How to make money through affiliate marketing

Freelancing isn’t the way to go

The internet is full of promise. In fact, the internet is the new frontier where anyone is free to prospect for gold, which in this case is online wealth. Unknown is this one simple fact: there is more than one way to make money online. The most common way to make money online is freelancing given that this is likely to give you upfront payment for your efforts.

But the problem with this model is that it is very difficult to scale up the business and earn as much money as you want. This is simply because when freelancing, you are in most instances exchanging your time for money. Given the fact that your time is limited (you only have 24 hours in a day), this explains why your growth is likely to stagnate at some point.

Marketers make the money

I have heard this one phrase in internet circles that marketers make money, not freelancers! Do you know why? Well, part of the reason is that they invest their time and other resources upfront to create a system that makes them money while they sleep or even while they tour the world. In this case, the marketer doesn’t have to spend endless hours exchanging his or her time for money. Instead, he lets the systems he or she has set to work for him or her.

The available options

That definitely sounds good, doesn’t it? So, what options do you have as far as internet marketing is concerned? The truth is that there are very many options some of which include selling digital products, email marketing, and affiliate marketing. For this article, we will talk about affiliate marketing given that it cuts across all internet marketing options.

First off, let me start by pointing out that knowingly or unknowingly, I’m almost certain that this is not your first brush with affiliate marketing as a concept or as a terminology. However, for clarity and comprehension (understanding is the first step to making money from affiliate marketing), let us explain the concept of affiliate marketing.

Understanding affiliate marketing and my first brush with the concept

What is affiliate marketing?

My favorite definition of affiliate marketing as a field of making money online comes from Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income (more of that in a bit). The definition reads; “Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products.” In other words, it is the process of finding a product, promoting this product to other people and earning a piece of the product sale price.

Why affiliate marketing?

#The most beautiful thing about this kind of marketing is that you don’t have to spend thousands of hours, dollars, and time creating a product to sell.

#Moreover, affiliate marketing is all about passive income. The passive income model is one that demands you invest; time, energy, and money upfront then automate the process and earn money/commissions on autopilot.

Let me account my first brush with affiliate marketing and what got me started in the field.

I work in the field of photography. Seeing that photographs capture important precious moments, I get many questions (from professional and amateur photographers alike) about which camera is the best buy, which lenses to buy, how to care for cameras, how to take good pictures plus many more. Being the helpful person I am, for the first few months, I gladly offered advice to the first few people who asked me these questions.

However, as more and more people asked for the same advice, I grew tired of penning responses to them. That is when I decided to write an article on “The best DSRL camera to buy” and started referring anyone looking for advice on the same to the article. That is how my journey into affiliate marketing started.

In the first two months of publishing the aforementioned article, I made $138.38 from referring people to the best photography cameras I have used. Amazing, right? The success of this article although minimal in nature, got me started into creating a passive income to supplement our regular photography income.

As you can see from rather accidental story above, creating a passive income as an affiliate marketer is easier than it seems.

How To Get Started As An Affiliate Marketer

As we have seen, recommending products and services is the perfect way to ‘passively’ supplement your regular income regardless of your field of concentration (I use photography because it is the field I’m in). At this point and as you gear to get started in this field, I should mention that most platforms selling items online aka most online stores have an affiliate program. Some have better commissions than other (some even offer 50% of the total purchase price, while some offer even higher commission payouts).

Depending on your field of concentration, getting started is easy. All you need to is simply find a product to promote, signup for their affiliate program and voila! You are ready to promote. At this point, let me draw you back to an important aspect of promoting products: promoting products online requires the use of a website; in fact, it is almost impossible to earn affiliate commissions if you do not have a website-you could opt for email marketing but having a website is critical.

How the process works

It starts with sellers wanting to maximize their revenues and increase their popularity. Given the competitive nature of the internet and how hard it is especially to rank highly on the search engines, the best way for these sellers to get their products out there is to get people to spread word about them. You can think of affiliate marketing as being a sales agent of a particular company; only this time, you do everything online.

Affiliate marketing is not intricate or complicated in nature. Basically, the parent company (the one that owns the product you intend to promote) gives you a personalized link that you can place on your website. The personalized link links to their product and tracks the sale back to you. After your referral makes a purchase using the link, you earn a commission from the sale of the product.

Many affiliate marketing platforms exist. One of the best platforms is Amazon Associates Program (it is the program that helped me earn $145.38 in two months).

Important facts about affiliate marketing and commission programs

If you have followed everything we have talked about thus far, I’m sure you can see that making money as an affiliate is easy. However, like everything else in the world (anything worth having), there are some rules/prerequisites to the program. Let us touch on this briefly.

1.       Disclosure is by law mandatory

 One of the most important things you need to know while venturing into affiliate marketing is that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) mandates complete disclosure i.e. you have to disclose to people that you earn a commission when they buy items or products from your link. Failure to do this constitutes to breaking the law.

For this reason, my advice to you is to only promote products or services you would use, have used, or have complete faith in. This is to ensure that the product does not reflect badly on your brand. For example, in my field, I only recommend photography products that I use or love.

2.       You cannot earn money from your own purchases 

The second thing to note is that most companies and platforms forbid earning any commissions from your own purchases. What does this mean? This means that you cannot use your affiliate link to make a personal purchase (bummer, right?). For example, if you are constant shopper at Amazon, you cannot use your affiliate links to make purchases and earn commissions. 

1.    3.       Some affiliate platforms have a minimum payout

This means that you can only access your affiliate commission after you reach a specific threshold.

How much can you make from this and what does it take to succeed in the field?

A passive income is something no one would refuse if the chance presented itself. In my case, all it took to make over $2,500+ in 11 months was simply connecting the dots between what I knew and what the people who knew me wanted to learn from my knowledge in photography.

To some people, making money as an affiliate may not be this easy. This is especially if you intend to create a website solely to earn affiliate commission. The reason for this is simple: researching which topics to cover, and how to create content around the main subject is not easy. My advice in this is to create an affiliate marketing passive income not as your main income, but as a supplement to your main business.

For example, if you own a dating tips website, you can find dating products to promote (a good example is a relationship advice eBook). This brings us to a very important question: what does it take to succeed as an affiliate marketer?

As anything else, dedication, hard work and effort are mandatory. Further, if you have an established brand, and intend to promote many affiliate products, you must consider how these products will affect your brand in the end.

How much can you make from affiliate marketing? The answer to this is infinite. The web has many affiliate marketers (also known as internet marketers) who rake in thousands of dollars on a monthly basis. A good example is Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income and Darren Rowse of Problogger and Digital Photography school who make thousands of dollars from promoting products. As you can see from my example of $2,500+ in 11 or so months, and that of the two passive income moguls above, the limitation of how much you can generate from affiliate marketing solely depends on your efforts.

While the monetary compensation is worth the effort, it should not be your main motivation. As you can see from my example, the product marketing part came from my desire to help people to find the best camera to buy. Likewise, your main motivation should be to help people. The satisfaction that comes from knowing you helped someone should be greater than the money in you PayPal or bank account.

Some Affiliate Programs I Would Recommend

As you may deduce, there are a ton of affiliate programs out there. Some are better than others. As someone who promotes different products related to photography and other products I use on a daily basis, here are some affiliate programs I can vouch for confidently.

1        Amazon associates

This is the mother of all affiliate programs. As of writing this, it is perhaps the biggest, if not the biggest and most luxurious affiliate program in the world. What I love most about Amazon is the endless opportunities it offers. For example, regardless of which niche you work in, be it photography, baby clothes, skin care products, diapers etc., I can guarantee Amazon will have a product you can promote and earn a commission.

Further, Amazon allows you to link to their main page/homepage or to specific items. Making money with Amazon associates could be in form of a blog about a product you use e.g. a camera or microphone. Making money from the platform demands some ingenuity. The only downside to using Amazon Associates is that commissions on the platform are lower when compared to other less popular affiliate programs.

2       Digital Photography School E-books

As a photographer, many amateur photographers ask me to recommend photography classes they can use to develop their skills. In this case, Digital Photography School, a platform run by Darren Rowse is my go to program. I love this program because the eBooks available on the platform are relatively cheap and thus affordable for most people. They offer great commissions (40%).

1.        CJ Affiliate (Formerly Commission Junction)

This affiliate network gives Amazon Associates a run for its money. In fact, most merchants have their products listed on this platform. This shows you that it is one of the more liked and highly profitable affiliate network available (there is a running joke that if you cannot find a product to promote on this platform, you are better off quitting). CJ has thousands if not millions of merchants.

This makes it easy to segment and compare different products and their offered commission. Further, their process is easy. All it requires is approval before you get your affiliate code.

What I like the most about the network is its massive product database and their reliable payments, as well as their powerful reporting tools. However, the platform does hold a disadvantage in that it has a steep learning curve, which may be a bit tricky for the complete beginner. However, the steep learning curve is worth the trouble because of the powerful features the platform presents.

3       LinkShare-

If you are looking for an old and tested affiliate network, Rakuten LinkShare is your best bet. Although smaller than some of the other players in the field, it is one of the very best out there. On the other hand, LinkShare has some features that are not available on other platforms.

For example, with LinkShare, you have the ability to automate rotation of different banner ads for the same product. This is a huge advantage in terms of optimization. Further, the platform offers flexibility in terms of deep linking to merchant landing pages. This allows for better-optimized customization.

As I mentioned earlier, LinkShare is smaller than most of the other networks. This in itself may be considered a disadvantage (the platform has about 1,000 merchants). Another disadvantage to this platform is that their payments are erratic (the platform pays commissions only after it collects them from merchants).

           ShareAsale-

This platform ranks up there with the other major players in the industry (it has over 3,800 merchants, of which 1,000 are exclusive to the platform). This platform is well placed and holds an advantage over the others in that it publishes data on most of the offers running on the platform. This includes reversal rates, average commissions, earnings per click etc.

While this does not automatically mean that you are set for success as an affiliate marketer, it certainly does make it easier to reap the benefits of their platform. I mostly like this platform because of its huge and exclusive database merchants. Plus, it offers easy comparison between products that makes it easier to choose a product worth promoting.

Further, the platform has a reputation for quick payments (the platform pays out commissions on the 20^th of each month).

          BlueHost-

Unlike most of the affiliate networks we have looked at, BlueHost is not an affiliate network. It’s a web hosting and domain registration company that has one of the most vibrant affiliate programs (Pat Flynn makes $50,000+ each month from their platform). If you own a vibrant website that helps people, many of your visitors may be interested in your hosting plan or company. If you use BlueHost, you can recommend the platform to other bloggers interested in using the platform. I love their affiliate program because it has an easy sign up process and your earning potential has no limit.

           Click Bank-

If you intend to promote digital products, there is no better marketplace for digital products than this platform. ClickBank is one of the top-five affiliate networks available to markers. It is akin to mega store full of digital products that you can promote. What I love about the platform is the easy signup process, the timely payout, and the upfront and candid nature of the platform.

Using the platform is also relatively easy and is thus ideal for the complete beginner. Further, because most products on the platform are digital in nature, there are no shipping costs. This means that their commission rates are higher.

Final thoughts

If you can implement everything we have learnt, you are on the correct path to generating a substantial passive income. Fortunately, it is possible to promote many products from different affiliate networks on the same website. 

Further, as we have also seen, the beauty of affiliate marketing is that it is passive in nature. Moreover, if your website is in a very specific niche that does not have products on the affiliate networks we have looked at, you can also join company specific affiliate programs. 

As I said, everyone who is selling something online wouldn’t mind getting a few more sales from his or her products. Even if you have a service that you use (it could be your favorite freelancer’s service), you can talk to him or her about an affiliate arrangement; they would be glad to have someone promote their service while they do the orders!