliate marketing because they don’t treat it like a real business, and they fail to put in their best efforts and dedication.
Some even consider affiliate marketing to be a get rich quick scheme. LOL!
Affiliate marketing is one of the very few businesses that one can start with a low investment. Once you succeed, you can enjoy the location, time, and financial freedom that affiliate marketing offers.
The number of affiliate marketers have increased over the years, but if you correctly do the business, you can be at the top 1% of the competition.
Some say that affiliate marketing is dead, and the business model no longer works. Those who say this are either promoting their courses, or promoting other business models.
Affiliate marketing won’t die unless and until marketing dies, which will pretty much never happen.
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a business model that suits the people who are ready to work hard, smart, be dedicated, and be patient. If you possess all the mentioned qualities, then you’re ideal for affiliate marketing, and one day for sure, you will become successful.
Conclusion
I hope this blog was useful to those who want to start an affiliate marketing business.
As I covered in the blog, there are many affiliate programs out there, and there are a wide range of products that one can choose to promote.
I wish All the Best to all the affiliate marketers.
If you have any doubts regarding affiliate marketing feel free to ask me in the comment section below.
