An affiliate marketer is someone who joins a affiliate network or for more prestigious products or services signs a contract or agreement with the online business to promote their products or services using an affiliate link.
Here Are Some Good Reasons To Become An Affiliate Marketer
The business will pay the affiliate marketer a percentage from the sale that was made through their affiliate link. Some businesses pay a set rate per lead that can be followed with tracking cookies online.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most effective ways of setting up a business online. Signing up to be an affiliate for a business is free. It’s a very easy way to set up your own business without any inventory.
As an affiliate marketer, everything you are selling will be shipped by the business and not you. This is a top reason the affiliate business gains hundreds of affiliate daily.
With Minimal Outlay Your Can Have Your Own Online Business As An Affiliate Marketer
You don’t need to have ten thousand dollars like many conventional offline businesses do to start-up your own business as an affiliate marketer. Actually you really only need to have ten bucks available to you a month so you can set up your own web hosting account with a company like HostGator.
As you can see the investment you need to make is very minimal and if you choose to go the blog route with your affiliate product or service, there is also the option to use free hosting from places such as Blogger.com Or WordPress.org.
There are many affiliate marketers that actually take the FREE option, however if you really want to stand out and have your own brand as an affiliate marketer it is advisable but not compulsory to obtain your own domain name and hosting provider.
Another upside to having your own hosting and domain is that once you have created the site and hopefully you have used your own content and built up a following you can then also list the site for sale which is another way you can make money online from site flipping. This can not be done if you are using free hosting accounts.
There Is NO NEED For You To Create Your Own Product Or Service
You don’t need to create a brand new product that have to be selling online. You don’t need to figure out how to get a wholesale tax id number and find the best wholesale companies which can be headache in itself. As an affiliate, all you really need is your computer, a good internet connection and some spare time. The time you use will be focused on pre-selling your affiliate products or services.
It takes time to learn the most effective ways to market your products but with so many resources online, it’s all at your fingertips. Such As Link Building, Article Marketing and Even Social Networks these are all things you will want to know about to be successful online.
As An Affiliate Marketer Have A Good Understanding About The Products Or Services You Will Be Promoting
To begin a successful journey with affiliate marketing is to know your product and learn how to put it into words to create content for your site or email list. Content is the material you will be writing on your website or blog to draw traffic to your affiliate links. If you are starting out on a free web hosting site, the only suggestion from top affiliates would be to after making a few initial sales use those proceeds to purchase your own unique domain name.
A domain is the name of your website and it can create a professional sound and look right from the very start. If you are not familiar with domains, you can purchase domains for as low as ten dollars a year at many popular domain sites.
Visit Google to do a search on them.
Remember, the name of your domain should be memorable and easy to type for visitors. As well totally relevant to what it is you want to be marketing online to your visitors.
The Are Many Different Affiliate Networks You Can Join
Signing up for an affiliate program is easy and you can start your own online business as soon as you get the go ahead that you have been approved. Some of the most popular affiliate programs are ClickBank (No Waiting Time Just Pick A Product And Start Promoting) and Commission Junction (Vendor Approval Required).
With many merchants joining these affiliate networks daily, you are bound to find something that has potential for you to promote and sell as an affiliate.
When you sign up for the affiliate program of your choice, always make sure to fill out everything they ask for. After you have been approved, take a few days to look through the merchants so that you make a wise choice of what will work for you as an affiliate marketer. You might also find this useful How To Start An Affiliate Marketing Business.
Awesome site with great information. Keep up the good work you guys!
Thanks Avery glad we could provide you with some useful information…
this info is very useful indeed. Especially to someone who is just starting and needs direction and guidance when starting up an affiliate marketing program. Thanks and keep the good article coming.
As you said there are many valid reasons to be an affiliate marketer! It is like working with different companies and offers without having employment contracts with them, the internet has made affiliate marketing very liberal in the sense that affiliate marketing has international reach; it doesn’t matter in which country you are, just sign up to an affiliate program, promote and make money. Simple!
Respect!
.-= Viju Dallon´s last blog ..Web2Mayhem Review – Unbiased Critical Review of Web2Mayhem to Dominating Search Engines! =-.
You make it sound very simple Viju
But in actual fact in can be a long hard road to make any money with affiliate marketing. Before you start you need to know what you marketplace is all about then research products that you will be promoting. Choosing the wrong products can result in failure very quickly.
However you are very correct when you say that as an affiliate marketer you have an international reach and it is also correct that it really does not matter what country you are based in. Even though this blog is written in English we have more than 20 different countries visiting daily.
Viju can I also ask you how you are finding Web2Mayhem for marketing?
Cool insight into affiliate and online marketing … I also own a website with lots of useful information about affiliate marketing and like to do reviews on different products to help people out.
Thankyou for the information you’ve written here though!
Hi Christos… and thanks for dropping by.
Yes I to have some products reviews on the site but i only write reviews on products that i actually use myself especially now with the all the FTC rules and regulations. It also allows me to offer assistance to anyone that is having any problems using the programs or services that I review.
I have a product in the workplace wellness arena. I get a lot of affiliates signing up but the reality is only a few make up the majority of sales. An affiliate who puts a little work into understanding what he is promoting can do really well while affiliate marketers that want to be everything probably don’t make a dime. Know your niche and work it deep.
Thanks for joining us Phil..
And you are spot on with that observation I think that you will find, and I am only going on my own experience here is that about two percent of those that would join your affiliate program are making 100 percent of the sales would i be right in saying that.
You have to understand what it is you want to achieve and go for it, sitting back and hoping you will make money will not work.
Clickbank is the best affiliate network I have found personally. They give lots of details about the products placed on their market place, making it much easier for affiliates to analyze if it’s profitable. That’s the best thing I found with affiliate marketing, you no longer have to make a product, offer a service or even research the demographics and statistics of a certain product, seeing as it’s being laid out by affiliate networks. The only tight spots that I can think of are the choosing of product to promote stage and the approach to be used in pre-selling them.
By the way, I’ve heard a lot of good things about you Ron — specifically at Growmap.com — as they have mentioned you as one of the most known experts in this industry, ethical as well. It’s a good experience to read those wise words straight from you. Thanks 🙂
Regards,
Jason Acidre
Hi Jason
Thanks for the post and adding your thoughts to our site much appreciated.. I would have to say that your site Affilorama is in the top ten best sites for affiliate marketing and I have visited you guys many times.
I would have to agree with you when it comes to choosing a solid affiliate network, clickbank is very easy for affiliate to find products to promote and without having to wait for approval from vendors which makes it even easier to get started. I also speak with Growmap (Gail) a few times a day as we are always bouncing ideas and suggestions off each other to provide better information and resources to our readers.
Thank you Jason for letting Ron know you read my recommendation of him. Since I wrote the post you referred to about ethical Affiliate Management I have been collaborating with Ron more and more.
His knowledge of how to make money using affiliate marketing in blogs and his article marketing skills that are so far beyond any I have previously seen that I never even imagined the process he is using are so impressive that Ron, Derek Semmler and I are now doing Joint Venture blogs.
When you want to achieve success at the highest levels there are so many advanced skills required and so much time involved that it just makes sense to work together. I completely trust Ron and Derek – even with our joint income. Since you’ve read my blog you know that I only recommend the very best and when I find them I REALLY recommend them.
You have stated great reasons to become an affiliate marketer. I am an affiliate marketer and the primary reason I joined affiliate marketing is that I don’t really need that much capital to start it. All I need to do is to promote it and that ‘s it.
Hi Andrew…
Yes this was one of the main reasons that I also got involved into affiliate marketing, for the very low start up costs involved… Another was the fact I had spend most of my working life in the the corporate sector working as a V.I.P manager for a very large casino for many years and really needed a change of lifestyle and affiliate marketing offered that to me and much more…
Andrew congratulations on releasing a great income blogging guide have had a look at it and it really is a solid course for anyone wanting to get involved online.
I am 18 years old and affiliate marketing is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Not only am I making more money than my friends are — I’m doing it 100% passively which is quite awesome.
I recommend affiliate marketing combined with SEO for everyone — young or old. It is a world worth exploring. Much more fun than working at Mc Donald’s.
/Nabil, from Sweden.
Hi Nabil
And congratulations for taking the leap into the affiliate marketing world. Once you get your head around how everything works you will make some good money for your efforts. And yes there is no better feeling than going to the beach for the day and then returning home to find money sitting in your accounts.
I find affiliate marketing to be very addictive in the fact that the more work you put in the more you make and best of all you don’t have to deal with clients that don’t understand what it is that needs to be done to get good rankings on the internet.
I must agree that affiliate marketing is a wonderful and creative way to make money online. It’s – just like Nabil says – a way to stay off bad jobs like McDonalds, even if you’re young as him (18 yrs old).
Thanks for all the help I get here, AffiliateX is in my RSS 😉
Regards,
Jennie
I just wanted to take the time to let you know that I am quite impressed by your blog.
When I attended university the internet was truly in it’s infancy however, I would be interested in seeing how your marketing research scenario would be conducted using the next generation business marketing tools like Facebook and YouTube.
Sincerely,
Showayne. M
Internet Marketing Business Advisor
Hi Showayne…
We used Youtube for about two years with some very good results in the first year, however as our viewers grew to more than 3000 a day it did not relate to traffic on the website so we had to make some changes.
We now use wordpress plugins that are available to host the videos directly on our wordpress site through Amazon S3, Those plugins and programs are GVS which is a video sitemap for wordpress and Viddymatic which helps us embed our videos on wordpress and static html sites, you can also get a video site map generator for you static sites as well called XML-Video Sitemap.
Buy using these tools our pages are now getting indexed in Google faster as well as the videos, where they are appearing right along side the youtube videos but with our URl not a Youtube which does not really benefit the site at all.
As for Facebook there are many positives if you want to work to create a strong online presence, however again we only use this as secondary tool as we want the focus to be on our site not all the interaction to be on Facebook, which really does not benefit the site, however can be good for business. For those that are interested in using Facebook to market their online business we have a series of Facebook How To Videos to head you in the right direction.
I love joining affiliate programs, especially the ones that offer residual income, but its so difficult to make money through this route especially with someone starting up and have no credibility yet.
I tried to get HostGator sign-ups through my blog because I use their hosting service and its pretty awesome, and yet no one, not even 1 person actually clicked on my link and purchased anything.
I think it’ll just take a bit more time to build credibility so people believe the quality of the products that you want them to purchase.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Sayed…
What you have stated is the case for many affiliates, it does not just happen. What you need to do is write a product review on hostgator and then get it indexed well by the serps. Then you might start to see some results, however it will again come down to your credibility to your readers and how well you have laid out the review.
I would suggest not to sell in the review of Hostgator but to tell your readers about you experience such as the ease of sign up what response you got from their customer support and even what you don’t like about them so anyone reading the review will have a better understanding of what it is all about.
One last thing is the call the action make sure you actually tell you readers to click a link or check it out for themselves don’t just rely on a link within the text to do the work for you, as that will not be effective. Build your online business with a great hosting company, click here to visit Hostgator and get started…
I see you last post is about Dofollow you might be interested in this post Do Follow Or Nofollow The Raging Bloggers Debate
Nice Post Ron,
If done well, affiliate marketing can be gold mine for anyone. The two things anyone need to know are traffic building (with ppc or seo) and conversion. If right product is not chosen, then too it can be big fail. Deeper you go inside, you may find many obstacles and learn lessons from it.
Hi Joel
Yes affiliate marketing can be profitable for some, and you are right when you speak about traffic you need it to survive online… If you choose the wrong product then you are definitely in for an uphill battle as an affiliate. However every mistake you do make is just added to your own personal knowledge which makes you stronger and more alert next time.
Anyone that wants to start off in affiliate marketing needs to have two things besides what was mentioned above, and that is dedication and motivation to succeed.
Something that i have learned over the years is to check out the offer before promoting it and make sure its a good one. Especially if you have a list. You need to protect it from all the scams out there so people know they can trust you. That way you can build a long term sustainable business
Hi Robert..
You are right on with this advice, however many affiliate still find a program they know nothing about and start promoting it hoping to make some money.
However overtime they find that there subscribers start to leave and there traffic also suffers simply because their site visitors have no trust in the information they are reading.
Hello Ron,
Just a few hours ago I was watching an Anthony Morrison infomertial, which introduced me to your line of business as an affiliate marketer. I have done a little reading about it online and it has really intrigued me.
I have two questions for you. I have been reading posts on this site and many have the reoccuring theme of “knowing your product”. What, exactly is it that you have to know? Would I have to use all of these products myself? Would I have to know the who/what/where/when and how much these products sell?
My second question is exactly how computer savvy do you have to be to start your own online business? To tell you the truth, some of the computerese I have read in the above posts may as well have been in Chinese!
Thanks for your time,
Steve
Hi Steve and Welcome
What I mean by “knowing your product” is simply that you have used it yourself. you can either do this by purchasing the product that you want to promote or contacting the vendor to see if you can get access to the product where you will write a review in return.
This is especially important for building trust with your site visitors because if you are marketing things that just don’t work or only have a limited life span you will find that the trust will fall away very quickly with your site visitors.
Using wordpress as your main website you will find it very easy to get started. The most time consuming thing about creating your business in the beginning is writing the content and not simply finding articles that are everywhere online and populating your blog with those.
Once you are established (making money) you can then start outsourcing some of the work you need done to keep your site current.
Despite the many challenges affiliate marketing is worthwhile as long as you have the right products to promote. Thanks Ron, that I hope will encourage more guys to venture into affiliate marketing.
Yes you are right!
So many people today simply register a domain name then promote every product they can find whether it is related to their niche or not. Affiliate marketing takes time and hard work and if done correctly meaning (Niche Specific) you will see results, but it takes time.
A lot of Internet Marketers and online business owners overlook the fact that all their hard earn respect and reputation can be affected for promotiong an affiliate product which later turn out to be a ‘scam’ or not living up to the results as advertised in the sales page.
I have seen that even reputable Gurus made such mistakes, trying to promote products which I have bought and try out personally and found it to be less promising as anticipated.
Yes we have also been guilty of doing that…
However lessons hard learned are lessons well learned. Now anyone wanting to promote products from our site such as a guest post are required to give us complete access to the product first. If we do not like it, or believe it to be a very short term solution then the product does not get a review or even a mention on our site.
For those that do not have a site like ours you would not start to imagine how many requests we receive a day for JV Partnerships and “To Good To Be True Offers” that just don’t sit right with us. In a lot of the cases we do not even ask for access just say no or delete the emails that are coming in, you see there are those that are repeat offenders and have a new get rich quick program every month to promote.
I don’t now about the rest of you but the promise of making thousands of dollars in your first month online has worn very thin with us, you need patience and dedication to start and then find a good group of people in your marketplace that you can network with for bouncing ideas off.
It’s terrible that people misconstrue phishing and affiliate marketing for one in the same. I always run into this real-estate blog that is an “expert” in everything, but links back to some site promoting a get-rich quick, real estate DVD. What are steps you can do to differentiate yourself from people like that?
Hi Maggie…
Yes as you have said there are many sites out there doing the wrong thing by their site visitors for sure. What we always try to do as an affiliate before promoting any product is actually use it, whether that has been through us buying the program or being offered access by the product creator.
We are approached many people trying to get there products noticed by way of reveiw on our site, however only a small amount actually make the cut. The reason is simple that if we believe the product has long term benefits we will seriously consider it and as long as there are no black hat strategies involved. If we believe a product to be short term then it will not be posted on our site.
Do you have any tips for driving trafic to mobile websites?
Hi Barry
I have never realy looked into this so I am really only guessing here. The site is still hosted on the internet right, so it would be no different to any other site as far as I can see. It will still be getting indexed in Google and you can still promote your site using social sites such as twitter.
There is also a social site called Dodgeball that has been created specially to work with a Smartphone or any mobile devices. Here is a link to the top 10 Mobile Websites at Webtrends that will give you much more information.
Becoming an affiliate marketer was the best decision I have ever made in my life. I love it, I enjoy it and best of all its fun making some serious money.
I really like the point you make of watching what products you promote and recommend. If you as an affiliate do not take the time to honestly review the product and recommend it that person that buys from you may never trust you again. First impressions and your word matter a lot to people in affiliate marketing.
Hi Sean
Yes there are far to many people littering the internet with absolute rubbish, meaning they are constantly promoting products and services that they have never used or even know anything about. They simply do a search and then gather the information they need to write a review and then start promoting the product.
This shows that they have very short term goals for there website. As you said overtime you will lose any trust that you have online and regardless of your content or anything else you do online without trust you are heading for disaster.
Thanks for the great article on Affiliate Marketing, I’m new to it but i have started making money with them already I just find that there are to many affiliate networks to choose from….
Hi Steve
Yes Steve there are affiliate networks everywhere and you have to make sure you don’t join to many or you will spend to much time trying to figure out what it is you are going to be promoting. Pick one or two affiliate networks only and work with them. If you find that one is not working for you, meaning the product offers then try another one. It is all about trial and error until you find what works for your niche.
It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing doesn’t work on all blogs. Some blogs are on topics where it is hard to find products to promote – other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and for other blogs it just doesn’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach
Yes this is one area that many people neglect and at the peril of their online business. It is one thing to research a niche to find out what traffic is available as well as deciding on a domain name but if there is nothing in that market to promote as an affiliate then you are really just wasting your time.
If that does happen then maybe an alternative is that you use Adsense so all your time is not wasted and maybe you can recoup your costs back or even make a small profit.
I’m kind of a newbie when it comes to affiliate but I’m really thinking it’s a cool business. There are some really good reasons you’re pointing out – thanks AffiliateX 🙂
Hi Albin
Just remember that your affiliate business will take time to build make sure you find some trustworthy mentors that are willing to give you the right information without trying to sell to you and you will be on your way.
How can one find those mentors? I would be really glad to find a swedish mentor that could help me with the most important parts of the affiliate business and Internet Marketing in general. Is searching in forums a good way?
Hi Albin
You are already on the right track by starting up a conversation on this blog. If you ask relevant questions you will get relevant answers. Over time you can sort out for yourself who is giving you good information or bad and then follow them by subscribing to their site feed or even Twitter and Facebook if they have accounts in those social circles.
I started a business in affiliate marketing just because the amount of opportunities was so many. You can choose to market almost anything when being an affiliate – that’s what made me begin my journey.
Hi Albin
Yes you are right there are many opportunities with affiliate marketing, however you need to realize that not all niches are created equal if you go for a competitive market to soon you could end up losing your shirt. Or another area where affiliates get caught out is where they do not research then enter into a market place that has little competition but find over time that there are just no sales.
One of the reasons for not making any sales are that the information that you are trying to sell is readily available online.
Interesting – I’d been looking for a way to supplement my income and it’s looking like affiliate marketing just might be great for me! I hadn’t known much about it before reading this, so I really appreciate the info – thanks a million! 😀
I like Internet marketing because it’s not capital intensive as an offline business, and the outreach is global. However, as a newbie in internet marketing, I still have to learn a lot how to be more effective in this effort. Thank you for sharing this information.
Hi Steve
Don’t rush into to many things at once online this will only serve to confuse you and slow your process. What you need to do is choose a few people you would like to follow and run with that. Make sure that you do not subscribe to a lot of different newsletters either or you will find that you are spending most of your time reading emails and clicking on links to check out other products and reading way to much rubbish that gets constantly published online, again slowing down your own progress.
If you as an affiliate do not take the time to honestly review the product and recommend it that person that buys from you may never trust you again. First impressions and your word matter a lot to people in affiliate marketing. | 😛
Hi Brown
Yes you are right, most internet users today are well informed and can spot a fake review very quickly. As you say the first impression is everything to your online business and if you can not build trust with your site then your opportunities will be very limited.
Im really new on internet marketing. But I started in this business to make money online. I have so many oppurtunites and so many ways that I can go.
Im already promoting offers (with CPA) and that works good. Now I really can thank my mentor that thought me to affiliate market.
I must say that the most challenging in affiliate marketing is to match the right products with the right traffic/market. And affiliate offers there are plenty
Sometimes I get lots of traffic to a offer that I believe will be very popular, but almost none even clicks the offer .. sometimes they click the offer but don’t buy anything.
Other times I just throw in some offer on a lab autoblog and then suddenly I get many people buying.
How am I supposed to analyse what is making the differences?
Hi John
You have just described the dilemma that many affiliates face everyday, firstly regardless of your niche if you don’t have the trust of your readers then they probably will not buy. The next dilemma is that as internet users become more educated they tend to look at between four and six other sites before making decision which makes it a one in six chance that they will buy from your link.
You need to make your content so attractive and informative that the person will trust your information right from the start then bookmark it so that after they have finished reviewing other sites for information they may return to you to purchase. The best way to do this is by allowing comments on your site where you are answering any questions or concerns about a product or service, that way your review will be a lot more in depth than any others online.
And most importantly of all do not lie to your readers just to get a sale or your trust factor will end up in the toilet along with your site over time.
Thanks for your tips. It always come back to this. Make good content and create value for the visitors. It is not the easiest task but probably tho most secure way of creating a returning visitor, as you say. Well .. I continue to work on that..
Hi John
You definitely need quality content today, it really does not matter what you are doing whether it is affiliate marketing or selling your own products. The quality content that you produce works in two ways first it will make you look like an expert in your niche and secondly will give you social influence online.
Social influence is where people are adding your to social sites such as Twitter, Facebook and even StumbleUpon just to name a few which is another ranking factor that is slowly being rolled out by Google. Hence their new network Google+.
Another important aspect which many do not realize yet is making sure your content is grammatically correct, avoid spelling mistakes at all costs, use your spell checker in WordPress or write the article in Microsoft Word first to ensure that you have no spelling mistakes.
I agree. Affiliate Mmrketing is a good way to gain some money without worrying about shipping the products, storage and other snags.
Very intresting post, Sometimes I get lots of traffic to a offer that I believe will be very popular, but almost none even clicks the offer .. sometimes they click the offer but don’t buy anything. Thanks for the sharing.
Hi Bibiana
This could be a trust issue with your site, meaning you are not considered the authority and your visitors are moving on to find more in depth information before making a purchase which in effect means you are losing the affiliate sale.
I am interested in becoming an Affiliate. The question is as I do not have a website can I still become a Affiliate. If so where is the best place to start?
Hi Sheiglo
The first question I need to ask you is what are you interested in, meaning what would you want to sell as an affiliate marketer?
There are many free sites that you can start with but it is really better if you have your own website so that you are in control.
HI Affilliate X, there are several things.
I would possible sell: Books, Kitchen equipment, Health Products. not sure which would be the best to satrt with. depends what is popular at the time.
Any tips would be great, I have spent a bit on these sites to earn ‘big’ time like most but no joy.
I know there is a way out there.
Thanks for your reply.
Sheiglo
Hi Sheiglo
You are going to have to pick one and run with it, don’t try to all at once you need to start making money in one niche and move on. Do you have any keyword research tools so you can have a look at the market of each niche. If not just use the free keyword tool at Google to see what is happening in the niche.
When starting out you need to look for keywords that have no mare than 10,000 or less competing websites or it will take you to long to see any money.
The reason why I want to become an affiliate marketer is because of the possibility of earning passive residual income. This is actually better than sticking to an 8-hour job with fixed salary or minimum wage. The possibilities of affiliate marketing are endless, you just got to keep scaling a bit and take action.
Cheers!
Dan Lew
I love affiliate marketing… I have been able to work from home for 6 years from this type of business. I am grateful and although the Panda has made it a little more challenging it is a good thing.
And the most important reason for me: because is fun and you learn something new every day 🙂
Affiliate marketing is really awesome. You have put it right in a very effective manner. I have been doing it for sometime but truly experience speaks for itself, which is exactly the case with you.
Affiliate marketing is a good way of earning but you have to do it the right way. Knowledge is the key !
Hi, nice article you have! I have heard about affiliate marketing so many times, but I haven’t got myself a chance to be one. I’m interested and this article might give me few hints how to do it. Many say you make great income from this. But I guess you also need a reliable site to work for.
This is nice article indeed. Thanks!
Hi Rizza
If you want to get into affiliate marketing you need to understand straight away that it is going to be hard work. you need to select a niche and work on it so you are the authority. Another very important tip is to stay clear of all the hyped up product promotions that you will come across promising you the world. All these do is slow your progress and cost you money.
I agree that in order for an affiliate to be successful with affiliate marketing they must know the product/products they are selling. They must know in it inside and out so that they will be able to educate others about it.
When they know the product then they will be able to do a write-up about it on their blog or website so as to attract potential customers to their affiliate links.
Affiliate Marketing has worked extremely well for some people. My thinking is that we have to study a lot of articles and methods in order to find one that will bring success as not all people will succeed doing the same thing. Articles/content are what will generate the traffic to make the good things happen and it will not be an overnight success for someone entering this field.