Introduction
Affiliate marketing: This happens when one promotes a product owned by another individual or company and earns money out of the sale. Usually the revenue is shared and yours mainly qualify as a commission. In other words, affiliate marketing is a type of business where one earns by generating sales(CPS), leads or actions(CPA).
CPS (Cost per Sale) – when you generate a sale out of a promoted product, then this is Cost per Sale.
CPA (Cost per Action / Cost per Acquisition) – this happens when you generate leads or actions when you promote a product.
CPA is a much easier approach for any beginner since it doesn’t demand too much work and or knowledge. In most cases you are only required to drive traffic to a landing page. Mainly the action is usually to fill out a form, download a book, make a phone call, download an app, share a link etc. The good thing is the person doesn’t have to pay anything so that you can get paid. Therefore, all you need to do is drive traffic which converts to actions that make you get paid e.g. $1 or 2 per lead.
Isn’t this wonderful?
How and where do you Start Affiliate Marketing?
Know and Understand your Niche
Truth be told, you cannot do everything, you will end up doing nothing! What is your line? Where do you swim best? What are you knowledgeable about? What would you rather spend your time doing? Let these clear cut questions help you to know your direction. Once you know what you want it will be easier to go to the next step. For example, a software engineer would best choose a niche close to what he is doing and actually go for affiliate programs that fit his line. A web developer would easily enroll as an affiliate in a hosting company making it easier for him to promote their products based on services he is offering. A photographer would most probably become an amazon affiliate to promote latest cameras in his social media or website.
Hunt for an Affiliate Program to Promote
Once you know your niche direction, it’s time to look for an affiliate program that best fits your niche. There are many genuine, true and tested affiliate programs to enroll. For example, amazon, maxbounty, CJ Affiliate, ShareASale, Rakuten, ClickBank, LiveChat among others. Some of these programs will not approve you immediately; you will need to be patient. Others will approve you quite fast. The moment you get approved, check out the tools for each program that you need in order to promote their product. Usually, you will get affiliate links to banners linking to products on their main websites or landing pages. Use those tools for the next step.
Start Promoting the Affiliate Products
There are many ways you can use to promote the products you have registered to.
Start a blog
This is one of the best ways to promote affiliate products. If you like writing and creating content, then one of the best ways to present this content is using a blog. Your content remains organized, archived and easily retrievable. The blog also creates another level of authority for the fact that you own it and you can create your own customer base making it a powerful tool. The aim of having a blog is to create convincing content about the product you are promoting which is able to convert any driven traffic to leads or sales. One of the best CMS (content management system) to start out your blog with is a WordPress platform. You can also do so on blogger. You can actually start with a free blog website on both platforms then graduate to hosting it on your own space on your domain name which gives it more authority and branding.
Social Media
Another great way to promote an affiliate product is using social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc. Social media is one of the most powerful tools for generating traffic and driving it to a landing page of a promo. You do not have to own a website to become an affiliate marketer. All you need to do is use the tools provided to link back to the landing page and you are done. Some quick tip: build an email list or phone list while you promote these products for an affiliate product may be there today and tomorrow is gone with your hard earned traffic. The best way to drive traffic to your product page is to boldly promote through content creation inform of videos or articles as a publisher.
Mobile Marketing
If you are a little bit of a techie person and you know more of programming, you can build free android or IOS apps which you can include the links to the affiliate products. Upload these apps on google play or apple store or simply share them on your website or social media for people to download them. You can make quite a lot of money from affiliate links that you include in these apps.
How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing
Most affiliate programs make it very clear how they will share their revenue. This usually depends on whether the affiliate marketing module is a Cost per Sale(CPS) or Cost per Action (CPA). Some CPA methods will give you direct one time commission others will be recurring commission depending on the product promoted. Recurring commission works for enrolled programs where a lead product has an expiry and has to be renewed eg. Yearly, monthly etc. Some programs like google pay per views. E.g. youtube pays $100 per 20000 views. Usually you tube pays per thousand impressions (CPM) which is about $7.6. Therefore, every 1000 views you will get $7.6 and $0.0076 per view.
How to Grow and up the game of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most assured ways of making money online. It grows month to month year to year and it can grow from 10s to 100 to 1000s to 5 and 6 figure per month depending on work that you put on it. One best way to keep the pace and growth is to remain consistent on content creation and enrolling on best affiliate marketing programs that converts to great payouts. Do not just jump into an affiliate program because you have come across it. Take your time to choose and promote only what you are passionate about, what is on demand and what will convert high profits . You will not go wrong. Another best way of upping your game is to come up with your own affiliate product which you can offer other publishers to promote. There are many great and successful publishers who are living large by keeping disciplined and working hard to promote other people’s affiliate products and they are great testimonies.
Conclusion
Is Affiliate Marketing Worth your Time?
My honest answer is, yes! Affiliate products are genuine products which if promoted generate big revenue for the owners who are more than happy to share a commission for work well done by publishers. This marketing method is here to stay and will keep growing year after year following the swift change on technology. It will remain the top most method of making money online and there are no regrets in starting now! You are also never too late. It is however important to have a mentor who will help you go up the ladder quicker than when you try to find your way up alone and the hard way.