No doubt about it, affiliate marketing offers the very best way to quickly start making money online. You’re probably already well aware of what affiliate marketing entails, but in case you’re not familiar with the concept, it basically boils down to selling products for commission. You sell a product that you didn’t make but in return for making the sale, you get to keep a percentage of the profit.
The difference with affiliate marketing though, is that your cut will often be much higher than that of the product creator in the first place. A lot of the time you’ll be selling digital products, which right away means that you have the potential to keep 100% profit between you.
Product creators are then happy to share up to 75% of their takings with their affiliates in many cases, as that way they are able to encourage more people to help them with the selling process. This is a big deal, because the more people they have selling their products, the more items they’ll shift and the more profit they’ll make overall. To them, it’s better to have 30% of 1,000 sales than 90% of two.
So this is a win/win situation. And it’s super easy for the marketer to make money because all they need to do is find a product they want to sell and then promote it to an audience. They don’t even have to create anything!
Of course though there are ways and ways of going about affiliate marketing. If you take the wrong approach, then you can’t expect to make big bucks. Read on and we’ll take a look at what you need to do to have a highly successful strategy and to make this genuinely as easy for you as possible.
Affiliate marketing – it’s not changing the world (but that’s okay)
A lot of people who set out to make money online will do so with the intention of changing the world with some exciting new app, some amazing website that will make them a celebrity or something else massive and ambitious.
Of course we have to admire this ambition and it certainly shouldn’t be sneered at! Wanting to do something great should be encouraged.
But if you’re currently working a 9-5 and you just want to make money then this isn’t the best strategy. Why not focus on creating some stable income first and then worry about creating ground-breaking software? Why not take the easiest route possible to generating income for now and then build on that in order to come up with something a little more creative?
The Mark Zuckerbergs of this world are sadly very few and far between. For every innovator who becomes a billionaire there are many, many more people using tried-and-tested business models to become millionaires.
Once you get into this mind set, you will be in the right position to begin affiliate marketing. At the same time though, you also need to understand that making millions isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight either. More likely, you’ll make hundreds to begin with and then maybe thousands.
But that’s okay. Remember: affiliate marketing is easy. Once it’s in place this is an entirely passive business model that will allow you to generate income while you sleep. That means you can repeat the same process over and over again in order to scale your profits infinitely. It also means that you can generate this income while still earning a living at your 9-5.
How much easier would life be if you had an additional $10K each year?
This is all very important to consider because if you set out to become a superstar on day one you will fail. Instead, look for easy, guaranteed ways to make money and set up systems to do that for you. That’s how you succeed at affiliate marketing.
Speaking of which…
Easy, guaranteed ways to make money
When it comes to affiliate marketing, one of the most popular approaches is to head over toe JVZoo, ClickBank or WSOPro (the sites where you find most eBooks and other digital products with affiliate programs), to look at which product is the most profitable and most popular currently, and then to sell that.
This means that you’ll probably be selling a fitness eBook, a dating eBook or an eBook on making money.
And that’s fine.
But it’s also not the easiest, nor the most guaranteed way to make money.
Why? Because you’ve chosen the most popular niches, which are also the most oversaturated niches. Sure, there’s a big audience out there, but that audience is so diverse and so well catered to that it’s almost impossible to stand out and get heard by them.
If you choose a fitness eBook to promote for instance, then you’re going to need to build up an audience that’s interested in fitness books.
Easy, right? Everyone loves fitness!
Actually, no. Not so easy.
Try and create a website that will rank for a popular fitness term like ‘get abs’ or ‘muscle building secrets’ and you’ll be going up thousands if not millions of other websites, many of which will have much bigger advertising budgets than you.
If you try and pay for AdWords in these niches then you’ll have the same problem. Remember, AdWords ads appear if they win a ‘bid’ which means you’ll end up paying more money for more popular keywords. That in turn means that your advertising budget will run out much quicker and your ad will appear far fewer times as a result.
If your conversion rate is 1% (which is about average) and you’re paying 50cents for each person who visits, it will now cost you $50 to get one person to buy. If you’re paying $1, it’s now going to cost you $100. You see the problem?
Okay, so how about you try and e-mail a big bodybuilding blog and do some influencer marketing? Well, those big bodybuilding blogs are so big that they probably get about a billion messages a day. Good luck standing out!
Instead then, you should instead pick a smaller and much more targeted niche or industry and you should try to solve a very specific problem that people in that industry have.
How about a job for instance? Find an eBook aimed at digital artists, that shows them where they can sell their work. Now you suddenly have something that caters to a far smaller audience but you’ll also find that it’s much easier to stand out.
Now you’ll be able to afford Google AdWords much more cheaply. And organically reaching the top of Google with a website based around digital art will be that much easier. There might not be that many digital artists but there are still hundreds of thousands of them on the web – more than enough for you to make some serious money.
And because there’s not a ton of content/products aimed at this audience, you’ll find it’s much easier to work with people. Write to a blog owner about the eBook you’re selling and they might actually be excited as it’s something new and interesting for their audience. Suddenly, you’ve gained exposure to thousands of people.
Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income shows how targeting a niche like this and solving a specific problem can help you make money from a website too. One of his experimental sites is aimed at food truck owners – and the figures he publishes for that website are huge.
Basically, you want to avoid being a small fish in a big pond and instead move to different waters. Once you find an eBook that’s catering to a more unique audience and you start selling there, you can then repeat that exact same process over and over again with more and more eBooks. Each time you do, you can reinvest your earnings back into marketing and you can see yourself become successful much more quickly!
More tricks that will make your life much easier
One of the take-homes I want you to learn from this report is that earning money is actually quite easy with affiliate marketing when you’re logical and systematic about it, rather than shooting for the stars with some crazy plan, or just doing what everyone else is doing.
But there’s another thing I want you to learn from this too: and that’s that your product selection is about the most important part of this whole thing.
It’s right at the start, when you choose what product you’re going to try and sell, that you seal your fate and determine how easy it will be for you to be successful. That’s because choosing the market also means choosing the route to market and that in turn means defining how easily you can reach the people you’re trying to sell to – which happens to be your entire job as an affiliate.
One other way you can make life a lot easier for yourself at this stage then is to think about the routes to market that you already have available to you. Essentially, a route to market is any form of ‘direct access’ you have with an audience.
So say you’re selling a book on gardening (a good niche) and you happen to know the editor of ‘Gardening World Weekly’ magazine. That right there is a route to market and all you then have to do is use that connection in order to promote your landing page and to start selling.
Another route to market might be the forum that you’re a respected member of. Or it might be the website that you own with thousands of daily views (more on this later).
In other words though, most people should have some influence and some opportunities presented to them. For your very first affiliate product then, it makes sense to choose a niche that you already have lots of routes to market for. If you know that editor then pick the gardening book! If you have a fitness website, then pick fitness! Guest posts are also a great way to get people to buy your affiliate product – if you know someone with a blog then just write them an article and include a plug for the affiliate link right at the end.
Here you are picking the digital product that will work for you, rather than picking a product that is objectively popular and then trying to change your own contacts and business to suit it. The difference is huge and can’t be understated – so be logical!
This also means that you’ll often be choosing affiliate products that deal with a subject you’re well-versed in. This is always a good idea. When you choose a niche that you know well and that you find interesting, you’ll find it’s far easier to understand the merits of your product and to persuade people to buy it. Again, this is very important – especially because it will impact on your enjoyment of the affiliate marketing process. If your job involves writing tons of paragraphs on subjects you don’t like or understand, thenchances are you’ll give up before you make a cent!
The last thing you can do to make life much easier for yourself is to look for products that offer promotional materials along with the products themselves. Some eBooks, reports, courses and other products will actually give you access to the landing page, the sales funnel, the autoresponder sequences etc. that the seller and other affiliates are using.
This is huge because it means you can take not only a proven product but a proven business model and a proven marketing approach and simply use it to your own ends. This then becomes literally a ‘copy and paste’ business where you are emulating the exact, specific elements of a highly successful online business. This also removes all the other variables – you know that this product and these marketing materials can be successful – the only remaining thing is for you to find the audience and connect with them!
Other approaches to affiliate marketing
Of course everything we’ve approached so far is only one approach to affiliate marketing. There are plenty more ways to go about this, with one of the most popular options being to build yourself up as a ‘marketing guru’, to create huge mailing lists and to sell multiple products to an audience you’ve built trust with.
This is an excellent option if you can do it. Once you have an audience that trusts you, you create almost limitless opportunities for selling and for earning and this is a much longer-term business strategy than simply selling a few niche products from a landing page and some adverts.
The only problem is that building yourself up to this point can take a long time. This essentially means you need to create a website, get people to read your blog posts, build trust and rapport and then encourage them to subscribe. Essentially it means creating a brand from scratch and that is a ton of work that takes a lot of time and isn’t guaranteed.
Of course if you have a huge audience already then disregard that. You are in the perfect position for affiliate marketing – all you need to do is pick a relevant product and start promoting!
Otherwise though, the best approach is to build your audience while at the same time selling other products on the side. This way you can use the profits from your smaller affiliate products in order to ‘boot strap’ yourself and to gradually build more exposure for your brand. This is a great goal for your affiliate marketing activities, just make sure you’re not relying on it happening right away – because it won’t.
People enjoy doing this as well because it creates more opportunities for new business ideas and also comes with some prestige and a great sense of accomplishment. If you want to become one of the ‘superstar affiliates’ we’ve all heard about, then this is what you’re going to need to build towards.
Either way, once you have built up your audience, you then have a few more options available to you which can help you to bring in even more money.
Physical products for affiliate marketing
One option is to sell physical products. Sites like ShareASale and Amazon have affiliate schemes that you can use to sell any of their items and this then gives you access to a much broader spectrum of stock. Using Amazon Associates you can now sell everything from televisions to computer games to herbs and spices. What’s great as well about Amazon is that the cookie lasts for 24 hours. What this means is that when someone clicks on your link to go to Amazon, you still get paid even if they buy something other than what you recommend.
The downside is that you only get up to 8% with most physical products. This means you’ll have to sell a lot more in order to make a decent living.
Then again though, the aforementioned point about the 24 hour cookie somewhat mitigates this point. Imagine that someone clicks your link tonight and buys the product you suggested and you make $2.50. That’s cool. But then they head back onto Amazon to buy the computer they’ve been planning on buying for ages and you then earn an additional $200! It’s not likely, or common, but it can happen and it’s certainly worth thinking about.
What’s also great about selling affiliate products is that it means you can sell to a much wider audience. People trust Amazon and there’s something here for everyone. Your Mum probably shops on Amazon in fact which shows you how much broader the appeal is here. Would your Mum buy an eBook on making money online?
Other places to put your affiliate link
Selling through Amazon might also change the way you go about your promotions. No longer are you working hard to get that one $50 sale – instead you’re going for more quantity and a broader range of products. That means that you can simply recommend items within your articles and link to them. If you have a bunch of successful blog posts that are getting 500-1,000 views a day each, then you can simply add a couple of relevant product suggestions to those items and you’ll potentially earn an awful lot of money!
Again, this isn’t a great approach for someone new to affiliate marketing but it does show the potential for other opportunities as you grow and build your audience.
Creating your own product
Another option of course is to create your own product. This has a lot of pros and cons and once again it’s something to consider working up to and then doing in addition to selling affiliate items.
To cut a long story short, creating your own product means you can get 100% of the profit, tailor your offering to your existing audience (another good reason to wait) and control the branding and pricing. On the downside though, it also means that you’re investing a lot of money into a project with no guarantee that it’s going to work.
