What Is Affiliate Marketing? Learn The Basics Of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of best option to make money on internet, but still, there are lots of people who want to make money online does not have idea ‘what is affiliate marketing’.
I used to receive number of emails from different people who wants to earn some extra income online by doing some simple online jobs but very few people say they are ready for hard work but need some big & stable income.
There is no better way than affiliate marketing after Google AdSense to earn big income but that is no so simple like PTC sites or online surveys. You need to get the complete idea of affiliate marketing & you should by ready for to work very hard until you cross $1000 earning from affiliate marketing.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a way of promoting the products & services of other companies & websites on internet. You will earn commission for each & every sale or successful lead.
E.g. you can become an affiliate of Amazon & then promote & advertise any of the product from the Amazon website through a special link known as “affiliate or referral link”.
Whenever any visitor clicks your Amazon affiliate link and buy something from Amazon then you can earn 4% to 15% commission depending on the products he purchases.
There are number of merchants who pays for inquiry or signup too. You can promote such merchants so that whenever they makes an inquiry or signup on the website, you get paid.
It means, if you want to earn money through affiliate marketing then just follow these 4 simple points.
- Find the best affiliate programs.
- Join its affiliate program and receive a unique affiliate link
- Promote the merchant’s product through that affiliate link.
- Collect cash
You can start with an individual affiliate program from the merchant website itself or join an affiliate network where you can promote dozens of big merchants from a single platform.
What Is An Affiliate Marketing Network?
There are thousands of online merchants who has the best products and services but does not have an affiliate program because of number of reasons like:
They have the state of the art software to monitor the activity of affiliate, can handle their account and directly pay to the affiliates on behalf of the merchants. So it's always better to start affiliate marketing with an affiliate marketing network than a single merchant because you have the option of choosing the product and advertiser of your choice.
You can test, analyze & compare the return on investment (ROI) with different merchants & then focus more on the websites which are giving you more returns.
How To Promote An Affiliate Program & When Do You Get Paid?
It’s important to understand the meaning of promotion and marketing here. There are numbers of ways to promote an affiliate product & one of the most widely used ways is through a blog or website.
You can create a blog & then write the reviews or tips related to the products you are promoting. You can insert your affiliate links in the post where you are asking your blog readers to buy the product from the merchant website.
People come to your website, read the tips & reviews you have written, click your affiliate link & then visit the merchant site. You will get the commission every time a blog reader buy something from the merchant site.
But creating a website & writing about the product is not enough. You need the targeted traffic on your website. There are numbers of ways to promote a website like doing SEO, through PPC programs like AdWords, social media promotion, guest blogging, classified sites etc.
Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the most lucrative business on internet because of the advantages it carries. The biggest advantage is you don’t have your own product but still you can make money by selling other merchant’s products.
This is like you are the owner of these products. You don’t need to maintain any stock, no need to worry about the shipment after someone purchases or even don’t need to track your customer lists. Everything is taken care by the merchant. Other advantage is the income potential. You can earn up to 70% commission by selling the products or in some cases you can earn even 90%.
Yes, that is absolutely true. There are even merchants like hosting providers, membership sites which if you sell can earn you lifetime commission till the customer has the membership with the site. That is the gold mine!! What else you want if you setup a promotional campaign and that is giving you automatic income even if you are enjoying a great vacation on a beautiful beach of Goa with your girlfriend.
So don’t get delayed, no more thoughts, create an action plan as provided below.
Create An Action Plan
Join an affiliate program
If you plan to make money through an affiliate marketing then its better you start with one of the best affiliate programs from this list. Join one of them and spend at least 3-4 days understanding everything about the site and the concept.
Once done, write all your interest and hobbies on a paper.
Choose a product
Its better you promote a product which matches your interest. Find the merchants which has those products and services. e.g if you are fitness freak, you can find a product related to fitness, if you are a gadget lover, you can find the mobiles, tablets and other gadgets to promote.
Research the demand
After choosing 2-3 products, find its demands whether its a hot product or not and if people are searching online for this. You can check in AdWords Planner Tool, YouTube, Google Trends etc.
You need to spend more time here because you have to take your decision based on this. After doing the research, choose the one with the highest potential.
Promote the product
There are numbers of better ways, you can use to promote an affiliate marketing product and the easiest one is by creating a review site. A review site is something which is created by a user of the product and providing the review of the product by writing advantages and disadvantages as an experienced user.
If you thought of creating a review site, always buy the product first, use this for sometime and then write the review. Review site is something which gives you the best conversion as this is the last stage a buyer is searching before taking a final decision for purchase.
You can use SEO techniques so that you get the traffic from Google or other search engines. You can also promote through Google AdWords.
Other ways to promote is through social media sites like Facebook advertising, YouTube, Pinterest, article submission sites, guest posting, banners ads on other blogs, classified sites etc.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a business of focus and Patience. Don’t get demotivated if you don’t find the results in the initial phase. Even the biggest gurus made so many mistakes & got failures.
But they learn from the failure, keep working and finally become millionaires. The key to success is accept failures as a next step to success. Who knows out of 100 attempts in affiliate marketing, only 1 attempt can make you earn, you never thought of earning.
- they can’t afford this.
- they don’t have perfect tracking system of sale done through affiliate
- they don’t have time to handle the system and want to outsource the whole process
They have the state of the art software to monitor the activity of affiliate, can handle their account and directly pay to the affiliates on behalf of the merchants. So it's always better to start affiliate marketing with an affiliate marketing network than a single merchant because you have the option of choosing the product and advertiser of your choice.
You can test, analyze & compare the return on investment (ROI) with different merchants & then focus more on the websites which are giving you more returns.
How To Promote An Affiliate Program & When Do You Get Paid?
It’s important to understand the meaning of promotion and marketing here. There are numbers of ways to promote an affiliate product & one of the most widely used ways is through a blog or website.
You can create a blog & then write the reviews or tips related to the products you are promoting. You can insert your affiliate links in the post where you are asking your blog readers to buy the product from the merchant website.
People come to your website, read the tips & reviews you have written, click your affiliate link & then visit the merchant site. You will get the commission every time a blog reader buy something from the merchant site.
But creating a website & writing about the product is not enough. You need the targeted traffic on your website. There are numbers of ways to promote a website like doing SEO, through PPC programs like AdWords, social media promotion, guest blogging, classified sites etc.
Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the most lucrative business on internet because of the advantages it carries. The biggest advantage is you don’t have your own product but still you can make money by selling other merchant’s products.
This is like you are the owner of these products. You don’t need to maintain any stock, no need to worry about the shipment after someone purchases or even don’t need to track your customer lists. Everything is taken care by the merchant. Other advantage is the income potential. You can earn up to 70% commission by selling the products or in some cases you can earn even 90%.
Yes, that is absolutely true. There are even merchants like hosting providers, membership sites which if you sell can earn you lifetime commission till the customer has the membership with the site. That is the gold mine!! What else you want if you setup a promotional campaign and that is giving you automatic income even if you are enjoying a great vacation on a beautiful beach of Goa with your girlfriend.
So don’t get delayed, no more thoughts, create an action plan as provided below.
Create An Action Plan
Join an affiliate program
If you plan to make money through an affiliate marketing then its better you start with one of the best affiliate programs from this list. Join one of them and spend at least 3-4 days understanding everything about the site and the concept.
Once done, write all your interest and hobbies on a paper.
Choose a product
Its better you promote a product which matches your interest. Find the merchants which has those products and services. e.g if you are fitness freak, you can find a product related to fitness, if you are a gadget lover, you can find the mobiles, tablets and other gadgets to promote.
Research the demand
After choosing 2-3 products, find its demands whether its a hot product or not and if people are searching online for this. You can check in AdWords Planner Tool, YouTube, Google Trends etc.
You need to spend more time here because you have to take your decision based on this. After doing the research, choose the one with the highest potential.
Promote the product
There are numbers of better ways, you can use to promote an affiliate marketing product and the easiest one is by creating a review site. A review site is something which is created by a user of the product and providing the review of the product by writing advantages and disadvantages as an experienced user.
If you thought of creating a review site, always buy the product first, use this for sometime and then write the review. Review site is something which gives you the best conversion as this is the last stage a buyer is searching before taking a final decision for purchase.
You can use SEO techniques so that you get the traffic from Google or other search engines. You can also promote through Google AdWords.
Other ways to promote is through social media sites like Facebook advertising, YouTube, Pinterest, article submission sites, guest posting, banners ads on other blogs, classified sites etc.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a business of focus and Patience. Don’t get demotivated if you don’t find the results in the initial phase. Even the biggest gurus made so many mistakes & got failures.
But they learn from the failure, keep working and finally become millionaires. The key to success is accept failures as a next step to success. Who knows out of 100 attempts in affiliate marketing, only 1 attempt can make you earn, you never thought of earning.
