Have you been searching for ways to earn money working from home? I bet you have found loads that are actually just jobs or ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes that all turn out to be scams and you might be getting frustrated and getting to the point where you think it isn’t possible to earn any money working from home.
But I want to assure you there are genuine opportunities for you to earn money and it can actually be quite fun too.
The reason I say it can be fun is the fact that I will be showing you how you can start your own online business in a subject that you enjoy, with none of your own products. Regardless of your experience or computer knowledge, you can start your own online business with Affiliate Marketing.
There are other ways to earn money working from home, but there are advantages to someone with little knowledge online to starting an affiliate marketing. It can also mean you get to choose what you actually start your online business in. Affiliate marketing is easy to get started, requires little money to get started and there is some awesome support and training on offer.
In this post, I will describe in detail what Affiliate Marketing is, how you can choose any niche (interest) you have and turn it into a profitable online business with Affiliate Marketing with awesome training and support too.
All you need to ensure it is successful is promise me two things:
Be prepared to invest a lot of time into your business and start thinking like an entrepreneur otherwise it often will end up in failure.
Why Most Fail at Affiliate Marketing?
The reason I say this is this is not a quick thing, you will not make money overnight or even within a couple of weeks with affiliate marketing. There are people out there that are earning 6-figures out of an affiliate marketing business, but they all started in the same place – putting in a lot of time and effort and not getting anything in return straightaway.
So, if you are looking for a quicker way to earning money, then this is not it.
But I would like to add that most products out there that claim to earn you quick money are scams, or you need a lot of money to invest in paid ads to make it work.
I presume, if you are here you are looking for a genuine opportunity to learn and earn online – Affiliate Marketing can offer that, but again know you will need to put the time and effort in and be realistic with the timescales. I didn’t make anything for 6 months, if I had given up at month 5 – I would have said Affiliate Marketing didn’t work, when it was actually my expectations that were wrong.
So, if you are ready to invest in your future and earn the goals you have set, with realistic goals we can carry on with what exactly is affiliate marketing?
What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?
The premise behind affiliate marketing is actually quite simple, it is the timescales that is the often reason why people are put off.
Affiliate Marketing is where you (an affiliate) promote a product or service and receive a commission if someone goes and buys it.
It is a great way for companies to get their products promoted without having to spend millions of dollars in a marketing campaign. It is the model that Amazon used when it first launched as just an online book store and they still use it today. They would give their members a percentage of the price for introducing a new buyer of their books.
Now, when you think of how large Amazon is today and the different products they have on offer in their marketplace, you can start to understand the scope that affiliate marketing allows.
That is why this business model can be fun, as you can start affiliate marketing in any interest, hobby or passion you have as there will be both a customer and an affiliate program available for you to cater for.
Let me give you an example, to make it easier for us to continue. Let’s say your hobby is golf. I know not everyone will be interested in golf, but the premise will work whatever your interests or hobbies are.
When I go onto Amazon and just type golf, there are 300,000 products that are available in that category on which we could promote via an affiliate marketing business just on Amazon. That doesn’t include any other affiliate programs out there. But you notice that I will start with Amazon, as a big factor to this business working is trust. Amazon is trusted the world over, so it is a great starting place for affiliate marketers.
But when starting out with an affiliate marketing business, the biggest obstacle we need to get over is getting trusted by the search engines, this takes time but there are things we can do to help, and the first thing is when you are picking a Niche is not start too broad. The narrow you can get, the better you have of building up traffic and trust sooner.
Picking a Niche
SO, whilst Golf is the example we are using, Golf in general is way too broad. So the next stage would be to narrow that down. Let’s go back to the categories and seeing how we can narrow it down to find our niche and a target audience.
Let’s look into Golf Accessories, this opens up another set of categories in Amazon.
Now, when I think about if my Uncle is a keen golfer. He takes it very seriously and researches heavily before investing in any new item for his golf. That is something else you need to know about your target audience, ready for your new affiliate marketing business.
SO, now I have gone into Golf GPS Units on Amazon. There are 303 items in this niche. That is 303 items I can research on for creating content for a niche affiliate marketing website.
That is what you need to do. Become the Authority in Golf GPS Units. One you have become the authority in that niche, you will be making money via affiliate marketing. It will also allow you to expand in other categories within Golf in general.
At this stage, you will have great traffic coming to your website to understand Golf GPS Units and as you have them regularly coming to your website to find out about these devices – think about this, you will have an audience is very engaged in Golf too. So, at that point if you started branching out into other items in the broader golf accessory category, you can start offering help and advice in other products – such as Range Finders, Scorers, Shoe bag, etc.
That is the scale and the opportunity that a well-executed affiliate marketing business can achieve.
Will you achieve this overnight, no. Will you achieve in this a month, no. You need to plan for the long term.
Things to Consider with Affiliate Marketing
There are a few things to consider when starting out with affiliate marketing, and the most important one is that you need to help the reader and not sell to the reader.
Imagine if we started that Golf GPS Unit niche website and all we did was include 303 reviews of the 303 devices and that was all that was on the website? Then imagine if you landed on that site, and all the reviews were “buy this it is great?” “Don’t buy this one, buy this one instead”
Now imagine, that same website with helpful guides about picking the right Golf GPS Units, what to look out for, how to care for your devices, some interesting posts about golf in general and then some well-executed reviews with helpful insightful information about the devices including pros and cons about them…
Now, which website would you rather land on before making a purchasing decision?
That is the difference between helping people and not selling, you will convert a lot more when you are helping people come to a decision then selling them.
The Customer Purchase Lifecycle
Think about the last time when you searched for something online (when it was a product) were you in a position to make a purchase? Or were you just browsing.
Now, when we are in a store we are not always looking to buy. Where would that be any different online?
You will have people reach your website at different points along the customer purchase lifecycle. Some will just be researching, and some will be in a buying mood. You need to have a collection of posts, videos, etc on your website to cater for whenever they are there. That is how you build up an authority in your niche. Once you have this, you will start building up your trust. Once you have the trust, they will follow your advice more easily and that is when you start converting.
Is Affiliate Marketing Hard Work?
I will be totally honest with you, it can seem like hard work at times. But it is often because we lose sight of our goals because it hasn’t reached our targets yet. That is often because we have unrealistic timescales.
A big factor is time with any online business, the more you can put into it the more we can do to achieve our goals.
If you can put 40 hours into a business a week, you would logically say that would be more successful than someone who can only put 10 hours in right?
But there are other factors to consider, if you are new, most of those 40 hours will be spent learning how to actually do some of the basics, whilst an experienced marketer like myself could get loads done in 10 hours.
Some will only have a couple of hours a week to invest, and this will mean that their expectations and timescales should move accordingly.
I am not telling you this to put you off, I am trying to give you insight into what you can expect if you decide to choose Affiliate Marketing. I also want to tell you this, so you can also choose non-financial goals too.
If we solely focused on the money made with affiliate marketing, in the first year I would have said it was a failure and not worth doing.
But when we start to explore, the amount of skills I have learned through starting an affiliate marketing business and learning from our recommended training platform. You can start to see actually, the first year was awesome.
I learned:
- How to Build Website (a service I could offer to others)
- Keyword Research (Essential for online business)
- Affiliate Programs (how to help others with affiliate marketing and programs)
- Search Engine Optimisation (How to be Google Friendly)
- Social Media Marketing
- Writing Content (a service I could offer out as a freelancer)
Those are just a few that you could learn along this journey, and as a freelancer you could make money whilst your website is building up that authority you need.
The golden nugget for that is when you are number one in Google for a keyword. If you can get there, with the right converting posts you will be at a point where you can say you are making money from affiliate marketing and be able to work from home.
You just need the right training for affiliate marketing.
The Right Training and Support for Affiliate Marketing – Wealthy Affiliate
If you seriously want to be successful at affiliate marketing and reach your goal of how to earn from working from home, then you need to understand the first step is to get the right training.
First off, don’t think of it as going back to school. Think of it as an investment of time into your future business. The most successful affiliate marketers will tell you, that if you do not keep learning and adapting to the ever-changing playing field you are destined to fail.
I know affiliate marketers who have built $100k businesses and they still log in and follow the live training every week.
Some will disagree with me, but you need a website to build an affiliate marketing business. Imagine putting all your hard work into one social media channel and then that social media channel goes through problems, or your target audience isn’t engaging into that social media channel. You are stuck. Go back to the golf example, I wouldn’t search social media for Golf GPS units, I would search on Google.
Google owns 2/3 of the search traffic, that is where you need to target.
Our recommended training platform offers valuable training in affiliate marketing and it also offers WordPress web hosting all in one platform.
Wealthy Affiliate is a comprehensive training platform for affiliate marketers, regardless of your experience or your computer knowledge – in the first ten lesson, you will have built your own WordPress website in your chosen niche, you will fully understand the potential behind affiliate marketing and how to start building up your traffic to make this a reality.
All of this is included in a free starter membership, there is a premium membership but for now, the free starter membership will give you a full insight into this awesome platform that Gem, and I used to build this website and Gem’s wedding stationary business.
Whatever your niche, whatever your time allowance is – if you follow this training and invest the time you will see that it can work for you too.
I will always be honest with you, and I would recommend you read my Wealthy Affiliate review just to understand fully what is available and the successes WA has brought for many of its members.
But if you want to explore the platform for free, check out the free starter membership and go through the ten free lessons.
You will surely see that this is a platform that cares for its members, you will even get coaching from the owners Kyle & Carson and if you decide to accept my invitation you will get personal coaching from me too.
Final Word
Affiliate Marketing is a great option when you want to build an online business in something that you are actually interested in… we chose golf as an example, but that same search could be done in healthcare, gym fitness, football, computer games, making money online, cooking, toys, jewellery, cars, etc.
You name it there is a target audience within a niche, that you could build an authority website in and enjoy the rewards. Like I said, it is a slow burner. But if you could be in the position where in a year’s time you have an authority website in a niche that is earning you a good return, and you continue to scale that business think where you could be in ten years’ time?
Affiliate Marketing is constantly growing, and the opportunities are bigger than you think…
But you need to invest in learning everything Wealthy Affiliate has to offer, and actually putting into practice everything they teach you.
Otherwise, you will fall into the high percentage of people who failed at affiliate marketing and claim it doesn’t work.
You can earn money working from home, but you need to commit to it. Set yourself daily, weekly and monthly goals and, borrowing a term from an affiliate friend HUSTLE! Go and get it!
Thanks for reading my post. If you have any questions or comments about, we have talked about, then please write them in the comments below and I will definitely come back to you as soon as.
Thanks, John
