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Affiliate marketing is about selling products or services that you neither created nor bought. I like the way Wikipedia explained this concept; it says affiliate marketing is a kind of performance-based marketing in which business owner’s rewards affiliate for introducing a customer to their business.
Affiliate marketers are not placed on monthly salaries; rather their mode of earning money online is via commission which depends on the company’s policy. There are various types of company policies and modes of payment. You can get paid for generating a lead, this is called Pay per Lead, and you can earn a commission based on the number of clicks – Pay per Clicks, and of course the general mode of payment – Pay-per Sale.
Using Amazon as an example, while searching for a product, you walk into Xyz.com. They conducted a review of your selected product with a link to the product on the Amazon website. On purchasing this product, the owner of the website where you read the review is qualified to earn what we call an affiliate commission.
Just before I take a look at five unique characteristics of affiliate marketing, I know you are here because you have been asking yourself this question – How do I Start Affiliate Marketing? The lines of this page will not be sufficient for me to teach the whole concept of affiliate marketing. Kindly use this link to access my free Ebook -A comprehensive Guide on Affiliate Marketing.
Table of Contents
Characteristics of Affiliate Marketing
- Set-up Time: Affiliate marketing is not a get rich scheme; it takes time to establish this business. As start-ups, I advise you to project your mind to nine (9) months before you start earning a real income.
- Start-up cost: is very low when compared to other businesses, your basic cost is the cost of setting up a website, which is less than $100. You can start affiliate marketing without a website, but I prefer and recommend that you start with a website.
- Product Pricing: Affiliate marketers do not influence the price of products or services they promote, nor do they determine the commission they are paid. Both price and commission are set by the company.
- Highly-Scalable Business Model: the business model is designed in such a way that you can scale it into other businesses.
- How much can you make From Affiliate Marketing: I am taking this as the last characteristics, but not the least. Like I said earlier your affiliate income is on commission bases. The more traffic you get, the higher your commission, and the more money you are likely to make.
We have seen what affiliate marketing is and the characteristic features of this form of marketing, I think it is gone we address the golden question – How do I start affiliate marketing?
We have seen what affiliate marketing is and the characteristic features of this form of marketing, it is time we consider the intricacy in starting affiliate marketing.
Starting up as an affiliate marketer requires proper planning, and deciding on what you want to promote and how do you intend to go about it.
Niche
There are diverse products out there, but having a niche will help you concentrate on a particular market. Finding a niche can be very simple, and at the same time very complicated.
The following are basic steps you can follow to pick a niche:
Find out what interests you: how much do you always want to know about this topic and how much background knowledge do you have on this topic.
How large is the market: Let me share my experience with you, I started with a little large niche. At the time I started, I felt it was a small niche, but as I began to research and write articles, I discovered smaller niches within my niche.
Who are the players in this niche: many of the popular niches like to make money online, health niche, are heavily saturated. Working and succeeding there will need a lot of effort and tactics, I advise looking at small niches.
To select a niche you can check it out on ClickBank or Amazon. I always use amazon, check the category and you can narrow it down as you pick the arrow in line of your interest. Click on this link to access a comprehensive training on Niche selection.
Build a Website
Building a website can sound so complicated, you can decide to hire someone or do it yourself. I prefer the do it yourself style, I have never contracted anyone to build for me, I do it myself. Although I do it myself, there is a platform where you can learn – Wealthy Affiliate.
It is a robust platform where you can start from as a beginner and become a professional. They have one of the best hosting platforms where your website can be hosted; I have my entire website on this platform. They have built a community of not less than 40,000 online marketing professional that is always ready to help, top of it is their keyword research tool – Jaaxy.
Every website has a focus, and this is delivering valuable content. Alongside there are three important pages that must come alongside your content.
- About me: it is an introduction to your person. Who are you?
- Privacy Policy: Very important visitors to your site know what you will do with their personal information. Make a declaration to keep their information and keep it save
Create Content
Content, this is what I call the Online Marketing Business Currency. It is the currency we spend in online business; content is the same thing as your blog post or article. To enjoy a good online presence, there is a need to create quality content. It takes consistency and dedication; many online marketers start strong but gets frustrated. They feel they are running out of ideas, but no, there are ideas every day and everywhere.
Some affiliate networks will not accept your application, except you have built your site with good content and generated well enough traffic to your blog. Not to say that you must have 50 or more posts but I recommend you to have at least 10 articles on your website before you start promoting products
Build an Email List
Email marketing is a type of marketing that involves keeping in touch with customers and prospects via e-mails. When effectively engaged this method of marketing builds prospects that are converted to clients. Your email list is a personal portfolio of your clients. I strongly advise every internet marketer to use an email list. Click here to read more about building your e-mail list.
Promote Affiliate Product
The number one key to promoting affiliate products is to promote products you have used. I promote Wealthy Affiliate on all my materials because I have used the training, the hosting, the community, and even the keyword tool; it has been a pleasant experience.
Promote products that are related to your niche from trusted vendors, I have other vendors whose products I also promote. I promote products related to building traffic, creating YouTube videos, but I ensure they are from vendors I trust their jobs and likewise their customer service.
Hey there,
I am proud t say that I do have my own website. One thing that I could learn from you is email marketing. So far I have struggled to obtain and build an email list. What additional advice can you offer to help out with this? Which platform is the best to use, in your opinion? Thank you for any help and sharing your ideas!
I recommend mailchimp for now, they have a robust platform and very friendly for beginners
Great introductory article that really wants to make me find out more!!!!! You make it sound relatively easy to get started with affiliate marketing. I really really like your honesty about how long it will take. I keep seeing these websites that say you can make tons of money in one month and I have trouble believing that. But, your article says it takes nine months. That sounds much more realistic to me. I am curious about programs that I can become an affiliate marketer for. Do you have any recommendations of where to start looking to become an affiliate marketer?
I have read a lot about Amazon and was wondering your opinion of them. Do you consider Amazon a good company to use for affiliate marketing? How would I find more affiliate marketing people for my niche? Also, once I find a company, do you have any guidelines for how to tell whether they are a good company? A checklist would be good – but if you could just share the top things to look for, that would be very helpful as well.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!!!!
Talking about a good platform to work with, I still fil Amazon stands as one of the best platforms. Another good place where you can diverse niches is ClickBank, also you can join me and let us promote Wealthy Affiliate, it is a great platform
Thanks for detailing out what affiliate marketing entails and thank you for sharing everything that has to do with affiliate marketing. Personally, I like this platforms a lot because affiliate marketing offers a legitimate way to become finwnxuakky independent. I just started too but I already feel like there’s more to it than I could ever hope to. Thanks for this post
This is like one of the most important things I have read about the concept of affiliate marketing and thank you for detailing things out. It is not easy and I know you have shared this post out from the wealth of your knowledge. Well! I feel niche selection could be my problem whenever I decided to be an affiliate marketer. Getting to limit my passion to a specific is difficult as I have passion to do quite a lot. Thumbs up to you
To succeed in Affiliate Marketing, it is important you narrow down your niche to specifics, this will help you build a website that can easily rank on google and solve a particular problem
Thank you for your post. It is useful for me. I started my online business for a while and am actively looking for money-making opportunities. Affiliate marketing is one of my business target.
Your article gives a nice review on the affiliate marketing. I particularly like your description on characteristics of affiliate marketing, which addresses all concerns I have on the affiliate marketing. The business set-up time and set-up cost are important to me. From your point of view, both of them are in my acceptable range and are reasonable to achieve in terms of time and money invested.
I am happy to learn that the business can be easily scalable. This is also important for me, since right now I have limited time and if the business is working, I may work on it full time and of course I am going to scale it up.
This article is a good summary on how to start an affiliate marketing business. I just started my journey in affiliate marketing with Wealthy Affiliate five months ago and things are steaming up now! I have followed all of those steps mentioned above and the email list is growing. From your experience as a member, what is your best practice to generate traffic to your website and are you using popup form to capture emails? Thank you!
For me, I use forums and content to drive traffic. I belong to forums and I ensure I contribute to the forum .
I also post content regularly
Thanks for a great post. I’ve been thinking about getting seriously involved with affiliate marketing and with all the changes we are facing as a world now it makes even more sense. If you were starting fresh with a brand new site in today’s environment what niche would you choose? Do you think it would take a really long time to actually generate income from it… really appreciate your insights on this. Thanks so much!
Honestly I will not recommend a niche, as long as you learn from the right source. You will learn to create content and this will definitely help you monetize your web page. I strongly recommend wealthy affiliate for learning
Really this is very useful and attractive information providing regarding very beginner for starting affiliate marketing. In this articles almost all facts are illustrated here . Wealthy Affiliate is indeed a amazing platform for both learner and experience people.where any one can discuss and solve his query/issue by experienced community and all relevant tool and other facilities are available here. Really people can learn and grow on this platform.
Hello Ayodeji,
Thank you for your interesting and informative article on what affiliate marketing is and an affiliate marketers responsibilities are. I believe the basic and comprehensive way you have explained it without frivolous jargon is just the right approach. I see from the comments section everyone has understood your great content without any confusion.Your structured article although presented as simple has been thought out thoroughly well written and is a joy to read. You have also presented it in a most pleasant way and again from the comments, you appear to have won people over and are interested to join this alluring endeavour. I will join them in exploring further as your kind explanation on the subject matter is both written with authority and comes across as genuine. Thank you so much again for presenting it.
Rami.
Hi and thanks for the easy and accessible overview intro into affiliate marketing. I’m starting out on this journey too and it seems every day I learn more about SEO and keywords. One area I would like to branch into, when I have created more written content would be YoutTube videos and possibly a YouTube channel. Is there any specific guide or approach you would recommend. I also know I will have to grapple with social media at some point too. That is going to be a real challenge as I wonder sometimes whether I am fundamentally anti-social – I guess I will find out sooner or later. Maybe there should be a social media platform specifically for curmudgeons. Happy Days and thanks again. Andy
Hello there,
Affiliate marketing is a great way to start an online business, writing about what you love, establishing authority and eventually promoting products in your niche. Indeed the niche choice is critical. You have to strike a balance between what you like and what sells. You have to pick a niche that is not a fad. You can do that by going to Google Trends, entering your niche and check out the trend for these keywords.
Also, you need SEO and/or a good mailing list. Affiliate marketing is about a numbers game. The more that visit your site, the more referrals you get. So it is imperative, besides good content, to have good SEO and good social media promotion, so that more people visit your site.
My 2 cents!
Marios
Very interesting, I’m just starting out so this has helped a lot. The 9 month timescale is interesting, I guess I need to learn to be patient! You are definitely right that it is not a get rich quick scheme, I believe you have to enjoy writing new, unique content to stay motivated to keep publishing week after week, month after month. How important do you think social media is to build an audience and regular traffic?
Working from home is gaining popularity by the day especially with the lockdown that most people are facing worldwide due to the pandemic. I too have gained full confidence that setting up a website and trying out affiliate marketing is the way to go! However, what I seem to luck is the required “currency”, content.
I wonder is there is a automated way on the Internet I can be able to generate fresh content without any violations that can get me and my website blacklisted.
Thank you, Ayodeji, for your post.
Generating automated content is not advisable, come on board to wealthy affiliate, and learn how to write content.
I really could have done with reading this article a few months ago. I have already started on the affiliate marketing journey but as yet, I have to say, I am making slow progress.
You have put together an excellent article that gives so much well needed advice. One thing I have found out, is that there is a huge marketplace for affiliates to choose from. The range of products is not only diverse but also vast. That said, the commissions can also vary considerably.
As you have advised, learning about niches is imperative. If you can do this before setting up your site, you might be able to find some very lucrative products. It would be a shame to put in hundreds of hours of work and for the rewards to be very low. I am not part of the Amazon program but after reading your post, I would say that it would be worth investigating further.
Thank you for your great article. It is useful to understand what is involved in affiliate marketing. As you mention trying to decide on a niche seems very simple but then seems to get very complicated! As the make money online and health categories are saturated do you think there are still opportunities to find smaller niches within these larger categories? Or would it be more prudent to look for less competitive niches entirely?
Thanks
Thank you for your informative article Ayodeji,
You have covered many important aspects to setting your own personal business as an Affiliate Marketer. However one of the most important comments made was to give it at least 9 months. Many can lose heart at not creating any income after a few months however it is important to persist, hone your craft and increase traffic volumes before you can realise the fruits of your labour.
It is for real that it takes time to have real income via affiliate marketing.
I suggest another way to do affiliate marketing by using FB messenger ads. It is new to me too. However, I’ve been purchasing several unplanned-to-buy items via Facebook messenger Ads!! I purchased with joy and 100% willingly without feeling being “push” sales. That’s powerful!!!
Check it out, or we can have further discuss if you are interested too.
Thank you for sharing the content about Affiliate Marketing, which is very easy for novices to understand. I have also started to do Affiliate Marketing now, as you said, I have also built a website, but it took me a lot of time to create content, you know, content is too important, good content can be better Establish trust with visitors.
I love how you went on the explain what is affiliate marketing. I have a website and currently producing content in it hoping to reach my target audience. I will look into the email marketing aspect of things. Seems very interesting. What I love about affiliate marketing are the different avenues that cater to people who have more reserved personalities but can still make money in the field. great job and looking forward to reading more articles from you.
Very awesome. Your post speaks plain English about what affiliate marketing is and the benefits of getting started. Honestly putting forth the fact, it takes some work and persistence. Your keyword explanation is very straight forward.
I liked the Wikipedia link because that provides more information from an independent sourse adding authority to your post and your site.
The link to wealthy affiliate page where you actually share one of the training content with the video is a total affirmation of what you said in the post. I need to learn this trick too.
I think your post and site are very engaging, holding my interest and the post enticed me to click the links to see what is behind the curtain. Your probably already know you will do well with this approach. Thank you. CQ.
Thank Chris,
I appreciate your comment