How To Make Money From An Affiliate Marketing Program
Post Updated: January 29, 2023
Are you researching ways to make money online?
I have a solution for you; you can make money with affiliate marketing.
Let me tell you how.
The current e-commerce statistics say that in 2021, e-retail sales surpassed 5.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide, and this figure is only expected to reach new heights in the coming years.
In the year of the pandemic, global retail e-commerce sales grew by more than 25 percent and are expected to continuously grow.
This article will explain exactly how to make money from an affiliate marketing program.
Affiliate marketing has been a sponsor to the growth of many businesses on the internet.
Amazon.com is one of the first endorsers of affiliate marketing; it has a massive member advertising network and an abundance of affiliate relationships.
Amazon, for example, was responsible for about 44 percent of all U.S. e-commerce sales in 2017, about 4 percent of the country’s total retail sales figure, according to data from One Click Retail.
However, Amazon has also significantly slashed its affiliates’ share while prospering as an organization.
So I highly recommend looking outside of Amazon for other affiliate program options. As well as continuing to use the Amazon platform as an income stream.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most longstanding marketing businesses in which one can work.
It also provides a framework from which one can begin to understand the other aspects of marketing that are universal to any business.
Starting a business as an affiliate marketer can be intimidating, aside from the annoying technical questions that manifest with everyone at some point along the way.
There is the question of where, exactly, one starts.
It’s easy enough to say that most extended journeys begin with a single step, but figuring out which first step to take can be a very perplexing concern.
Understanding how to make an affiliate marketing business successful involves understanding how to select a market, how to advertise, how to enhance one’s search engine visibility, and how to increase one’s conversion rates.
The information in this lesson will apply to any affiliate marketing business as much as it will apply to a company that sells its own products online or offline.
This article will cover the basics of Affiliate Marketing and how YOU can grab your market share in this booming industry.
How To Make Money from an Affiliate Marketing Program?
What is Affiliate Marketing?
The best way to define affiliate marketing can be found on the Wealthy Affiliate University’s learning platform, Understanding How Affiliate Marketing Works.
Affiliate marketing earns a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products or services.
You find a product/service related to, preferably, something you are passionate about.
Or knowledgeable about a subject, promote it to others looking for the kind of product/services you recommend, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale/referral you make.
The unlimited advantages of affiliate marketing increase the profit potential.
To make money with affiliate marketing, you can automate a great deal of the marketing operation and get a fee for targeted results, which incorporates clicks, transactions, and sign-ups.
Here Is An Example Of How Affiliate Marketing Works
So, to be clear, affiliate marketing is an online marketing tactic by which brands work with other online content creators to drive traffic and business to the brands’ sites and pay the content creators a commission for any sales as a result.
Spending on affiliate marketing in the United States is expected to reach a 10.1% increase each year, according to MediaKix.com.
And as the Web becomes increasingly interconnected, this tactic will continue to gain momentum for both B-to-C (business to customers) and B-to-B (business to business) brands.
Here’s what you should know before building your own affiliate marketing business.
How To Make Money From An Affiliate Marketing Program
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
As I stated, affiliate marketing involves a merchant paying a commission to other online entities, known as affiliates, for referring new business to the merchant’s website.
Affiliate marketing is performance-based, which means affiliates only get paid when their promotional efforts result in a transaction.
Affiliate marketing works by spreading the responsibilities of product marketing and creation across parties; it manages to leverage the abilities of a variety of individuals for a more effective marketing strategy while providing contributors with a share of the profit.
To make this work, three different parties must be involved:
- Seller and product creators.
- The affiliate or advertiser.
- The consumer.
Regarding the actual marketing, there are 2 sides to an affiliate equation: the product creator and seller: the affiliate marketer.
It’s not just the promotion or product creation that defines you as an affiliate marketer.
You can be both the creator and the marketer and still profit from the underlying idea of sharing revenue.
Now let’s look at all the parts of a successful affiliate marketing system.
How To Make Money from an Affiliate Marketing Program?
The Affiliate Marketing System Has 3 Key Roles.
The Merchant: Also known as the creator, the seller, the brand, the retailer, or the vendor.
This is the role that creates the product. It can be a big company, or it can be a single individual.
Solo entrepreneurs, startups to massive Fortune 500 companies could be the merchants behind an affiliate marketing program.
They don’t have to be actively involved. They just must have a product to sell.
The Affiliate: This party is sometimes also known as the publisher. Affiliates can also range from single individuals to entire companies.
An affiliate marketing business can produce a few hundred dollars in commissions or tens of millions of dollars each month.
It’s where the marketing happens. An affiliate promotes one or multiple affiliate products and tries to attract and persuade potential customers of the merchant’s product’s value so that they buy it.
This can be achieved by running a review blog of the merchant’s products. For example:
It could be an entire site dedicated to finding trendy products related to specific topics and promoting those products.
The Consumer: The customer or consumer makes the affiliate system go ’round.
Without sales, there aren’t any commissions to hand out and no revenue to be shared.
The affiliate will try to market to the consumer on whatever channel they see fit, whether that’s a social network, digital billboards, or a search engine using content marketing on a blog. Or even offline!
How To Make Money From An Affiliate Marketing Program
7 Phases to Creating A Profitable Affiliate Marketing Business
I’ve broken down the process into seven steps for affiliate marketing.
Following these steps will set you on the right path and have you earning your first commission in no time.
1. Get Educated
Join a program like Wealthy Affiliate for free that will teach you everything you need to know to be successful at building an affiliate marketing business.
You can learn for free within Wealthy Affiliate University. The Online Entrepreneur Certification (OEC) training is a 5 phase (50 lessons) series of courses walking you through creating and growing a business within absolutely ANY niche you want.
It will save you time and money if you are trained in the system’s workings before going at it alone and finding your way through.
No one has time for that! Wealthy Affiliate has all the tools you need to be prosperous.
2. Choose a Niche
Before you even build your first site, you’ll need to decide which niche you will target.
A niche is a small but profitable market segment suitable for focused attention by a marketer.
Market niches do not exist alone but are created by identifying needs or wants that are not being addressed by competitors and by offering products or services that satisfy them.
3. Research Affiliate Programs
Once you’ve decided on a niche, it’s time to find out what’s out there regarding programs and products to promote.
4. Build a Site
Steps 1 and 2 are all about research and figuring out what’s possible and profitable. Now, it’s time to start putting your research into action.
This will be the next step, assuming you don’t already have a website built. Fortunately, creating a site isn’t as complicated or labor-intensive as it was in the past.
You will need to follow a few steps to have your site up and running:
Buy a domain.
Your domain is the address for your website (e.g., https://ladisoulmusic.jamielondonclay.com/), so this is the first thing you will need to do when setting up your site.
Considering millions of websites on the internet, the domain name you want may already be taken by someone else. So have several options in mind.
There are many domains and hosting sites you can purchase from but what I love the most about Wealthy Affiliate is it is a one-stop-shop for everything you need to have an affiliate marketing business.
Purchase and set up hosting.
If your domain is your address, hosting is like the house where your site will live.
It’s your own little slice of the internet, your real estate property, where all your website files live.
Hosting is very affordable these days, so don’t unnecessarily go easy on costs.
Choose a reputable, reliable provider because your affiliate marketing business will depend on it.
Wealthy Affiliate (WA) has all the tools to make money with affiliate marketing.
WA provides good hosting and has a one-click install option for WordPress, which means it will only take you a couple of minutes, and you will have WordPress installed on your site with live hosting.
And yes, you can purchase and/or transfer an existing domain name to their hosting platform.
Connect to a Content Management System
Once your hosting is set up, you must install a content management system (CMS) for your site.
I recommend Wealthy Affiliate because they have a website-building system, and it is so easy to use that a beginner can quickly figure out how it works.
Create Content.
Once your site is ready, it’s time to create content. Your content must be relevant to your niche, exciting, and engaging enough to keep your audience coming back.
You should also ensure the site content is search engine-friendly, affectionately known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
4. Produce Excellent Content
Now that your site is set up and you’ve joined an affiliate program like Wealthy Affiliate, you’re ready to begin the most time-consuming (but potentially rewarding) part of the affiliate business: Producing content.
This is where the overused but truer-than-ever phrase “content is king” comes into play.
Your goal for your site will be to establish it as an authority site in your niche, and the primary way to do this is to consistently produce unique, high-quality content.
Wealthy Affiliate comes with its own content management system that will tell you whether the content you are getting ready to publish on your site is unique.
5. Build an Audience
Building an audience for your site will, in some ways, follow naturally once you start producing excellent content.
An interested audience will bring you consistent traffic and result in consistent sales for you.
So how do you start building an audience for a completely new site?
Here are some ideas:
- Promote your content via social media.
- Guest posts on high-traffic blogs.
- Build an email list.
- Use basic SEO techniques to increase search engine traffic to your site.
- Invest in paid advertising.
6. Promote Affiliate Program Offers
Once you’ve shown that you can offer something of value in your niche, it’s time to continue adding value by promoting products that will be useful and helpful for your audience.
You can promote your offers in several ways. It will depend on the type of site you’ve built and what you’re selling.
Some ideas include:
- Product reviews.
- Banner ads.
- In-text content links.
- Email promotions.
- Discounts and giveaways.
When promoting affiliate offers, ensure you are fully aware of your affiliate program’s terms and conditions.
Some programs can be strict about allowing you to promote their products.
Also, make sure you have a disclaimer on your website that advises your audience that you may have links that promote affiliate offers.
This is necessary for several affiliate programs and a basic courtesy to your website visitors.
In the U.S., the FTC mandates disclosure for affiliate marketers and anyone issuing endorsements.
How To Make Money from an Affiliate Marketing Program Conclusion
Ever since the 4-Hour Workweek was released. Everyone has the same goal. To wake up in the morning, open a laptop, and glance at something like this:
Passive income.
Make money while you sleep.
For 99% of people, affiliate marketing is how they get started.
Remember, the idea is that you promote other people’s products, often through an affiliate network, earning a commission if people buy, thanks to your marketing.
It’s based on revenue sharing. If you have a product and want to sell more, you can offer promoters a financial incentive through an affiliate program.
If you have no product and want to make money, you can promote a product that you feel has value and earn an income from it as an affiliate marketer.
As with any business venture, there is still a level of risk included. When you understand what you’re doing with affiliate marketing, you’ll be successful well before you realize it.
Regarding profiting from making money with affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing is in its very own class.
You don’t need to stress over managers breathing all over you. You are in control of all that you do with your business and website.
Affiliate advertising allows you to keep your stance behind merchandise you use and appreciate by putting links and banners of the products or services on your own site or blog.
You will, in turn, get cash for every item purchased that you display. This alone is a reason to engage.
Are you looking for a chance to make additional cash? Affiliate marketing is the best concept. You won’t make money overnight, but you will make money if you are consistently following these steps.
You can stay with one seller or add as many as you require for your venture. Make money with affiliate marketing on the Web because it is more mainstream.
By setting aside a few hours a day to establish yourself in the marketplace, you will make money online with an affiliate business.
Does affiliate marketing sound like something you can learn to make money?
Leave a comment in the section below.
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Affiliate marketing always sound juicy expecially when you come accreoss programs that teach work for 4 hrs a week and bank millions of dollars. But the truth is you need to get it right before that happens. You need to get educated like you said. And that is why I love wealthy affiliate. They place a lot of emphasizes on training and retraining. With appropriate training and investment of both time and money, the sky is not a limit
I like what you stated, “with appropriate training and investment of both time and money,” The sky is not the limit! I too believe it will take you beyond the sky! Thank you for your comment!
hello jamie gotta say i love the website, i to started with wealthy affiliate to start marketing online are the 5 pages you have listed under small business/entrepreneurship are those all affiliate links as well? also say bravo to include the website you started with to use for a niche very practical..
Cheers!
Cheers, Jesse!
Those are affiliate links! Glad you liked the website. Thank you for your comment!