How to Make Money Online by Becoming an Affiliate
Now that you have your own website, it’s time to fill it with even more content that will help to generate a stream of passive income into your bank account. The first item on the menu is affiliate marketing. I know that some people will immediately jump to one of those “get rich quick” ads and believe that is what affiliate marketing is all about. It’s not. Affiliate marketing is simply the process of recommending other company’s products and services. If you send these companies a new customer and that customer makes a purchase, then you get a percentage of that sale. Most big companies love to hire affiliates because it is considered guaranteed advertising. In other words, they know that when they are paying for advertising, they are getting a sale. Therefore, it has become a popular choice for businesses.
Affiliate marketing will depend on how much traffic your website is generating. So this section will show you how to get started and then you can expand on what you learn to generate even more content and eventually sales.
Affiliate marketing is another form of passive income. Once you get enough content set up, the process is automatic. Just keep in mind that although some people do generate a full time income from affiliate marketing, this is normally not the case. Affiliate marketing is usually at its best when used as a secondary method for generating income.
For some, affiliate marketing seems like a daunting task. However, you are already using Adsense to generate income. Incorporating affiliate links into this content is actually really easy and requires very little extra work. In a nutshell, you will sign up as an affiliate for a company and then base your content around actual products such as Top 10 lists or reviews. These tend to work the best and are considered very helpful content by most search engines.
Before getting into the more technical details, I want to add that while some tend to focus a lot of effort into promoting their affiliate links, I would not recommend you do that at first. You should focus on getting traffic to your website. That’s why you have it. Your website will do the promoting for you. For the sake of long-term success, focus on adding useful content and driving traffic.
Here are the most common types of marketing affiliate marketing.
Product Review Websites
Many webmasters dedicate an entire website to reviews. These reviews are a way of promoting their affiliate products. This is actually a sound strategy and can lead to some fun content and a nice stream of income. Plus, once the website gets highly ranked on search engines, it’s likely that the domain could be sold for a premium. Keep this in mind because one of our money making methods involves flipping domains. Review sites are excellent in this regard.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is more valuable that platinum if done correctly. People respond much better to videos than any other form. To add even more incentive, YouTube makes video marketing a breeze. This book includes an entire chapter on YouTube. So keep this in mind when reading about creating YouTube videos later in this book.
Blogging
This is the type of marketing you will be using in the beginning. Posting content about products that you are promoting is a good method for generating conversions. You can either post about these products directly or include them in a general post (example: a how-to post).
Email Marketing
Another proven way of marketing is via email. This form of marketing can be used parallel to your website. Essentially, this process involves collecting email addresses by convincing users to sign up – otherwise known as opting in. People opt into lists in order to receive updates, news, information, etc.. Never buy email lists from third parties and then spam them. This is immoral and illegal. Instead, take the time to effectively market through email. Let’s take a moment to set up a list building account.
Setting up an Email List Building Account
Now that you have some experience with your WordPress site, you should understand the basics of how widgets work. Why not go ahead and add a widget for visitors to subscribe to an email list? It couldn’t hurt and can give you another avenue to generating money by opening up email marketing.
The first thing you need is an email marketing service provider. The best on the web is Aweber. Keep in mind that this does cost money. You don’t have to do this now but I recommend you go ahead and get started so that you can gain valuable experience with how it all works.
Aweber costs $1 for the first month and $10 a month after. First, visit their website and sign up for an account.
Once you have set up your account, you’re ready to get started. In order to gather email addresses, you will need a form. These are easy to set up and once you do, you’re given a code. Simply copy and paste the code into your WordPress widget and your form will show up on every page. Aweber has a ton of videos that will help you get started. You should take the time to watch them. There are so many options and everyone will want to use different strategies. Here are a few tips:
- Use follow-up emails to keep your subscribers up-to-date.
- Don’t use every message to pitch products. This will annoy your subscribers and cause a high rate of your list to unsubscribe.
- Don’t send more than one email per day.
- Learn and then learn some more.
Clickbank
Clickbank is the online bazaar for selling digital products. There are thousands of products available on their vast website. Better yet, each of these products is open to affiliates. That makes Clickbank your first stop in making money by becoming an affiliate. Here is a quick breakdown of categories on Clickbank:
- Arts + Entertainment
- Business/Investing
- Games
- Health+Fitness
- Parenting
- Politics
- Software
No matter what niche you have decided to specialize in, you should have no problem finding products that fit nicely within it.
Making Money with Clickbank
There are actually two ways that you can make money on Clickbank. The first is to create your own product to sell on Clickbank. The other is to become an affiliate. Since you are already set up to promote products as an affiliate, we will focus on that first. One of our money making methods discussed later in this book will have you (possibly) selling a product on Clickbank. Therefore, that option is best left for then. I want to start you off on the path of least resistance. That’s the main reason for choosing affiliate marketing first. You have the opportunity to learn more about the market before trying to promote a product of your own. Trust me, you will be glad that you started off slow.
Anyway, let’s get you started on Clickbank. The first step is to sign up for an account. Only then can you become an affiliate.
Setting up your First Clickbank Account
Getting started is easy.
1. Visit www.clickbank.com
2. Click Sign Up
3. Fill in all necessary information
4. Click Submit
After that, you just need to wait until your account is approved. Once they send you the approval email, you are ready to get started.
How it Works
Start off by browsing through products within your related niche. Bookmark ones that look good to you. Once you have enough of them bookmarked, it’s time to choose several that you want to promote. This is where things start becoming a little complicated. I say that because you likely have numerous products that you are affiliated with – so many in fact that it can become difficult to keep track of all this information.
One way to make this easier is to build a spreadsheet just for affiliate information. Include one column for the product and another with your affiliate link. You can even add columns for pictures of the product, links to descriptions, etc.. The point is to do whatever makes it easier on you. Just make sure that you are not spending too much time searching for affiliate links of products that you’ve already decided to promote. Most of your time should be spent on either creating content or finding new products to promote.
Affiliating with Clickbank
Okay, turning Clickbank into another money generating machine is only a few steps away. They are likely to recommend that you have a website or blog. You do. You will need a niche. Add another check beside that one! All you need at this point are products to promote. I would recommend choosing one product at a time. Create content involving that product and then find another and repeat the process. For now, let’s focus on just one product and then move on. That will help keep things simple until you choose which money making methods you want to use. Trust me, there are a lot more to come!
Needless to say, your chance of successfully getting one of your visitors to purchase a product from your website is directly related to how closely the product matches your niche. Never promote things outside of your area. It’s just a waste of time. Other factors to consider before choosing to promote a product are:
Initial Sale: This is listed on Clickbank and is the average amount you can expect to make for every sale of the product.
Average Sale: Your average lifetime income for selling a product.
Average Rebill Total: This directly relates to products that are based on reoccurring payment. Recurring payment are membership based and this is the average amount you will make on a monthly basis (or weekly/yearly/ etc.).
Average Rebill %: Applies to the Average Rebill Total. This is how often individuals choose to remain a member of the specified service.
Gravity: This is basically how popular the product is on Clickbank in terms of affiliates. Higher gravity means more people are promoting it. Gravity is also determined by amount of income being generated by affiliates. A higher gravity means more competition from other affiliates. The rule of thumb is to shoot for a gravity score of more than 50 but not more than 120.
After juggling the numbers, take a more personal approach by putting yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer. Pretend you saw the product on your website and were interested in finding out more. Then click the link to the product’s landing page. Determine if the page compels you to buy the product. If not, then move on. If it does compel you to make a purchase, look through the page once more. Get technical now and check for any typos, misinformation, etc.. If after the second viewing you are still 100% happy with what you see, then you are free to promote them.
Never promote a product or service that you do not trust or truly believe in. This lack of enthusiasm will show up in your promotions. Plus, if you’re not sold on the product or service, chances are that you audience won’t be either.
HopLinks
HopLinks are just a fancy term for an affiliate link. The process is simple.
1. From the product page, click on Promote.
2. Add a nickname (optional).
3. Copy and Paste the link into your spreadsheet.
You now have a Clickbank product and a link to promote it. At this point, it’s probably a good idea to turn your affiliate links into Tiny URL’s. A great (and free) place to do this is www.bitly.com.
Simply sign up for an account and then you can copy/paste the link onto bitly and it will spit out a Tiny URL. I recommend you do this for all affiliate links in your spreadsheet, creating a separate column for Tiny URL.
Promoting Clickbank Products on your Website
This is where you want to be very careful. You are already using Adsense and email marketing on your website. If they are in widgets, then you have ads on all of your pages. You don’t want your website to transform into a circus of floating ads and spam.
I recommend that you limit Clickbank to articles only. Write content filler on your website and make some of this content about Clickbank products. In addition, only have two links in your article – one at the beginning and one at the end. That’s it. If you spam too many ads on your website then you will not only annoy customers, but search engines will punish your website as well.
For now, write one post about one Clickbank product. You are only getting started and trust me when I say that there are plenty of opportunities yet to come which will allow you to further promote Clickbank products. We have only tapped the surface.
Become an Amazon Affiliate
The next affiliate program I highly recommend is Amazon. The idea is to gain experience while giving yourself the best chances of long-term success. Amazon is a leading brand and highly reputable company. In the terms of internet sales, they are heavyweights in the field.
Since you already understand the basics of affiliate marketing, you should have no problems getting started with Amazon. They offer numerous video tutorials and an extensive blog to help affiliates. I’ll just go through the basics real quick.
Getting Started with Amazon
1. Visit https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
2. Click Join Now for Free
3. Fill out all required information
4. Click Submit and wait until your account is approved.
Once you can log into your account, do so and have a look around. You will find that it’s similar to Clickbank. You can search for products from a variety of different categories.
Advantages of Becoming an Amazon Affiliate
I’ll end this chapter on a list of the advantages of becoming an Amazon affiliate. While the commissions might be lower than other opportunities, Amazon will generate a higher conversion than others. Higher conversions lead to more money.
The biggest advantage has to be the large number of products to choose from. You can promote any product that Amazon sells (which is pretty much anything you can think of). This leads to easy content and a better variety. Top 5 and Top 10 lists tend to convert quite nicely. This allows you to create content to fill your website (and help get it ranked) while promoting products. Essentially, you wind up killing two birds with one stone.
Amazon is very easy to get started using (as you have likely seen if you signed up for an account already). They have a wide selection of plugins and scripts that make integrating products onto your website painless. Amazon truly knows how to make money.
In addition, you will be aligned with a reputable company. People see the name Amazon and are comfortable spending their money. All online sellers do not garner this kind of reputation.
Most of the time, people will buy more than one product on Amazon. Even if someone clicks through your link to buy one product, you get credit for all products in their cart at the time of checkout. So there are opportunities for huge sales.
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