Introduction to Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most efficient methods of earning money online.In this Ultimate Guide, I’ll walk you through every step of starting an online business with affiliate marketing and generating your first online income.
To be honest, I don’t make six figures with Affiliate every month, but I do make good recurring revenue, and what’s more, it’s almost completely passive income!
What exactly do I mean by passive income?
Passive income means that I earn a couple of thousand dollars per month without doing anything.So even if I take the entire month off, I will still earn almost the same amount each month.
In this article, I will explain what I do and provide some tips to help you get started with affiliate marketing, and then I will show you how to scale and reach 5-6 figures after one year or so.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Simply put, affiliate marketing is the practise of promoting other people’s products and services and businesses are earning commission each sale.
So, what’s nice is that you won’t have to worry about creating and purchasing products, you’ll simply promote an existing product. This is why it’s simple to start with. As you will see later, you can even begin with a 0$ budget.
So affiliate marketing is a great option for anyone who wants to start a business online and make money without investing or having a lot of online skills.
Let’s get started!
Affiliate marketing is simply based on the following two things:-
1. Selecting the right product to promote.
2.Promoting the selected product.
It’s as simple as that, choose a product, promote it, and make money!
Let’s begin with the first step, which is to select the right product.
1.Select the right product to promote:
Understanding and learning how to select the best product or service to promote is very important because, Simply put, if you choose the right product, you will earn much more money with the same amount of time and effort.
Example:- Assume you are promoting a $200 service and your commission is 60% on each sale.
You promoted this service and received about 50 sales per month.
Simple calculations:–
50$ * (200*0.6) = 6000$ each month.
And your advertising costs (In case of running paid Advertisement) are 3000$. Then you earn 3000$ per Month.
Each Year: 3000$ * 12 month = 40000 $ ✔️
Great! BUT, in this situation, you will need to promote each month, pay for advertising every month,effort and Time each month!! Yes?!
Let’s now change the Scenario!
We chose a product for the same price: $200. Your commission is 40% rather than 60%.
The difference here is that the product you chose pays recurring commissions, so you will earn 40% every month without promoting it again and again.
Assume you promoted this service and were able to make 50 sales in a month.
Simple calculations:–
For 50 sales each month:-
First month: $50 * (200*0.4) = $4000
And if your advertising costs $3000, you will earn only $1,000 in the first month.
But then, without any further effort or advertisement, 4000 dollars for the next months (It’s recurring!) Have You Got It?
As a result, you will receive $4000 in the next months for free!
Each year: 1000$ + ( 4000$ * 11) = 45000 $ with much more less effort and time!
Which scenario do you choose?
I think , you will choose the second option (recurring commission), which will become 90% passive with the same or more revenue!
This is just a small example of how choosing the right product—even with a low commission—could be critical in affiliate marketing.
Of course, I’m not saying you shouldn’t go with one-time commission products! NO.
Choosing the right product is very important, and I’m only showing how it may affect your work.
Top Networks And affiliate Products to choose from.
After we knew the importance ofchoosing the affiliate product, the Big Question now is: “Where can I find affiliate products to start promoting it ?“
To make things simple for you,I’ll go through more than 10 affiliate programmes and products that you can join even if you’re a complete beginner. and I’ll show both recurring and one-time commission products and services for you.
Affiliate products with single commission.
I will share with you the top 5 affiliate networks where you can get started and find different products to promote.
1.ClickBank:- You may have heard of ClickBank, which is an affiliate network with thousands of products available to promote.
2.CJAffiliate:- CJ is another one of the biggest online affiliate networks. I work with CJ and promote various product, including Contabo and other web hosting services.
3.JVZoo:- It’s another large and trusted affiliate network with thousands of Affiliate products to start with.
4.Warrior Plus:– This network is excellent for beginners because it is simple to join and is available from anywhere in the world.
5.Envato Market:- One of my favourites, and I already use it to generate a couple of hundred dollars per month (100% passive).
This company offers digital assets and products such as website themes and templates, audio and video templates, source codes, and much more.
Now let’s move to my preferred list of affiliate services and products with recurring commissions.
Affiliate Products with Recurring Commissions.
Here is the nicest part, working with recurring commission products and making 10X more money annually with the same amount of effort!
1.ClickFunnels:- It is one of the most generous affiliate programmes for Service As A Service (SAAS) businesses offered by ClickFunnels. They pay 40% lifetime affiliate commissions on every purchase.
Also, they have something that is referred to as a “sticky cookie,” which is a bonus to affiliates because if you share your link with a customer, it follows them across all of their devices. As a result, no matter where they are, the people you refer remain attached to your affiliate account.
Together with their software, Clickfunnels constantly creates new products that you can sell and make money from, such training courses and live events.
2.SEMRUSH:- It’s also an great Service to promote with a 40% commission rate, SEMRUSH is an SEO tools company that helps anyone to rank their websites and increase their free organic traffic.
3.Tube Buddy:– By referring people to Tube Buddy, you can earn up to 30% Recurring commission.
Tube Buddy saves time and helps content creators, brands, and networks grow their channels.So you can market and advertise it to content creators in order to help them grow their YouTube Channels.
4.Get Response:- One of the best email marketing services available, with an excellent affiliate programme.
As you can see, it offers to programmes, one of which pays a single commission of $100 per sale. The other is a monthly 33% recurring commission.
What’s nice about Get Response and similar services is that it’s difficult for users to leave them because all of their mailing lists, data, and analytics are saved in the system, So making migration will be a problem.
This is a great thing if you think about recurring commissions, So, when you refer someone, there is a 95% chance that he or she will become a long-term customer.
Anyway, practically all products and services have an affiliate network, so you can check out whatever product or service you like, contact them, and ask about their affiliate program.
Promotion of Affiliate Product.
After we know what is affiliate marketing, and the importance of choosing the right products to promote, and I showed you some of the best affiliate networks and programs that you can start with. Now it’s real work time!
Choosing the product or service could take like 10 minutes or a maximum of 1-2 days.
But what is most important now is How to promote?! It is all about Marketing.
When it comes to marketing, we have two options:-
1.Free advertisement.
2.Paid advertisement.
Free advertisement
Let’s start with Free advertisement, and see how we can promote affiliate products and services for free by starting with free promotion.
1.Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the greatest way to promote affiliate products and services and turn this online business into nearly 99% passive income . why?
Before, I say why, Let’s explain SEO in briefly .
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is simply a method, or a techinique which is used to rank your websites and articles on Top of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing .
You know, when people wants something on the internet, they use search engines to find it, and usually people will open results on the first page only.
So, your main objective with SEO is to make your website rank on the first page for certain keywords. so that you can increase the amount of free organic traffic to your website.
You may now reply, “OK, great!” But how do our articles get ranked?Alternatively put, what the hell is SEO!!What do we do!?
Of course, Going in deepth on SEO is beyond the scope of this article, but at the same time, I’ll do my best to explain how to start and use SEO in a few words.
The Basic Concept is Easy to Understand. To rank your articles, we primarily follow these three steps:-
- To Know what peoples are searching for (Keyword Research)
- To optimize your article for these keywords (On-Page SEO)
- To do Off-Page SEO (Building Trust, Social Signals, and Link Building…)
So, how to do keyword Research,On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO?
This is a clear example of on-page optimization, where the keywords are mentioned in the post title that will use as the article’s H1 tag on your website.
You have to mentioned these keywords multiple times in your post, so search engines and Google can know that this article is about this Topic.
You may wonder where I get these keywords and how I know which ones to use. SIMPLE! Make use of a keyword research tool.
You can make use free keyword research tools like ahrefs or maybe some advanced SEO tools like SEMRUSH .
Just simply type the topic you want to find out about into the search box of the ahrefs free keyword research tool and click Search.
The tool will automatically provide you keyword search volume data and will assist you in selecting the best keywords.
The final step is off-page SEO, which involves trying to get backlinks and social signals to your website. For example, I link to my blog from all my social profiles.
I hope this helps you understand how SEO works and how to get started with it.Let’s move on to the next strategy for promoting affiliate links, which is YouTube!
2.Use YouTube to promote Affiliate.
YouTube is one of the most effective ways to promote anything! Not only a affiliate services . You make videos about your affiliate product and include a link to it.
Now comes the big question: how do you grow your YouTube channel and get more views?
In general, there are different ways to grow your channel.
1.YouTube suggestions:– This is where YouTube will start to suggest your videos above other popular videos.
For example:- choose a popular video or topic, make a high-quality video that is similar to it, and then optimise the metadata (Title, Thumbnail, Description, and Tags).
2.Video SEO:– This is the process of ranking your videos at the top of YouTube search results by optimising your title and metadata for a specific keyword. To grow your channel, you can use tools like Tubebuddy, Vidiq and others.
3.Forums and Q&A Websites.
Search for forums similar to your content and help others by sharing what you know and linking to your article or page where you are promoting the offer (DO NOT SPAM).
Also,don’t forget about Reddit, which is a great source of free traffic.
Also, one of the quickest ways to get traffic is through Quora Q&A. It is done by answering questions and linking back to your website.
4. Social Media
If you have some followers on Linkedin, twitter , Facebook,may be Facebook groups,all these helps you to get traffic,( by using a social media management software you can automate posting on all platforms, I do use of Content Studio).
Of course, when I say social media, I do not means to spamming groups and people, NO, try to build connections, give sum value, build sum trust, and then you can link back to your pages.
5.Free Courses and Ebooks
To increase traffic, you may also write small free ebooks and publish them on ebooks sites . Instead, you can publish a free course on Udemy, a platform with millions of users, and link back to your website.
6.Email Marketing
When it comes to email marketing, make sure to always expand your email lists,which will be one of the best sources of traffic for your sites by providing newsletters to your Subscribers.
Paid advertisement
When It comes to paid advertisement, we have multiple networks and places to market on like:-
- Google Ads
- Facebook Ads
- Quora Ads
- Native Ads
Going through all of these needs a 300-page book each! So I will go over each one briefly, to put you in the correct direction.
Promote Affiliate products using Facebook and Google Ads
Keep the following in mind if you want to advertise affiliate products on Facebook or Google:
First: Do not run ads directly to your affiliate link. Google and Facebook are generally not a big fan of affiliate links, and using too much might be end up getting your ad account being suspended.
Instead, you should direct them to your landing page in between the Advertisement and the Affiliate product page.
Secondly: make sure that all of your landing pages are compliant with Google and Facebook GuideLines.
Make your landing page.
Now, what you have to do is to make your landing page.This might be a simple page where you pre-sell whatever it is that you’re promoting… whether it’s a sales page or piece of pre-launch content and direct them to click through to download it.
Or, better yet, you can use this as an opportunity to expand your list by converting these people into subscribers to YOUR list and then trying to direct them to the content or offer you’re promoting.
Run your Campaign.
A small note to consider is whenever you launch your campaign, be sure to choose the right audience and narrow it down as much as you can to target specific people. You can also use Advertisements retargeting, which is a great weapon when running paid Advertisements.
Use Native Ads to promote Affiliate products.
For affiliate marketers, native advertising networks like Outbrain, Mgid, Taboola, and others are the great platform, proven to bring excellent results.
Advertising on search results (such as Google) and social media (such as Facebook) are not the same as advertising on native networks. Why?
Simply because there is a major difference between scrolling through a social feed,looking for something specific on Google orbrowsing a favorite news website (where Native ads are shown).Users are in “discovery mode” with the latter.
They are primed to find content that interests them.
Use Quora Ads to promote Affiliate products.
Even though, I suggest starting with Quora as a free source of traffic by answering questions and sharing your knowledge as I explained before. But you can still run paid advertisement also on Quora.
I hope this article provide you all the knowledge that helps you with your online business operations as an affiliate marketer.
