Affiliate marketing : Worth the hype?

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

The concept of affiliate marketing has been around for a while, but it’s only recently that it’s started to gain traction in mainstream media. When you think about online marketing, you probably don’t at once think “affiliate marketing.” But many big brands are jumping on board and using this type of marketing strategy to boost their popularity.

In fact, one of the biggest companies in North America is now an affiliate marketer: Amazon. The e-commerce giant has hired a lot of affiliates by offering them special programs where they can earn money from other businesses. While there are no guarantees when it comes to making money as an affiliate marketer, if you have a website or blog, then becoming an affiliate marketer could be a great way to make extra income.

In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal , Amazon is currently the world’s largest affiliate marketer. And there are plenty more companies out there like Apple, Starbucks, Aetna, and others who have jumped into the fray.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

When someone buys something through your affiliate link (which we’ll get to in just a minute), you receive a commission. This means that you’re earning commissions off products that people buy without even having to do anything! There are different types of affiliate programs. Some pay per sale, some pay per lead, and some pay based on how much traffic you send to the merchant site.

You should also consider whether you want to promote products on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. These platforms offer tremendous potential for promoting products and increasing sales, but they also come with accomplished drawbacks. For instance, these sites tend to attract a juvenile audience than most traditional websites. Also, you need to keep in mind that once you post a product review, it will seem on your own profile page. So, if you don’t want your friends to see what you bought, you may want to avoid posting reviews on these sites.

How to Become an Affiliate Merchant?

To become an affiliate marketer, all you really need is a computer and access to the Internet. You can start making money right away by signing up at Commission Junction, which offers varied affiliate programs. Once you sign up, you can browse through thousands of merchants and find ones that interest you. Then, you simply create a free account with each company. After that, you can begin promoting their products.

There are two ways to go about doing this. One is to use text links. Text links let visitors to click anywhere on a webpage and take them to another page. They are helpful for linking to explicit pages within a website. but, text links aren’t very effective because they take longer to load. Plus, they’re not mobile friendly.

The second option is to use banner ads. Banner ads are small images that appear on top of webpages. If you have experience creating banners in Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, then you can easily design your own banner ads. But if you don’ t know how to create banners, you can hire someone else to help you.

Types of Affiliate Marketing

One thing to note about affiliate marketing is that it doesn’t necessarily require any technical skills. As long as you have a computer and access to online resources, you can learn how to set up an affiliate program and start making money. There are 3 types of affiliate marketing:

Product-based Affiliate Marketing
Service-based Affiliate Marketing
Lead Generation Affiliate Marketing

Product-Based Affiliate Marketing

This type of affiliate marketing involves selling other people’s products. It ’s one of the oldest forms of affiliate marketing. In fact, Amazon started as an affiliate marketplace. Today, there are many companies out there who sell physical products like books, electronics, and clothing. The best part about this form of affiliate marketing is that sellers only pay affiliates when customers actually purchase items from them.

Service-Based Affiliate Marketing

Services include things like hosting, domain registration, search engine optimization (SEO), and more. With services, you don’ t get commmision until a customer signs up for the service. This means that you could potentially make money even before generating any leads.

If you are a blogger or content writer, there are plenty of freelance writing jobs out there if you know where to look. Create custom landing pages and lead magnet websites to promote your business as an information product author or online course creator. You can get started with what to write, build your audience, and eventually monetize through advertising and affiliate sales.

Lead Generation Affiliate Marketing

This type of affiliate marketing involves generating leads. When a visitor comes across a link to your site, he or she might decide to visit your site after reading some information on your blog. At that point, you earn commissions based on whatever action the visitor decides to take.

You may also want to check out Fiverr, which is one of the biggest providers in digital services and products and can help you make money online as a virtual assistant. Fiver lets people to create gigs on their platform where they can offer a variety of services, such as taking pictures of logos for businesses, taking over tasks on social media, and translating languages. Some people make good money helping out on Fiverr.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

Flexible hours : Unlike traditional jobs, you can work at your own pace.
No office politics : You won’t be dealing with managers or coworkers.
Better lifestyle : You can work from home, so you don’t need to worry about commuting or dress codes.
More freedom : You can choose the projects you want to do and the clients you want to work with.
Higher income potential : According to Business Insider, the median salary for an affiliate marketer in 2016 was $56,000 per year.
Less risk : If you fail, you will lose less money than if you were working for someone else.
Low overhead : You don’t need much capital to start.
Ability to scale quickly : As your traffic grows, so does your income.
No boss breathing down your neck : You have complete control over your schedule.
Fewer taxes : Since you are self independent contractor, you won’t have to pay payroll taxes.

Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

Long learning curve : To succeed in affiliate marketing, it takes time and effort.
Low starting threshold : You need to invest a lot of money to get started.
Lack of transparency : There are many ways to cheat the system.
High competition : It’s hard to stand out among all other affiliates.
Low average commission rates : The average rate is around 10%.
Hard to find high-paying customers : Most advertisers only spend small amounts of money.

How Do Affiliate Marketers make Money?

The payment process varies depending on the program. In general, you can expect to receive payments via PayPal or Amazon Payments.

What Are the Different Types of Affiliate Programs?

There are two types of affiliate programs:

1. Pay Per Sale (PPS) : This is the most popular model. A merchant pays an accomplished amount when a customer buys something through your links.

2. CPA (Cost Per Action) : This is similar to PPS but instead of paying upfront, the advertiser receives payment once a conversion happens.

How to start Afiliate Marketing?

To become an affiliate marketer, there are three main steps:

Find a product to promote
Create a website or blog
Promote the product

> Step 1: Finding a Product

Before you jump into promoting a particular product, you should first figure out what kind of product you want to promote.

You can use different methods to narrow down your search. For example, you could look up keywords related to your niche and see how many results come up. Or you could try using Google Trends to see what topics are trending right now. You can also browse sites like Clickbank, Commission Junction, LinkShare, etc., to see what products are selling well.

Once you know what type of product you want to sell, you’ll need to find a good one.

Here are some things to consider when choosing a product:

Is it easy to promote?
Does it offer a high profit margin?
Will it be profitable even after the initial investment?
Is it a proven product with lots of sales history?
Can I trust the company behind it?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then congratulations! You found a great product that you can promote as an affiliate.

If not, keep looking until you do.

> Step 2: Creating Your Website/Blog

Now that you have chosen a product, it’s time to create a website or blog where you will promote it.

This step is very important because if you don’t have a site, no one will visit your page. So before you start promoting, make sure you have a solid platform for yourself.

It doesn’t matter whether you choose WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, or another platform. What matters is that you have a place where people can go to learn more about you and your business. It’s recommended that you pick a domain name that reflects who you are and what you do. If you run a travel agency, for instance, you might want to register travelagencydomainname. com.

After picking a domain name, you’ll also need to decide which hosting service you want to use. There are plenty of options available, so it’s best to research them all thoroughly. Beginners can use Bluehost.com because they provide free hosting services along with a 30-day money back guarantee. When you sign up, you’ll get a special link that you can share with others. They’ll be able to sign up for their own websites too.

> Step 3: Promote the product

The final step in becoming an affiliate marketer is actually promoting the physical product. There are two ways to do this:

Direct traffic means getting potential customers to click on your affiliate link by posting ads on forums, blogs, social media pages, etc. This method usually takes longer than other methods but it does work.

Social media marketing involves creating content (e.g., videos) and sharing them via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram , Pinterest, YouTube, etc. When you first begin, you may think that direct traffic is the only way to succeed. but, once you build a strong following, you’ll realize that social media marketing works better.

In either case, you should always test different promotional strategies to see what works best for you. You can earn commissions from multiple sources, including Amazon, eBay, Rakuten, ClickBank, ShareASale, CJ Affiliates, Shopify, and many others.

How to choose your Affiliate Niche?

Choosing the right niche is essential to success. The most successful affiliates tend to focus on products that interest them. For example, if you love cooking, you could become an affiliate for a food processor.

But how do you know what interests you ? Here are some things to consider:

• Do you enjoy making something?

• Is there a problem that you solve every day?

• Are there products that you already buy?

• Do you like helping people?

• Do you like working online?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you might be interested in starting an affiliate marketing career.

To Sum Up,

I hope that you enjoyed reading my article about affiliate marketing. I truly believe that it’s one of the easiest businesses to start. All you need is a computer, an internet connection, and a little bit of knowledge. Overall, I think Affiliate marketing is worth the hype if you plan to make a living out of it.

The internet is a great place to make money. It’s also a great place to lose money, and it can be very hard to get started making real cash online. But affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to do so.

I would recommend that you read through the whole post before beginning your journey as an affiliate.

Then, come back here often to check out new articles.

Is affiliate marketing easy? Can we make a sizable amount of income through Affiliate Marketing? Is Affiliate marketing becoming the new norm? How to find the right products/company to affiliate with? Will affiliate marketing help me as well?

I hope I was able to provide some insight into how to choose an effective email marketing software. If there are any questions or comments please feel free to leave them below. Thanks again for reading my article.

Hope this helped!

Have an awesome day!

Like What You're Reading?

SaaSname

Affiliate Marketing : Worth the hype?