Earn Money as an Affiliate Marketer
When I joined the affiliate marketing industry a few years ago,
one of the things I came to realize was that there is an awful lot of hype in
the online marketing business. I am sure you have noticed many online marketers
telling you how easy it is to make thousands of dollars a week with little or
no effort. All you need to do is follow their secret system to success. Well,
90 percent of that stuff is hype because it simply isn’t true that you can make
money online without any effort.
What I will tell you is that being an affiliate marketer is the
best way to make money online, lots of money if you do it right, but it will
take a lot of effort your part. It will also take some planning and maybe a lot
of time before you start making money so you will need to have patience as
well. So, if you want to make money online as an affiliate marketer be prepared
to make an effort to learn the business the right way.
This review will give you a brief overview of Affiliate
marketing and what you need to do to build your own income producing online
business.
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What is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which a company pays compensation to third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third-party publishers are referred to as affiliates and are paid commission fees to find ways to promote the company.
Affiliate marketing has been around even before the internet, but it is during the internet age that it has increased its prominence and became the billion-dollar industry it is today. Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world, is mainly responsible for making the industry what it is today.
Amazon is not the only large reatiler with affiliate programs. They may be the largest online retailer but there are so many others today. Affiliate marketing today has become a massive industry with most of the world’s leading retailers involved. According to Forrester research, the industry has been growing at an annual rate of 10% since 2015 and will be a $6.8 billion industry by 2020. Also, more than 80% of large companies in America use some form of affiliate marketing to advertise their products to as many people as possible.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
An online merchant that wants to reach as many internet shoppers as possible many hire an affiliate to help him achieve them. The affiliate could be the owner of a website, or multiple sites, or email marketing lists, etc. The affiliate would then promote the merchant’s product on his website using articles, videos, banners, to draw the visitors the product or service being advertised for sale.
The merchant will provide the affiliate with his own unique affiliate link, a link from the affiliate’s website to the merchant’s site. This link is used to track the sales that you generate.
A visitor who clicks this link or the banners will be redirected to the merchant’ s website. If he ends up buying the product or service, then the merchant pays the affiliate the agreed commission which could 5% or 10% of the of the sale price of the product.
There are millions of businesses selling their products or services online through their online stores or website. As an affiliate marketer, you can join most of these programs without charge. Two of the most prominent ones are:
Amazon Associates, the affiliate program for Amazon, the world’s leading online retailer, and
Shara-a-sale, an affiliate marketing platform with almost 4000 merchants welling products.
Some Important Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
- You do not need your own product to sell online.
- You do not have to handle inventory
- You do not need to deal with customers should something go awry
- You don’t have to deal with product delivery, shipping, handling, or customer support.
- You don’t have to handle refunds, or keeping the product up-to-date.
- Very low start-up cost ($10/year for a domain, $5/month for hosting).
Many companies provide affiliate resources for you, such as banners, graphics, e-mail swipes, social media swipes and content that you can use to make it easy to promote their product or service. The best thing is still to separate from the rest and create your own marketing materials.
You only need to focus on one primary aspect: sending traffic to someone’s product or service and then they will take care of the rest.
The People Involved in the Affiliate Process
To make affiliate marketing work there are the following parties are involved;
- The affiliate or re-seller of the product is responsible for getting the product in front of potential buyers.
- The merchant or advertiser is the person or company who owns the product. Companies use affiliate marketing as a way of gaining more sales without exposing themselves to too many risks because they only have to pay affiliates when they make sales.
- The source of traffic is where the customers will come from. In other words, through your website. To sell the products, you need to get visitors to your site
- The customer or buyer of the product is the person who will purchase the product you promote on your site. When they arrive on your site and click your affiliate link, they will be redirected to the Owner’s site where if they buy the product you get paid.
How to get Started as an Affiliate Marketer
To become an affiliate marketer, you do not have to worry about having your own products to sell because there are tons of online marketers with products for you to sell. You can join their affiliate programs without charge. So, the first thing is to sign up with one of these affiliate programs and get your ‘affiliate link’ to link your website to the marketer’s site. This link is to keep track of the activities on your site, and when a visitor click’s it, he will be redirected to the market’s website. If he/she buys the product, the link will record the sale so that you can get a commission.
The other things you need to do to start out, which are very important is to choose a niche, build your website, and write and distribute articles to promote the products you are selling.
Finally, be patient. Patience is the virtue you will need to become successful as an affiliate marketer because it could take a long time before you start making money.
Get Free Affiliate Marketing Training
It’s a very dificult task to try to learn everything you need to know about affiliate marketing, if you decide to do it on your own. It could take months if not years for you to become profitable. People fail because they don’t have the vital affiliate program information they need and the guidelines on how to proceed. So, the first thing you should do to do to become an affiliate marketer is to get the best available training.
Be aware that there are many experts out there with their own versions of how to make money online. But all they want you to do is sell their own products. On the other hand, there are honest brokers out there who have had great success as internet marketers and are willing to train new marketers (newbies) and to do so in some cases for free.
Get A Free Website
One of the best training facility online is Wealthy Affiliate, a training website which provides the training and continued guidance to take you from a newbie to a successful affiliate marketer. The training is free to start, saving you money and time and avoiding mistakes. It provides the training, the tools and all other services needed for you to succeed as an affiliate marketer. It is an excellent training website highly ranked by the industry experts for what it offers. The free starter membership comes with starter training, two websites, hosting and more.
