Tell Me About Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a good way of creating a passive income through your current website, blog, forum or email list. In my previous installment I told you about how and why to write a blog, here we will look at another way a blog can create cash for you even if you are only writing on areas of personal interest.

Affiliate marketing began as a side effect of people connecting their websites to the sites of others. It was very quickly made clear that if you built up a trusted following and you suggested an item to them then people were much more likely to buy that product. Therefore retailers have for quite while now employed people to advertise on their own personal or business websites to bring in more customers.

Affiliate marketing hence is a true and tested method both of advertising and of creating an income depending on which side of the affiliate program you are on. Nowadays a lot of large companies, like Amazon for example, have an affiliate program that rewards bloggers and similar people for forwarding people to their sites.

Why should I be thinking about this?;

If you run a site, a blog or even have a strong social media following then you have access to a huge potential market of people looking to buy goods and services digitally. By utilizing that market you can begin to earn cash from your website/blog despite the fact that it is only a personal blog or website. There is no good reason you should not be making money from all of the time and effort you spend working in your chosen media.

What do I get from it?;

For every product an affiliate refers a buyer to the affiliate earns a percentage of the sale price. Different companies offer different percentages ranging from a few percent to a surprisingly large cut. Usually large companies offer a flat percentage across all of their products whilst individuals or small businesses often offer a greater percentage on digital or downloadable products.

What's in it for the companies?;

For businesses affiliate marketing is an extremely efficient way of marketing. After all there is no initial cost for this way of marketing, they simply pay you when someone makes a purchase. That means a company may use lots of affiliates who are in contact with hundreds of potential consumers and can therefore get in touch with a huge market of customers with absolutely no initial layout.

How can I get involved?;

Before you start counting your money there are a few things you will need to do to start with. Obviously if you have no followers yet then you won't have anyone to sell ideas and products to. So the first thing you will need is a website, blog, email list, or other method of getting people's interest online.

As soon as you have managed to get viewers coming to your site, or whatever other place you have gotten their attention, then you can begin thinking about joining an affiliate program. The simplest method of becoming an affiliate can often be by going directly to the company or website that you wish to market for and ask about an ongoing affiliate program, which you can then join, or if they would be interested in starting one.

What do I sell?;

When looking at marketing opportunities for affiliate marketing there are two key issues to remember,

1. Ensure your marketing is pertinent. If you write about motorcycles as an example, but are selling knitting patterns then the chances are you'll get very little interest from your followers. The most useful products are products that you have reviewed personally or that integrate well with whatever you have talked about.

2. Only sell items you personally use. If you start recommending poor quality products to your followers then they will begin to lose interest in paying attention to what you are saying. Think about having a good friend who often gives you bad advice, you will probably keep him as a friend, but would you continue listening to his/her advice?

Is there actual money to be had?;

The answer to this question is it depends. You see many people who use affiliate marketing sell only the occasional product of little value and so get few returns. Of course your layout is still nothing so that any money made by this style of marketing is a bonus.

To make more money though you either need to be selling large amounts of low profit products or a lesser amount of higher priced products. Again this all comes down to carefully choosing the product(s) you wish to work with.

So, where is the negative?;

The major downside to becoming an affiliate marketer is that you will obviously have to sell things. This usually involves placing banners or affiliate links in your site or blog. A lot of people don't like doing this as they feel it will make their site messy and that it is morally wrong to market products to people who have faith in you. Again so long as you are careful in the way you place adverts on your website and as long as you only market products you trust then these issues should be relatively minor.

Any more tips?;

Like all business experience is important. Of course because there have been people doing this for some time already there are lots of people on the internet that can show you how to become very successful within the industry. Many affiliate marketers who have done well for themselves sell courses or ebooks about how they managed to make money digitally.

As I always say with all of these things be careful who you buy extra information from as there are also some people out there that just want to make some quick money. So, please do your research and exercise a little caution whilst looking for a mentor in this area.

Also remember that if done properly this is not a get rich scheme. The amount of money you can get out of affiliate marketing depends for the most part on the amount of effort you put in.