Still, as popular as the idea has become, many are not yet crystal clear on how exactly affiliate marketing works and how exactly it works to earn you more money.
There are many great reasons to start an affiliate marketing business. It’s easy, passive, scalable and is literally free to start. You could do it in mainly two ways – Create a blog or a YouTube channel and slowly build up your audience or you could create a sales funnel and then run ads to convert your traffic into sales.
Continue reading to learn how this awesome revenue stream can start making you lots of money while you’re asleep!
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a process in which a person, or an affiliate, earns a commission by marketing the products of another person or company.
Getting started is relatively easy as you can simply search for the product that you enjoy using and learn how you can promote products that you already use.
Usually, if a company or a seller has an affiliate marketing program, they create an affiliate link. You then use that link on your pages so those who are interested can click through to the website.
By promoting the product and creating more web traffic to the site, the seller or company pays you a commission in exchange for the traffic or based on the amount of generated sales from your affiliate link.
Affiliate marketing is how sellers, businesses, and product creators can spread their marketing responsibilities.
By leveraging the abilities of a variety of influencers, bloggers, and other individuals, the seller creates a more effective marketing strategy that benefits both the affiliate and the seller.
There are 2 main ways in which an affiliate can collect income from the seller or the company.
1. Pay Per Sale
The first is through a pay per sale agreement. This is a reasonably standard affiliate marketing structure in which the seller pays the affiliate a commission or percentage of the sale price after a consumer has made a purchase. Ultimately, a sale must occur before paying any commission to the affiliate marketer.
2. Pay Per Lead
Another pay structure, referred to as pay per lead, is a bit more complicated than a pay per sale agreement. This pay system rewards the affiliate based on the conversion rate of their leads. Simply put, the affiliate marketer must persuade the consumer to click through to the link and complete the desired action. This can include filling out a form, signing up for a free trial, subscribing to a newsletter, or completing a download.
Here is a list of 41 Pay per lead affiliate programs.
Related Article – How to Use Clickfunnels For Affiliate Marketing (Complete Tutorial)
6 Reasons You Should Start Your Affiliate Marketing Business Today
1. It Is Virtually Free to Start
The best part about creating an affiliate marketing business is that it is practically free to get started! There are no hard start-up costs.
You don’t have to buy supplies, products, or pay rent on a building. Instead, you have to decide how you plan on creating a monetizable audience.
If you are going to create your own website, you will have to pay for hosting and your domain. Once your website or platform is complete, and you have begun to create content that draws an audience, you can start to join affiliate programs – they’re free!
It is best to join programs for products that fit the presence of your blog or website.
Alternatively, You could also start a Youtube channel in a particular niche that promotes affiliate products.
Related Article – Is Affiliate Marketing a Pyramid Scheme?
2. It’s a Great Form of Passive Income
Affiliate marketing if done the right way can be your source of income even while you sleep. This is one of the main things why a large number of people start their own affiliate marketing business.
There are affiliate programs out there with a recurring based model. This is even better as they pay you as long as the customer you referred stays on their program.
Here are some recurring based affiliate programs that you may want to look into.
3. Gain Professional and Financial Independence
Possibly the most significant advantage of affiliate marketing is that you are your own boss! You can choose your own hours and work from virtually anywhere in the world. All you are going to need is an internet connection.
If you think that affiliate marketing is no more than a side gig, you are sorely mistaken. Some affiliates marketers make over a million dollars a year.
This, of course, is not typical for everyone, but those who put in an appropriate amount of effort can create a lucrative stream of passive income.
Related Article – Launch Jacking Tutorial – Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing
4. Highly Profitable
Affiliate marketing is quite profitable if you can organically bring in traffic to your blogs or Youtube channel.
Most affiliate programs pay in the range from 30%-80% of the product price. So, with free organic traffic, your profit is the full amount that they pay you.
Even if you are running some marketing campaigns, the ROI is pretty high if you do it the right way with the right product and marketing.
5. It Is Easy to Scale Your Business into Something Incredible
Affiliate marketing is an incredibly scalable business, which is why it is such a great form of marketing! The opportunity to size up is astronomical!
If your business begins to grow beyond your capacity to manage your programs, you can hire additional people. Your costs remain low because you aren’t renting out an office or paying the traditional employer expenses.
If you prefer to keep your business a one-person show, there’s plenty of opportunity for growth within that model as well.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you can take on as much work as you are willing to spend time and energy on, giving you as much control as possible.
6. You Are Selling Things That You Like!
The reason affiliate marketing is so successful is because you believe in what you are selling!
When you actively use and enjoy the products you are promoting, it is much easier and effective to educate and encourage others to follow suit.
While promoting the products that create value in your life, you get to build a lucrative career that affords you an enormous amount of professional and personal freedom.
Promoting products and services that you have tried and enjoy is not only ethical, but it is also an incredibly efficient way to create, manage, and build your own business.
Related Article – Is Amazon Affiliate Program Worth It?
How to start an Affiliate Marketing Business?
You can start an affiliate marketing business in many ways. But I highly recommend you start one in any of the following ways.
1. Blog or Youtube Channel
It’s true that building a blog or a YouTube channel is an intimidating task and can take a very long time. But, the result that you get after a while is just too amazing and is surely worth the wait.
Starting a blog will require you to invest as low $3.95/month for your hosting and domain together. You can get this offer on Bluehost.
But, for a Youtube channel, you won’t be needing any money to start and you can start one right away.
Once you create a blog or a Youtube channel, start creating and publishing content. If you stick with it for a while, you will surely start seeing some results.
You could even take this a step forward and start both a Youtube channel and a blog. It has been proven to be quite effective.
Related Article – Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It?
2. Using a Sales funnel
This is one of the fastest and the most effective way to make a lot of money from affiliate marketing. However, you will need to invest a little more money for this to happen.
A sales funnel is basically a series of landing pages and emails that aims to convert a casual visitor into a customer.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is surely one of the few online businesses that require a very low investment to start. So, if you have ever thought of starting one, you should probably start one right away.
Anyway, hope you found this article useful. Please feel free to comment down below if you have any questions, or if you just want to say a ‘hi’.
Peace!