So you want to be an online marketer, but don’t know how to get started? You’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will give you an overview of what affiliate marketing is and how you can use it to earn money online. We will also give you tips on how to get started as an affiliate marketer.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
In simple terms, affiliate marketing is a type of marketing in which you make a commission (typically in the form of cash or a discount) when someone clicks a link or buys a product that is promoted on your website. The product doesn’t have to exist at all; you just have to know about it and be able to promote it to earn a commission.
There are several different ways to earn money with affiliate marketing. You can become an affiliate for a company that sells products such as travel gear, fitness equipment, cars, and household items. You can also become an affiliate for a company that provides services such as web hosting or SEO (search engine optimization).
You can use affiliate marketing to promote any product or service that you believe in. You simply have to find a suitable niche (small community of people who are interested in your particular subject matter) and build a relationship with them. Once they are aware of your website and affiliate marketing strategy, they will begin to rely on you for information about products and services they might not have heard about before. This will undoubtedly grow your affiliate income.
Why Should You Be An Affiliate Marketer?
There are numerous benefits to promoting products and services on your site using affiliate marketing. Some of the most prominent ones are:
- You can use affiliate marketing to promote any product or service you desire (within reason)
- You don’t need to have a specific product to promote; you can use affiliate marketing for services, too
- You have an engaged audience; people are more likely to buy a product or service if they’ve heard of you or your website
- Affiliate marketing is a trusted and proven way to earn money
- It’s relatively simple to get started
- You can scale your efforts easily as you grow your audience
How Do You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
There are several different ways to make money with affiliate marketing. You can use any of the following methods to earn a commission when a customer clicks a link or makes a purchase after being exposed to your content:
- Product sales.
- CPA (cost per action) marketing, which is when you connect with an advertiser and they pay you when a visitor performs an action such as signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or filling out a form. This could include paying you when someone clicks a link to a product or service on your site, or buys a product that you’ve promoted in earlier posts.
- CPC (cost per click) marketing, which is when an advertiser pays you when someone clicks a keyword or phrase that you’ve bid on in an ad campaign. For example, if you’re running an ad campaign for a lead generation product and you’ve included the keyword “generator,” you’ll be financially compensated when someone clicks the ad and lands on your site.
- PPC (paid per click) marketing, which is similar to CPC marketing but doesn’t require you to build your audience first. With PPC marketing, you can literally ‘grab’ the audience that is interested in your topic and pay them to click on your links.
- Shopping cart apps such as Shopify, Woocommerce, and others. These types of apps let you connect your store account to a third party payment provider, such as Stripe or Dwolla. When a customer makes a purchase within your store, you’ll earn a commission at the end.
- Sale promotions, in which you ask your readers to enter a coupon code or discount during the sale. For example, if you’re running an anniversary sale for a product and you want to incentivize your readers to visit your site, you could entice them with a 15% discount.
- Vending machines; you’ll find several online vending machines such as Swagbucks Gear and Amazon Mechanical Turk that allow you to instantly earn money by taking surveys, uploading photos, or performing other tasks.
- And the list goes on…
How Do You Use Affiliate Marketing On Your Site?
Once you’ve decided that you’d like to try affiliate marketing, the next step is to figure out how you’ll use it on your site. There are several options, so you need to determine which one is the best for your needs.
If you’re just getting started, you might want to consider making your marketing content look more like a blog post. Posts on average earn around $100 per month, with some earning as much as $400 per month. The more you post, the more you’ll earn. If you decide to go this route, try to create a schedule so you can publish new content often. The more you publish, the more you’ll attract potential customers to your site. You can start by using a free tool such as WordPress to create and design your site. Alternatively, you can use a service like Bluehost to get started with a custom domain and affordable hosting.
You might also want to develop a few simple landing pages for promoting product sales. A landing page is a page that you’ll design and build to attract potential customers to engage with you on your site. Typically, these pages will have the following items:
- An introduction to the product or service you’re promoting (e.g., “Learn more about the amazing product XYZ.”)
- A large image or graphic that will be used as a banner or header on the page
- Copy that will be used to describe the product or service
- A list of pricing (if applicable)
- A call to action, such as a button to click or a link to click
You’ll need to test different types of landing pages to see which one is the most effective. Some companies that help business owners with conversion optimization, the practice of improving a web site or app to increase the amount of people who perform a specific action (such as purchasing a product or signing up for a newsletter) use tools such as Google Analytics to track the results of their testing.
Becoming An Affiliate Doesn’t Have To Be Hard
You might be wondering how you’ll be able to find customers for your product or service without losing sleep. Believe it or not, getting started as an affiliate isn’t that difficult. You can use several methods to find potential customers for your product or service including:
- Blogs; you can create a blog around your product or service and use affiliate marketing to promote it. Blogs are a great place to get started because they’re so easy to create and maintain. When a reader clicks a product or service link on your site and buys a product that you’ve recommended, you’ll earn a commission.
- Social media; you can create a hashtag for the product or service you’re promoting and use it on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. When someone clicks the hashtag and makes a purchase, you’ll earn a commission.
- Online forums; you can post on forums such as Reddit to get in front of potential customers who are looking for your product or service. When someone finds your post and decides to click a link or make a purchase after reading your content, you’ll earn a commission.
To find customers for my product, I created a blog about video editing. On this blog, I share how-to guides and tips on editing videos using Adobe Premiere Pro. I also created a YouTube channel and started using Amazon Mechanical Turk to take on online tasks such as reviewing products or creating videos.
By creating a small community of engaged individuals around my product, I’m able to leverage my blog and YouTube channel to gain exposure and eventually acquire customers. Earning money with affiliate marketing is now possible.