Affiliate Marketing How To's
Are you looking to grow a passive income online? Perhaps you know someone who earns money online through an affiliate marketing business model.
Affiliate marketing is online advertising in which an individual (called an “affiliate”) promotes another company’s products. The affiliate publishes content on his website with links that take people to the retailer’s site. The affiliate gets paid when someone buys the product through the link.
Affiliate marketing offers many benefits for someone who wants to grow a business but doesn’t have or doesn’t want to invest a lot of money upfront. Maybe you’re only interested in working part-time or supplementing income from another job. Affiliate marketing is one way to earn income without investing money.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Investopedia describes affiliate marketing as:
An advertising model in which a company compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third-party publishers are affiliates, and the commission fee incentivizes them to find ways to promote the company.
Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of internet marketing. It was first used by Amazon.com back in 1995. Today, thousands of companies, including Amazon, use affiliate marketing to promote their products and services.
While affiliate marketing has changed since its inception, it is the same transaction. Amazon or another online retailer offers a commission in return for traffic to their website and products. This commission can be paid as a percentage of the total sale, or there can be a set fee earned for each purchase. While the majority of affiliate marketing transactions pay third-party publishers for completed sales, there are a few who will pay for leads or clicks.
Third-party publishers have several names for what they do. You may recognize some of these:
- Publishers
- Influencers
- Associates
- Partners
- Affiliates
Why Do Retailers Advertise through Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is one of the cheapest ways for retailers to advertise. There is no upfront fee for the advertisement. Publishers usually have to create the content themselves. The retailers only pay out after the item has shipped to the customer.
Retailers choose the percentage or flat fee upfront to know the cost of advertising their product. It’s likely that the same products will be advertised in other ways, but third-party publishers can often reach markets that the retailer can’t. This is especially true for niche products or services.
Why Should I Do It?
There are several reasons why you should use affiliate marketing.
1. It is an effective way to make money online.
Even if you’ve never earned money on the internet in the past, you can easily get started for a minimal cost. Most affiliate marketing is done through direct links from your content to the product or group of products being sold. This isn’t just through written content. It can also be through image, video, or audio content. Technology allows publishers to add links within videos, and audio content, like podcasts, often verbally directing listeners to specific URLs. All of these are affiliate links.
2. You can market other people’s products without any upfront costs.
You can start affiliate marketing for very little cost. To start, all you need is access to the internet, a method of creating and disseminating content, and at least one company that will partner with you as an affiliate.
Unlike many other business models, affiliate marketing doesn’t require you to buy into the company. You don’t need to buy a beginner’s kit, inventory, or pay a fee for the rights to sell products. Those costs don’t apply.
There are fees to create a website, but when starting, you can have a simple DIY website. You’ll need to pay a fee for your website domain, monthly or yearly software for the website (although there is basic free website software), and content creation. If you are creating your own content, then your upfront cost is your time.
3. You gain access to a large number of potential customers.
When starting with affiliate marketing, there are many free channels to promote your website. You can start, for instance, by building an audience on a social media site. As your audience grows, you gain access to potential customers interested in what you’re promoting.
If you’re a celebrity, you can market to all of your fans and followers. If you’re a regular Joe or Josephine, you will have to start from scratch. Once you start selling, you can invest in paid channels which allow you to build your audience much more quickly.
4. It provides you with a platform to build relationships with other businesses.
You may find that some businesses aren’t interested in working with you when you first start out. Some companies will only work with established affiliate marketers who have proven themselves. They may require you to have a minimum number of followers on a specific channel.
For example, a retailer is only interested in publishers with 50,000 followers on TikTok. They want to break into a niche market on TikTok. In that situation, only influencers with the right audience that’s the right size on TikTok will work for this promotion.
You will find high-quality businesses that you can work with from the start. As you learn more about affiliate marketing, you will find new retailers to partner with. You will also build relationships with related businesses willing to place your links on their site if you reciprocate.
5. It helps you earn passive income.
Affiliate marketing is different than many businesses because you earn a passive income. While you do need to post content and promote it regularly, once your content is up, it will generate a passive income. Suppose your niche is an evergreen niche, one that has customers year-round or customers repeat purchases periodically. In that case, your online content will continue to earn money without needing your constant attention.
Since you’re selling other people’s products, your job is done once a customer clicks the link and lands on the product page. Taking care of the order is the job of the retailer.
How Does It Work?
Affiliate marketing connects merchants (or retailers) who offer products or services to affiliates (or marketers). These affiliates then promote those products or services through various channels such as social media, email, and search engines.
Affiliate marketing was traditionally implemented through text website content with active links to specific products. With the development of mobile, video, and audio technology, other types of content have become more popular. Mobile apps, videos with embedded links, links from images, and sales through social media stores have built a more complex marketplace for affiliate marketers.
The Basics Of Making Money As An Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online. All you need to start making money is an internet connection and some knowledge of building a website and email list.
Getting started in affiliate marketing is easy. You need a website or app to host your links, an audience, and an email list. The email list works best if you build it on your own, but if you want to develop it rapidly, you may need to use some paid services. Most email lists are generated from a landing page, video, or app. To get someone’s email, you have to offer them something in return, like free content or free membership.
With emails that engage your audience, you will generate sales and commissions.
You can also build an audience through texting. Texts usually remind people to look at your latest email or landing page.
How To Start A Successful Affiliate Business
Start by educating yourself if you’re ready to learn more about affiliate marketing, how it works, and researching companies and products to sell. Dig through the information about companies, products, and what is trending. Find out which products excite you.
Affiliate marketing works best when you focus on what you need to do and can devote time to building your business. Like any business, there is a learning curve for affiliate marketing. Some lessons are only learned through experience. Be realistic about how much time you have to start your affiliate business. You can start small, take your time, or dive fully into it from the get-go.
As an affiliate marketer, you will reap what you sow. The more time you can invest in your affiliate business, the more quickly your business will achieve success and grow.
By Darryl Sykes CEO of Synture.com
