in here i'll show you just a recent transaction in my paypal account
of the monthly affiliate commissions that i received from one of the services that i promoted
to my audience. I’ve been asked to talk about affiliate marketing on my channel for ages. And
I get it why so many people really want to learn what is affiliate marketing and how does it work.
It’s one of the best ways to make money online because it doesn’t require almost
any financial investment to start.
Hey there! I’m Anastasia of anastasiablogger.com, I am a full-time blogger, a Pinterest marketing
expert and an online business educator. If this sounds interesting to you,
hit Subscribe and the Bell button to get notifications about my new videos going live.
So are you dreaming to start working from home? Maybe you are a mom and you want to take care of
your kids while having an income stream. Or maybe you are someone who just wants an extra hustle
at the side. If that’s you, affiliate marketing could be your best way to go as a beginner.
To put it simply, affiliate marketing is a process of earning an affiliate commission from marketing
another person’s or company’s products. You are someone who introduces products and
services to others using any online platforms that you have. And when a sale is made,
you will earn a commission. I think it can be a great
way to make online income even for beginners because the entry requirements are very low.
You don’t have to think about creating your own product, you don’t have to market it or
hire customer support. All of this is done by the company that offers the affiliate program. All YOU
have to do is share the information about their products or services with your online audience.
Now, you may ask: but how does it technically work?
You get a unique affiliate link from the company that sells the product.
Whenever someone clicks on your affiliate link, a cookie will be dropped into their browser.
If they decide to make the purchase, the company you are
affiliated with will know that that customer came from you and they will reward you for it.
HOW MUCH MONEY CAN YOU MAKE AS AN AFFILIATE MARKETER?
According to Payscale, a website where you can find reliable salary market data,
an average annual affiliate marketing income is $51,217. Those who are low-leveled affiliate
marketers can annually earn up to $37,000. But honestly, the sky is the limit when it comes
to affiliate income. For my blogging business, affiliate marketing is the second biggest
income stream after creating and selling my own products. If you are interested in checking in
detail one of my income reports, here is one for a month when my online income exceeded $40,000.
And I will show you just a recent transaction in my PayPal account of the monthly affiliate
commissions I received from one of the services that I promote to my audience.
Usually, the biggest chunk of my affiliate income comes from the companies that offer products and
services in the online marketing space. This screenshot below is for an online program that
I promoted to my email list only twice and during these 2 promotions I made $8,660 in commissions.
If you want to become their affiliate as well, it makes sense if you have an online presence in the
same or similar niche to mine. I mean if you talk to your audience about weight loss for example,
it doesn’t make sense to join this particular affiliate program.
But if you have the right audience, then I’ll drop a link to this program in the description
below the video so you can apply and see if they accept you as an affiliate as well.
On a side note, affiliate marketing is an amazing income stream for bloggers,
but it’s not the only one. I actually have an online course that shows you all the best ways
to monetize your blog to 6-figures and beyond. You will find a link to the course in the info
icon and in the description below this video. And remember that your income will highly
depend on how much and how effective you promote a product. The price of the product and the size
of your commission also can affect your income. When you work with online courses the commissions
are usually very high, anywhere around 30 or 40% commission. The products are usually priced at
least in the hundreds of dollars, sometimes even a few thousand dollars per customer.
An affiliate marketer can get paid in three ways: 1. Pay Per Sale
This is the standard and most common way of getting paid through affiliate marketing.
You will get paid a percentage of the sale price of the product you are promoting. Expensive
products or programs that have higher commission rate, are more interesting in this model because
you then you can make more money. 2. Pay Per Lead
Here an affiliate marketer has to convince the customer to visit the company’s or merchant’s
website and complete some kind of action. It could be signing up for their free challenge,
subscribing to their newsletter, filling out a form, something like this. Through this, companies
will track every action done by the consumer and you will get paid a fixed commission per lead.
But I will be honest, in most of the affiliate programs they typically will use
pay per sale model. Pay per lead is less common but I already had an experience with one company
that paid me for the same campaign the both things – pay per sale and also, they paid me
a $2 commission for each lead, meaning I also got paid for anyone who just signed
up for their email list and not necessarily even purchased the product this time around.
You might ask me why would they want to pay me $2 for leads if
these users didn’t purchase the product? Well, that’s because leads were people somehow
interested in the product. Something didn’t work out. Maybe they didn’t have the funds or the time
to use the product when I made the promotion. But they will remain on their email list and so
they can keep sending them emails later and definitely a certain percentage of the leads will
eventually purchase their product. They can also work as affiliate marketers themselves and send to
those people other offers at a later time. You see they paid me $2 per lead and this
is a pretty low-cost warm audience for them because if they tried to get the same people
through Facebook ads for instance, they would likely pay at least $7-10 dollars per lead.
Now a few tips for you that will help you START MAKING MONEY WITH AFFILIATE MARKETING
1. Find your Niche An affiliate marketer’s success
highly depends on how convincing and persuasive they are in marketing a product. This means that
before choosing a product or service to promote, you must have at least a bit of knowledge on what
the product is and what category or niche it falls under. Is it Lifestyle? Tech? Travel? Beauty?
Next, you should ask yourself which of those niches you are interested in. You won’t be able
to successfully promote a beauty or skincare product if you do not know the brand or have
no idea what the product is for. So keep in mind that the product you will promote is something
that you are genuinely interested in. Remember, you can’t fool everyone, especially people they
know a little bit about the topic and made some research on it before finding your information!
2. Find Great Affiliate Products to Promote Depending on your niche, you will promote
different types of products. If you are in the home decor niche,
you will likely create content that features multiple affiliate products per post and
give links to each product from Amazon Associates or RewardStyle platforms.
On Amazon you’d likely be looking at the products that have
great reviews to make sure people actually buy and don’t just leave Amazon page immediately
disappointed with your recommendation. When you search for products on
RewardStyle for example, they have this high commission label on some of the products.
They are usually from large and known stores like Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and others.
So this is the filter you could use when you create content around the affiliate products.
The issue with promoting physical products through Amazon or other networks is that commissions are
often very low. Anywhere from just 1% commission (seriously, this applies to
some product categories on Amazon) and to about 10% maximum. So it’s rarely a huge commission
but because the products are in a lower price range, usually below $50 or $100,
it’s relatively easy for consumers to pick up the credit card and actually make the purchase
right away coming from your affiliate link. When you promote digital products, for example,
online courses, especially those that are in the higher price range,
commissions are usually higher – anywhere between 30% and even up to 40% commission. Plus,
the products usually cost at least several hundred of dollars if not thousands. So if you think it’s
easier to promote high-ticket products, you might be quite wrong about it. Because it takes a lot
more effort to promote them, it’s not enough to just drop a link from a blog post or two.
You have to educate your audience, build trust through your free content and do it
consistently so that when you have something to share as an affiliate,
they would know all about your values and would see why you are recommending this product.
So if you ask me what are the best type of products to promote as an affiliate? The answer
is not so easy and straightforward as expected. Is it always better to promote something more
expensive and with a higher commission rate? Well, higher commissions are always great but
when the product costs thousands of dollars, you need to do a ton of work as an affiliate to
educate your audience about the benefits of this product, and to convince them to make a purchase.
3. Sign up for affiliate programs Again, depending on your niche,
you might need to work with some products directly. Like for example in case of online
courses or big service companies, they will often have their own platforms for you to sign up.
But in many other niches, looking for individual companies that offer affiliate
partnerships can be very time-consuming. This is why affiliate networks exist.
Their main role is to give you access from one place, to different brands and
companies that offer affiliate partnerships. These networks will also handle the tracking,
reporting, and payment to the affiliates. The variety of companies and brands that you can find
on these affiliate networks could range from high-end brands like Dior, Gucci,
to indie brands and individual eCommerce websites. Some popular affiliate networks include:
• Awin • Amazon Associates
• CJ Affiliate • ShareASale
• ClickBank • RewardStyle
• Flexoffers • Rakuten Marketing
There are many more but I just mentioned the ones I tried to work with for different
products! The possibilities and choices are endless when it comes to affiliate marketing 🙂
By the way, if you enjoy detailed videos like this one, let me know in the comment
below and like the video – I truly appreciate your support of my channel. And if I see this
kind of longer videos packed with helpful information are doing well, I will do my best
to create more of them on my channel. 4. Start an Affiliate Blog
Starting your own blog is probably one of the most effective ways to be successful
in affiliate marketing. First of all, it builds a bond and trust between you and your audience
since you can share your opinions and reviews about the product you are promoting.
Second, there is a chance for your blog or post to rank organically in
search engines. This means that when people search about the product you are promoting,
there is a possibility for your blog post to appear on the search results. And another benefit
is that once your blog gets more successful, affiliate opportunities will eventually come
to you – you do not have to search for them! Companies always go to established online
influencers to promote and review their products. What you just need to focus on is your writing
skills and how persuasive and convincing you are when promoting a product. After you are
done writing your content, you just need to add your unique affiliate link to the content
where you mention the product. Sounds easy, right? And if you are worried about starting a blog, then
do not worry because it does not cost much at all! In fact, you can make a blog within 11 minutes!
You can watch my Youtube video here where I guide you on how to start a WordPress blog very quickly.
You can also check out my FREE course on how to start a blog. I’ll give you both links
in the description box down below. 5. Start a Youtube Channel
This is kind of like a blog but a video blog, right? You can totally promote products or
services by recommending them in your videos. You can’t drop an affiliate link
in the video as easily as in a blog post, but you can add it to the description below the video.
If you ask me what do I think works better a blog or a Youtube channel, I think it’s definitely
easier to write texts than record and edit videos. But if you already have a blog and want to reach
additional audience with your videos, then I have a great video for you that will help you start a
Youtube channel from scratch and grow it to 1000 subscribers as fast as possible. Check out the
link in the info icon in the top right corner. 6. Create a Pinterest account
If you do not have the time or just are not interested in starting a blog, there is another
way you can promote your affiliate links for free. And that is through Pinterest! You need
to know it is not just a social media site but it’s actually a search engine just like Google!
This means with right keywords and SEO, when people search for the product you are promoting
on Pinterest, there is a high chance that your pin will be at the top of the search results!
If you are just starting out or already made an account on Pinterest but you feel lost and
you want to improve your SEO, then you can check out my free course: Pinterest SEO Traffics Secret
where I teach you how to master SEO and keywords on the platform and keep you updated on the latest
Pinterest updates, changes in algorithms, and more. Check out the link in the top
right corner and in the description down below. By the way, you can even add direct affiliate
links to your pins. It’s allowed on Pinterest you have do make sure your account doesn’t become a
collection of affiliate links only, this could be considered spammy. I have another video on my
channel that explains how you can use Pinterest as an affiliate marketer even if you don’t run a
website. Again, look at the links below the video, I will have all the stuff I mentioned there.
7. Start an Email List Another great strategy to
build trust and communication between you and your audience is by starting an email list!
You should treat your emails as a mini-blog of some sort since the approach will almost be the
same as when you are writing a blog review– but shorter and more direct to the point.
You can send out emails weekly or even daily! This means that you will be able to introduce
more products to your audience more frequently. This also gives an opportunity for your audience
to reply back to you and ask more about the product which increases the chances for a sale!
In addition to that, always keep in mind that your email list is something that you control.
While with your social media profiles, like your Instagram, Youtube or Pinterest account – all of
these platforms have algorithms and they decide which of your content should be shown to whom.
Not all of the followers will always see your posts with affiliate links. On top of that,
these platforms can literally take away from you all your work one day if they decide to change
an algorithm or to ban your account. With an email list this doesn’t happen because
you have direct access to the inbox of each user who signed up for your list.
To wrap it up, everything under the moon is now accessible with a few clicks through the Internet.
It goes for products, jobs, and income. If you are someone who is searching for
a side hustle that can provide extra income, then seriously consider affiliate marketing.
In fact, once you become successful, you can easily make this your full-time job and main
income stream. I’ll leave with that and just wanted to remind you about
my course that shows you the way to making a serious income as a blogger.
It’s not only about affiliate marketing, I show you in the course all the different
monetization methods that can help you get to a 6-figure online income and beyond.
Check the link in the info icon and in the description below the video.
Now, here are a few of my other videos that will also help you grow your income online,
check them out here and there. And I’ll see you in the next videos!