If you want to make money online from home, Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. You don't need a product to sell, you don't have to make payments, and you don't have to ship anything. Plus, you don't have to deal with customers, returns, or refunds.
It's a without investment business that anyone can start. even you also don't want any technical knowledge.
BUT you need good common sense. Obviously, you need to understand the market, what and who can buy your affiliate products or services.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing means – Generating traffic on your own website or blog and sending them to other affiliate sites, and for each sales conversion, you earn the affiliate commission.
The more traffic you generate or the more targeted your traffic is, the more will be your income.
There are 1000's of manufacturers in all industries who have products or services available for you to sell and make a commission on.
An affiliate company pays you when a visitor from your website clicks on a link and is sent to the affiliate's company website and makes a purchase.
How Much Commission Can You Earn
The US $10 billion is the amount earned by affiliate marketers (blogs and website owners) in 2018 alone. And, this industry is growing leaps and bounds, day by day, due to low investment and high earning.
Commissions vary among affiliated companies. Information and downloadable software products can average commission rates of 50% to 75%, where products or services usually bring in commission rates between 5% and 10%.
Advantages of money-making via affiliate marketing
1. Very less investment: The initial investment required to start an online affiliate marketing business is very little. You have to invest some money to launch your blog or website. A matter of few dollars! That’s all!!
2. Unlimited earnings: Yes, there is no upside capping on your earnings. The more traffic you channelize to your affiliate websites, the more will be earning. Well established, full-time affiliate marketers usually earn the US $5,000 to $10,000 monthly.
For the initial few months, your earning may be very less. Over a period, when you gain some reputation or authority in your niche, your earning will increase exponentially.
3. Work from home: A PC and an internet connection. This is the only thing you need to start your online affiliate marketing.
Working from the comfort of your home is just like a ‘ dream come true ’ for a lot of people. Because you are the BOSS, and you decide how many hours you want to work or during which part of the day you want to work.
Example Of An Affiliate Product
This is an example of what an affiliate product would look like in your online store.
Click the BUY NOW button, and you can see how the store works.
When a visitor clicks on the ‘Buy Now' button they're directed to the affiliate company's website to continue with their purchase.
How to start an online affiliate marketing business?
Step #1. Know your expertise or passion
Make your passion your profession. This is the most important and deciding factor for successful online affiliate marketing. Because you excel in your profession naturally and effortlessly.
Everybody has a passion or a hobby for something or else. You have to discover that, to explore more, or, to be more creative.
There are so many advantages when you make your passion your profession. First of all, you already know a lot of things about the subject matter and command a little bit of authority in the niche, from the beginning itself.
Secondly, you enjoy your profession every day, as it is your passion. And, when you enjoy your profession, you work hard. This will be quite helpful in your initial days of an online money-making venture.
Step #2. Make your own blog
If you have decided on your subject matter or niche in the 1st step, proceed to the 2nd step and launch your own professional blog.
Launching a professional blog is damn easy! You simply have to choose and register a Domain name and a Hosting Plan from a Web-Hosting service provider. You should go for either of the famous two – Hostgator and Bluehost. Or you can check the best and trusted hosting service providers.
Important: Your domain name should closely resemble your subject matter or niche, and it should be short and catchy enough to be remembered by your visitors.
Then you have to choose your blogging platform. Again, the famous two are Blogger, WordPress.org and WordPress.com. It greatly depends on – how comfortable you are while using the back-end of the blogging platform, which will be your virtual working office from now on.
Bloggers are greatly divided while choosing a blogging platform. In my opinion – you should go for WordPress.
Launching a WordPress blog is very easy. Login to your Control Panel, go to the Softaculous, with a few clicks, and your Online Affiliate Blog is launched!
Step #3. Find products or services to promote
Now that you have launched your professional blog, you have to find different products and services you want to promote.
You should choose the products and services which are related to your subject or niche. Because your targeted traffic will be related to your subject matter and usually considered high converting affiliate sales.
You can choose any products or services related to your niche like – Gadgets, Fashion apparel, Books, Financial products, Foot-wears, etc. There is no end to this list. And, there is the ‘ N ’ number of online websites that offer affiliation to sell these products.
You can go for the Amazon Affiliate Program or eBay affiliation, to learn the tricks of the trade-in in your initial days. These days, almost all online sites are offering affiliate programs. Just check the affiliate link at the bottom or top of the websites.
There are also companies that have consolidated 1,000’s of affiliate partners under one umbrella where you can go and select the kind of products you want to promote.
Three popular consolidators are; ClickBank, LinkShare and Commission Junction, vCommission.
ClickBank sells information and downloadable software products with commissions ranging between 40% and 75%. You can register for free on ClickBank and be accepted immediately to sell any of the products from the companies they represent.
Here’s an example of a software product, offered by a company under the ClickBank umbrella, which monitors a child's activities on the web. It also protects against online predators. It’s called PC Tattletale Software. The Tattletale software costs $70.88 and the website owner receives 51% in commission.
LinkShare & Commission Junction's product lines range in commission from 5% to 10%. One example of LinkShare's companies where you need to be approved for selling their unique product lines is SkyMall.com. You may have seen their product lines in magazines on various airlines. Approvals are easier to get when you create an online store already created.
Step #4. Generate Traffic and Track Link on your blog
Traffic is the lifeline of your online money-making venture.
Generating tons of raw traffic is not enough to be a successful affiliate marketer. Your traffic should be highly targeted for higher sales conversion.
My only advice to you, to generate more targeted traffic is quality blog posts. You should publish high-quality posts about products and services for which people are searching desperately. And, with a bit of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you will get lots of targeted traffic.
Your aim should be – Provide information and solution, which people are searching for online.
Your affiliate company will also give you a login section on their website where you can keep track of your sales, and payments.
Banners & Tracking Links
Affiliates provide you with banners or tracking links, you can easily copy into your website. You simply copy and paste into your store which tracks your visitor purchases.
When a visitor clicks on one and is directed to your affiliate, it tracks the sale. Links can usually track returning visitors for weeks or months and you can still receive a commission if they return to make a purchase. You should ask your affiliate partner the time frame that they attribute the sale to you for returning visitors.
You can feature affiliate products and services that are complementary to what your website is about, and feature them on various website pages alongside your primary revenue stream.
You can sell an unlimited number of products on your website.
Final words: Online money making using affiliate marketing is a very easy and successful online venture, provided you Work hard and Keep patience for the long haul.
Read More:
- 3 Necessary Tools for the High Rolling Affiliate Marketer
- How To Become A Super Affiliate In Niche Markets
- How to make money from vCommission Affiliate Program
- 3 Things All Affiliate Marketers Need To Survive Online
- Why Dropshipping is a Great Business Idea?
One Comment
Very informative post. I really do hope and pray this stuff works!