30 Oct
Affiliate marketing is in some ways like starting a business. You have the distinct advantage of not holding inventory and typically don’t need to hire employees, but you’re still setting up an online operation.
No matter what approach you take, whether writing blog posts or running ads, there are certain steps you’ll need to take to help you find out how to use affiliate marketing to make a living. That means you need to take strides to ensure you prepare yourself for what lies ahead.
If you’ve recently started a website and are ready to grow your traffic and start earning affiliate commissions, then you are at the right place.
What is affiliated marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
Benefits of affiliate marketing?
Here are the reasons why you should consider doing affiliate marketing:
1. Low cost of start-up
An affiliate program does not require that you have an advertising team for ad visuals or purchase ad space.
Rather than that, you’ll have to depend on your affiliates to come up with their marketing content. Other than the initial effort of selecting and vetting affiliates, there’s little effort required from you to market your products, which is one of the reasons it’s become such a popular method of marketing.
Once a company is comfortable working with an affiliate and has built a good relationship, they can for the most part let them get on with marketing your service or product.
2. Low ongoing costs
Since most of your marketing activities are done by affiliates, they’ll also bear the chunk of the cost attached. And since it’s a commission-based program, it means that you’ll only pay affiliates from sales they bring in.
This marketing model makes cost easy to manage and does not interrupt your cash flow, unlike other marketing models such as PPC advertising that requires you to pay for every click leading to your website. But affiliate marketing ensures that you only part ways with your money when sales are made.
3. Low risk
Lost cost means low risk. There’s little risk of loss since payments are only made when there’s an actual conversion; perfect for businesses on a tight budget.
4. Targeted Traffic
Since the affiliates are handpicked by you, it can ensure that the traffic that comes to your site is from individuals that find your product or service useful. This is because affiliates that resonate with your brand will most likely have individuals with their area of influence that’ll find your brand useful.
5. Flexibility
You can easily make your affiliate program smaller or bigger at little or no cost. It also offers you a great way to scale up your business without breaking the bank.
6. High ROI
Having the keys to product innovation and effective management skills doesn’t guarantee a high ROI; you’ll also need to get your marketing right. Affiliate marketing has been proven to have a much higher return on investment than the majority of marketing strategies.
One major reason for this is because your target audience will hear of your product or service from affiliates that are within their spheres of influence. In short, you’re channeling your marketing efforts through an affiliate who has direct access and influence over a highly targeted audience that is receptive to what you have to offer.
Disadvantages of affiliate marketing
Let’s have a look at some of the disadvantages of affiliated marketing.
1. You’re building someone else’s brand
The first major disadvantage of affiliate marketing is that you’re helping other companies grow their brand instead of growing your own. Many people, like myself, become digital entrepreneurs because they want more control over their lives and finances. As an employee, your hard worker makes your employer rich. When you become an entrepreneur, your hard work is supposed to build up your company, an asset that rewards you for years to come.
As an affiliate marketer, you spend a tremendous amount of time, money, and effort to promote the products and services of other brands. In exchange, you earn a percentage of the sale. If you become a full-time affiliate marketer, you can choose the products you promote, work from anywhere, and make as much money as your skill set allows. While this sounds better than being an employee, it still follows the same employer-employee relationship.
You’re reliant on the company that runs each affiliate program you promote to remain in business. If the company goes out of business, you’re out of luck. In addition, whenever you make a sale, the affiliate program earns the bulk of the revenue. In my experience, affiliate commission rates rarely go higher than 40%. It typically falls within 10-30% for online courses and digital software, which are among the highest-paying affiliate programs.
2. You have no control over the business decisions of affiliate programs
True entrepreneurship is about validating the need for a product in the marketplace, creating a minimum viable product, and then taking it to the market. From the ideation phase to the testing to the branding and marketing, these entrepreneurs are in control of the whole process. That’s what makes starting a business exciting (and also risky).
As an affiliate marketer, you have no say in any of the core functions of the businesses you promote. Branding, marketing, management, sales, customer service, and all the moving parts that make a business work are in someone else’s hands. There are five commandments for online business, known as CENTS framework:
- Control
- Entry
- Need
- Time
- Scale
Affiliate marketing violates the first commandment, control. Another company can kill your business in an instant. The analogy that is used is getting into a stranger’s car and letting them drive. You’re not truly your own boss as an affiliate marketer. You’re working for someone else as a freelancer with no guaranteed income or benefits. If you’re not good at sales and marketing, you may end up essentially working for free.
3. It takes time to build up your affiliate income
Anyone who tells you that you can start affiliate marketing today and quit your job in a few months is lying. Affiliate marketing is definitely not a get rich quick scheme. It takes time, dedication, and discipline to earn consistent affiliate commissions. You first have to learn how affiliate marketing works. Then you need to build up an audience to market your affiliate products to, usually through a website. You also have to create content regularly to draw in more leads and keep the sales rolling in.
Anything worthwhile takes time, and passive income through affiliate marketing is no different. You’re not going to be sitting on a beach sipping margaritas while collecting thousands of dollars in affiliate income within three months. I would say you should give affiliate marketing at least a year of consistent effort to establish consistent commissions. Some affiliate marketers start making good money fast, but they are the exception.
4. Affiliate programs can change terms or be discontinued
Along with having no control over core business functions, you are also at the mercy of whatever direction the affiliate program goes. However, this is a challenge from the perspective of an affiliate marketer. You have to go along with whatever changes an affiliate program makes. Since you’re not involved in the decision-making, you won’t know if or when the changes will happen. A business can change the terms of the affiliate agreement or discontinue its affiliate program altogether. If you were relying on it for your livelihood, you’d be in serious trouble.
5. Fraudsters can hijack your affiliate links
There are some hackers out there who have figured out how to insert their code into other people’s affiliate links. That means that those hackers earn a commission from sales that other people generate. One way to mitigate this risk is to cloak your affiliate links using a link shortener like Pretty Links. You can use this plugin to give the affiliate links a new URL using my domain name. That way, they are easier to manage and harder to hijack.
6. Referring a sale doesn’t always guarantee income
With the affiliate marketing model, you’re supposed to earn a commission every time you refer a sale. That’s not always the case though. Some products don’t lend themselves to instant commissions. For instance, when you promote web hosting companies, you don’t earn a commission if someone purchases a hosting plan through your link and then cancels their subscription. Each sale must be verified, which can sometimes take 30-45 days. There are other conditions that every sale has to meet in order to qualify as a verified sale. This doesn’t seem to be an issue if you’re promoting physical products and any products that aren’t subscription-based.
Steps to get started with affiliate marketing
Now let’s cover the steps you need to take to get started, including how to:
1. Choose a niche
You must have heard the expression “jack of all trades, master of none.” This sentiment applies in several scenarios, but especially when it comes to building an audience. It’s difficult to build credibility as an affiliate marketer when you’re promoting everything all of the time. Instead of coming across as an industry or niche expert, you’ll present yourself as a person who simply wants to make sales.
A better approach is to choose a niche and focus your content on one area of expertise. When choosing a niche, consider picking something that you’re passionate about, hold specific expertise in, or where you already have a following. For example, let’s say you have a killer travel Instagram account. Starting a travel blog and selling affiliate products related to travel would be the perfect niche.
It doesn’t matter what your niche is, but if you want to be seen as an expert and make sales, it’s critical to settle on one niche.
2. Build a website
Affiliate marketing takes place online. While it’s certainly possible to make money as an affiliate marketer on your social sites, you’re missing out on sales if you don’t have a website.Why?
A website gives you one centralized location on the internet where you can build a large and active audience. Additionally, through the power of other digital marketing efforts, you can drive new traffic to your website and boost your sales opportunities.
To build a website, you’ll first need to find a reliable web hosting plan from a company. If you’re just starting out with your website and don’t have much of a following yet, it’s sufficient to start with a shared web hosting plan.
As soon as your audience starts to grow and you start getting more traffic, you can scale your web hosting plan by upgrading to a VPS hosting or dedicated hosting plan. The best news about starting a website today is that it’s inexpensive, and it’s even possible to take the DIY route to build a gorgeous site.
It doesn’t matter whether you use WordPress to build your website or a website builder, but if you’re looking to generate more sales via affiliate marketing, you must have a website.
3. Join affiliate programs
If you’re wondering how to get into affiliate marketing, good news: there are several different types of affiliate programs available. The best news is you can join more than one. The type of affiliate programs you will join will depend on your preferences and your niche. Before you invest all your time and energy into affiliate marketing, there are some important things to know. Consider the following:
- Most affiliate programs review your information. When you apply to be an affiliate for different merchants, most of them will take a look at your website to make sure it’s a good fit. If you know you’re not a great fit, don’t waste your time applying.
- Commissions vary from program to program. There is no set rate for how much you’ll get paid as an affiliate marketer. What you get paid depends on the affiliate program you join, the competition, and what you sell. Do your research to make sure the affiliate commission is sufficient.
- Earnings depend on your reach. How much you’ll earn with various vendors depends on how wide of an audience you have. This means, the more you do to promote your website and social accounts and grow a loyal following, the more opportunities you’ll have to make sales.
Now you may be wondering how to actually start applying for affiliate programs. One of the best ways is to start with a quick Google search for affiliate programs in your niche. However, there are some affiliate programs that have a little something for everyone. Consider checking out the following affiliate programs.
4. Grow your audience
It doesn’t matter how many affiliate links you include in a blog post. If you don’t have an audience, no one will see your website, and it will be difficult to make sales. Here are some ideas to help you grow your audience:
- Grow your social following. Social media is hotter now than ever before. With platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and SnapChat taking off, it’s possible to capture the attention of thousands of followers. Leverage your social media following to drive traffic back to your website.
- Post consistently. Consistency is the name of the game for social media influencers and popular bloggers. Take the time to plan a content calendar for your social media and blog posts. Then, stick to your calendar. Give the people what they want.
- Create excellent content. Content is everywhere, but it’s still king. It doesn’t matter how many creators are out there. As long as you are creating content that people like, sharing links for interesting brands, and giving your audience what they want, you’ll see your audience grow.
As you continue to grow your audience and offer excellent content, you’ll see your affiliate sales skyrocket and your business boom.
How to do affiliate marketing for free
If you can’t afford to run ads or pay for web hosting right now, look into affiliate marketing methods that don’t require you to spend money. Popular strategies include:
1. Posting in Facebook group
Join Facebook groups related to your niche and start building relationships by commenting on others’ posts. Once people start trusting you, you can start recommending your affiliate products to earn commissions.
2. Including affiliate links in email
Do you have an email list? If yes, then you already have a channel to share affiliate links without any charge. You can insert product links in your newsletters that take people to the merchant’s website. The more targeted your email list, the higher the number of people who will check out your affiliate offers.
3. Including affiliate links in YouTube videos
YouTube is an excellent platform for affiliate marketing and doesn’t cost anything to use. You can start earning commissions by creating videos featuring the products you enjoy. Make sure to add affiliate links in the description so people know where to make a purchase.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a straightforward way to monetize your content and build an online income. Working in tandem with a seller, a motivated affiliate marketer will be able to achieve a passive income from the comfort of their home without worrying about producing their own product or service.
Although the success of the job does depend on the affiliate’s marketing skills, it can prove to be an effective way to meet your income goals as either a primary career or a profitable second job.