The internet is littered with enough information about all the wrong ways to do affiliate marketing
Introduction
Affiliate marketing itself is not too hard to learn if you're interested, ready to learn, and determined, but to reach a point where you can start earning at least $10 a day is quite an achievement, because you can then scale your business from $10, to $100, $200, $300, $500, and even $1,000 a day.
Now these are good numbers by any standard. An individual earning upwards of $1,000 a day is considered rich—not a millionaire, but rich enough, because they can live comfortably anywhere in the world.
There are far too many affiliate marketers who are promoting the same products, such that, if you want to get any meaningful results as an affiliate marketer, the business is already rigged against you, and has been reduced to gambling.
The problem is not with the affiliate marketers themselves. Over the last 10 years, the affiliate marketing landscape has changed significantly. The game has evolved both competitively and technologically.
Furthermore, diversification, accompanied with cutting-edge technological advances and automation has made the game even harder for newbies.
Many small players have entered the game at a time when the ocean is already flooded with the big fish. These are big players who earn more than 95% of all the affiliate revenues.
That being the case, the good news is that affiliate marketing is growing at a break-neck speed for obvious reasons.
Affiliate marketing spending in the United States from 2010 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)
According to analytics firm, Statista, annual revenues from affiliate marketing are expected to grow to US$8.2 billion by 2022. That's a staggering growth and should tell you something.
My own prediction is that affiliate marketing will be dominated by the smaller fish by 2030.
The reasons are quite obvious. By far, affiliate marketing is one of the easiest online business models to start an online business with, because the risks are very low compared to other online business models.
Furthermore, you don't even need a website, start-up capital or an office or inventory, to get started. In fact, as long as you have an internet-enabled smart phone that can access Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you're good to go.
And, like any other online business models, you can run your affiliate marketing business entirely from the comfort of your home, at the kitchen, or even your mother's garage. Many students have started their online businesses from their campus dorms.
Unlike other business models you don't need to sell your own products. No prior experience or selling skills are required either. In fact, on the Internet, people hate to be sold.
However, to make serious money online with affiliate marketing, you'll need to do more than that. For one, you'll need a website, lead-capture funnel, and an email marketing system to promote products, and grow your business.
One of the advantages of the affiliate marketing model is that you can start from nothing, and grow your business to a 6-figure or even 7-figure empire.
Being driven by stiff competition and technological advances, affiliate marketing has evolved to a higher degree of sophistication. Techniques that worked a decade ago, are no longer working. However, the principles remain the same.
Affiliate Marketing in A Nutshell
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is the process by which an individual earns money by leveraging the product of another individual or company. Usually, the earnings are in the form of revenue-sharing plan, paid in commissions.
The other definition is that affiliate marketing is a business model where you can earn money by generating leads or specific actions.
When you earn money by generating sales, this is called Cost per Sale (CPS) revenue model. The other common affiliate marketing revenue model is when you earn money by generating leads or specific actions. This is often referred to as Cost per Action or Cost per Acquisition (CPA).
Sometimes I find the CPA revenue model easier for newbies because all you have to do is keep driving traffic to an offer. All that the lead is required to do is to fill-out a form, download an app, a resource, or an e-book, take a specific action like making a phone call, or take some other appropriate action.
In most cases the lead doesn't need to use their credit card for you to get paid – isn't that cool?
Just imagine driving free or paid traffic to 10,000 eye-balls and 1,000 convert by filling-out an online form or downloading something, and you get paid around $2 per lead. That's a whopping $2,000!
Most large affiliate websites generate revenue using a combination, variety or mixed affiliate marketing revenue strategies.
Most people who are comfortable with technology will find affiliate marketing to be a thrill, especially, CPA Affiliate Marketing.
Social Media Traffic
For one, the rise of social media has seen the migration of web traffic from the traditional blogs, to social media platforms such as Facebook groups, Instagram, and TikTok.
Moreover, people who are not scared to show their faces on YouTube, are raking in millions of dollars in YouTube AdSense revenue and affiliate marketing. Interestingly, many people are raking in millions without even showing their faces.
TikTok is now the new kid on the block, and you can make millions just by posting 22-second weird videos.
With all these opportunities on your side, you can start from nothing and build a large audience on these platforms. You can then promote your affiliate offers to your audience on one or more of these platforms.
The wise thing to do would be to promote your affiliate offers while building an email list at the same time. The email list would be your insurance package in case the platform decides to shut you down without notice, for some reason. This happens all the time.
Remember Donald Trump? He had a large following on the mainstream social media platforms until one day, the platforms decided to shut him down without notice. He not only lost the social following, but also the election.
Niche Blogs
If you don't mind being devoted to writing, you can create a niche affiliate blog, or a dozen of them. A niche blog is some kind of dynamic website which talks about one specific topic exclusively.
The success of a niche blog depends on how much research you have carried out and the competition of the specific keywords that drive organic traffic to your blog.
You will also optimize your blog, for search engines to make it easier for people who are searching for your particular affiliate product to find you, or at least outsource the work to someone who knows SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Mobile Marketing
Ever since the growth of mobile phone users surpassed desktop computer users almost a decade ago, mobile marketing has become the most efficient method to promote affiliate products.
If you're a techie, and know how to develop simple mobile apps, depending on the particular niche you're promoting, you can make a tidy sum of money in affiliate sales, with mobile marketing.
You only need to develop free mobile apps for Android or iPhone, and embed affiliate marketing pop-up ads somewhere within the apps. Then you can just share the apps on blogs, social media, and forums. You can also upload the apps on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Some apps have millions of downloads, and they're free because they have affiliate links embedded within them.
Affiliate Marketing Blueprint
Newbies who want to start affiliate marketing are faced with a dilemma—whether to find an expensive mentor, buy expensive online courses, or teach themselves affiliate marketing the hard way, using the freely available resources on the Internet and YouTube videos.
They've literally been turned into cash-cows by unscrupulous "gurus" who keep selling them useless courses and $37 e-books they know used to work some ten years ago.
Who will sell you an e-book for $37 if they know they can still make money with it?
No. They'll first make money with it, and since they know that the methods no longer work, they'll either give you the e-book free of charge, or dispose it to you like scrap.
If you want to make money in affiliate marketing, the best way is to get a good mentor—you know, someone who has a proven track-record and a success story in affiliate marketing. However, such mentors don't come cheap.
If you want to make money quickly, I would suggest that you buy an online course or get a mentor. That will not only save you time, but you will start making money quicker. Furthermore, you'll quickly recoup your investment.
After all, affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme—right?
Well, that depends on how fast you can learn, and more importantly, how fast you can start applying the knowledge.
The principles to make money with affiliate marketing are quite simple and straightforward. You just need to find the right products and an affiliate network that pays generous commissions.
Something About Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks like Amazon, CJ, and Rakuten, are stable networks that have been there for quite a while, but that doesn't mean they pay well. In fact, Amazon pays an average commission of 3% per sale, which is quite low by today's standards.
On the other hand, ClickBank is an affiliate network that pays generous affiliate commissions as high as 100% to its affiliates. It doesn't get any more generous than that.
ClickBank isn't the only affiliate network that pays well. Other upcoming affiliate networks such as Digistore24, JVZoo, and https://www.beermoneyforum.com/, also pay well.
Furthermore, most large companies, including big-tech firms, have quite generous commission plans. WP Engine, Big Commerce, and Shopify, are just a few that pay well. You can search for others on Google.
When it comes to affiliate products and generous affiliate networks, you'll be lost for choice.
Affiliate Marketing: Little Steps, Big Results
The steps to start affiliate marketing are straightforward and stupidly simple.
Choose a NICHE.
Find a good OFFER (product) that converts like crazy.
Drive targeted TRAFFIC to the offer.
Convert the traffic to SALES.
Collect emails.
Repeat.
Period.
The secret to making money online, not just affiliate marketing, is to drive targeted TRAFFIC.
Simply, without traffic, you can't make money online.
Primarily, there are two ways to drive web traffic:
Paid traffic sources,
FREE traffic sources.
Free Traffic
The best type of traffic is FREE, organic traffic and the best source of free traffic is Google.
The reason is that Google will continue to deliver free traffic to your website or blog even after you die. The number one free traffic strategy to get tons of web traffic is SEO (search engine optimization).
SEO is not easy, and takes a long time for your blog to rank on search engines, but if you do it the right way, you will continue to enjoy organic traffic for years to come.
However, Google is not the only source of free, organic traffic. YouTube, which is owned by Google, is another source of free traffic. You don't even need appear on camera o shoot a video on YouTube. Sometime in the near future, I'll write an article about using YouTube to drive free traffic.
When it comes to driving free traffic there's no shortage. There are dozens of other traffic sources such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. I love TikTok traffic because it makes the job of generating free traffic a piece of cake. Nothing comes even close to TikTok, and you have to see it to believe it.
The major disadvantage of free traffic is that it takes time, but you have to be patient and consistent to reap big.
Paid Traffic
If you want quick results, the alternative is to use PAID traffic.
Buying web traffic is just a matter of visiting your favorite paid ads network and start promoting.
The pros are that you can get instant results as soon as possible.
The cons are that you can throw away money if you don't know how to use paid ads, which can drain your hard-earned very quickly, especially if you have no idea how to use paid ads on Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or any of the PPC networks.
Paid traffic requires mastery in copywriting and if you don't have any copywriting skills, you have to keep visiting gig-websites like Upwork, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, or one of the many other gig-websites.
Other paid traffic strategies include media buys, solo ads, native ads, and influencer marketing strategies. Paid ad strategies such as placing a banner ad on top websites like CNN, CNBC News, and USA Today, are very expensive as they are the preserve of big-budget online advertisers. However, online revenues earned from these websites can run into millions of dollars.
If you're a beginner in affiliate marketing, I would advise you to stay away from paid traffic, until you've made some money. Then you can gradually move into paid traffic sources, starting with cheaper traffic sources like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, YouTube Ads, Bing Ads, etc…
In Conclusion
In conclusion, writing a detailed article about affiliate marketing is no mean achievement. What we've covered here is just a tip of the iceberg. In fact, this is not even a substitute for a full affiliate marketing course.
Affiliate Marketing is one of a few High-Income Internet skills, which means it has the potential to generate more than a million dollars a year.
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, I suggest you grab a good book, watch a video course on YouTube, or a video series, or yet still, invest in an affiliate marketing course.
Just as there's no shortcut to earning big money without learning, there's no shortcut to learning affiliate marketing without investing in affiliate marketing education.
Whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, you need to always keep abreast with the latest knowledge, tech news, changes in technology and the latest internet marketing tactics, by learning from seasoned affiliate marketers, and other experienced teachers.
Introduction
Affiliate marketing itself is not too hard to learn if you're interested, ready to learn, and determined, but to reach a point where you can start earning at least $10 a day is quite an achievement, because you can then scale your business from $10, to $100, $200, $300, $500, and even $1,000 a day.
Now these are good numbers by any standard. An individual earning upwards of $1,000 a day is considered rich—not a millionaire, but rich enough, because they can live comfortably anywhere in the world.
There are far too many affiliate marketers who are promoting the same products, such that, if you want to get any meaningful results as an affiliate marketer, the business is already rigged against you, and has been reduced to gambling.
The problem is not with the affiliate marketers themselves. Over the last 10 years, the affiliate marketing landscape has changed significantly. The game has evolved both competitively and technologically.
Furthermore, diversification, accompanied with cutting-edge technological advances and automation has made the game even harder for newbies.
Many small players have entered the game at a time when the ocean is already flooded with the big fish. These are big players who earn more than 95% of all the affiliate revenues.
That being the case, the good news is that affiliate marketing is growing at a break-neck speed for obvious reasons.
Affiliate marketing spending in the United States from 2010 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)
According to analytics firm, Statista, annual revenues from affiliate marketing are expected to grow to US$8.2 billion by 2022. That's a staggering growth and should tell you something.
My own prediction is that affiliate marketing will be dominated by the smaller fish by 2030.
The reasons are quite obvious. By far, affiliate marketing is one of the easiest online business models to start an online business with, because the risks are very low compared to other online business models.
Furthermore, you don't even need a website, start-up capital or an office or inventory, to get started. In fact, as long as you have an internet-enabled smart phone that can access Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you're good to go.
And, like any other online business models, you can run your affiliate marketing business entirely from the comfort of your home, at the kitchen, or even your mother's garage. Many students have started their online businesses from their campus dorms.
Unlike other business models you don't need to sell your own products. No prior experience or selling skills are required either. In fact, on the Internet, people hate to be sold.
However, to make serious money online with affiliate marketing, you'll need to do more than that. For one, you'll need a website, lead-capture funnel, and an email marketing system to promote products, and grow your business.
One of the advantages of the affiliate marketing model is that you can start from nothing, and grow your business to a 6-figure or even 7-figure empire.
Being driven by stiff competition and technological advances, affiliate marketing has evolved to a higher degree of sophistication. Techniques that worked a decade ago, are no longer working. However, the principles remain the same.
Affiliate Marketing in A Nutshell
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is the process by which an individual earns money by leveraging the product of another individual or company. Usually, the earnings are in the form of revenue-sharing plan, paid in commissions.
The other definition is that affiliate marketing is a business model where you can earn money by generating leads or specific actions.
When you earn money by generating sales, this is called Cost per Sale (CPS) revenue model. The other common affiliate marketing revenue model is when you earn money by generating leads or specific actions. This is often referred to as Cost per Action or Cost per Acquisition (CPA).
Sometimes I find the CPA revenue model easier for newbies because all you have to do is keep driving traffic to an offer. All that the lead is required to do is to fill-out a form, download an app, a resource, or an e-book, take a specific action like making a phone call, or take some other appropriate action.
In most cases the lead doesn't need to use their credit card for you to get paid – isn't that cool?
Just imagine driving free or paid traffic to 10,000 eye-balls and 1,000 convert by filling-out an online form or downloading something, and you get paid around $2 per lead. That's a whopping $2,000!
Most large affiliate websites generate revenue using a combination, variety or mixed affiliate marketing revenue strategies.
Most people who are comfortable with technology will find affiliate marketing to be a thrill, especially, CPA Affiliate Marketing.
Social Media Traffic
For one, the rise of social media has seen the migration of web traffic from the traditional blogs, to social media platforms such as Facebook groups, Instagram, and TikTok.
Moreover, people who are not scared to show their faces on YouTube, are raking in millions of dollars in YouTube AdSense revenue and affiliate marketing. Interestingly, many people are raking in millions without even showing their faces.
TikTok is now the new kid on the block, and you can make millions just by posting 22-second weird videos.
With all these opportunities on your side, you can start from nothing and build a large audience on these platforms. You can then promote your affiliate offers to your audience on one or more of these platforms.
The wise thing to do would be to promote your affiliate offers while building an email list at the same time. The email list would be your insurance package in case the platform decides to shut you down without notice, for some reason. This happens all the time.
Remember Donald Trump? He had a large following on the mainstream social media platforms until one day, the platforms decided to shut him down without notice. He not only lost the social following, but also the election.
Niche Blogs
If you don't mind being devoted to writing, you can create a niche affiliate blog, or a dozen of them. A niche blog is some kind of dynamic website which talks about one specific topic exclusively.
The success of a niche blog depends on how much research you have carried out and the competition of the specific keywords that drive organic traffic to your blog.
You will also optimize your blog, for search engines to make it easier for people who are searching for your particular affiliate product to find you, or at least outsource the work to someone who knows SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Mobile Marketing
Ever since the growth of mobile phone users surpassed desktop computer users almost a decade ago, mobile marketing has become the most efficient method to promote affiliate products.
If you're a techie, and know how to develop simple mobile apps, depending on the particular niche you're promoting, you can make a tidy sum of money in affiliate sales, with mobile marketing.
You only need to develop free mobile apps for Android or iPhone, and embed affiliate marketing pop-up ads somewhere within the apps. Then you can just share the apps on blogs, social media, and forums. You can also upload the apps on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Some apps have millions of downloads, and they're free because they have affiliate links embedded within them.
Affiliate Marketing Blueprint
Newbies who want to start affiliate marketing are faced with a dilemma—whether to find an expensive mentor, buy expensive online courses, or teach themselves affiliate marketing the hard way, using the freely available resources on the Internet and YouTube videos.
They've literally been turned into cash-cows by unscrupulous "gurus" who keep selling them useless courses and $37 e-books they know used to work some ten years ago.
Who will sell you an e-book for $37 if they know they can still make money with it?
No. They'll first make money with it, and since they know that the methods no longer work, they'll either give you the e-book free of charge, or dispose it to you like scrap.
If you want to make money in affiliate marketing, the best way is to get a good mentor—you know, someone who has a proven track-record and a success story in affiliate marketing. However, such mentors don't come cheap.
If you want to make money quickly, I would suggest that you buy an online course or get a mentor. That will not only save you time, but you will start making money quicker. Furthermore, you'll quickly recoup your investment.
After all, affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme—right?
Well, that depends on how fast you can learn, and more importantly, how fast you can start applying the knowledge.
The principles to make money with affiliate marketing are quite simple and straightforward. You just need to find the right products and an affiliate network that pays generous commissions.
Something About Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks like Amazon, CJ, and Rakuten, are stable networks that have been there for quite a while, but that doesn't mean they pay well. In fact, Amazon pays an average commission of 3% per sale, which is quite low by today's standards.
On the other hand, ClickBank is an affiliate network that pays generous affiliate commissions as high as 100% to its affiliates. It doesn't get any more generous than that.
ClickBank isn't the only affiliate network that pays well. Other upcoming affiliate networks such as Digistore24, JVZoo, and https://www.beermoneyforum.com/, also pay well.
Furthermore, most large companies, including big-tech firms, have quite generous commission plans. WP Engine, Big Commerce, and Shopify, are just a few that pay well. You can search for others on Google.
When it comes to affiliate products and generous affiliate networks, you'll be lost for choice.
Affiliate Marketing: Little Steps, Big Results
The steps to start affiliate marketing are straightforward and stupidly simple.
Choose a NICHE.
Find a good OFFER (product) that converts like crazy.
Drive targeted TRAFFIC to the offer.
Convert the traffic to SALES.
Collect emails.
Repeat.
Period.
The secret to making money online, not just affiliate marketing, is to drive targeted TRAFFIC.
Simply, without traffic, you can't make money online.
Primarily, there are two ways to drive web traffic:
Paid traffic sources,
FREE traffic sources.
Free Traffic
The best type of traffic is FREE, organic traffic and the best source of free traffic is Google.
The reason is that Google will continue to deliver free traffic to your website or blog even after you die. The number one free traffic strategy to get tons of web traffic is SEO (search engine optimization).
SEO is not easy, and takes a long time for your blog to rank on search engines, but if you do it the right way, you will continue to enjoy organic traffic for years to come.
However, Google is not the only source of free, organic traffic. YouTube, which is owned by Google, is another source of free traffic. You don't even need appear on camera o shoot a video on YouTube. Sometime in the near future, I'll write an article about using YouTube to drive free traffic.
When it comes to driving free traffic there's no shortage. There are dozens of other traffic sources such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. I love TikTok traffic because it makes the job of generating free traffic a piece of cake. Nothing comes even close to TikTok, and you have to see it to believe it.
The major disadvantage of free traffic is that it takes time, but you have to be patient and consistent to reap big.
Paid Traffic
If you want quick results, the alternative is to use PAID traffic.
Buying web traffic is just a matter of visiting your favorite paid ads network and start promoting.
The pros are that you can get instant results as soon as possible.
The cons are that you can throw away money if you don't know how to use paid ads, which can drain your hard-earned very quickly, especially if you have no idea how to use paid ads on Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, or any of the PPC networks.
Paid traffic requires mastery in copywriting and if you don't have any copywriting skills, you have to keep visiting gig-websites like Upwork, Fiverr, PeoplePerHour, or one of the many other gig-websites.
Other paid traffic strategies include media buys, solo ads, native ads, and influencer marketing strategies. Paid ad strategies such as placing a banner ad on top websites like CNN, CNBC News, and USA Today, are very expensive as they are the preserve of big-budget online advertisers. However, online revenues earned from these websites can run into millions of dollars.
If you're a beginner in affiliate marketing, I would advise you to stay away from paid traffic, until you've made some money. Then you can gradually move into paid traffic sources, starting with cheaper traffic sources like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, YouTube Ads, Bing Ads, etc…
In Conclusion
In conclusion, writing a detailed article about affiliate marketing is no mean achievement. What we've covered here is just a tip of the iceberg. In fact, this is not even a substitute for a full affiliate marketing course.
Affiliate Marketing is one of a few High-Income Internet skills, which means it has the potential to generate more than a million dollars a year.
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, I suggest you grab a good book, watch a video course on YouTube, or a video series, or yet still, invest in an affiliate marketing course.
Just as there's no shortcut to earning big money without learning, there's no shortcut to learning affiliate marketing without investing in affiliate marketing education.
Whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, you need to always keep abreast with the latest knowledge, tech news, changes in technology and the latest internet marketing tactics, by learning from seasoned affiliate marketers, and other experienced teachers.
