Affiliate marketing is a billion-dollar industry these days. It acts as a passive income source and you can make money through it while you are sleeping. It is a quick and affordable method of making money without actually selling a product.
This type of marketing is based on revenue sharing that aims to promote products that lead to an increase in sales. With Affiliate marketing, you can make money at any time, from anywhere.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting someone else products and earning money (commission) whenever a customer buys through your affiliate links.
If you don’t have money to sell your own products, still you can make money by promoting a product that has value in the market. Here you work as a salesperson for a company and help the company enhance its sales. If you do so the company will reward you.
A typical salesperson only sells products from one person. Here the best thing is that an affiliate marketer can work with many companies at a time and earn commissions from all of them. Affiliate marketing proves beneficial for both brands and affiliate marketers.
How does Affiliate Marketing Work?
In this process, there is a relationship between three parties; seller, affiliate marketer, and customer. First, you find a product to promote it. Then you select an affiliate program and sign up for it. After this, you get connected with a merchant. The merchant will provide you a unique link (contains ref in the URL) through which they can track the people who clicked your link. If the person buys that product you will be rewarded a specific amount.
Another interesting point is that when someone clicks an affiliate link, a cookie gets stored on their device. That cookie has an expiration time, If the buyer delays the purchase you still be able to receive your commission. The cookie also helps to track the affiliate links. Merchant can know that the product is referred to the customer by you.
How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketers?
Till now you have understood the concept of affiliate marketing and it’s working. As you have realized that this platform offers you to make unlimited money with no investment. You might be considering starting it, but how to get started? Don’t worry. This process will be easy for you if you follow the below mentioned steps. Let’s explore together.
Step-1: Choose a Platform
There is flexibility in choosing a platform, you can even start working on social media i.e. Instagram, Facebook, etc. All you need to do is place a link, then guide and motivate people to click it. However, it is recommended to build an audience by starting a blog or YouTube channel.
Use Google to understand the process of starting your own blog. Currently, this process is easy and cheap. You need a few dollars per month. You can choose any niche for your blog if it is relevant to the products you want to promote. Once done, adjust affiliate links in your content wisely and improve your website SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for better reach.
You can also start a YouTube channel, it’s completely free. Review different products and add affiliate links in the description. Again, improve your video’s SEO.
Work Ethically:
You need to mention that the link is affiliate both for blogs and YouTube channels. As you are earning money by endorsements, therefore it is necessary to work ethically. Also, you should not mislead visitors by writing something else in the text of affiliate links.
From here onwards we will discuss the methods related to blogs only.
Step-2: Choose Your Niche
To start affiliate marketing, you will face a lot of competition. Therefore, to stand out from the crowd and gain success, choose a specific niche. In the field of clothing, you can narrow down your niche by choosing kid’s clothing.
In this way you will remain focused and good traffic will be received. Your interest also matters in the process. Affiliate websites need consistency and passion. Go for the niche that feels charming to you. With this, you should look for a product that has market demand.
Step-3: Find Affiliate Programs and Join
There are various types of affiliate programs. We can divide them into three categories;
- High paying, low volume affiliate program (Recommended for the business audience)
- Low paying, high volume affiliate program (Recommended for customers)
- High paying, high volume affiliate program (Both)
You can choose one that matches your niche and level of expertise. New affiliate marketers should start with low-paying, high-volume affiliate programs. The Amazon Affiliate Program is an option. You can check out the list of best affiliate programs with different categories and can choose one that fits your needs.
Step-4: Prepare Great Content and Add Links Wisely
Now create high-quality content for your blog where you can fit affiliate links easily. You should understand the art of placing affiliate links. Take help from online sources. Don’t just blindly paste links to your blog. If links are present at the end of the page, you will rarely get a decent number of clicks.
For instance, you can guide your customers about hygiene. Mention its importance and motivate them to buy some products by following your affiliate links. Try to solve the visitor’s problem.
If you are doing reviews, purchase the product and test it. After analyzing that product, mention its benefits and motivate your customer to buy it. Purchasing is not always necessary, you can review technology products that you already have at your home.
Similarly, apply any legal method that leads to increased sales of the merchant.
Step-5: Improve Traffic to Your Affiliate Site
Now is the time to improve traffic for more sales. To do so you can use two methods. The first is improving the SE0 (Search Engine Optimization) of your website. SEO is a method applied to optimize pages to rank them high in Google and other search engines. For this, you must know your target customers. The more knowledge you have about your customers the more you can optimize your website.
Another way is to build an email list. It allows you to communicate with your readers anytime. To build an email list, motivate your customers to subscribe or sign up to your website. Use your creativity in this step like you can offer a free eBook by signing in.
Many people use paid traffic techniques like Pay per click ads. Here you gain traffic quickly but this is not organic traffic. So, it’s not recommended for a newbie.
Step-6: Convert Clicks to Sales
All your efforts will be rewarded if you convert clicks on affiliate links to sales. In affiliate marketing, two types of conversion take place. When someone clicks your affiliate link, you get the first conversion. This is totally in your control, so use various techniques to get that click.
The second conversion is when the visitor buys the product. The visitor is dealing with the merchant website so it is not in your control. Therefore, you should work with a merchant having good conversion rates. Before joining, analyze the income reports and know the average conversion rates of affiliate programs.
Make use of your intuition, if a product looks silly and you would not recommend it to a friend, don’t promote it.
How do Affiliate Marketers get paid?
Being an affiliate marketer, you will get paid in various ways. The good thing is to get a commission, it is not necessary that customers should buy the product.
Three main ways through which affiliate marketers get paid are;
Pay per Sale
You will get paid once the customer buys the product or service. It is the standard form of affiliate marketing.
Pay per Lead
In this method, you need to connect customers to an online store or website. Online shoppers need to be persuaded to sign up for a product trial, subscribing to the newsletter, or downloading files and software.
Pay Per Click
Here the affiliate marketer has the responsibility to increase traffic for an online store or website. Whenever a netizen clicks your affiliate link, that person will reach the merchant website. If you do so, you will get paid. The more clicks you get the more money you receive.
Conclusion
Applying these steps will help you get started with affiliate marketing. In the beginning, you need to work hard, surprisingly the return will be less. With the passage of time, you will earn more money.