Last Updated on May 3, 2022
What is an affiliate marketing business? Whether you are searching for a side hustle to supplement your regular source of income, or if you are plainly scavenging the Internet to find for ways to make a full time guaranteed income within the comforts of your humble abode, affiliate marketing is definitely one of your best options.
There is definitely a wide variety of ways to make income online, but affiliate marketing takes home the crown for being the easiest and fastest way to generate another stream of income.
But the real question is – what is an affiliate marketing business? It would be such a loss for you if you don’t get to understand the real wonders and opportunities this business model has to offer.
So, in light of that, let me walk you through this post by explaining to you what is affiliate marketing and how does it work and hopefully, I can give you an idea whether you should invest in affiliate marketing and start your own online business!
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a common and effective way for the independent blog or website owner to generate a stream of full-time or part-time income. What makes it ahead of other business models is its ability to even generate you a passive source of income as time passes by and once you get the hang of all the ropes it possesses.
This business model brings you more money and definitely beats the hell out of putting up online ads all throughout your website. It works pretty much simple and straightforward, actually. You as an affiliate, have the job and duty to generate traffic to your online merchant’s website and engage your readers and audience to purchase their products and services.
Every blog owner who wants to engage with affiliate marketing can partner up with a company like an affiliate network or an e-commerce website, and promote them to your audience. For every prospect coming from your audience who purchases the merchant’s products and services, you will earn a commission.
The key to all this is driving traffic to your website. Of course, when you have a wider audience, you are able to generate more leads to your merchant’s website. More leads mean more conversions, and more conversions mean more commissions! The best way to drive traffic is through free traffic from search engines.
If you happen to have large sums of money to spend, you can always opt to paid advertising like putting up ads on other websites, paid ads on social media outlets, and of course, through Google Adwords.
Here in My Own Admin, all I want is for my readers to know the best way to make money online. Consider this your free training course on affiliate marketing for beginners as I will be showing you how you can get started in building your own affiliate marketing business!
How To Start Your Own Affiliate Marketing Business?
Sort Out Your Options
There are loads of affiliate networks out there willing to pay their affiliates for promoting their products and services for them. But the main concern is which are the best options to consider which will be easy to work with, pays very well, and would give you a lot of benefits. Of course, you should also choose an affiliate network that is trustworthy and legit.
First off, you can consider signing up as an affiliate to e-commerce websites such as Amazon, ClickBank, and Shopify. Let’s have a breakdown of these affiliate networks.
Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce websites in the world, known for selling almost everything from A to Z. This monster e-commerce retailer is also well known for its Amazon affiliate program. Here, you can sign up as an affiliate to promote their physical products.
You can be guaranteed that Amazon’s affiliate program is legit. However, you may find the commissions below. Promoting digital products, on the other hand, is said to generate higher commissions than promoting physical products on Amazon. This is why we have ClickBank affiliate marketing program.
ClickBank is a well-known affiliate network – in fact, one of the leading proponents in this industry. The marketplace within ClickBank is gleaming with a lot of products to promote particularly with digital products such as desktop software, e-books, and many more.
With such a large marketplace of products, unfortunately, ClickBank has a history of featuring products that you would see as scammy, suspicious, and too good to be true. As an affiliate, you have the responsibility to promote only products that would be beneficial to your audience. I’ll talk more about promoting worthy products later on.
You may also want to be an affiliate of companies like MindValley and edX running their own affiliate marketing programs. It’s all about finding the best and legitimate ones out there.
Promote Worthy Products
Searching for the right affiliate network that’ll suit your needs is one thing, but I cannot stress enough the importance of choosing the right products to promote! While ClickBank is definitely a legit platform to promote products, you can’t help but encounter some products that turn out to be scams.
When looking for the right products and services to promote, one thing you should consider is whether the niche you’re targeting is profitable and employs tons of product vendors to give your audience a wide range of products to choose from.
You should know which products make your readers want to click on it and which products would generate you commissions. You can try out which products appeal to your audience by first starting out with 1 or 2 products, and trying out others if it doesn’t really convert well. If you can’t afford to risk a lot of money then it’s always the best option to research extensively about a product first.
Of course, one thing you would also have to consider is if the product you’re going to promote is something you would consider buying, or at the very least, if you’re interested in the product itself. You can’t just go on promoting an e-book you don’t like and expect your readers to like it. Remember, your audience trusts your word. If they could see you genuinely like the product itself, they will do too!
Though you are not always obliged to purchase the product you’re promoting, you can do just that if you have some extra cash to spare and if you really want your readers to trust your word. Think about it this way. You’re entering a scary funhouse, and one of your friends who hasn’t been inside telling you it’s not scary. While your other friend who has been inside telling you that it is indeed scary.
Now, tell me, who will you believe? Affiliate marketing works on the same premise, as well. First-hand experience is always the best primary source, and you can win over more prospects this way.
In most cases, your affiliate merchant may be willing to provide you advertising materials such as banner ads and posters you can display on your website, post templates you can use for social media marketing, and training courses to email marketing.
On top of these, you’ll be given your own unique affiliate link which you’ll be using to insert within your posts. Listen up, this is important because your audience should be solely clicking on this link for the affiliate merchant to know that it’s you who lead the prospect to them.
Write Good Content
One of the reasons you want to write and stack up good content is to strengthen your search engine optimization and catapult yourself to the first page of search engines, especially on Google since Internet users mostly resort to Google for almost anything. We’ll talk more about traffic generation later on.
Creating good content is a big challenge, especially since you have to suit the different tastes of your readers. Well, you just have to make sure that you engage with them. Make them feel like you’re really talking to them so they can relate to you.
On top of that, you have to write in a way that will make them want to keep on reading until the end. Make them stay as long as possible, so you have to constantly pull them down the page.
Writing great content also means you know how to naturally slide in the product promotion to your posts. You can’t just go around promoting products like you’re a salesperson and shove the product to your reader’s face. No one likes that. I mean, would you? People like it when you’re genuine about something and they tend to empathize, making them want to buy the product.
You always want to go subtle. Create smooth and flowy transitions before introducing the product to your readers. Make it look like it’s a natural part of the post and not just some advertisement forcing it’s way in.
You may also want to try upsells. This is what I usually see on my shampoo bottles: “For best results, also use our hair conditioner to get Rapunzel’s hair!” ← absolutely not true.
I see that’s a really smooth and, in colloquial terms, lowkey way to promote your merchant more. Just make sure you see it fit that they’re complementary or else you’re just going to look desperate.
Traffic Generation
This is the key to everything, kind of overdramatic, but yeah, you get the point. You have to generate traffic to your website for the purpose of generating more leads to your campaigns. Remember, this is your online business and traffic is your livelihood. Traffic equates to leads and leads equate to conversions.
Most new affiliate marketers usually give up in the first three months because they find it hard to drive traffic to their website. While it’s mostly true, it’s all about using the right techniques and methods – and having patience and trust in these.
First, know which niches Internet users are more interested in. The more number of people interested in a niche means it’s profitable and you can tap into this niche’s traffic stream to redirect to your website. Still, avoid saturated markets as it becomes harder to seek for an opening and even harder to rank on the first pages of search engines.
Second, it never hurts to write great content, does it? Google disregards pages in which they deem to be irrelevant or mediocre. That’s why you have to write your content in a way that stands out from the rest of the pages.
Of course, it’s most important to know which traffic generation method you’re going to employ. Do you have some money to spare and want to generate traffic fast? Then, you can always opt for paid traffic through social media outlets or Google Adwords.
For me, I prefer free traffic via search engines and social media. Why? Well, because it’s free! Plus, even though this one takes you a long time to generate traffic, I find organic SEO to be much more stable in the long run. Imagine having to constantly pay for running your campaigns, that’s going to have a drastic toll on your expenses.
Free traffic is a challenge, but again, it’s all about employing the proper methods and techniques. Keyword research is one of the proven and effective ways to help you generate free traffic. You see, keywords are like hidden golden nuggets, you have to search for them.
You have to know what people are searching for answers for and be the one to provide these answers. You have to know which keywords are generating a ton of average monthly searches so you can tap into this traffic source. Through this, people will have a reason to visit your website.
That’s why it’s important to use an effective and accurate keyword research tool. Check out my Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool Review, and see if it’s a perfect fit for your keyword research needs.
Another technique to employ for generating free traffic is competition research. In the field of affiliate marketing, you are bound to compete with every other website ranking for the same keyword as you are. But sometimes, you have to back off especially if you are competing with high authority websites like Wikipedia, Forbes, CNN, among others.
Don’t be too optimistic, and only step into the battlefield with websites in the same league as you. There you have it, supplement your keyword research with an ample amount of competition research and you’re a force to be reckoned with.
Top Paying Affiliate Programs
Enough of that, are you ready to get started and build your own affiliate marketing business? I have listed for you below some of the best affiliate programs for beginners all the while being the top paying affiliate programs, as well.
- WP Engine: This is a web hosting platform for blog and website owners who particularly write about WordPress themes and plugins. For each of your referral that purchases a plan from WP Engine, your commissions could start at $200 minimum! What’s amazing here is their employment of a two-tier affiliate program.
- BigCommerce: This is an e-commerce platform employing an affiliate program that could compensate you commissions with a 200% bounty payment. Heck, you could earn up to $1,500 for a single referral.
- AWeber: This is an email marketing platform that pays you a 30% commission for promoting their email templates.
- Rakuten Linkshare: One of the leading affiliate networks and longest-running in the industry, you can promote products from more than 1,000 merchants. You have a lot of options to choose from!
- Shareasale: Being 19 years in the industry, this affiliate network has built its empire to a scale of more than 1 million affiliates – and for good reason. They have been providing affiliates with all the resources they can get like training webinars and affiliate marketing classes. If you’re a sucker for benefits on top of income, then Shareasale might be your best option.
Start an Affiliate Marketing Business With 0 Investment
Now you know what is an affiliate marketing business, but do you know that you can build your own without having to spend a single dime? Well, thank God he has allowed you to live to this day where it’s most certainly possible for you to start an affiliate marketing business with zero investment.
Wealthy Affiliate is one of the biggest affiliate network powerhouses out there, it provides you with all the tools, hosting, and support you will ever need. You can rely on the teaching plus everything else you need to know about building your own profitable and sustainable online business.
This one will guide you step by step until you are stable enough to earn your commissions by promoting the platform itself. Check out my Wealthy Affiliate review now to see for yourself why this one is your best option in starting your own affiliate marketing business.
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