Passive income is something that everyone dreams of. Some people may think that it is impossible to make money while you sleep, but that is not true. Affiliate marketing can provide you with a full-time income working from home on your own time (no need to hold on to the 9-6 office lifestyle). You can make a substantial amount of money with affiliate marketing, but it is not as simple as putting up a few links on your website and calling it a day. Affiliate marketing will allow you to pay your bills and put food on the table, but you have to start in a correct direction.
What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?
You have probably seen a lot of ads online or YouTube videos that talk about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when an online retail store or company pays you a commission for helping them sell their products by putting links on your websites or promoting other ways (like email and social media). The commission depends upon the company and product you promote. Some companies will pay you few dollars while some other will pay hundred dollars depending upon the value of the product.
Now that you know the definition of affiliate marketing, it is important to understand how to get started the right way.
1. Find a Niche
Finding a niche is the first step in making money with affiliate marketing. It helps you create content for your target audience and marketing campaigns. Doing research online to find the most popular niches will help you make a lot of money, or you can follow your passion. You can check out the websites like ClickBank to get an idea of popular niches. Remember, it is important to choose a money-making niche regardless of your passion. For example, choosing a niche on recipes is completely different than promoting web hosting or online trading services. While you can earn hefty commissions for promoting web hosting or trading related products, it is also important to adopt a proper affiliate marketing strategy to target the buyers.
To give you an idea, here is a commission structure for selling SiteGround hosting services – a single sale will get you $50.
2. Start a Blog
There are many ways to promote your affiliate products. However, blogging is one of the win-win situations for your readers as well as you. Though other options like email marketing and social promotion are quicker, blogging helps to get steady source of income over period.
- WordPress is the best and most popular platform to use for blogging.
- When creating a blog, make sure to use your own domain and premium web hosting.
- Avoid, hosting your site on free web hosting platforms like Weebly with .weebly subdomain. This will reduce the reliability of you and your readers may not trust to buy products from free websites.
Websites like SiteGround offers good deals for buying a web hosting plan with less than $10 month budget (it includes domain, hosting and email). The focus of your website is going to be your blog, but it is also good to have an about me, contact, affiliate disclosure and privacy pages for the sake of completeness. This will also help users and others find your contact details and get in touch with you when needed.
3. Create Content that is Worth Reading
Your content can either make or break your affiliate marketing goals. You have to have enough content to be approved for affiliate marketing programs. Some programs want you to already have a large amount of monthly views and traffic in order to sign up for their affiliate program. Here are some guidelines:
- Make sure to have at least 25 posts published on your website before applying to any affiliate marketing programs.
- Create content that will engage and inform your readers.
- Make use of the list articles which is one of the most popular ways to attract your target audience.
In general, the content value will take your site top in Google and other search engines and you will start getting hundreds of thousands of users visiting your site. However, you should also focus on search engine optimization techniques like optimizing titles and meta description to show your website outstanding on the search results pages. Though getting free traffic from search engines is a difficult task with AI results, it’s worth trying by optimizing your site.
4. Create an Email List
Combing email marketing with your blog an ultimate way to promote your affiliate links. Having an email list allows your subscribers to immediately know whenever you post a new post or deal. Setting up an email list is not as hard as you may think. You can platforms like MailChimp and ConvertKit to create an email list and automate the content distribution (for example sending a weekly newsletter).
5. Promoting a Product
Choosing a product (within your niche) to promote is the next important step of affiliate marketing.
- It is good to pick a product that you are already familiar with or use. For example, if you have a freelance writing blog, you can join Grammarly’s affiliate marketing program.
- Make a list of the products that you use and research on Google for their affiliate programs.
- Promote products that solve your readers problems or fulfills a need.
6. Signup for Affiliate Marketing Network
There are two ways to join in a affiliate program:
- Signup for an individual product website. As mentioned, hosting companies like SiteGround offers affiliate program on their own website.
- Affiliate networks – these are the marketplaces where companies list their affiliates and products. Some of the popular affiliate networks include ClickBank, Impact and Amazon Associates.
In both cases, you don’t need to pay any money to join the program. The advantage with networks is that you have hundreds of thousands of products to find and apply in a single platform. Remember that approval from the product owner is required for each product intended for promotion.
Final Words
Affiliate marketing is a lucrative option for making a decent income by sitting in your home. Many bloggers are making well over six figures a year with affiliate marketing. However, it is important to understand that you will not see the results overnight. It takes time to build trusted followers before making money. So, work hard to build your blog and affiliate promotions and reap the benefits in long run.
