Is affiliate marketing legit? Here's all you need to know
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Abdul Wadood
If you plan to start affiliate marketing, you will probably want to know whether the business model is legit.
Enquiring about the legitimacy of a business before starting it is a common practice, and there’s nothing wrong with it.
Is affiliate marketing legit?
YES! A big YES!
There are people making millions of dollars from affiliate marketing. Moreover, I myself have made a good amount of money from affiliate marketing.
Nice. Here are the topics to be discussed in this blog.
Introduction to affiliate marketing
First, what is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing where you sell products for a commission. The more products you sell, the more money you make.
Here’s an example of how affiliate marketing works.
Say I have a digital course on web designing. I have launched an affiliate program for affiliates to enroll and promote the course.
When an affiliate joins the program, I’ll provide him the unique affiliate links to promote the product. If someone clicks on the affiliate link and purchases the product, I will pay my affiliate a commission.
As you can see, affiliate marketing is a simple business model through which you can make a lot of money.
Moreover, since affiliate marketing is an online business, it offers time and location freedom — besides financial freedom.
Who doesn’t like freedom?!
Now, here comes the issue. Since affiliate marketing seems simple and highly profitable, many people doubt the legitimacy of affiliate marketing. If you’re among them, I repeat, affiliate marketing is a legitimate business.
Is affiliate marketing a get-rich-quick scheme?
NO! A big NO!
Affiliate marketing is a real business, and it requires hard work, patience, and dedication to achieve success.
Ok. I hope you understood the basics.
How to promote the affiliate products?
As an affiliate marketer, you should have a clear idea about your niche.
Nowadays, as you know, people have high expectations. So, if you want to become successful, you should provide the value that people expect, which is possible only if you know about your niche thoroughly.
Now, coming to the ways to promote affiliate products, there are several ways to do so.
The following are the ways to promote affiliate products.
1. Social media
As you all know, people spend a lot of time on social media. Affiliate marketers should make use of this opportunity to promote their affiliate products.
YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are the some of the best social media platforms to promote affiliate products as they all allow affiliate links. Also, the engagement rates are high on these platforms.
If you get into trending conversations on your niche and show your products to the right people, you can make a lot of money through social media. Ensure that the posts you publish are of high quality.
2. Email marketing
Here are the number of email users worldwide.
As you can see, the numbers are mind-boggling.
Email marketing can be highly effective for businesses, and fortunately, many businesses make use of it.
Setting up an email marketing sales funnel is pretty easy. You can sign up for an email marketing software like GetResponse, and start building your funnel.
Once you finish setting up the funnel, you should collect the email addresses of people. But, how to do so?
Good question!
There are various ways through which you can collect people’s email addresses. Among them, one of the most effective ways is to offer something for free.
For instance, you can offer people a free online course in return for their email addresses. You can promote this free course through your blogs, YouTube channel, Facebook page, etc. Since you provide the course for free, many people will provide their email addresses to enroll.
Once they enroll, GetResponse will automatically mail them the course. You can include the affiliate links on the course to make affiliate sales.
Ok. I hope the concept is clear.
If some people didn’t purchase the products you promoted in the course, you can use the following two methods to make people buy the product.
In the first method, you promote the affiliate link directly to people through email. Here’s an example.
In my opinion, this method isn’t as effective compared to the second method.
In the second method, you promote the affiliate link by offering something free to the people. For example, you can provide a free e-book that includes affiliate links. I find this method to be more effective than the first one because of the higher value provided to the people.
Sure, it can be pretty hard to create free products, but it’s a one-time task, and it’s worth it!
I hope you have clearly understood the concept of email marketing.
3. Paid advertising
If you want to make quick affiliate sales, you can utilize platforms like Google and Facebook to sell your affiliate products.
When you advertise an affiliate product, don’t promote it directly. Instead, advertise through blogs, videos, etc.
If you are wondering why, here’s the answer to that.
Say you’re scrolling through your social media feed. If you suddenly see a product promotion, will you take your card and make a purchase?
Most probably, no. Am I correct?
So, if you want people to make a purchase, you should first provide value to them. You can do so by driving them to channels like your blogs, videos, etc.
If your content is valuable and beneficial, there’s a high chance for the people to purchase the affiliate product you promote.
4. Website
The blogs on your website are one of the best ways to sell an affiliate product.
Thankfully, nowadays, you can create a website without coding — unlike a few years back.
With the help of WordPress, you can easily create a website. When creating the website, you should choose a good hosting provider like HostGator to host your website and choose a good domain name.
Once you create the website, you should start publishing high-quality content.
If you want your blogs to rank high on the search results, you should optimize them for SEO. SEO is a long-term digital marketing strategy, and the traffic through SEO is organic.
Do you know?
BrightEdge researched the organic search engine traffic across various industries in 2019. From the research, they came to know that organic search traffic increased by over 53%, overtaking marketing channels like social media.
Bonus tip: You can promote your blogs through sales channels like social media and email marketing. For instance, if you publish a post on your Facebook page about digital marketing, you can include the link to your digital marketing blog in the caption.
Why choose affiliate marketing?
Before concluding this blog, I will quickly explain the reasons to choose affiliate marketing over other businesses.
1. Low investment
You can start affiliate marketing with low investment and make huge profits.
All you need to do the business is a laptop, smartphone, and internet connection.
2. Low risk
Low investment translates into low risk.
As an affiliate marketer, you don’t have to deal with product manufacturing, storing, shipping, etc.
These cost a lot of money, and if something goes wrong, you can end up in a massive loss.
As an affiliate marketer, you only have to promote the products, and there’s pretty much no risk involved in it.
If you don’t like a product, you can join other affiliate programs and promote their product without losing much.
3. Win-win-win business model
Affiliate marketing is a win-win-win business model.
It’s a win for the seller because they will pay the affiliate marketing only if they make a sale.
It’s a win for you as an affiliate because you get to choose a wide range of products to promote. Also, you can make a lot of money.
It’s a win for the customer because they get to use a good product.
Conclusion
Long story short, affiliate marketing is a legit business model.
In affiliate marketing, you partner up with companies to promote their products for a commission. The more products you sell, the higher commission you make.
Affiliate marketing is a passive income business model. But, like all other businesses, it requires hard work, dedication, and patience to achieve success.
I hope I have provided a detailed answer to your question in this blog. If you have any further questions, we will discuss them in the comment section below.
