What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a strategy that companies implement in order to increase their sales. The way it works is, a company creates an affiliate program in which individuals can apply to become affiliates of that company. Once accepted, the affiliate will receive a customized link, known as an affiliate link, to that company’s offer. Then whenever the affiliate refers a customer to that company’s offer they do so using their affiliate link. If the customer makes a purchase, the affiliate will receive a portion of the sale. It’s really very simple and this form of business partnership has been going on for a very long time. It’s beneficial for both the company and the affiliate because the company reaps the benefit of having a commission only sales force driving additional revenue and the affiliate gets to make money for directing people to, hopefully, helpful products. Also, the customer pays the same price whether they purchased the product through an affiliate link or not. The commission is paid straight from the vendors cut.
How Do You Join an Affiliate Program?
To make it easier on themselves, many companies will join an affiliate network to manage their affilate program. Affiliate networks specializes in managing affiliate programs for companies so they take care of the all of the technical details of running the affiliate programs. It can be advantageous to join an affiliate network to find many of the different businesses that have affiliate programs that you can apply to. That is one way to find an affiliate program to join. Some larger companies like Ebay and Amazon manage their own affiliate programs and you will have to register directly through their website. If you already know of a product/ service that you would like to promote but don’t know where to join their affiliate program, go to company’s website, scroll to the bottom of the page, and look for a link that says “affiliates”. Click on that and it should give you all the information about how to register for their program.
What Offers Should You Promote?
There are many different types of products/services in which one can promote. There are physical goods such as those sold on Amazon or Ebay or there are digital products such as e-books or online courses. There is no shortage of different types of offers to promote. Many people have a very difficult time trying to decide what type of offer they should promote and that’s understandable. After all, people usually want to promote something that is going to make them a lot of money. So here is my best advice on the subject. Only promote things that you know work or are helpful. There are some key reasons why this will make a big difference in your results. Mainly because if you’re promoting something that you truly believe is helpful, it will be much easier when looking for places to display your links. If you tell a site/video owner that you know your product can really help people then they will be more likely to let you display your link. If you try asking a site/video owner to let you promote your “Make $1000 a Day” B.S. product, most likely they will know it’s a scam product and they will say no. Also, the same reasoning is true when promoting your products on say social media or word of mouth. Do you really want to recommend products, that you don’t even know if they really work, to your friends and family? It could be really damaging for your reputation. If you know what you are promoting is legit then you don’t have to worry about people calling you a scammer or coming back angry. On the contrary, you will have people thanking you and telling you how you really helped them out. The downside to this is, it will probably drastically reduce the number of products that you will be able to promote and might reduce the amount of money you make. But it depends on the type of person you are, it might also help you make more money. Many people never make any money with affiliate marketing because they try to promote products that they think will make them money but they don’t have any idea whether they are any good. Because of this, they never promote the offers to the right people and what they say about the offers don’t come across as sincere.
Now, when it comes to the actual offers themselves, I do have some suggestions. Keep in mind, these are only recommendations and I don’t follow them strictly. If you find an offer that doesn’t fit the bill but you really like it, give it a try, if it is a really helpful product, it might payout well for you.
I prefer to promote offers that payout at least $15 in commission and I like to promote services, if possible. The reason for this is that since many services are subscription based the commission payout is usually higher than a single payment item and the purchaser only has to pay a small amount up front. Some examples of these types of services are Stichfix, Naturebox, Butcherbox, Stamps.com.
How Should You Promote Affiliate Offers?
So once you have been approved for the affiliate program that you like and you have your affililiate link then you need to promote your offers. There are many different ways to promote affiliate links but I’m only going to focus on the one that I use and that is through a blog. One reason having a blog is important in affiliate marketing is sharing a straight affiliate link, which is also known as “direct linking” is prohibited by almost all websites. This is because it will be viewed basically as spam because you are not adding any value when you are just providing a link to a product. So when you have a blog, you will have your own website address in which you can link to a product review, or some additional information, about the affiliate offer.
The Darkside of Affiliate Marketing
So there is one thing I want warn you of in the world of affiliate marketing or what is sometimes known as “internet marketing”. There is an abundance of “gurus” out there who make there money by promising to teach you how people how to “make money online”. The truth behind these gurus is that, the only way they make there money is by selling their training materials or programs to newcomers by promising ridiculous income claims. Almost all of these training programs are B.S. Sometimes there is be some actual useful information in them but as complete plan they almost always fail. Or their training plan will actually be for you to turn around and offer the same kind of pipe dreams to other people.
Here are some of the tell tale signs that the gurus are scammers. They are almost always promoting “make money online” products because it is well known that making money products sell the best. If someone is suggesting that you promote products that you have never tried and don’t even know if they work, then chances are they are doing the same thing to you.
I’ve been in this game for over 10 years and I can tell you I’ve seen this over and over. Many of the gurus don’t know how to make money other than promoting materials to people teaching them how to make money online b;y selling the same types of products to other people. So the thing is, some of these gurus are making money but they aren’t doing it in a way that most people, myself included, would feel good about. It’s basically like a giant Ponzi scheme. I’m not saying there are not people that legitimately make money with affiliate marketing, helping people, but you have to be careful who you listen to and it’s not as easy as some of these people will have you think. If they are making it sound like it’s easy and you will make thousands of dollars within a few months, chances are just trying to get you to buy their product.