how to make money with affiliate marketing

How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

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Learn how to make money with affiliate marketing. Use these 8 powerful keys to skyrocket your affiliate sales in 2023. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to get started in Internet marketing.

I am personally making money with affiliate marketing and recommend affiliate marketing as one of the best ways to make money online.

It's one of the fastest ways to get started making money online because you don't have to spend time creating your own product or buying products.

Here's a short overview of what I'll cover in this post:

Read on to find out what affiliate marketing is and how you can make money as an affiliate.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate programs are also called associate programs, referral programs, partner programs, and revenue-sharing programs.

In short, affiliate marketing is promoting other people’s products or services. Affiliates drive traffic to the merchant’s website and receive compensation from the merchant.

It is an agreement between merchants and affiliates where affiliates receive a commission for generating sales, leads or clicks for the merchant.

Basically, the merchant pays affiliates for every visitor that takes required action. This action can be making a purchase from the merchant, clicking on the merchant’s ad, providing requested information to generate leads, as well as a variety of other actions.

The majority of affiliate programs pay you when someone buys through your link. But there are other types of affiliate programs.

Some programs pay affiliates for lead generation. For example, when people provide their email address, zip code, phone number, or other information. Others pay for visitors that click on an affiliate link or ad and visit the merchant site whether a purchase is made or not.

Affiliate marketing is a win-win situation for both affiliates and merchants.

  • The affiliate gets paid when selling other people's products (or generating leads or clicks).
  • Affiliates don't have to purchase or create products. And they don't have to stock or ship merchandise.
  • Merchants only have to pay affiliates when affiliates make a sale or provide them with leads, clicks, or impressions.

For example, many credit card companies will pay affiliates between $5 and $20 in commission for each visitor that affiliates send to their site who completes a credit card application, and they pay up to $55 for approved applications.

Benefits of affiliate marketing

  • Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest and best ways to get started in online marketing.
  • Affiliate marketing can be VERY profitable. If you don't realize the huge income potential of affiliate marketing, start reading income reports from successful bloggers. Not only will those income numbers inspire you, but they can also provide great information and ideas for your affiliate promotions.
  • You can work anywhere where you have internet access and a computer or even your cell phone.
  • Make passive income. It will take plenty of work to get started in affiliate marketing and you'll have to occasionally update some information and add new products and new information. But once your blog is set up with plenty of content and affiliate links, you can literally make money while you sleep.
  • Affiliate marketers can have an absolutely amazing lifestyle.  And you can truly work at your own schedule. For example, Michelle Schroeder is making $50,000 a month from affiliate marketing while traveling full-time. There are many affiliates that make that kind of money and some even make more than that. Read my review of her course here.
  • You don't have to create your own products.
  • You don't have to purchase, stock, or ship products.
  • You don't need a merchant account.
  • You don't have to process orders, refunds, or returns.
  • Your only job as an affiliate is to promote the merchant's products.

I was intrigued by Michelle Schroeder's income reports and bought Michelle's course in December, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. And I highly recommend her course.  You can read my review here.

How to make money with affiliate marketing – how affiliate marketing works

  • Typically, you'll join one or more affiliate programs and add your affiliate link(s) to your website.
  • Some merchants run their own affiliate programs while others join large affiliate networks like Commission Junction, Shareasale, or Rakuten Marketing/Linkshare.
  • The merchant or affiliate network uses special software or a script to assign a unique link to each affiliate. When signing up for an affiliate program, affiliates receive a unique affiliate ID and link (text link or banner) and use that unique link when promoting the merchant's products.
  • Affiliates add text links or banner ads on their website, on social media (e.g., in your tweets or Pinterest pins), in emails, and in newsletters. And when someone clicks on their links/banners, they are redirected to the merchant. The affiliate software tracks leads and sales.  And if someone purchases through your link, you'll get a commission. Some programs even pay you for clicks!
  • The affiliate agreement specifies the amount of money affiliates will earn from each sale or lead they generate. Many digital products (ebooks, software, templates, etc.) pay 50% to 75% and more commissions. Some programs pay a fixed amount or percentage of the sale. Other programs pay recurring commissions or pay on multiple levels.
  • You can promote affiliate programs without a website but you'll have more possibilities if you have a website or blog. Find out why below.

Recommended reading:

How to choose merchants and products you want to promote

Choose merchants and products carefully

  • Choose reputable products.
  • Choose a niche and products you understand and are familiar with. Or spend time to learn more about the product before you start promoting it. When choosing products you understand and are familiar with, you will be able to promote them better and write better recommendations, descriptions, articles, and blog posts.
  • Choose vendors that provide you with tools and information to help you promote their products. Many vendors provide you with promotional materials like text ads and banner ads. Some even provide you with social media images, articles, and email messages you can send to your list.

How to find affiliate programs

Here are several ways to find affiliate programs:

  1. Affiliate networks give you access to tons of affiliate programs. They're free to join. Here are just a few the popular affiliate marketplaces and networks where you can find products to promote.
  2. You can find many online directories that list affiliate programs.
  3. Visit the websites of merchants that have products you're interested in and look for their affiliate programs. You can often find a link at the bottom of their home page that says “affiliate, associate, or partners.”
  4. Do a Google search for “company name or website name” + “affiliate program.”

The truth about affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is often misrepresented as a way to make money fast. And some people take that very literally. But becoming a successful affiliate marketer usually doesn't happen overnight.

There are people who are able to make affiliate sales almost immediately but those are exceptions. It's more typical for affiliate income to grow gradually as you learn more about affiliate marketing and internet marketing.

How to generate affiliate sales almost immediately.

You can make some affiliate sales quickly by adding your affiliate link to social media posts. Pinterest is the easiest place to make quick affiliate sales. You can create Pinterest pins for affiliate products you promote and use your affiliate link as the destination URL. Below is a book that will show you how to do that.

Paid by Pinterest – How to Make Your First Affiliate Sale in 24 hrs with Pinterest.

How to Make Your First Affiliate Sale in 24 Hours with Pinterest is a great, inexpensive book for new affiliates by Elise McDowell, House of Brazen. It focuses on using Pinterest to get quick affiliate sales. Click here for more information.

Notes:

The book above is a quick way to make affiliate sales. But if you want to make consistent money and make passive money with affiliate marketing, then I recommend getting Michelle's course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. You can read my review of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing here. Michelle’s also has free ebook, Affiliate Marketing Tips for Bloggers – click here to get it.

More tips on promoting affiliate links through Pinterest:

1. You need to disclose that your pin is an affiliate link. You can do this by adding #affiliate or #ad to the end of your pin description.

2. When promoting affiliate programs through Pinterest, you need to use the full affiliate link (Pinterest does not allow a shortened link or redirect link).

3. Not every affiliate program allows you to link directly to your affiliate link, so make sure to check the rules of each program you join.

But to make big money in affiliate marketing and make passive income, you'll have to build a blog and email list.

It usually takes time to become successful in affiliate marketing and make good money consistently.

Here's why:

  • It takes time to learn what it takes to be successful in affiliate marketing. You can shortcut that time by learning from some of the resources I'm mentioning below.
  • It takes time to build your blog, create quality content and grow traffic to your blog.  Luckily there are ways to get traffic fast. Using social media is one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog fast – and it's free. Pinterest and Tailwind work very well for me to generate traffic. To find out how I do it, read my article, How to Boost your Blog Traffic with Pinterest and Tailwind.

8 keys to skyrocket your affiliate commissions:

  • Promote only quality programs. If you promote lousy products, you won't get repeat sales and you'll damage your reputation.
  • Promote only products that are targeted to your audience. If should be obvious that you won't make sales if you're promoting products your audience isn't interested in.
  • Choose reliable vendors. Choose vendors that have a good reputation and pay on time.
  • Choose a niche and products you understand and are familiar with. Or spend time learning more about the product. When choosing products you understand and are familiar with, you will be able to promote them better, and write better recommendations, descriptions, articles, and blog posts.
  • Get a website and build an email list. Email marketing is your best option for marketing your affiliate products and solutions to your audience. This requires that you use a website and social media marketing and other methods to build your email list of your ideal audience who needs and wants what you are offering to them. When you have a list, you can stay in touch with your visitors and keep marketing to them with plenty of information, solutions, education, and engaging and actionable content.  Read How to Set up and Build an Email List on Autopilot.
  • You need to do a few core things really well.  You must learn how to generate traffic and pre-sell affiliate products. If you learn these basics well, you will earn great commissions and may be able to quit your day job as many people have.
  • You must get accurate information about affiliate marketing so you don't waste your time with trial and error and give up before you become successful. New online marketers are overwhelmed with the huge amount of information that is available online. And they don't know how to detect good information from bad and inaccurate information.

    Investing in quality training will teach you what you need to know to be successful in affiliate marketing and help you become successful faster. I'm mentioning some books and courses I recommend below.

    My #1 recommendation is an affiliate course called, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing by Michelle Schroeder. You can read my review of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing here. Or you can go to Michele's site at Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. Michelle’s also has a free ebook, Affiliate Marketing Tips for Bloggers – click here to get it.
  • You must be persistent. Persistence is important. Many new internet marketers give up when they don't see immediate results – massive traffic or sales.

Where Are Your Sales Happening?
in Email, on Social Media, or on Your Website?

It's important to know where your sales are coming from. You need to know whether you’re getting sales from email, social media, your website, or all the above.

While you should use all of them, it’s important to understand where most of your sales are coming from. Figuring out what works for your audience is one of the most important ways to ensure that you have a profitable affiliate marketing business.

Website Marketing / Email Marketing

Email marketing is your best option for marketing your affiliate products and offering solutions to your audience.

This will require that you use a website, social media marketing and other methods to build your email list of your ideal audience who needs and wants what you are offering to them.

Get a website or blog

While you can make some affiliate sales without a website by using affiliate links on social media (e.g. Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook), having a blog gives you many more opportunities for making sales and making it big in affiliate sales.

Your website is your storefront and the center of your business.  It's where you can educate, inform, and engage your audience with the content you share with them.

You can build trust with your site by providing quality content that is related to the affiliate products you are promoting. Your content can be blog posts, tutorials, or videos.

For example, if you're promoting software, you can create a tutorial on how you use the software and how it benefits you. This is a good way to “presell.” You will get more clicks and conversions because people know how the software will benefit them before they get to the sales page.

With your website, your job is to get visitors to your email list where you can market your affiliate products easier to them. You need to build trust by staying in touch with your list on a regular, consistent basis and by providing helpful and high-quality content.

Here's another reason to have a website. Not every program will accept all affiliates. Many affiliate programs (but not all) require that you have a website to get accepted as an affiliate. You don't necessarily have to have a large number of page views or social followers to get accepted as an affiliate by many programs but you have a better chance of getting accepted if you have a blog with good content – especially if your content is related to their product.

If you don't have a blog yet, check out my article on how you can create a money-making blog.

You must remember that every single marketing channel mentioned here is important to be successful. However, one of the most important is email marketing.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t need an email list.
List building and email marketing is still the highest-converting marketing tool today.

Once you build the list, you’ll want to market to them through the list with plenty of information, education, and engaging and actionable content.

You have to remember that when you build an email list, you own that list. You can move it, you can use it in other places, and you can take it with you when you switch platforms. But you do not own social media. If that platform ends, you will lose your connections.

No matter what anyone else says, the stats don’t lie. Email marketing generates on average between 37 and 42 to 1 ROI (return on investment). That means that marketers who use email state that for every dollar they spend on email marketing, they earn between 37 and 42 dollars. As the highest converting marketing option today, it will pay for you to focus on list building and email marketing but don’t ignore any of the other marketing methods.

Recommended reading:

Social Media Marketing

More than half of social media participants interact with the brands they like to buy from. Most companies use some form of social media marketing to get the word out about their products and services and to cross-promote their email list through engagement.

Using paid advertising like Facebook Ads is lucrative and easy to set up. One of the best uses of paid ads on social media is to build your list. Host a free webinar, give away a checklist or template, and get those email addresses to build your email list.

Traffic and Marketing Affiliate Programs

Once you have a list of keywords that have at least 1,000 monthly searches and fewer than 50,000 competing pages, it’s time to use those keywords to get traffic.

There are literally hundreds of ways to get traffic. To get started, check my article on how to get free traffic here.

Pinterest marketing is one of the best ways to get tons of free traffic. You can read some of my Pinterest articles here:

Although there are ways to market affiliate programs without a website, I highly recommend that you get a website. A successful website with valuable content that endorses related affiliate products can easily make you thousands of dollars every month.

Finding a niche is not difficult but you need to do some research to make sure that the niche can be profitable.

And once you have decided on a niche, you’ll be ready to buy a domain, get a website or blog, and add content to it.

Read how you can set up a money-making blog.

Ready to get started in affiliate marketing?

There are over 10,000 affiliate products available on the internet that provide affiliates the opportunity to earn commissions.

Affiliate Marketing Resources
To Help You Jumpstart Your Affiliate Sales

There are many resources that can help you get started in affiliate marketing. The hard part is finding the right advice. It's important to choose the right resources so you don't get overwhelmed or confused or get inaccurate, outdated information. Below are some courses I recommend. Some are targeted to newbies while others will also benefit affiliates with some experience.

For Beginners and for people who want to learn more about promoting affiliate programs with Pinterest

Would you like to learn from someone who makes $50,000 a month from affiliate marketing? 

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

If you want to learn affiliate marketing from someone who's making $50,000 a month in affiliate marketing, I recommend getting Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

I was intrigued by Michelle Schroeder's income reports and bought Michelle's course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing in December 2018.

I highly recommend Michelle's course for beginners. There is nothing that experienced affiliates haven't already heard.  Even though I've been an affiliate marketer for many years, it reminded me of things I hadn't implemented, and it also covered some areas I can improve on. So, I am gradually implementing some of Michele's recommendations to increase my own affiliate sales (although I'm making steady affiliate sales). There is so much good information, you have to read more than once to really get what it takes to make the kind of money Michelle is making. And you want to go back to it over and over again to implement the strategies Michelle is teaching.

You can read my review of Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing here. Or you can go to Michele's site at Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. Michelle’s also has a free ebook, Affiliate Marketing Tips for Bloggers – click here to get it.

Ready to Get Started in Affiliate Marketing?

Learn from someone who is making $50,000+ a month in affiliate marketing!

Recommendation #1:
Michelle’s course: Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing

making sense of affiliate marketing

If you want to learn from someone who’s making $50,000 a month in affiliate marketing, I highly recommend getting Michelle’s course, Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing.

Michelle’s free ebook
Affiliate Marketing Tips for Bloggers

free affiliate marketing ebook

Recommended Reading

Do you have an affiliate program of your own?

If you have your own affiliate program, you don’t want to be legally liable for your affiliates’ mistakes! Protect yourself with this Affiliate Agreement template that is created by Amira, a lawyer, and blogger. Her affiliate template includes all the affiliate terms and conditions you must have your affiliates accept. Get it here.

3 thoughts on “How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing”

  2. Thanks for your feedback Jasmine. I’m glad that you liked my information about affiliate marketing.

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