Affiliate marketing is not a new thing. It has been the talk of the town ever since people started selling things on the Internet. Everyone wants to try it and earn passive income. In this article, you will learn affiliate marketing for beginners and earn money passively.
Businesses rely hugely on this domain, and people are making millions of dollars each year by just sharing affiliate links.
Want to know the secret sauce? Well, there isn’t a secret sauce. It is all about branding and marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
It is the promotion of a company’s products via unique affiliate links that a company gives to individual marketers. When another person clicks the link and makes a purchase, the affiliate marketers earn compensation. Little by little, it sums up to make huge figures.
Who Can Learn Affiliate Marketing?
The answer is simple- anyone! Yes, anyone can become an affiliate marketer. But the harsh reality is that affiliate marketing is a crowded place. There is tough competition.
Therefore, only those with exceptional marketing skills, high traffic, and patience can earn up to six figures. There are countless success stories and a lot more failure stories as well. It all depends on you and your strategy.
How Does Affiliate Marketing It Work?
Almost every business relies on Affiliates. There are some big names in the market, such as Amazon and Clickbank, that provide affiliate links to individuals. So how do people actually make money by just sharing links and asking other people to make a purchase?
When a potential customer clicks on a link, they essentially store a cookie on their device. This cookie comes with validity, and it helps to identify every individual affiliate marketer.
The cookie lasts for up to 24 hours or more, and if the potential customer buys something within that time period, the affiliate marketer earns compensation for that purchase.
How Much Can You Earn as an Affiliate Marketer?
As mentioned before, the money you make depends on your marketing strategy and your reach. In the beginning, don’t expect to earn millions. But there are people who make up to $50,000 to $100,000 a month.
Next time you buy a book from a blog or purchase a course after watching a YouTube video, it means you helped that person earn some money. Well, it can be you too. You just need the right kickstart.
Some of the richest affiliate marketers are Pat Flynn, Finch Sells, Missy Ward, and the list goes on. They make thousands of dollars each day. It is because they have built a brand of themselves-which is not an easy job.
If you want to become a successful affiliate marketer, follow the following steps, and implement them.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing?
Every journey needs courage and enthusiasm. To become an affiliate marketer, you should follow these steps and learn to make passive income amazingly.
1. Select a Platform to Market the Products
There are countless platforms where you can begin your affiliate marketing journey. Out of them, the best and the most profitable platforms are blogs and Youtube channels. Many people choose other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, forums, Reddit, Quora, Emails, and several other platforms.
Blogging is The Best
A blog is the cheapest and the most profitable way to start this journey. It only needs 30 minutes to set up a blog. If you don’t have a blog, follow these steps-
- Select a domain name
- Choose a hosting plan from websites like Hostinger, Bluehost, etc.
- Optimize your website
- Upload a blog post and include affiliate links.
- Share it with your friends/audience.
- Promote your blog through SEO and social media
YouTube Channel
YouTube channel is another profitable way of including affiliate links and making passive income. Starting a YouTube channel is pretty easy. The time-consuming part is making a video, uploading, and promoting it.
If you already have a channel with ample subscribers, then it is a great way to start your affiliate journey.
If you want to make a choice between a blog and a YouTube channel, you should start with a blog because it is less time-consuming.
Other Platforms
Other platforms, like Instagram, Quora, Facebook, Reddit, etc., are also great, to begin with. You can switch to these platforms anytime later. But first, it is recommended to start a blog as it provides more credibility to you.
Social media handles are a great way of further promotion, especially Quora and Reddit, where people come to get recommendations and answers to their questions.
2. Stick to a Niche
Niche is a particular theme around which your content revolves. It is always recommended to stick to a niche as it-
- Establishes more credibility
- Drives more traffic
It is true that blogging is enormously competitive. To thrive and find success in this field, you have to select the right niche for you. Selecting a niche is crucial, and you should focus on uploading quality content. Some of the most profitable niches are-
- Health
- Technology
- Digital Marketing
- Personal finance, etc.
If you still have a problem finding the right niche, read this article by Neil Patel on finding a profitable niche.
3. Find Affiliate Programs
This step is the main part of the whole process. Without joining affiliate programs, you won’t earn anything. Affiliate programs can be further divided into-
High-volume Affiliate Program
High volume programs deal with high-in-demand products that lure a large audience. It can be low-paying and high-paying as well. Low-paying affiliate programs only pay a few dollars per sale. It is not profitable when it comes to making money, but there is a tendency for more sales.
You can also find high-paying affiliate programs that have a huge demand as well.
Low-volume Affiliate Program
These programs contain niche products that don’t have a very high market demand but come with high payouts. One such example is the Convertkit affiliate program and Amazon affiliate program. Here, you can make a steady income between $700 to $3000 per month.
4. How to Join the Right Affiliate Program?
The market is flooded with thousands of programs. Once you understand the concept of Affiliate marketing for beginners, you can start looking for affiliate programs.
Some don’t pay much, while others are not worth it. So how should you choose the right program? It essentially depends on the following things-
The Niche of Your Blog/Channel/Any Other Social Media Handle
Niche decides which products you are going to promote. For example, if you have a book review blog or channel, you will probably share affiliate links related to them. The same thing goes with a YouTube channel. You should mention affiliate links to those items you will mention in your video.
Expertise
If you are a beginner, you would probably choose the less-paying affiliate programs as they are not so hard to promote. As your expertise broadens, you will look for better-paying programs.
Country
Most programs run internationally. However, a few programs are limited to a certain country. No matter how better paying they are, you can’t grab their benefit.
5. Generate Content that Revolves Around Products You Want to Market
How are you going to promote links and ask your audience to buy those products?
Simply by uploading exceptional content. Exceptional content refers to readable, useful, and profitable content.
Don’t just make a list of amazon products and call it a day. Most people do that every day. Be creative and try to reach that extra mile.
Some people even buy the products and try them before writing a review. Most people don’t want to waste that much money. In that scenario, start with cheap products.
Dive deeper inside your channel or blog niche and find new ways to promote affiliate links.
Also read- 15 Best Affiliate Networks in India in 2021
Generate More Traffic
The greater the traffic, the more people will buy the affiliate products. This is a proven fact. You can’t just write a captivating post and wait for people to discover it and click on the links, not in the beginning, at least. Do possibly everything you can to promote your blog/video.
How to promote a blog?
There are a couple of paid as well as unpaid methods you can use to promote your blog.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is absolutely free, but it requires patience and time as well. The best way to get organic traffic is with the help of SEO. It involves all the strategies that help your blog rank higher on the 1st page of search engines like Google. SEO is very crucial for your website, and it is basically divided into three important parts-
On-page SEO
You can optimize on-page SEO with the help of quality blogs and content on your website.
Off-page SEO
It is the part where other sources, like blogs, social media handles, people, etc., add up to give more credibility to your blog.
Technical SEO
It refers to the technical optimization of your website. For example, the type of hosting, the website speed, the UI/UX, the hassle-free indexing and crawling, etc., makes up the technical SEO.
Out of these three parts, you can take authority of both the technical and on-page SEO, which is enough for a beginner.
6. Paid Traffic
It is when you promote your channel or blog via running advertisements on the internet. Running ads is only favorable if you already have an audience and you want to increase the number.
However, paid PPC(Pay Per Click) ads sometimes cut down profits and can even cause significant losses.
If you are an avid social media user (which most people are), then you can also run paid ads on social media and devour enormous traffic.
On the other side, if you don’t work on organic traffic, you will waste a lot of money on paid traffic, as visitors will stop coming as soon as you stop investing money in ads.
7. Increase Your Email List
Email marketing is not going out of fashion anytime soon. If you want to build a trustworthy audience, invite them to join your email list. A huge email list is also helpful while sharing affiliate links, especially during celebration seasons.
If you show that you care about your audience, they will definitely stay connected with you and even buy the products you will recommend.
8. Reach Out to People to Click on Your Affiliate Links
Now it’s time to understand the psychology of your audience and use it constructively to make them click.
If you are making a video, mention all the affiliate products you are promoting. The same thing goes with blogs. Always mention to your audience that you are using affiliate links. It induces transparency and keeps everything clear between you and your audience.
Here are a few tips to get more clicks on your links-
- Be transparent (as I have mentioned already).
- Don’t seem spammy. There is no need to include unnecessary links that distract the flow of your audience.
- Don’t place links in the very beginning. It is best to place links at the end of paragraphs or in the middle of an article.
- Build trust and use catchy headlines. 80% of people won’t even click on the blog if they don’t find the title juicy enough. Use catchy images of the products.
- If you are making a video, try to use the products in front of your audience. Also, don’t forget to upload the blog format of the article(if you have a website). It will double your chances of making money.
9. Generate Leads and Convert Them into Sales
Affiliate marketing for beginners has two steps-
- People click the link you have mentioned on your website.
- People make a purchase.
However, most people don’t even reach the 2nd step. It means you won’t get any compensation. In the beginning, it would be a hard job. But you know the drill- establish your brand, and everything else will follow.
10. Make Money While You Sleep
Once you become a pro in affiliate marketing for beginners, you can literally make money while you are sleeping. The real hard work is in the beginning. After one year or so, you can brag about your income on social media, and people will get attracted to you like a magnet.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing has been the buzz of the town for so many years. It is projected that, in total, businesses will invest more than $7 billion in affiliate marketing. It brings a huge opportunity for beginners as well as professional affiliate marketers.
On the other hand, it also makes it a highly competitive source of side income. They are just some brutal facts. However, don’t let the facts demotivate you. The competition also gives way to ‘great opportunities’.
If affiliate marketing excites you, don’t delay. Start making your first move, and don’t settle until you make ‘huge’ money.
