Hello!
Have you ever wanted to get away from the mundane drive to the office or work at the store as a clerk or looking for a way to work from home or looking to supplement your retirement income? You might want to consider affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing training? Affiliate marketing is promoting companies products through your blog, website or YouTube channel by creating informative and in depth content.
If the person reading your blog, or viewing your website or watching your YouTube video click on the links provided of products you are promoting, and purchases that item, the affiliate marketer gets a small commission from the sale. More than 80% of brands and publishers use affiliate marketing to help increase sales every year.
Affiliate marketing is huge business and is only expected to increase every year. I will discuss what is an affiliate marketing program, how it works, how affiliate marketers get paid, and how to be a successful affiliate marketer.
5 Facts About Affiliate Marketing
- Estimated Annual Affiliate Marketing Spending was $12 Billion
- More than 50% of affiliate-referred traffic comes from mobile devices
- Up to 30% of all sales for advertisers are generated through Affiliate Programs.
- 15% of the total digital media advertising revenue is attributed to affiliate marketing
- Affiliate Marketing Market Share
- USA = 39%
- UK = 15%
- Germany 11%
Let’s get into the nitty gritty.
What is an Affiliate Marketing Program?
An Affiliate marketing program? Is where an affiliate earns a small commission for marketing a product for a company. An affiliate researches products they like, then promotes the product, and earns a small profit from the sale of the product you promoted or reviewed. The sales are tracked by using affiliate links to track all the sales that came from your affiliate links.
What makes Affiliate Marketing work?
Affiliate marketing works by spreading the responsibilities of product promotion by having people promote their products to increase sales and both share in the profit of the sales. Getting started with affiliate links you would need to have a niche and either a website, YouTube channel or blog, with content that goes with products you would be promoting. There are three individuals involved in affiliate marketing
- The Seller or Product Producer
- The Affiliate or Publisher
- The Consumer
All three of these individuals are needed to make affiliate marketing work.
The Seller or Product Producer
The seller can be a big box store, a small mom-and-pop store entrepreneur or just about any type of store to purchase product(s). The product can be a physical product, or a service like an online course or tutorial.
The seller also known as the brand doesn’t get involved in the marketing of the products but they could be the advertiser and profit from revenue sharing from the affiliate marketer. If the seller is an e commerce merchant they could have started an online business and wants to reach a targeted audience, by paying affiliate websites to promote their product.
The Affiliate or Advertiser
An affiliate can either be an individual or a company, that markets the products to appeal to their audience and potential customers. In a nutshell, an affiliate promotes a product in a way that is attractive to promote sales of a product. If the customer purchases the product the affiliate gets a small commission for the sale.
Affiliates have a niche and promote products that go with their niche. I have a gardening niche, I promote gardening products like from Burpee, Etsy, Amazon and Gardeners Supply. I target the gardening audience for the products I review and recommend.
The Customer
The customer is the driver of affiliate marketing, if they realize it or not. Especially in 2020 with the pandemic, people were purchasing more and more online. These products being marketed can be seen on websites, blogs and social media outlets.
When the customer purchases the product, the affiliate and the seller share in the profits. It’s recommended that the affiliate disclose they may get a small commission from the purchase of the product or service that is being advertised. Actually Amazon won’t pay you if you don’t disclose you getting a commission. There are some people who chose not to disclose this and the customer may not be aware of it.
In any case there is no up charge on the products or increase in the cost for the commission the affiliate will make. So it’s a win-win for all. The customer purchases the products or service, through the affiliate link, gets the product as other product ordered online, unnoticed by the affiliate marketing system, that they are the driver of.
Affiliate Marketers get Paid
Affiliate marketing has definitely caught the attention of some people. Where you can sell a product without storing it or creating it. So how does the affiliate marketer get paid? Well there are a few different ways it can happen.
Pay Per Sale – this is the standard for affiliate marketing, You promote a product, get the customer to purchase the product, you get a commission, The affiliate gets a percentage of the sales price. The percentage is predetermined when you sign up for their affiliate program. The customer needs to purchase the product for the affiliate to receive commission.
Pay Per Click – This program focuses on getting the customer to redirect from your website to the merchant website. The affiliate get paid based on the amount of web traffic to the merchants’ website.
Pay Per Lead – This is a little more involved, the pay per lead affiliate programs compensate the affiliate based on the conversions of leads to the merchant’s website and do the desired action, of signing up for a free trial, subscribing to a newsletter or downloading files or software.
Why You Should Be an Affiliate Marketer?
- Passive Income
- Work from home
- Cost-Effective
- Flexible and Convenient
- Work for yourself – BE YOUR OWN BOSS!
- Performance-Based Rewards
- Understanding the Power of SEO
How to Become A Successful Affiliate Marketer
Build a fellowship – acquire an audience that is specific to your niche, to increase the likelihood to convert. Establish yourself as an expert in your niche to market the people most likely to buy the products you are promoting.
Be Personal – There is a lot of products out there for every niche. Find the products you can personally believe in, to make sure your campaigns are heartfelt, and giving a good review to valuable products that your customers will want to purchase and enjoy. Also using email outreaches to gather people’s contact information to send personalized emails to keep your customers engaged.
Review Products and Services – Focus on products and services within your niche, then leverage your fellowship you have created with your audience, tell your readers why they would benefit or not benefit from purchasing the product or service you are reviewing. Being honest in your review is important. Don’t just say all the products are great, if they are not, because people will lose trust in you. You want to be trusted. Very important to make sure you are giving detailed content when reviewing the product or service this will improve conversions.
Use Other Sources – If you are only doing an email campaign, focus on making money with a blog, reaching out to your audience on social media, like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. Try cross-channel promotions. Try a variety of marketing strategies and see where your audience responds the best.
Research Products – Try to figure out what your customers are looking for within your niche. Take the time to study the demand for a product before promoting it.
Keep up with Trends – Lots of competition out there in the affiliate marketing world. Stay on top of new trends to ensure you remain competitive. There are new marketing techniques that are always being created. Keep up to date on all the new strategies to get your conversion rates as high as possible.
My Summary
Affiliate marketing is a great solution for those looking to be financially independent, earn a retirement income or just have fun with your niche and see where it goes. By working with a seller and become a motivated affiliate marketer, you will be able to achieve a passive income from the comfort of your own home and not have to worry about producing a product or service.
What are your thoughts on affiliate marketing? Is this something you might consider? There are several affiliate marketing services out there but I recommend you read my review about Wealthy Affiliate. If you are really considering joining the affiliate marketing world, then I highly recommend Wealthy Affiliate. You can join for free and build your website and get it up and running on the free platform. The training is top-notch. Just pick your niche of something you are passionate about or really enjoy doing. I am finding really enjoyable and fun.
==>Click here to read the Wealthy Affiliate 2021 Review<==
or
==>Click here to Wealthy Affiliate page<==
Please let me know your thoughts about affiliate marketing and if you are interested in learning more. Leave a comment below, I would love to hear from you!
Cheers!
Chris
Hi there,
Those facts about affiliate marketing are mindblowing! $12 billion as estimated spending … incredible! How long does it usually take to be successful with affiliate marketing and what do you recommend to get your website noticed online (and on Google’s first page)?
You also mentioned that over 50% of affiliate referred traffic comes from mobiles. So, is it important to make articles and websites mobile-friendly?
Hi Christine,
Nice name, that is my name too! Thank you for your comments. I was blown away with the estimated $12 billion in spending. I am just a little over 2 months into this venture and still trying to get noticed on Google’s first page. I just keep producing content, and follow the training. I have a couple Facebook groups that also help direct traffic. Yes, your site would need to be mobile friendly. I usually test all my pages using my Iphone to make sure everything works.
It was interesting to find out that the top 3 affiliate marketing share countries are the USA, UK, and Germany. Affiliate marketing is an excellent opportunity to be able to work from anywhere you have an internet connection. I have considered affiliate marketing already, and my website is two months old now. I am struggling with the organic traffic, as google trust is still relatively low. But I don’t give up and keep working forward to meet my goal of passive income.
Hi Violeta,
I am fairly new to affiliate marketing as well just about 3 months in now. I do enjoy it and looking into possibly incorporating YouTube in my gardening niche. I have a Facebook page and group for both websites I have. Getting organic traffic is the hard part. Thank you for your comments
Affiliate marketing does seem like a good model. There are so many models out there that frighten me such as MLMs or some even unfair multi-level marketing structures. But affiliate marketing seems to be able to make product owners happy, affiliates happy and consumers happy. Worth giving it a try!
Hi Paolo,
Thank you for your comments. I agree about the MLM businesses out there. I felt affiliate marketing isn’t an MLM, the money a person makes from affiliate marketing is about your content and how it’s presented.
Hey Chris, this is another great article! I am very interested in affiliate marketing myself, and It is a great way to earn a passive income. There are so many products and services out there that have affiliate marketing programs. Anyone who is dedicated to working hard at their affiliate marketing business will be successful.
Hi Matt
I am kind of new to affiliate marketing, and find it fascinating! I have 2 websites, this one and Gardening at the Simongetti North!. I am having fun with both websites and feel good about this endeavor. Thank you for your comments.