Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to have an online business and make a very good living without all the expense and hassles normally associated with starting your own business, particularly having to develop your own products to sell or to purchase a stock of products ready to sell .
Affiliate marketing gives you all of the flexibility of being in business for yourself such as choosing your working hours ,choosing an income but none of the constraints of going it alone.
Affiliate marketing gives you the chance to sell products online but without having to stock them, own them, take payments for them, ship them out to customers or handle any queries.
In my mind its a no brainer for anyone looking to start an online business and wants to be up an running as quick as possible. Its also perfect for anyone looking to make money online but is also working a job as well. It allows you to start in your spare time and then if you so wish go full time later on.
What Exactly Is Affiliate Marketing.
In a nut shell there are all sorts of different companies out there who have what’s known as affiliate programs and who will pay you a commission on any sales that are generated from your efforts.
These companies range from some of the biggest and most famous on the planet such as Amazon, Nike, Microsoft, all the way down to a guy operating on his own who has Ebooks for sale. And 99% of these companies affiliate programs are free to join.
What Do You Do?
Your job in all this is to attract people/customers to the companies website with the idea that they will purchase something. When this happens you get paid. That’s it, that is your job and if you do it well you can be paid very handsomely indeed.
The sort of commissions you can expect really depends on the company itself but overall you will find affiliate programs that payout anything from 3% to 70% of the total sale price. Normally the higher commission payouts come from products or services that only have to be made once such as download courses and the lower payouts will be for actual physical products like clothing or electrical goods.
My advice here is to find products to promote that not only pay you this commission for the initial sale but also have a residual payment built in to it, such as a monthly subscription program, which will mean you get paid every month on a product you sold only once.
Much better to concentrate your efforts on products with repeat sales as it takes no more effort to do this than it does for a product with a one time only sale.
How Do You Get Paid.
When you join a companies affiliate program, which will nearly always be free, you are given, along with lots of other tools, a tracking code (link). This tracking code is unique to you and no one else so that when someone clicks on a link of yours and they are taken to that companies web/sales page then any sale that’s made will be credited to your account.The company knows the customer came from you because they clicked on your unique link.
Then once your account reaches a certain level, perhaps $100, the money is then released to you by way of a cheque or bank transfer or Pay Pal. Although this really depends on the individual company as to exactly how you get paid.
Be aware that companies will have set dates for sending out commissions so don’t expect a cheque as soon as you reach $100, you may have to wait until the end of the month and some companies will hold your money until any return dates on the product you sold has expired, normally 30-60 days. But if you imagine it is only the same as starting a salaried job where you don’t get paid until the end of the month.
How Do I Get Started.
First thing you need to do is find some products to promote. It might be best to find ones that interest you first rather than ones that pay the most, perhaps you will find both. Or you could do a search online to see what is popular at the moment and then find products that match this.
Some of the best place to find these products are through affiliate networks. These are places that quite literally have thousands of companies on their books who have products they want to sell via the efforts of you.
Affiliate networks are great because you will get paid by them for any of the programs you join within there network rather than having to wait for all the individual companies to pay you. A few of the best ones are,
Just visit one of these sites above and join. Its free to do and as soon as you do you can start looking for and then promoting products. I would recommend you read any help pages they have so that you can become familiar with how they work.
You can also search for affiliate programs individually through Google. Just type in what your looking for such as Home Business Affiliate Program and then join an appropriate program.
What Next
Ok so now you have your products, you just need to sell them and of course you do this by attracting customers.
Now you can just go out there and start posting your affiliate links wherever you feel is appropriate. My Free Advertising article will show where and how.
But one of the best ways to make affiliate sales is to have your own blog/website filled with great content that will appeal to the type of persons your looking to sell to and have your links to the products your promoting on there as well. Normaly a good affiliate program will not only give you links to use but attractive adverts to use as well that can be linked to you.
The idea here is, you create a blog/website , you fill it with great content that matches the type of products your promoting, you then have your links/adverts on there, you do some advertising promoting your website, readers arrive at your own site to read the content which will be content matching your products and they then click on these links and ads. The company your promoting then takes over from there.
If you create a good website and you have quality content and products that match then you have a very good way of making an income by way of a business that is working for your 24/7 365.
What Can I Earn And What Are My Chances.
There are many many people all over the world who make money from Affiliate Marketing including myself. Some make a few dollars/Pounds a month part time while some make millions of dollars a year and everything in between. Its not hard to do but there is work to be done and on a consistent basis but when you consider that an affiliate marketing business can allow you to work when and where you like then this effort seems small by comparison.
You can if you so desire make a very good living with affiliate marketing. One that can replace your current income or one that can supplement it. Its up to you and the effort you put in that dictates your level of success.
Finally
If this article has given you food for thought and you do like the idea of making money from affiliate marketing then I would be happy to show you how.
I can show you how to find good markets to be in and good products to promote. I can also create you a website that will promote all this for you and teach you how to advertise .
All you need do for now is show me your interest by leaving your details on my “Contact Me“ page with a short message. I will then be in touch to explain all.
To your success, Nick Squires-The English Entrepreneur
