Affiliate Marketing: A Beginner's Guide
As affiliate marketing is my preferred method of making money online, I'm dedicating a whole section of this website to the topic to give you a great resource for learning the best ways to take advantage of this method.
This article is an overview of affiliate marketing to explain what it is and how you can potentially make a great income from working in this field.
I'm guessing that you're already keen to know more, so let's get started:
What is Affiliate Marketing?
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is the process of promoting a third party created product or service via the Internet to earn commission for yourself on each sale generated via your special link.
The special link is otherwise known as an affiliate link (hyperlink) that you place on a web property such as a website, blog or social media page. This is obtained from the vendor of the product/service you are promoting (more on that later).
What makes this link ″special″ is that it contains a tracking cookie that allows the product vendor to know exactly where the customer came from. That's so the affiliate can be compensated monetarily in the form of a commission payment for their part in creating the sale.
The task for the affiliate is to place their web page in front of potential customers and pre-sell the product or service they are promoting to them. This is done using cleverly crafted content, called sales copy writing, that convinces the consumer that they want to buy that product or use that service.
Promoting Physical or Digital Products
There are two main classes of product that you can promote and sell as an affiliate, physical or digital in nature.
Physical products are things that people can buy online from stores that can be picked up, touched and used for whatever purpose they were created for. These include household items such as furniture, electrical appliances, tools, decorative accessories etc.
Digital products exist in the virtual world on computers, tablets and phones. These are usually readable or watchable content such as ebooks, pdfs or online courses including video teaching material.
Aside from actual products that are purchased for use in some way, there are also certain services that can be promoted by the affiliate to earn commission. These include things from household repair and maintenance services; automobile repair or servicing; financial services such as accounting, tax advice, investments etc; legal services; right across the board to finding someone to cut your lawn.
There are many companies that offer products or services online that can increase their sales performance by allowing affiliates to do some of the promoting for them.
Making Money as an Affiliate Marketer
Now that you know what the job of an affiliate marketer is, I believe you can already see the potential for making money by following the process through.
Finding a product or service that interests you and that you have prior knowledge about, that is popular and comes with a good commission rate can can get you started earning your first dollars online. The general idea is to start by promoting one product or service then gradually expand to other items that are related to that first one and build up an information and review type of website or blog to publish your own work to.
It's common for newcomers to this business of affiliate marketing strategy to start by finding their first thing to promote from one of the numerous affiliate networks. Such as Clickbank for digital products, Amazon Associates for all manner of physical products, or perhaps CJ (formerly Commission Junction) for all kinds of products and services.
In fact, literally any product or service that you can think of that people need or use will almost certainly have an online presence and an affiliate program associated with it.
Summary
The aim of the affiliate marketer is to make as many sales as possible with the online tools available in order to generate lots of commissions from multiple sources.
I'm not saying that it's easy, because it takes a good amount of work in researching products, services and the affiliate programs that are available. That's to ensure you start promoting things that people want and will make you money by making sales for the vendors, rather than trying to sell things that very few people are actually interested in buying.
Affiliate marketing is a numbers game to some extent, meaning the more eyes you can get on an offer, the better chance you have of converting visitors to your web pages into buying customers. However, it beats trying to make money from online surveys just like it's more lucrative than flipping burgers or stacking shelves for a living.
As long as your copy can grab their attention enough for them to open your page, then keep them reading until they get to your Call-to-Action (CTA) where you make the sale, you are set to make some good income from your efforts. You'll soon discover how being a digital entrepreneur as an affiliate has the very real potential to make you way more money than many regular jobs out there in the real world ever could.
PS: For info on a real, top rated Affiliate Marketing course, take a look at the embedded PDF document below:
Posted: December 27, 2023
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