If you have heard how affiliate marketing is a very profitable method to make money online I must tell you that it is true. Affiliate marketing is so good that it can give you thousands of dollars each and every month. I like to say that affiliate marketing is a passive income.
It is definitely a great way to build an online business without much investment, I will tell you in this article how you can start it with minimal investment when it comes to affiliate marketing.
When you build a foundation and start getting regular traffic to your promotion platform you are set for great success.
I am a full-time affiliate marketer and I simply enjoy doing this online business because yeah, affiliate marketing is a serious and real online business.
Now I suppose that you want to find out how to make money online as an affiliate marketer? You are in the right place, I will show you how can you start and you can start it with my personal help, I will talk about that at the end of this article so read carefully and till the end.
Before we get to the topic I want to meet you with some statistics when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Statista says that affiliate marketing expenditure in the US is reaching $8 Billion in 2022. In 2017, it was only $5 Billion. That means that if you want to start making money with affiliate marketing you will not go wrong. And don’t be afraid of competition, I am sure you heard about it how it is competitive to get into affiliate marketing.
Where is competition there is money, remember that.
Now, let’s start from the beginning, we will see what is affiliate marketing, how it works, and how can you actually make money with this great online method.
What Is Affiliate Marketing in Short?
In simple words, affiliate marketing is where you promote other products or services to an audience and when someone buys from your recommendation (through your unique affiliate link) you are going to get a commission from that sale.
The most common ways of earning from affiliate marketing are done through websites, YouTube, Instagram, and other social media. Affiliate marketing is working everywhere and everyone is doing it today.
I am sure you have seen on social platforms like Instagram that someone is promoting let’s say fat burner for example. In the description you can see that someone says ”click here to buy it”, that is an affiliate link and when you buy that fat burner through that link the owner of that Instagram profile will earn a percentage of that sale.
To be able to earn from affiliate marketing you will need to register on an affiliate program, without it you can’t earn money from promoting products or services.
Let me explain to you how actually affiliate marketing works.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
I already said that you need to register on the affiliate program to be able to earn from affiliate marketing. Which affiliate program you will choose depends on the niche you are in.
Let’s say that I am in the niche of fitness. In that case, I will be looking to register on affiliate programs that offer products or services related to fitness.
When I choose a product or service I want to promote I will need a promotion channel where I will do the promotion and marketing.
The most common marketing channels are blogs, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media.
Let’s say I have my own blog I created in the niche of fitness, there I will write related topics about fitness and in the text, I will naturally link to a product I am promoting. If someone clicks on that link and buys the product I will get from 5% to 75% in commissions. Those are pretty real percentages.
It’s that simple and easy, I have been doing affiliate marketing for years, and it’s definitely one of the easiest ways to make a nice passive income online but also one of the fastest ways. You can literally start making money today doing affiliate marketing but you need to do a great promotion and marketing depending on what channel you are using, blog, YouTube, Instagram, etc.
What is important to say is that affiliate marketing consists of various individuals and I want to make sure you know it before starting to make money with this online method. We have here a product owner, affiliate marketer, consumer, and affiliate network.
We Have Product Owner
Just like the name says a product owner is a person or a company that created a product or service and is ready to sell it.
Products can be physical like mobile phones, shoes, fat burners, refrigerators, and the like, and can be digital like web hosting, car rentals, ebooks, and similar.
What is pretty interesting when it comes to affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to own or make your own product to be able to earn money. You just need to find relevant product owners in your niche and contact them and that’s it.
Product owners can be big companies like Nike let’s say or they can be individuals like you and me.
We Have an Affiliate Marketer
Affiliate marketers are you and me. For me, I know for sure that I am an affiliate marketer but if you want to start doing affiliate marketing you will be too.
What we (affiliate marketers) are doing is promoting the seller’s products or services. That is our main job as affiliate marketers as we want to make serious money doing it. But we need to do it right!
The most popular way to do promotion is through a website we create. We create a niche blog and there we are doing our promotions, we can promote millions of products on our blog, no one can forbid us that and that is the magic of affiliate marketing, just imagine the potential and how much can you earn.
So, we create a blog in the niche we want (one blog one niche, keep that in mind), we write about the topic and we naturally link to a product we want to sell to our audience. There is no guarantee that everyone will buy the product but if we have a large audience on our blog there are definitely people who would buy it.
It is important that we are promoting relevant products that are in our chosen niche. You can’t write on your blog about fat loss and promote dog food, there is no sense. If you write about fat loss you need to promote products in that niche.
We Have Consumer
I suppose you already know who are the consumers. Those are the people who will potentially buy what we are promoting. You and I are consumers too, how many times have you bought something online? Countless times, I know, just like me.
Those consumers can be regular blog visitors or YouTube subscribers, when they see your content they will also see what you are promoting, if they like it they will buy it and that’s it, you will get a commission from it.
We Have Affiliate Network (or program)
This is very important, I already told you that you can’t do affiliate marketing without registering on some affiliate program.
Those affiliate networks (like Amazon Associate) have everything in one place. You will get affiliate links from them, banners, images, and all other promotional material. This will help you to increase the conversion rate and successfully promote and sell the product.
You don’t need to register specifically to affiliate networks like Awin, Amazon Associates, and the like. You also have some independent affiliate programs in every niche. You just need to google ”your niche + affiliate program” and you will see sites that are offering affiliate partnerships.
My recommendation is that you register with individual affiliate programs, they are much easier to work with than those big affiliate giants mentioned above.
Is It Worth Doing Affiliate Marketing Today?
Sure it is worth it. If it was not why would millions of people do it?
For me, it is the best source of passive income online because when you set the foundation, I primarily think about blogging and doing affiliate marketing, and you will see how powerful it is.
The best thing is that you don’t need a big investment, you just need to pay for domain and web hosting if you decide to do it with blogging, just like I am doing it and many others. This is an evergreen method of making money online, while there is the internet there will be always affiliate marketing.
Let’s see some of the best benefits you have by doing affiliate marketing:
It Is a 100% Passive Income Online
I know this from my personal experience, just look at the picture below.
Those earnings that you see above, are 100% passive because I have not done anything to earn those numbers, I have just written one product review and Bum! Just one article is bringing me a passive income and I am still receiving earnings after 5 months of publishing that article.
$3000+ in commissions from doing absolutely nothing! Just give my readers the right information and that’s it! And you know what, ANYONE can do this, even if you don’t have any experience in affiliate marketing, you just need to know the basics and follow the right training.
It Is a Low Investment Business
If you plan to start an offline business like opening a gym or your own restaurant you will need thousands of dollars to begin that business.
When it comes to affiliate marketing you only need to pay for domain and web hosting if you decide to do it with blogging which I highly recommend. Instagram, YouTube, and Tiktok are not bad platforms but owning your own website/blog is a MUST!
When it comes to creating a product that you want to sell you would need many ideas and start-up investment. That is why it is much easier to promote other products/services instead of creating your own.
Joining affiliate programs/networks is also free so it is a win-win for you.
You Can Work From Anywhere
This is the beauty of doing affiliate marketing, you practically can do it whenever you are, you just need a laptop or PC and an internet connection and that’s it.
Many of us dream of working in a restaurant while drinking coffee or while on the beach. With affiliate marketing, it is possible and achievable.
You are not tied to the office or just one place, you decide where and when will you work.
I am a person who enjoys traveling and it’s not important if I am in USA or Dubai, I can work freely.
How Much Is Affiliate Marketer Paid?
As an affiliate marketer you can be paid in many ways:
- PPC or Pay Per Click – this means that every time someone clicks on your link you are getting paid, it is a very rare form of paying in affiliate marketing, you will usually get paid in this way by doing Paid advertisements.
- Pay Per Sale – this is very common and you can expect that you will make money with this method. Everyone who clicks on your affiliate link and makes a payment, you will get a commission.
When it comes to how much can you earn the answer is, that the sky is the limit! And that is true, it’s not important if you want to make $100, $1000, $10.000, or more, you can make it if you put in the work and be consistent.
It is not like you are doing in some company for a fixed payment each and every month, with affiliate marketing there are no limits as you can make hundreds of thousands of sales with your website. It is an online business that does not have limitations.
If we are talking about statistics, according to PayScale average affiliate marketer is earning over $50k per year, which is fantastic.
Of course that there are many affiliate marketers who are making millions per year, you should not have a doubt about that.
How Can You Start With Affiliate Marketing In 5 Simple Steps?
It’s not hard to start doing affiliate marketing, you can start it literally today but you need a few things:
- You need a platform where you will be doing affiliate marketing
- You need to choose your niche, which products you want to promote
1. Which Marketing Platform Should You Use? (Blog Is a Must!)
BLOG! The blog is a must if you plan to start with affiliate marketing. Later you can expand your work on YouTube and other social media but for the start, you must have your own niche blog.
Just like I mentioned above you will need to invest only in hosting service and domain name, how much it costs depends on hosting companies, it can be from $100 to $400 per year. It is not much depending on how much you will actually earn with affiliate marketing.
It is the most effective way to do marketing on your blog because no one can take your blog, it is only yours, and when it comes to social media you are dependent on platforms, like Instagram, YouTube, and other.
On your blog, you will write about the topic you chose and in those articles, you will naturally promote products or services in your niche.
So, listen to me, invest in creating your blog and you will thank me later!
2. Choose Your Niche (Very Important)
I must say that if you plan to make money with affiliate marketing it will highly depend on choosing a niche for your website.
You must be in a profitable niche!
If you choose a niche that is not ”evergreen” you will likely not make any money. Of course, you can but I am talking here about serious money. I am in the Make Money Online niche which is very profitable.
If you plan to write about travels, art, history, and the like, you will not make any money from affiliate marketing.
That is why it is important that you choose an evergreen niche that will bring you passive income in years.
Fitness, diets, love, relationships, making money online..those are the niches that are very profitable and where money is.
3. Wisely Choose Products/Services and Affiliate Programs
When you build your blog in a niche you chose you will need to start looking for products or services you will promote on that blog.
It is very important that you choose quality products in your niche because you can’t sell everything to your audience, it must be something that will actually help them and not just take them their money.
You first must HELP your audience and only then sell them something. You must build trust with your readers and give them honest and true information on what they are looking for.
When it comes to affiliate programs, the best way to find them is to google ”your niche” + ”affiliate program” without quotes and you will see in the results independent programs that are offering affiliate partnerships.
If you are a beginner I don’t recommend applying to big giants like Amazon, Awin, CJ, and ClickBank. You will do great if you stick to those small, independent affiliate programs in your niche.
4. Start Creating Super-Quality Content
CONTENT IS KING! Remember that.
Depending on which niche you are you will want to create excellent content that in the end, will drive traffic to your blog.
You want to do in depths reviews and ”How to” articles on your blog and give your readers as detailed articles as you can, of course depending on your topic.
Look at the content that you are reading right now, it has more than 3k words. You don’t want to share articles on your blog which are 300 or 500 words long, that will not work.
5. Drive Traffic To Your Blog
Let’s be clear here, without traffic you will earn $0. Traffic on your blog is a must if you think to make any money from affiliate marketing.
Sure, you can pay for traffic by using paid ads but you will need a lot of budget for that.
That is why social media and SEO optimization should be your best friends when it comes to attracting traffic to a blog.
You should primarily focus on SEO because that traffic is priceless, organic traffic from Google will make you rich, I guarantee you that.
Primarily pay attention to headings IE titles, and your blog structure, do keyword research, and use images in your text. Don’t spam keywords in your articles because you could get penalized by Google.
Start With Wealthy Affiliate – No.1 Affiliate Marketing Training Platform I Recommend
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I am a member of this platform for over 6 years and I am working full-time with affiliate marketers all over the world.
WA platform is for both beginners and those more advanced people who want to start making money with affiliate marketing, you will love it just like I do.
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Hey, I’m Daniel, a 28-year-old from Serbia who has been successfully doing affiliate marketing for almost 10 years. Through years of trial, error and continuous learning, I have perfected my skills and I am delighted to be able to share my knowledge and advice through this site where you can find absolutely everything you need to start your online business.