This Affiliate Marketing beginners guide will walk you through the meaning of affiliate marketing, how it works, how to start your own affiliate marketing business, and tips to become a successful affiliate marketer.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
According to Investopedia, ‘Affiliate marketing is an advertising model by which a company compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s product or service.’
These third-party publishers are known as affiliates and they are being compensated a commission fee for the sales, leads, or traffic they generate for them.
Most affiliate marketing programs are free to join, so you don’t have to worry about any start-up costs or inventory; these are usually taken care of by the company. If done well, this can go a long way in acting as a side income generation tool for you.
Types of affiliate marketing
There are two types of affiliate marketing: The first type is where you promote other people’s products or services and get paid a commission for every sale, lead, or traffic made.
The second type involves creating your products or services and setting up an affiliate marketing program. In this type of affiliate marketing, you pay commissions to people for promoting your products or services.
How affiliate marketing works?
As an affiliate marketer, your job or duty is to advertise different types of products or services through social media platforms, blogs, podcasts, or websites.
To get started, you are given a unique link to track your every sale and lead. This will enable you to track your performance, sales and revenue.
To recap
- You advertise a banner or link for store X on your blog or social media platforms that is, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tiktok, etc.
- A customer clicks on your unique link and purchase from store X.
- The affiliate network recognises the transaction and records it on their system.
- Shop X confirms the sale or purchase.
- You are paid a commission fee.
The commission rates of affiliate networks vary, depending on the product and company. You can earn as high as 40% per sale, to as low as 5% when you are promoting products that are not on the high-demand side. Though some companies pay based on a flat rate per sale instead of a percentage.
How do affiliate marketers make money?
While some marketers make around $50 or less per month, others like Ryan Robinson net around $10,000 per month through affiliate marketing. Your social media following, blog traffic, and email lists are some of the factors that will determine how much you will make monthly.
Furthermore, the payment model will tell you what task you are expected to do. For instance, if you are promoting a physical product, the task will likely be a purchase. But if it is a software product, then the action will be a free trial sign-up.
4 ways affiliate marketers get paid
- Pay per sale: This refers to payments made for each sale. They are usually common among e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, etc.
- Pay per install: These are payments made for every installation made. Your task is to promote mobile apps and software so that people can download them on their devices.
- Pay per lead: You earn commissions for every specific action taken by a customer. For example, email signup, contact request, form submission, etc.
- Pay per click: this was a popular payout system before, but was abused by some affiliate marketers. PPC programs involve earning a commission for every click generated.
How to start affiliate marketing as a side hustle
To get started as an affiliate marketer, there are four simple steps you must take. Just like running any type of business; affiliate marketing requires total commitment, discipline, and hard work to be successful.
Step 1: Pick a platform or method
Every affiliate marketer out there has different platforms or methods they use in advertising products and services. Popular platforms such as Blogs, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, etc. Can be used as a tool to promote your offers. You need to identify which one you understand better.
Step 2: Decide on a niche or audience
You should specialize in a single niche to make your desired audience or customer locate you easily. For instance, if you blog about dog food, you can look out for affiliate networks or companies that sell dog food. People will see you as an authority in this niche when you help them choose the best dog food for their dog.
Step 3: Find your products
The niche or area you choose in step two must have an audience or customer out there; else you risk wasting your time, effort and money. Popular affiliate marketplace to consider include:
Step 4: Choose your affiliate program
The final step involves brainstorming about the product that will satisfy your audience. Make sure the product you choose aligns with that of your audience. A travel blogger shouldn’t be promoting beauty products. It is very wrong.
Also, the platform you seek to promote should be specific and effective. For instance, home decor and beauty products are well suited for photo-based platforms such as Instagram – not Twitter.
Tips to become a successful affiliate marketer
As we mentioned earlier, affiliate marketing requires total commitment, hard work and patience. There is a lot of heavy lifting you have to do upfront. Trust is a key factor in your affiliate marketing effort because people need to trust you in order to pull out their credit cards.
Also, there are some strategies you can utilize to generate sales, leads and traffic as recommended by top affiliate experts such as Ryan Robinson. They include building an email list, talking to product experts, creating product tutorials, offering bonuses, and finding relevant search terms for blog posts and SEM.
Conclusion
Starting an affiliate marketing business can be rewarding as a side hustle. It involves a low risk and low capital involvement. All that is required of you is your time, energy and dedication. By investing upfront, you can be sure of securing your future. But before you sack your boss, make sure you are already earning a significant amount of money from it.
