Before the birth of the Internet, people used to turn to the classified ads section
of their local newspaper to make extra money.
They advertised yard sales where they got rid of unwanted and no longer used
possessions. Advertisers would spend money on advertising space in newspapers and magazines.
There was door to door salespeople and as early as the 1980s, it was common to
receive a knock at the door and discover a traveling salesperson hawking their
goods.
Radio and television advertising were big, providing access to a local,
national, or even global audience.
When the Internet and World Wide Web teamed up in 1991, it was a game
changer for businesses and entrepreneurs.
Whether you wanted to start your own business from your kitchen table or you
were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you could finally reach a worldwide
audience by simply building a website or blog.
The smart marketers back then (individuals and corporations alike) started
building email lists. They would give away something for free, a report or product,
to get you to sign up to their email list.
They then marketed products and services to their list members, which is still
a low cost/high return marketing method today.
(We highly recommend building an email list. We will talk more about this
later and show you how to set up a list-building funnel the right way.)
Yesterday’s Commissioned Salespeople Are Today’s Affiliate Marketers
Back in that time before the World Wide Web, companies would pay salespeople
a commission to promote their products. If they sold a $100 product, they might
earn a $10 commission. Often the hopeful salesperson had to pay for inventory in
advance. They had to travel, knocking on a lot of doors and cold calling unqualified
prospects, often earning nothing more than a door or telephone slammed in their
face.
Today marketers still function as salespeople for big companies. Except the smart
ones do not pay for any product upfront. They do not have to travel, handle
returns and deal with upset customers.
Today they are referred to as affiliate
marketers and they build email lists, use blogs and social media. They generate
leads, drive traffic, and generate sales using funnels. All these efforts done
properly lead to the affiliate earning commissions.
Affiliate Marketers are changing the world and silently generating commissions
from the privacy of their own home.
Their main goal is to get the word out about different products or services they
really believe in. If they make a sale, they earn a commission. Except compared to
the good old days before the World Wide Web, an affiliate marketer can get
started in a couple of hours with absolutely no money invested.
Let’s look at this popular online moneymaking method and how you can use it to
create recurring, passive income. By the way, it can work for you and earn you a
sale as soon as today, even if you have zero Internet marketing experience.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing really is as simple as we just stated. It’s called “affiliate”
marketing because you become affiliated with a company. You can also become an
affiliate for an individual entrepreneur. Here is a basic definition.
Affiliate marketing means referring a product or a service to an online audience.
You can also advertise it off-line, but it usually means promoting products through
blogs and social media sites, a podcast or website, or through an email list.
When a company approves you as an affiliate, they give you a special link for every
product they have. That link is unique to you and only you. You simply get people
to click on that link, through a blog post or through an email you send. If someone
clicks that link and purchases anything from the company you are affiliated with,
you earn a sales commission.
That last bit is important, so well take a minute to talk about it. Imagine that you
become an affiliate for Amazon. Jeff Bezos’ company is the largest retail
organization in the world, online or off. They have tons and tons of products. You
decide to promote a high-end garden tool.
You write a couple of blog posts using keywords and phrases that the search
engines notice. They send you free traffic, people that are typing those words and
phrases into search engines. Someone clicks on your affiliate link in your blog post,
and they are taken to Amazon where they check out the product.
They do not decide to buy it. However, they stay on Amazon and start looking at
other things they need. The person you sent through your affiliate link decides to
buy an expensive watch for a gift. Even though you did not advertise that item,
and it is totally different from the gardening product you promoted, you still earn
a commission when that customer purchases the watch.
Amazon handles dealing with the customer, shipping the product and every aspect
of the transaction. All you do is send prospective customers to Amazon, and if
they buy anything after arriving at the site through your affiliate link, you get paid.
How Does the Company Know That You Made the Sale, Instead of
Someone Else?
Affiliate marketing requires the use of cookies. This is simply a computer term
referring to the way a company keeps track of the traffic you send it. Let us stick
with the Amazon example. (There are a lot of companies who will pay you a much
higher commission than Amazon, but since everyone knows what Amazon is, let
us stick with this example for now. Later, we’ll show you some places to go where
you can earn 25%, 50% and even 75% commissions.)
You get a unique Uniform Resource Locator (you know this better as a URL) with
each product you want to promote. You are the only person who will ever get that
specific URL. Share that link with people who you think might be interested in that
product or service.
Your link contains trackable cookies. With Amazon, you will receive a 24-hour
cookie with each affiliate link. When someone clicks on one of your affiliate links
and goes to Amazon, the second they show up their 24-hour period begins. This
means if that person leaves Amazon and returns tomorrow, if they purchase
anything within 24 hours of you sending them through your link, you will earn a
commission.
We know what you might be thinking. That is not a long amount of time. Do not
worry, many of the affiliate marketing platforms we’re going to share with you
later deliver much longer cookies, such as 30 days and longer.
How Affiliate Marketing Works In Real Life?
This is what happens when a product or service is promoted online by being
shared on a blog, through a social media platform, a podcast, or even through an
email newsletter: Every time a customer uses the special affiliate link connected
to their referral to make a purchase, the affiliate gets paid a commission.
One of the main challenges as an affiliate marketer will be directing targeted
traffic to the promoted products, and make sure you have an audience that will
know you, trust you and like you.
Why Choose Affiliate Marketing?
TrueList.co tells us that affiliate marketing has an annual market capitalization of
more than $12 billion globally. Kinsta.com has that number at $17 billion. You get
the idea. The market size of affiliate marketing is… HUGE!
You might be asking yourself right now whether you can benefit from this
marketing method. The short answer is… yes, 100%, and definitely! Let us look at
a few reasons why you would choose affiliate marketing as an online
money-making method.
One of the most attractive reasons for becoming an affiliate marketer is that it’s
possibly the fastest and easiest way to get started making money online. As soon
as you get approved as an affiliate for some company, you can start sharing your
affiliate links with everyone.
It does not matter if you do not have a website or blog. Shoot an email or
a text message out to all your friends. Let your family members know.
Share your affiliate links on social media sites.
You can get business cards and flyers made that include your affiliate links.
Whenever anyone uses that link to make a purchase, you are going to earn a sales
commission. As you can see in this example, you do not have to have any Internet
marketing experience at all. And you can literally make your first sale shortly after
you start sharing your affiliate links.
You leverage the work of other people that have created the products. They take
the time to curate the information for their digital products or physical products
that you are promoting. Tons of work, time and money went into that creation…
You did not have to do a thing with product development. This helps you leverage
the considerable work of others, and now your job is to drive traffic to your, bridge
page, website/blog or share links in your emails.
Here are a few more pros (and cons) of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing Pros
1 – It is Easy!
Remember, all you have to do is find someone that will pay you a commission if
you get someone to buy their products or services. Do not worry, they’re
everywhere, and it’s very easy to find companies and individuals that will pay you
a healthy commission to make a sale for them. There are literally thousands of
businesses and individuals you can become affiliated with. (We will show you
where to go later.)
Once you’re a member, find a product you would like to represent. You’ll be given
a specific and unique code for that product. Send that code to your friends
through email, in a blog post and share it on all your social media sites.
If someone clicks on the link that you post and makes a purchase, either of the
products you are representing or anything else on the site, you receive a
commission. That is, it. That is how easy affiliate marketing can be.
2 – You Do not Need a List to Make Money
You absolutely should be building an email list if you are going to be an internet
marketer. However, a lot of us do not start out with any type of list, or we have a
small list. As mentioned above, you can share affiliate links on social media sites
and with anyone you’ve interacted with through email.
This means you do not need a list to start making money today with affiliate
marketing.
(By the way, we’re going to show you later why you should definitely be building a
list as an affiliate marketer. In the perfect world, you’ll have a website/blog and
use list building to get the most out of affiliate marketing.)
No Stocking Products, No Delivering Products, and No Customer Service
Responsibilities
Let’s stick with Amazon as an example here as we have been, but the process is
the same with any company you become an affiliate for.
You recently purchased something from Amazon, and you really love it. You’re
crowing to your friends on Facebook how awesome the new product is, and
several mention they would like to buy one as well. You head over to Amazon,
grab your affiliate link, and share it with your Facebook friends.
A few of your friends click on your link and buy the product, you are paid a
commission by Amazon. Now, all you do is go spend the money that Amazon gave
you as a sales commission!
What you do not have to worry about is the entire process of delivering the
product and dealing with the customer. All you do is act as a go-between. This
means you do not have to worry about handling product returns, stocking
products or communicating in any way with the customer. This is all managed by
Amazon.
You Do not Need a Product or Service to Sell
Affiliate marketing is often the first way internet marketers start their online
journey. You have already seen this is an easy business to run, and you do not
need an email list to get started. You do not even need a product or service to sell.
You are just recommending things that other businesses offer.
Others Sell Your Products for You
Now let us say you have a product you would like to sell, either a physical or
digital product. You can list a digital product on ClickBank, JV Zoo and other online
marketplaces. If you have physical items to sell you can become a merchant on Amazon.
When you offer to pay others a commission if they make a sale for you,
you can end up with dozens or even hundreds of people around the world selling
your product for you.
You become the Amazon in this example! You get affiliate marketers to sell your
products for you.
This works great when someone with a large email list decides to recommend
your products or services through the affiliate marketing business model. They
may send out just one or two emails to their list and the response could generate
dozens or even hundreds of sales for you.
Affiliate Marketing Cons
1 – You are Not in Control
Any company that you’re affiliated with can stop doing business with you. They
can do this at any time, without an explanation. Another way you’re not in control
is that the company might change their business model altogether. They might
stop letting people become affiliates. You can’t control the prices of the products
you sell, the commission rates you earn, and the quality of the products and
services you promote.
2 – You Only Get a Commission, a Partial Payment
Imagine that you write an e-book, say you create a video course, or you develop a
physical product. In these situations, you can sell what you have to offer from your
website or blog. You get to keep 100% of the purchase price. That is not the case
with affiliate marketing.
As you learned earlier, affiliate marketers receive a portion of the sales price, a
commission; this can be very substantial. While you do not get the total sales
price of a product or service, it is not like you have to stock it, deal with customers,
or ship it out when it gets purchased.
You Have To Choose the Right Product
We’re going to show you how to choose the right products. That’s important,
because if you spend a lot of time and effort promoting a stinker, you might not
make a penny. There are certain things you can do to make sure that you do not
choose the wrong product, which a lot of affiliate marketers do.
There Could Be A Lot Of Competition
Remember that number we shared with you earlier, the market capitalization of
affiliate marketing? Billions of dollars are generated each year for affiliate
marketers because there are a lot of them out there working.
While the competition could be high, that can also be a good thing. It means that
a product or service you have decided to promote is popular. There is a good
chance that you will get of sales.
It Requires Consistent Work
With affiliate marketing you must be patient, you must put in the work every day,
and this is good news. So many people get involved in this form of Internet
marketing, they start off strong and put a lot of time and effort, and possibly
money, into developing an online presence.
Then they do not make very many sales for the first month or for several months.
They get upset and quit. This happens all the time, and that’s good news for you.
Do the work. Be consistent. Keep after it every day and you will eventually
see your efforts pay off.
Affiliate marketers have the ability, the opportunity to make six and even seven
figures per month. And believe me, there are people doing exactly that. Many of
them started out with affiliate marketing because you can get started right away.
If you’re willing to put in more work and time than your competition, this is a
simple and quick way to get started making money online.
Email Strategy vs Website Setup Strategy (Hub Setup)
We mentioned two especially important online moneymakers earlier. You have
email marketing, which successful entrepreneurs cannot live without. You could
also decide to build a website or blog and have that as the focus of your affiliate
marketing efforts.
There are some benefits and disadvantages of one versus the other. Let’s take a
look at email marketing versus website setup (also called a hub setup) specifically
for affiliate marketers.
Email Marketing Strategy
Have you ever joined an email list? Chances are you have, and they offer you
something free in return for your email address. That’s the very basic beginning of
email marketing.
You as an affiliate marketer will offer an e-book or a report for free. You then tell
prospective list members that they will receive special prices, early access and
other benefits to joining your list. When people take you up on your offer, they are
immediately sent whatever freebie you enticed them with.
If this sounds difficult, it is not. There are autoresponder services who
handle all of the work for you. And do not worry, there are free options
for beginners. You do not have to pay a penny to get started.
You attach your opt-in freebie to your autoresponder service. Then you write a
series of emails, and you only have to write them one time. This becomes the
initial sequence of emails your list members receive when they sign up to your
email newsletter.
The way you obtain email lists addresses is up to you. Most people have a blog or
website where they offer some type of freebie on each page. Others have a simple
one-page website which is nothing but what Internet marketers call a squeeze
page. Its only purpose is to offer something for free in return for a person signing
up to your email list. Then you use social media, video viewing platforms and paid
options to drive all traffic to that squeeze page.
The benefit here is you do not have to have a website or a blog to get started. You
can do nothing more than use social media to begin to build your email list. You
would have to have an opt-in page setup online, and there are multiple ways to do
this. The autoresponder services we’ll recommend later, offer free opt-in pages so
you do not have to build a website.