Understanding Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is often over-complicated. It is a simple process of selling other people’s products and receiving a commission on the sale.
Understanding how easy and lucrative affiliate marketing can be makes it a great business model to add to any website.
What is Affiliate Marketing
Take a look at a supermarket. They have shelves of products manufactured by different companies. Walk down the water aisle and there are ten, twenty or more different brands.
The supermarket buys the water for an X price, adds a markup and sells it. The difference between the buying price and the sales price is the profit. With affiliate marketing, instead of trying to compete on price, the commission paid is already built into the product. Affiliate Marketers are simply the marketers of the product.
Affiliate Marketing has some benefits over the supermarket.
- Affiliate Marketers don’t hold any stock they just advertise the item
- Sales are handled by the manufacturer/creator of the item
- Commission is built into the price and paid to the affiliate marketer.
Think of affiliate marketing as being an online supermarket where products are sold.
The role of the affiliate marketer is to get the product in front of as many people as possible.
Is Affiliate Marketing Easy?
Like any business, affiliate marketing has skills that need to be learned and applied before earning any income.
Most people think, just add an affiliate product link to a website and the money will role in.
Affiliate Marketing requires skills, that are easily learned, and consistently apply the skills to bring in traffic.
Some of the skills required are
- Research
- Building Websites
- Learning about SEO
- Creating Good Quality Content for the Website
- Understanding the product being sold so comparisons and product reviews can be written
- Applying online marketing strategies to bring traffic to the website
And there are many more skills required.
When you think about Affiliate Marketing as a business, learning as many skills as possible then it does become easier.
What Does it Cost to Become an Affiliate Marketer?
Surprisingly, affiliate marketing is a low-cost start-up business perfect for beginners to become online entrepreneurs.
The biggest expense is a website. I use a platform called Wealthy Affiliate that allows me to create websites and provides excellent training and support. Wealthy Affiliate is an affiliate program that I sell and receive a commission for any sales.
However, a beginner can start without money through blogging and free blog sites.
In my course, Quick Affiliate Profits, learn the steps for starting an affiliate marketing business for free.
How Much Money Can an Affiliate Marketer Make?
There is no limit on the amount of money an affiliate marketer can make.
Affiliate Marketing is a time-based business meaning it does take time to set everything up and start earning a regular to a full-time income from the business.
While some people can make money quickly, most people don’t start making money for 4 – 6 months and a regular income around 8 – 12 months.
If serious about the business and learning the skills it is possible to make €10k, €50k, €100k or more per month.
How to Get Started as an Affiliate Marketer
The first step is to find something the affiliate marketer is interested in such as a hobby.
Next, break the hobby down into sub-headings. For example, Golf is a sport played by many people but it is a huge market to try and work in as an Affiliate Marketer. Instead, break this down to golf clubs or golf clubs for left-handed people.
The idea is to get down to a specific topic (called a Niche) and start by specializing in that area.
Research the internet for companies that offer affiliate marketing programs for left-handed golf clubs. These can be found through private companies or platforms like Amazon and Clickbank.
Once signed up with an affiliate program the next step is marketing.
An Example of an Affiliate Marketing Business
I have been an affiliate marketer for over 20 years. It is a stable part of my business model as an online entrepreneur.
On this website, there is content about becoming an online entrepreneur. This content is in the form of blogs and videos, podcasts, newsletters, etc. Providing information to viewers.
Online Entrepreneur is a business. A business has to make money. Think of the website as a stand-alone business trying to make money.
There are several ways to make money on a website and the easiest is through Affiliate Marketing. This can be links in articles to products for sale, banners or adverts to an affiliate product.
As an example, in this article, there are links to Wealthy Affiliate which is an affiliate product for creating and hosting websites. There are also links to my own products about affiliate marketing – a book, Affiliate Marketing and a training course, Quick Affiliate Profits.
My job as an affiliate marketer and an online entrepreneur is to get viewers to the website – this is called traffic.
The more traffic visiting the site the more money the site will make.
This is a simple example of an affiliate marketing business.
Understanding Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a business. It is a simple business to start and can generate a full-time plus income. It is a low-cost start-up business perfect for anyone wanting to experiment with building an online business
There are many skills to learn so don’t expect to be making money straight away. Like any business be prepared to learn and keep learning. The better the skills the better the income.
Understanding Affiliate Marketing is the first step to starting an online business and becoming an online entrepreneur.
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