In making money online, affiliate marketing is a skill-based approach, anyone could learn that. It is one of those segments of the online world, that doesn’t require any degree or formal education.
Want to understand what is Affiliate marketing?
Keep reading to learn everything about this popular passive income method.
My Journey with affiliate marketing started in 2008 when I accidentally read about it on a discussion forum. I was surprised to know how something so simple and powerful is not taught in college, or very few talk about it.
In making money online, affiliate marketing is a skill-based approach, anyone could learn that. It is one of those segments of the online world, that doesn’t require any degree or formal education.
Want to understand what is Affiliate marketing?
Keep reading to learn everything about this popular passive income method.
My Journey with affiliate marketing started in 2008 when I accidentally read about it on a discussion forum. I was surprised to know how something so simple and powerful is not taught in college, or very few talk about it.
With this guide, I aim to help you understand affiliate marketing, so you can apply this technique to any field you are in to make money.
Want to understand what is Affiliate marketing?
Keep reading to learn everything about this popular passive income method.
My Journey with affiliate marketing started in 2008 when I accidentally read about it on a discussion forum. I was surprised to know how something so simple and powerful is not taught in college, or very few talk about it.
With this guide, I aim to help you understand affiliate marketing, so you can apply this technique to any field you are in to make money.
Before you embark on the journey of understanding affiliate marketing, let me show you the possibilities of affiliate marketing.
Here is a screenshot of one of the affiliate programs that I promote:
This one was an outcome of 2 and a half years.
However, the real question is:
How did I achieve this result, and can you do it too?
Well, the key here is your zeal to learn and how badly you want to live a free life.
I have accomplished all this by working only 6-8 hours a day on things that I like. Not even a single day of my online career has felt like pressure or something I did not wanted to do.
The only thing that creates a differentiator is, I did not cheat my way up. Those 6-8 hours of work were complete dedication, and based on my 14 years of experience, I could definitely say:
Anyone with a decent IQ could start making $3000-4000 within 6-8 months by practicing every day for 2 hours.
How to do this?
Well, We will dwell on details and more technicalities of affiliate marketing as we move ahead in this free course, but for now, let’s learn the basics.
Who Is a Good Fit for Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing can be a great choice for online entrepreneurs, bloggers, and really anyone who has a website and is willing to build an audience they can serve authentically.
If this describes you, products exist right now that people in your target market are probably already buying, and if you can become the resource that recommends those products, you can generate a commission as a result.
Affiliate marketing can be an especially good option if you’re not ready to create your own product or service, but you want to serve your audience by recommending products that may be helpful to them.
Online affiliate marketing can also be a good fit for a wide range of people because you can apply a bunch of different marketing methods to promote affiliate products and services.
These include the same marketing methods you may already be using—things like search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, content marketing, and display ads.
You can even take advantage of other nifty ways to market products, like product reviews and unboxings.
Take for instance this YouTube video I did, where I review and demonstrate three USB podcasting microphones and include Amazon affiliate program links to purchase each one in the description.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing (and Drawbacks)
As with anything, affiliate marketing has its upsides and its downsides.
Later in this guide, I’ll give you the guidance you need to go about affiliate marketing smartly so you can make the most of the opportunities out there and avoid the potential downsides.
Here are the main pros and cons of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing Pros
- Low barrier to entry. Affiliate marketing is easy to get started with, and costs little. Most affiliate programs are free to join, and you don’t have to create, stock, or ship products, which also means less hassle/responsibility.
- Low risk. You’re not the product owner, so you don’t lose anything if a customer doesn’t buy.
- Passive income potential. Affiliate marketing provides the potential for passive income.
- More freedom. When you start earning passive income, you can work anytime and from anywhere, as long as you have internet access.
Affiliate Marketing Cons
- Not a quick fix. It can take time to generate the amount of traffic needed to result in substantial income.
- Less control. You don’t own or control the product/service you’re recommending, so you can’t control the quality or customer experience.
- Competition and audience fatigue. An attractive affiliate program means you might be competing with others for customers.
- Offer fatigue. Audiences can also get “offer fatigue” if they see too much ongoing promotion from you.
- Not all affiliate programs are created equal. While most companies that offer affiliate commissions are stable and ethical, there are shady companies out there too, some of which may not pay what they say they will. It’s important to do your homework.
- Risk of link hijacking. Unscrupulous individuals may hijack your affiliate links, known as “clickjacking,” potentially stealing your commission in the process.
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What Affiliate Marketing Strategies Do Marketers Use to Promote Their Partners?
There are a ton of tactics you can use to promote your affiliate partner’s products online.
Here’s a starter list of 10 to get your affiliate marketer brain something to chew on and remix:
1. Create An Epic Post
One thing I like to do when promoting a product is create an Epic Post about it.
What’s an epic post?
Think of it as a potential one-stop-shop resource for this particular product—not just a review of it, but a full-fledged introduction, how-to, FAQ, best practices, and troubleshooting resource for anyone who purchases the product.
If you can show this much information to people before they make a purchase, they’ll be more likely to actually make a purchase.
At the same time, the epic post becomes an extremely shareable article, one with the potential to rank high for the particular product keyword in Google.
In this epic post, I’d go all out and . . .
2. Create Multiple Youtube Videos About The Product
These videos should be embedded in the epic post.
This is an important affiliate marketing strategy because YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world. You can get a lot of traffic coming in through your affiliate link on YouTube, and the videos themselves can rank in Google too.
Plus, by shooting multiple videos about a particular product, you create even more SEO opportunities.
Make sure to include your affiliate link in the video description, ideally in the first part of the description, so people don’t have to click on “show more” or “read more” to see it.
What should you cover in these videos?
I recommend recording yourself from start to finish with it, then break it up into chunks. People like to watch shorter videos, so this works in your favor, and you get multiple opportunities to rank for various keywords related to that product.
If it’s a digital product, start at the moment of purchase and walk people through the entire process. And if you’re doing a physical product, consider an unboxing video.
3. Host A Webinar
One way to take your affiliate product promotion to the next level is to host a webinar for it.
Webinars are an extremely powerful way to share a message with your audience. They’re personable, they’re live, and you can treat them like an actual event. That way, your promotion becomes a much bigger deal than just a regular affiliate link you dropped into a post.
Combine this with tip #15 in my list below, and have the owner of the product share high-value information, and even answer people’s questions directly on the webinar, and you’ve got yourself a winner.
4. Publish A Webinar Replay
Be sure to record your live webinar so that you can embed it on your website as a replay for those who didn’t watch it live, as well as those who did watch it live but want to review the information.
To be honest, more people will probably watch it as a replay than live, and that’s a good thing—you just have to give them the opportunity to do so.
I recommend recording using screen capture software like Camtasia Studio or Screenflow.
Here’s an example of a blog post on my site containing a webinar replay—one I recorded with Clay Collins of Leadpages, a company for which I’m an affiliate: