Want to know how does affiliate marketing really work? It’s a common question, and you’ll be surprised at how simple the answer is…
A lot of people make it sound like it’s a really complicated process, just so they can sell you an expensive tool, or something to make you believe they have the answer to making you money really quickly…
Today, we’re going to break it down and go through the basics of affiliate marketing. That way you’ll have a full understanding of the process, and how simple it is… But also, actually how much effort goes into it.
That way, you should also be able to avoid the thousands of scams out there pitching affiliate marketing as a get-rich-quick scheme…
A question that often comes up when people are first researching into starting affiliate marketing, is “How Can I Do Affiliate Marketing?” Many new affiliate marketers end up failing and it is down to a number of factors, including not getting the right training and support from the start.
Gem and I want to help you get started with affiliate marketing, help keep you motivated during the hard work needed to make it successful and ensure you get the best training that there is to become an authority on affiliate marketing.
Let us start by ensuring you understand what Affiliate Marketing is and how it works. We will also share with you what to look out for to avoid scams out there that are disguised as affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing? & How to Spot the Scams!
There are tons of programs out there that claim they are affiliate marketing, but really, they are MLM schemes designed to just keep getting you to spend more money so the owners are the ones that benefit.
Affiliate Marketing is a very simple premise – you create a blog on a chosen niche. You sign up with an affiliate program such as Amazon and promote products in your given niche. If someone follows your suggestion and follows your affiliate link to go to Amazon and makes a purchase, you have just earned a commission.
It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. See the graphic below:
If you have been checking out any other programs stating that they are offering you a ‘Done for You’ way to succeed at Affiliate Marketing, it is typically a scam and will not benefit you.
Why I say that is down to them normally employing duplicate content – which will never work out for you.
Do your research and you will definitely only find genuine products out there.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
SO, we know that affiliate marketing works by promoting products that include your affiliate link and if someone buys it you earn a commission. It sounds simple, but why do many affiliate marketers fail.
That is because of one thing – a Lack of Patience.
Whenever you search the internet for ways to make money online, you will always find people stating they earned thousands overnight or a system that will earn you money on autopilot.
So, it is natural to assume that you can earn money quickly. But they are all lies!
I know, you might be thinking that is a strong statement John!
But it is true. Affiliate Marketing is not a quick way of earning money online, you cannot just spend 20 minutes a day on it and hope for it to earn you money straightaway.
So to go back and answer the question “Can I Do Affiliate Marketing?”:
Yes, but you need to understand you will need to invest time and effort into this business model to make it work! You cannot play at this!
Yes, but you will not be earning money from it straightaway!
Yes, but you need to follow the right strategies!
You Need to Commit to Achieving this.
I didn’t earn anything from affiliate marketing for 6-months. I could have walked away after 5 months and thought affiliate marketing doesn’t work.
That is why there are so many people who fail at Affiliate Marketing, because they walked away after 3 months. They kept the employee mindset, that I have worked for an hour – I should get paid for an hour’s work.
It doesn’t work like this. That post that I earned my first commission from was a post that was 5 months old. It had crept up the google rankings and is a post that is still earning me commission now. That is the true meaning of affiliate marketing being a passive income.
How to Become Successful at Affiliate Marketing!
There are two things that you need to get your head around to be successful with affiliate marketing, other than the few above.
The Entrepreneur Mindset
Affiliate Marketing is a business model, it isn’t like completing surveys online and earning a few quid. You can earn some serious money with affiliate marketing if you do it right.
The first thing is becoming an entrepreneur. Living and breathing your business until it starts earning you money, and then scaling it so it grows, and you can start hiring writers for your business.
Understanding that you will not earn an hourly rate from this business model but understanding that this is all about the long game.
When I first started, I had a full-time job and a family to consider too. So, my spare time was limited. I needed to be practical in my planning and ensuring that the hour I put away into my business I spent it well. Whether that be learning a specific element, researching a product to review or writing an article. I needed to be productive.
That is what I mean, those are all traits of a successful entrepreneur who becomes a successful affiliate marketer!
Learning the Right Way
Something I have noticed about successful affiliate marketers is that they are constantly keeping themselves up-to-date with their niche, affiliate marketing, etc.
They are constantly learning. I myself, regularly check out webinars in Wealthy Affiliate to see if there is something I can learn and often I can. There may be a small detail that could help rankings or help conversions that I hadn’t considered or tried. You need to constantly learn.
If you are just starting out with Affiliate Marketing or are struggling to get it working for you, it might be because the training or advice you have been given was incorrect.
I would like to recommend you check out our recommended training platform for Affiliate Marketing, Wealthy Affiliate. Their training is designed for anyone, of any skill level to build an affiliate marketing business.
You will benefit from the training into exploring the right niche for you, building your own website within the platform, getting it ranked within the search engines, building traffic and writing content that converts.
This the same platform that I have used for almost 3 years now, and I would not be where I am today, without their training and help and support that comes with it.
Kyle and Carson are the co-founders and owners of Wealthy Affiliate. They have poured so much time and effort into making this the best platform it can be, they also offer their help and advice to new affiliate marketers to ensure they get started with a business that will mean, you can start saying “I Can Do Affiliate Marketing”
Let’s Get You Expert Help & Support
Another feature I love with Wealthy Affiliate, other than the training and the website tools is the community you become a part of.
Imagine being part of a community that is over 1 million users in size, where you gain access to chat with other affiliatemarketers who can help answer your questions at any time of the day. You also get a personal coach, if you follow my invitation to Wealthy Affiliate that would be Me. Anytime you feel like you need a motivation pep talk, the community and me will be there to help you.
Not sure of what niche to choose, ask me.
Not sure how you could improve your website, ask me.
That is the help and support you get within Wealthy Affiliate, and I would not have been able to say Affiliate Marketing worked with it.
Kyle and Carson are very keen that anyone who checks them out can do it without any pressure, and it is a great mentality to have. So, here you will find a link to my Wealthy Affiliate review, so you can check out more detail. But if you want to check them out yourselves, here is a link to get you started with a free starter membership (no credit card required). Explore the platform and see what you think.
Final Conclusion
The main reason why people fail at affiliate marketing is purely down to a lack of patience or following the wrong training. They give up too soon, or they are not entirely sure how to get started and that is why we fully endorse Wealthy Affiliate if you are looking for a training platform that has everything you need, including expert help and support, for getting started with affiliate marketing.
Then you will be able to say, “I Can Do Affiliate Marketing!”.
Thanks for reading our post, if you have any questions or comments to add please put them below. We will come back to you as soon as we can. Thanks John & Gem
Are you looking for a great training platform that you can learn affiliate marketing? There are plenty of them available. But do they all offer the support you need when you are first starting out…? That is often the key reason why people end up not succeeding at Affiliate Marketing.
The help and support you get from any platform you choose to sign up with will sometimes be the key to you sticking to your business and see it through to the point where you are earning money.
We will be exploring a common subject for those starting out online and that is how to monetise your blog with (mainly) Affiliate Marketing. If you are going to invest your time and effort into creating an online presence, you might as well be able to make some money at it.
I mention blogging, as there are some that state you do not need a website to do affiliate marketing, but I will disagree a little. Social Media is very important to your online business, but advertising on only one does restrict your reach and not all social media types are great depending on your niche.
Whilst I explore how to make money online with affiliate marketing for beginners, there are a couple of other routes you could take to monetise your blog.
How do you Make Money Blogging?
Blogging allows you to express your opinions, help your audience and grow your audience. Then you can start earning money by:
Joining Ad Networks (for example, AdSense). By offering up space on your website, you can earn revenue through interaction from your audience.
Sell Physical or Digital Products.
Consult & Hold Events
But the most popular is Affiliate Marketing. One of the key benefits of affiliate marketing is you control what you promote.
You can never really control what adverts are shown on your website. AdSense tries to make it relevant to the user based on their google interactions, but I refuse to use most of them as they could put my audience off.
If you have your own products, then great you could definitely follow this route, but I would typically say most are turning towards Affiliate Marketing.
But What is Affiliate Marketing?
There are 3 parties involved in Affiliate Marketing. You (the affiliate), the Company (Has the Product) and the Customer (Buyer).
Let’s use Amazon as an example – they have an affiliate program called Amazon Associates. You sign up for a free account and choose a product that is very relevant to your blog.
Let’s say you have a blog on the home.
You write a well-written review on that product (a toaster). You include your affiliate link in that review which when the reader clicks on that link, they are sent to Amazon and Amazon knows you were the one who sent them to that product.
They buy that toaster for $100. You will have earned 6% commission, earning $6.
Let’s break that down into a simple graphic:
That figure might not seem much but imagine if you had 100 people read your review and buy a toaster through your affiliate link, that is $600 through what is a passive income type.
This will depend on the niche you have set your blog up on. To help find products there are 2 ways you could find the right products or services in your niche.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate Networks have multiple products and services available giving you access to plenty of options with just one account. I would suggest you be careful with what you pick (depending on your niche) In the Make Money Online niche, there are also a few undesirable products in them, but if you do your research correctly, you can also use the product as a “watch-out” post.
Some of the top Affiliate Networks are:
Awin.com
Shareasale
CJ Affiliates (formerly Commission Junction)
Rakuten (formerly LinkShare)
Click Bank
Awin is the largest in the world and gives you access to a lot of products and services. It also helps give you ideas for content and reviews too.
Affiliate Programs
An alternative way is to sign up with individual companies via affiliate program. Just type in Google “Product + Affiliate Program” and you will see if they have one and the website details. You will be surprised how many companies are joining the affiliate program format.
But when searching for products or services, you do need to make sure it is a natural fit for your audience.
On average, 42% of Affiliate Marketers promote between one and 10 products.
Natural Fit to Your Audience
Commission rates differ massively across the affiliate marketing field, but that doesn’t mean we can just go for something that doesn’t fit with your website. Take this site, it is about affiliate marketing and affiliate marketing tools, imagine if there were banners and posts about stuff that was nothing to do with it, i.e. a toaster. Do you think I would get any traction from that?? It might actually put readers off, as it looks like I am not taking them seriously.
I’ll go back to the amazon example, it might only be 6% but if the website is right, content is right, I help that person with their questions and then they buy it and I am helping more and more people all the time, then you will earn the same as a 60% commission product where it is only bought once or twice a year?
Keep it Relevant.
How Much Will I Get Paid?
Commission rates vary depending on the type of product and service.
Physical products have a lower commission rate due to the cost of producing it and shipping it, Digital products or services tend to have higher commission rates.
The average would tend to sit around 30-50%. Amazon has a wide variety of products to use, however their commission rate sits around 6-10%
Will I Always Be Accepted to the Affiliate Programs?
This again depends on the program or network.
A small number will want to see proof of traffic to your blog and others will need you to earn a number of referrals to stay in the program.
I found this with Amazon if you do not earn a referral in 6 months, they do take you out of the program, but you can instantly reapply.
Others will let you join without much hassle, for example Click Bank aren’t particular about who can join their affiliate program.
Top Niches Ideas for Affiliate Marketing
If you are a little stuck on a niche to use, below are the topics people are seeking help in:
Health/Fitness Related Niches
Losing Weight
Health & Beauty
Reduce Stress
Technology/Gaming
Smart Devices (is huge at the moment)
Lifestyle/Home/Garden
Fashion
High-End Luxury
Travel
Sports & Outdoors
Online Jobs/Make Money Online
Business
Finance & Insurance Advice
Creating Awesome Content to Drive Sales
Creating content is the key to any blog, let alone with affiliate marketing. There are plenty of opportunities for creating content that will help you monetise your website:
Genuine Product Reviews
Blog Posts that:
Solve Problems in the given Niche
Answer Questions
In text Content Links
Email Promotions
Social Media Promotions
Create added value for those using your affiliate links
Free eBooks
An exclusive Facebook groups
Supplementing resources to support with any product you promote
Can I Compete with Established Affiliate Marketers?
Of course, you can! Affiliate Marketing is a major growth area at the moment – with revenue going from $3billion in 2016 to $6billion in 2018 and yet there it is still growing.
Many companies are realising how expensive it is to have massive marketing campaigns, but if they use the affiliate marketing route – they will get more exposure and pay a lot less in commissions.
Some niches are more competitive than others, but again if you target the right keywords with awesome content you can easily benefit from Affiliate Marketing.
Keeping Everything Legit
There are obviously some things to consider when it comes to the legal side of affiliate marketing.
Honesty & Transparency
This is also key to building up a trust with the reader, if they trust you they will consider buying off of you. Be honest with them about the use of affiliate links. Add a disclaimer – see mine below:
AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE
“One of the ways I try to cover the costs of maintaining Best Affiliate Marketing Tools and offer free courses to my audience is via a small number of affiliate partnerships (with tools I genuinely use) where I get a small percentage commission on sales made via referral. You don’t pay any more for purchasing via my affiliate links – in fact in some cases you will even receive a discount. If you click one of my affiliate links, your support is really appreciated! Learn more here”.
By placing a disclaimer in your website, it helps with your honesty, it also helps with the legal side of affiliate marketing. There are stringent laws in place. You will need to add an affiliate disclosure page to your website.
Conclusion
There you go, how to make money with affiliate marketing for beginners. I would be lying it was as simple as that. I would not have been successful with affiliate marketing if it hadn’t been for the help and support of Wealthy Affiliate.
I joined about 2 years ago and have not looked back. If you do want to start the right way in Affiliate Marketing, I do advise you to read my Wealthy Affiliate Review and make your own decision on whether their platform will help you.
If you have any questions about Affiliate Marketing, getting started or you are struggling with Affiliate Marketing in general – please get in touch, leave me a comment below and I promise to get back to you as soon as. I am here to help anyone I can.
Affiliate Marketing is a great choice for an online business, but many people wrongly assume it is an easy option to earning money online. The premise is very simple, but the execution of the business will determine how successful you are.
In this post I am going to go through 5 Qualities for Success in Affiliate Marketing that I have found very useful to building my online business up. Let’s start with what is Affiliate Marketing first…
But in short, with affiliate marketing you have 3 parties. You (the affiliate), a product/service (company selling it) and the potential buyer (consumer).
Signing up with an affiliate program allows you to promote a product or service on your blog or through social media and if the buyer purchases it, you get a commission. The affiliate program gives you a unique link that tells them it was you who introduced them and then you get paid.
The actual process for Affiliate Marketing is simple, someone clicks your link and you benefit from a percentage of the sale. But, people think this will happen really quickly, as in a couple of days or weeks and that is simply not the case.
It would be great if it could, but the truth about it is the time needed to build up trust with the search engines and the readers who will be visiting your blog.
These 5 qualities we will be discussing are all aimed at both being successful but also understanding what is required and the time needed to see it through.
Let’s get on with the 5 Qualities for Success in Affiliate Marketing.
A Willingness to Invest Time & Effort
Let’s be honest, any true affiliate marketer will tell you that it will take a lot of time and effort to build a business up to a point where you are earning a living from it. The key word there is Business.
Any business owner will tell you that you need to build a strategy, a business plan and invest in the time and effort in the beginning to get it started and out there in the public domain.
Affiliate Marketing is a passive income stream, but that doesn’t mean you sit back and do nothing.
The statement that it is passive, gives many an impression that you can sit back and watch the money come in. But the only reason it is passive, is you do not need to present to oversee the sale.
Without traffic to your website, you will not see any of these sales and that is where you need to invest time in research, creating content, connecting with others in your niche, monitoring traffic and which strategies work and which don’t.
Creating quality content requires time and effort, constantly reviewing it to see whether your readers like it or not, does it help them, does it answer a question?
Do not expect Affiliate Marketing to be a quick win or an easy route to earning money at the start. Don’t get me wrong, when you do nail a strategy and it starts earning money it could continue to earn you money for years to come, with minimal tweaking – but you consistently need to find ways of keeping your business fresh and up-to-date with the competition.
A Constant Desire to Learn
This one came from an Affiliate Marketing expert who has 15 years’ experience, never stop learning!
Think about how quick technology changes, any given business industry is constantly improving things, and this means there are new things to learn.
New techniques, new strategies, new systems. Google gave just updated their webmaster tools, so this meant I needed to get my head around it to get the best out of the platform and the data it represents.
There is also the fact that there are other elements that you will need to learn to be successful:
There are many factors to an online business and it is key that you keep learning to become an authority in your niche.
I found a platform that has a step-by-step guide to building an online business with affiliate marketing and I have found them integral to my online business.
Wealthy Affiliate is a training platform with awesome tools to help build a business with a community of experts in affiliate marketing.
But whilst they will give you the tools, you need to utilise the 5 qualities to make it a success!
Self-Determination
Are you determined to become successful? Can you keep determined that the content you provide will be useful to the reader and help them with a problem or help them decide to make a purchase (with your affiliate link).
Consumers are very wary when it comes to things online and want to feel that there is a real person behind the website. If you write poor content but loads of it – you will have a lot of content, but it doesn’t help you grow your business as the readers switch.
You need to make sure the content you write is the best you can do with helpful information that helps the reader.
It is also worth noting that when you are writing, you should be writing for one person. Write it as though you were talking to one person, that is the art of blogging and helping people. They want to feel like they have wrote it for you!
But it can also be easy to just sell – writing content that says “buy this”.
This doesn’t help them, they are searching online because they want to know whether it is the right product to buy for their circumstances, is there a better alternative. If they knew they were going to buy something, they would have already bought it.
Be determined that your business will offer the best advice, the best support and the best products to buy. Strive to help people, first and foremost and the sales will follow. Never go and try and do it the other way around
Self-Discipline
The single most important fact about Affiliate Marketing is: If you play at it, you will never be successful!
The only way that you will turn it into a full-time earning career is to run it like a business. If you are going to start it as a side gig for now, then you need to be strict about how much time you set aside each week to achieve your goals.
Many Affiliate Marketers started their business on the side of a full-time job, including myself.
The only way you can do it is to have a schedule – time to complete training, time to do keyword research, time to write an article, time to market on social media, etc.
It will be tough at first, but one you achieve your goals you will get a lot more time to spend on your business and enjoy a better work life balance and see the family more.
The other side to consider with self-discipline is self-control with distractions.
Think about how many times yourself or someone you know spends on their phone or social media.
Social Media is a fantastic tool to growing your business, but it is also one of the biggest distractions taking you away from doing tasks on your business, like creating that article you were going to write or that video you were going to record promoting your latest product review, instead you spend an hour going through Pinterest or going on Facebook.
It might be a good idea to write down a list of distractions, those that you can avoid and those you cannot avoid. For example, your day job and your family (I have a 6-year-old) would be classed as distractions that you cannot avoid. It’s called life.
But social media, catching up on a tv show could be called avoidable distractions.
Some Optimism
The last quality, Optimism is perhaps the most important and the most difficult to keep in mind.
A lot of people are searching online for ways to earn money from home and they can get carried away with the many ways of doing it (at first glance). There are many ‘Get Rich Quick” schemes out there that are predominantly scams and can really affect the confidence people have of finding a way to earn money online.
Then many find something called Affiliate Marketing – It is a great way of earning money online and is billed as a ‘Passive Income’ method.
But the reason you need optimism with any online business is you will not see the rewards straightaway. With one of my online businesses I did not see a return for 6 months, what if I had given up after 3 months as I hadn’t earned anything in that time. It is key that you believe in yourself and your business.
Think of why you want to earn money online, not just to earn money. I am talking about the lifestyle that this income can bring – I wanted to spend more time with my family, as well as get rid of the money worries I had.
In Summary
Done right, Affiliate Marketing is a very sound business model and can be very rewarding.
Helping others learn Affiliate Marketing and get started in affiliate marketing and all about the right tools in affiliate marketing is awesome and something I am very passionate about.
Harnessing these 5 qualities for Affiliate Marketing Online has been key to building up a profitable business and that is why I recommend them to anyone wanting to get started or struggling with their online business regardless of whether it is an affiliate marketing business or not.
Are you struggling to find a rhythm with your affiliate marketing business? Do you want to ensure you start on the right foot? I can help and I offer it willingly, if you want to get the best training out there for affiliate marketing with expert help and support. Then I highly recommend you read my Wealthy Affiliate Review – See what fantastic tools and training they offer.
If you have any questions about affiliate marketing or need any help or support, just let me know. Drop me a comment below and I’ll get you an answer.
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Let’s use Amazon as an example – they have an affiliate program called Amazon Associates. You sign up for a free account and choose a product that is very relevant to your blog.
$6billion in 2018 and yet there it is still growing.
point where you are earning a living from it. The key word there is Business.
Think about how quick technology changes, any given business industry is constantly improving things, and this means there are new things to learn.
you write poor content but loads of it – you will have a lot of content, but it doesn’t help you grow your business as the readers switch.
A lot of people are searching online for ways to earn money from home and they can get carried away with the many ways of doing it (at first glance). There are many ‘Get Rich Quick” schemes out there that are predominantly 