Affiliate Marketing for Beginners – Replace Your Job?
Affiliate marketing is one of the most well known cornerstones when it comes to earning money online. Even beginners that have time and patience can use affiliate marketing to change their lives.
Whether if you have a blog, a huge email list or just a strong social media presence you can earn money with affiliate marketing.
Many bloggers and influencers have used affiliate marketing to replace their jobs and turn their yearly income into monthly income.
Check out Pat Flynn’s (smartpassiveincome.com) December 2017 Monthly Income Report. Just the affiliate earnings alone.
My monthly goal was nowhere near this amount but once I reach it, this will be the next goal.
Imagine making your current yearly salary, every month without the hassles of a boss, commuting or having to request time off. It will be difficult but it’s definitely not impossible.
Table of Contents
- What is Affiliate Marketing?
- Affiliate Marketing Terms for Beginners
- Get Started With Affiliate Marketing
- How To Share Your Affiliate Links?
- Closing
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing allows you to earn commission by recommending products or services. You get paid when the product or service you refer becomes a sale. Your percent from that sale depends on the percentage offered by the affiliate program.
I have seen percentages as low as 3% to over 70%. Usually the higher percent programs have up sells so the company still makes a good profit while offering high percentages.
There are two types of payments. You can be compensated once for a sale or you can receive recurring payments from subscriptions. Recurring payments will help you reach your financial goals quicker because you can constantly add to it, instead of being paid once and working hard to make the next sale. Recurring payments are also the key to passive income.
Affiliate Marketing Terms for Beginners
Here are a few terms that you should know when getting started.
- Affiliate or Contextual link: The text link you are given that contains your affiliate ID or username. This links to the advertiser’s website while giving you credit, when the sale is completed.
- Affiliate Manager: Manages an affiliate program. They are responsible for recruiting/engaging with affiliates and ensuring affiliates get paid. You should contact your affiliate manager with questions and they are usually located on your cpa dashboard.
- Category: The niche for the affiliate offer (health, making money, fashion, travel, etc).
- Commission: A flat rate or percentage payment an affiliate receives.
- Conversion rate: Tracks the percentage rate of successful conversions. This shows how successful a offer is and should determine if you decide to promote the offer or not.
- Cookies: In affiliate marketing, when a user clicks on your affiliate link a cookie assigned to your ID is linked to that user. The cookie usually lasts for a specific duration of time. You will receive credit for the conversion during that time frame, which is typically 30-90 days.
- Earnings per click (EPC): The average amount an affiliate earns every time a user clicks an affiliate link.
- Offer page: The landing page where the conversion occurs. Many offers have multiple offer pages to choose from so you can try them out to see which brings the best results.
- Return on investment (ROI): The amount of money made compared to the amount spent to advertise. The goal is to always have a positive ROI or you will lose money.
Get Started With Affiliate Marketing
To make money with affiliate marketing, beginners will need to join affiliate programs. After joining, you will need to find products or services in your niche to promote.
Once you find the product you want to promote, you will be given an affiliate link. Your affiliate link tracks every time you send a customer to the affiliate partner’s website and you will be credited if a sale occurs.
For beginners you can start with Clickbank because it’s easy to sign up and get started. Clickbank has affiliate offers from most niches, including health, making money, etc.
With other affiliate sites and programs, you have to apply and be accepted in order to start. You may need to meet requirements such as having a website or have a certain amount of traffic coming to your site. If your application is denied, don’t panic. If you are not told why your application was denied, you can email the company and find out. Once you find out why, you can make the adjustments and try again.
Companies like Amazon have a few requirements but it has a good affiliate program. You can make a commission from any product on their site that is purchased after your link is initially clicked. You can apply for Amazon Associates Affiliate Program here.
Thanks to cookies, you don’t have to get a sale immediately. If the duration of the cookie is 30 days, this means if your visitor uses your affiliate link and decides to buy within the next 30 day period, then you will still receive the affiliate commission.
How To Share Your Affiliate Links?
Before sharing your link to the world, think about who your target audience is and what products or services can help them. Promote just those products or services which are relevant to your users.
If you have a blog write posts to help your audience solve one of their needs or issues. You can also write reviews, lists and comparisons of related products.
For those with huge social media followings, you can place your links in your bio and direct your followers to it.
I used this Free Training to learn Affiliate Marketing.
Closing
Yes, affiliate marketing can replace your full time job but it’s far from easy. When there’s no limit to your potential income, you have to expect some difficulty.
Be ready to dedicate the time, effort and have patience to stick with it, until you reach your desired results.