Image credit: Shopify
If you have ever dreamed of making money online you need this article. Affiliate Marketing has helped thousands if not millions of people to make good money over the recent years.
According to PayScale the average affiliate marketer in the US makes around $52,000 a year. This estimation shows that a full-time affiliate marketer can make $104, 000 in just a year. Wow! that is a significant sum of money.
What then, is affiliate marketing? How and where can I start affiliate marking? How much can I earn?
In this article, you are going to learn what affiliate marketing is, how to start earning money by selling people's products, and the required steps you need to make. We will also get you covered with some of the best companies you can sell their product to drive a huge income to yourself.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a system of advertising whereby an affiliate(the third-party publishers) advertises or recommends a company product or service to earn a commission. The affiliate gets paid when a person either signup or buys a product through the link they share. Companies normally pay affiliates per sale and less oftentimes by clicks or impressions. As a business model, it’s highly profitable because the business pays you for every referred sale.
Facts about affiliate marketing
1. It is not quick get-paid money: Don't expect to be paid anytime soon. When you do so you can lose interest in it.
2. No investment is required: You don't need to pay any money to start this marketing system. It is free for anyone interested to start
3. Patient pays the price: Never get discouraged, it will pay if you wait for the right time.
4. Consistent set you above: Never let your hand rest of the work. Always work for the money.
Recommended: How to make money with Facebook
How you make money with affiliate marketing
Every affiliate is provided with a unique link by the company they are promoting their product. You get paid every time a customer or people buys a product with your link. This payment is known as a commission. The commission you earn depends on the product and the company you are promoting.
Some commissions start from 10 to 20% while others might be higher or lower than this. It sometimes depends on the amount of product(whether high or low) or based on the agreement set by the company.
The money you earn will be sent to you through the payment gateway when it reaches the minimum withdrawal level provided by the person or company you are selling for.
Almost all companies have a dashboard for all their merchant where they can calculate or see the money they have earned.
How to start an affiliate marketing program?
If you are a beginner to this money-making strategy, the following are what you need to get started.
Pick a niche
As a beginner, the first thing you need to do is to look for a niche. One niche is okay and it helps you to be an expert in the field in question. A niche helps you to focus on a particular topic instead of struggling to talk about all the niches on the internet.
The reason you need a niche is that if you recommend different products people won't see you as an expert in the field or a person they can trust. Try to build one niche for trust before you decide to add another one(in case the interest arises)
There are many niches out there to choose from. There are food, traveling, business, education and so much niche you can decide to talk about. Frankly speaking, the best niche for you is your passion. If you are passionate about taking a certain topic, stick to it.
The niche you are in will also determine how much you earn. Some niches pay you more than others. Business related niche has the highest commission while the cloth niche has the lowest.
See what the Shopify data says about the top and the low niche in the affiliate marketing system.
Don't panic if what you are passionate about or the one you like is rated low, what pays is the effort you put in and the trust you build with your audience
Choose a platform
There are many available platforms you can use for affiliate marketing. Theoretically, many affiliates use their blog and their youtube channel to reach out to their audience while others use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitter as their main source of advertisement.
Blogging has been the most recommended way to participate in the affiliate marketing program. You easily get good traffic from a search engine like Google than social media platforms. Starting a blog is not a difficult task. You can see this article on how to start a successful blog.
If you don't have a blog or a website, you can use social media as a traffic source for your marking. Like running a blog, social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and other platforms - YouTube, and Quora also work better for you. You can start with any of the social media platforms that work best for you. But note that are both advantages and disadvantages to using these platforms.
Find an affiliate program to join
After you have finalized your affiliate marketing niche and the platform you want to use, now is the time you will look for the best affiliate program to join.
There are hundreds of companies in demand of merchants who would help them to drive traffic to their websites. Most of them offer a variety of niches you can select from while others only focus on a certain niche.
Below are some of the companies you can join
1. Amazon Associate - An eCommerce website that deals with the selling of accessories, clothes, gadgets, books, etc.
2. Bluehost - Bluehost is a web hosting company that focuses on the selling of web hosting and domain names
3. HubSpot - An American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service.
4. Jumia - An eCommerce website.
5. Elementor - Elementor's Affiliate program offers affiliates financial incentives to promote the leading WordPress website builder software.
6. Fiverr - Fiverr is a global online marketplace for freelance services. They pay for any person that joined them
The ones I listed above are to showcase some of these platforms. There are tens or hundreds of these affiliate marketing websites. You can do a Google search to find out more.
Build trust with your audience
The best strategy to earn more money from an affiliate program, you need to build strong trust with the audience. Whether you want to use a blog or social media platform, you need to, first of all, build a solid foundation of trust around your niche Trust plays a big role when it comes to affiliate marking. It helps people to always rely on you for a good product recommendations.
To build good trust, you must always be honest with what you say. It helps people to always believe in what you are telling them. Effective communication is also a strategy you can use. Always try to chat with each of your customers and try to solve any doubts/problems they might have regarding a product you are advertising.
Another instance to build trust is by always directing them to the right place they need to link up with what they want to buy. Always make sure the pictures and videos attached to your product ( if applicable) are the same as the original product pictures.
Write a good content
Good content is a significant way to reach a wider audience. It helps the affiliate marketer to make a good sale. An affiliate must make sure they write about the interest of their visitor and the product they are interested in. For great content, you need to apply the following writing styles.
1. Write about an event related to your niche: Always make sure your content is related to the niche you are building. For example, a sports niche will always focus on everything about sports while the one for food will mostly feature things related to it and vice versa.
2. Write content with a high search volume: To better reach a broader audience you must have to know what that is searching for. Always try to research any of the products you want to write about to know the demand of the people and to know the rate of how they are searching for it online. Google trends is a perfect way to know when and how a certain product is being searched for or bought. Good trends give you insight into how to structure content that attracts people.
3. Write detailed and honest product reviews: A thorough understanding of a product always makes visitors purchase with your affiliate link. Giving your readers only the good side of a product can make them doubt you when they see that what you recommend to them is different from what they want to buy. Never give half reviews that will only benefit you but always try to show the good and the bad side of the product through review.
Make sales with your affiliate link
This is the interesting part of affiliate marketing. Without making use of the affiliate link you won't be able to make money. Make sure you include your affiliate link in every content or review you make about a product.
Each link has to be placed beside the right product. As a blogger, you can use images or buttons to place the link while those that are using YouTube or other social media platforms should place theirs close to the product description.
Summarization
The affiliate marketing program is a type of marking that helps you to earn a commission from any product that is bought through the unique link you are given by your affiliate company.
To do well in the program will require you to either have a blog of your own or run a social media platform. To be successful, the following are what you have to put in place:
- Pick a niche
- Choose a platform
- Find an affiliate program to join
- Build trust with your audience.
- Write a good content
- Make sales with your affiliate link
How much can I earn?
There is no specific amount of money you can from an affiliate marketing program. Approximately, $104, 000 is the average salary of a serious affiliate. You can earn more or lower than this. Your earning rate strongly depends on your effort. Following the right process also makes one earn more.
When are you starting? Let us know.