What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is the Marketing and promotion of someone else's Business, Products, or services by driving traffic to it and earning a commission for it. It is named 'Affiliate' because you as the affiliate seller are an affiliate member of the company in which you sign up in agreement with the terms and conditions ( commission based percentage of each sale etc ) of that business that you will market its products and or services in a distributed manner that both you and the owner benefit from each others business.

The way you market other company's products or services depends on the kind of products or services you are trying to sell to.
If you are trying to sell main products, then your go-to place would be either Amazon or eBay in which requires very little advertising assuming your selling products that people are searching for ( Search Intent ) but will get to that later on in this blog article.

How does it work?

There are 3 steps on how Affiliate Marketing Works.

1. The Owner of The Product/ Service or Business.
2. You The Affiliate { The Advertiser/Promoter }
3. Your Customers

The Owner: Let's start with the entrepreneur business owner who owns the product (s) or services. As a business owner, you have the choice to allow and permit other third-party sellers to affiliate themselves as a partner with the company in agreement that you will promote, distribute and sell the companies products/services in return for an agreed commission percentage of each successful sale.

You { The Affiliate } advertiser and promoter is responsible for making sales out of the products and services you choose to make money online on. There are 2 ways in your best interest to do it right, fast and efficient but will get to that later. However you may promote those assets, you should know how to promote and advertise these goods and services { which is a skill by the way } because otherwise, affiliate marketing may not be for you, as we will explain to you the best way to do it anyhow.

Lastly, the customer is that final end of the sales process where the customer looks, reads find demanding, has social proof and in their mind have been convinced by how you promote including your ad creative that what you are selling them is something that will either solve their problem, entertain them or make life easier for them if they were to purchase what you are selling.

How you find these customers in relation to how you set up the ad creative and in which platform you find them is key to ' The Affiliate Marketer ' on how he or she should promote those products and services.

How Do I Become An Affiliate Marketer?

To become an affiliate marketer, you have to personally ask yourself some questions in order to make the right steps and to become successful at it. When you are looking to become an affiliate marketer, you need to find the best platforms out there that will put you in the best position to succeed. Things like, what are the highest payouts, which one has the best credibility and stability, which company has the highest number of products, what are the demands in the marketplace for those products and services, which affiliate program site gets you the best high-quality organic traffic etc, but don't worry as we will solve all these questions you have rattling in your mind, because we know you're hungry to succeed and start ASAP with this particular business model, so keep reading.

1. So first of all you need to choose a niche/category. This is the first step that will pave the way for your success. You want to make sure you in a position of the 'Sweetspot'. What is that sweet spot you say..? It is where High Demand meets with Easy to Sell.
That's the sweet spot that you need to choose that will make it easier to make money online.

You need to choose a niche/category that is in "High DEMAND and is Easy to Sell". If you get this right, your way to success will happen fast and easy assuming you have everything in place. You also need to take into consideration, is the niche/category supportive of the affiliate program you chose to do business with which we will mention in the second step. Are people searching for the products/services that are in the particular niche you've chosen?.. Is the demand long-lasting? meaning is the products/services will stay in demand for years to come without significant dips. Also, make sure, the products/services description, images, and videos are available for that product. Having a video of that product/service is important if you're going to promote it on social media, so make sure the images and at least a video are available, so you can promote it well and so that people can see how this particular product or service works.

2. Choose Your Affiliate Partner Program that you would like to sell with.

Choosing your affiliate partner program is very important as you will see why later on. Each company has their own compensation plan listed on their site where your about to sign up. It's important to compare each affiliate's supportive partner program with each other so that way you make the right choice that would fit you well in their compensation structure and the availabilities of products that they have for you.

3. Sign up and fill out your details. Make sure you fill out your bank details and your personal details. After that, choose from a variety of products or services that you want to put up on your affiliate site that they have provided for you, assuming you've checked what's in demand and easier to sell. Make sure you've written a persuasive personalized description of the product or service. Many times, the company has its product/service description. It would be in my humble opinion that you re-create the description of the product/service and make it personalized in your own way so it doesn't feel generic, and targeted towards a specific audience.

4. Lastly, Your marketing skills which are the most vital part make or break situation, will either make you succeed or fail at Affiliate Marketing. How you promote and in which platform relative to your ad creative is very very important.
If you're using Amazon's Associates Central program, then it would make a huge sense to have your products on Amazon and let Search Intent do the work for you. So placing the "right keywords" around your product is vital so it can get seen by people searching for that exact word or key phrase. Not many marketing dollars that you would need to put into that, as Amazon handles your organic traffic for you if you chose the right keywords searched by people and again assuming you've chosen the right product/niche/category.

It would go the same way if you chose to do affiliate marketing on eBay for example. eBay partner program is very similar in the way that you promote and position your products and services. Keywords are vital in that aspect, because you 'The Affiliate Marketer' is taking advantage of a well-known shopping site that gets millions of organic traffic per month, so if you chose the right keywords, you should have no problems getting sales.

If you've chosen an affiliate marketing website that maybe requires a social media method to market, then I would consider making the ad as Highly Creative as Much As Possible With VALUE being created in the Ad itself to make that customer buy into your ad. Meaning the customer would get value in the ad itself before taking them to your affiliate site. So yes Ad dollars are included in this method, but if you do it right, you wouldn't care as your return on the ad is at least twice if not more due to customers sharing and engaging with your ad causing a wave-like effect { word of mouth } which in this case, happens to be the best way to do it if it gets that kind of traction.

Also, I'm assuming you're going to have competition around your products and services. To overcome that, many people would play with the price, making their price lower to make the sale. I would suggest that you play differently in that aspect. Playing with the price is like playing checkers. You only have 1 move and you lose. I would rather play chess where I have more than one idea, value prop, or a bonus, or even something extra that the customer would get for Free to get them to buy your product as opposed to someone else with a lower cost. I would add a Free eBook, A discount on the second or future sale, a promo code for a family member who's also interested, Free Delivery, Get Credit, Customer gets shown as a testimonial, a free product, etc... Always play chess when your competitor is playing checkers, so that way your not vulnerable to price only because you have different strategies in your command and that way you gain power moves over any competitor if they're only playing the game with price only. Create Value high enough that the customer will have no issue with the price. Always remember, when value exceeds the price, the customer WILL ALWAYS BUY and a sale is made automatically.

The next and final way to have a huge effect with huge traffic that's organic and high quality is Google SEO and Google Shopping. That by far is the BEST strategy you have over everyone else in Business altogether. You get an edge, and you get a huge advantage. Yes, you guessed it, Google Search Engine SERP. I would argue that this method is the best and efficient way out here to create a crazy amount of sales, leads & sign-ups. Well that and Google Shopping, of course, the Free method of Google Shopping.

This is by far, the best way to optimize & rank for SEO shown here in a very clear way, so listen up. You need to have 2 things in place to make your SEO work for your affiliate marketing site or any website for that matter.

1. Your on-page SEO must be or have an A+ OR an A or from 0-100, Your on-page site should have at least a number of 80/100 or more. So in number, your on-page site should be 80+ out of 100. I'm talking about your "on-page site", not any other SEO Issues around your website.

2. The other thing you need to secure that your site will be ranked and seen on Google is to have 1 out of the 2 mentioned below, if you can do both then your on the Fastlane:

• Internal Links or External Links

You should choose, which one out of the two you are going to go after. If you're going to do internal links, then you better add content continuously on your site. If it's going to be external links, then you better do a high-tier package press release to get those external links to good use. If you're going after external links, make sure that Google News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo.com, and Microsoft Bing are part of the package tier that you chose to get those authoritative links so that Google can see that your site is perceived as high value in the eyes of Google so you can rank well. If you're going to choose internal links instead, then again make sure you start writing content on your site making sure it's high-quality content with at least a 1000 word count to make sure that google takes you seriously. By the way, a great press release package that would get your site on Google News is a company called PR Distribution out of las vegas Nevada.

The two websites to check if you're on page site is optimized at the rank that I mentioned above are the following:

• Seobility and Neil Patel Seo Audit

So these are the 2 Best ways 'above' to have your site appear on Google's search engine. So don't complicate it.

What are the top Affiliate Marketing Sites Available?

These below are the best affiliate programs available that caters to products and services alike.

1. Amazon Associates Affiliate Program
2. eBay Partner Network
3. ShareASale
4. Affilimate
5. ClickBank

• The Amazon Associates Program is one of the largest affiliate programs in the world for obvious reasons. Their AMAZON!
Amazon allows you to monetize your content if your a content creator, or a publisher, a blogger, or if you have an Amazon Affiliate store in place. All you do is link your amazon affiliate site to the audience and by them clicking on the link and purchasing you automatically make the sale. Amazon gets you up to 10% in commissions with competitive conversion rates on the market.
When you sign up, they will offer you a trial run for Free before you commit anything to see how you go and if you made any sales upon the trial period.

• eBay Partner Network is the world's biggest and most distinctive marketplace. It is the world's global e-commerce leader empowering people and creating opportunities for everyone involved in Affiliate Marketing and financial freedom. With eBays earnings, you can earn even by people visiting your eBay store that didn't make a purchase. So that's why I mentioned that each Affiliate Program suits different kinds of needs depending on the person. With eBay, you also get paid by people who visit your website, and if your the kind of person who wants to ride the Google Search Engine machine, then you in for a good ride if you've optimized your eBay store well because eBay will pay you for traffic coming in, so it would be cool and wise if you set up your site with Google Search Console and make sure you verify your website on Google Webmaster. You can also, track and analyze your result-driven data and move into a position where ever the data is showing you where your Affiliate eBay store is at in the marketplace. What's also unique about eBay's affiliate structure is that you decide as to the affiliate marketer what's the best affiliate model that works best for you.

• ClickBank is named and self promotes as the world's top-notch marketing entrepreneurs with the best creative products owned by business owners that build businesses that make sense. Their marketplace structure favors and empowers entrepreneurs, side hustlers, and even brands to grow their company revenue online to reach global scalability with excellent service of support and great power tools. They service in over 200 countries worldwide and they've been in business for over 20 years and counting which says a lot about their success frame with payouts to their clients { Business owners and Affiliate Marketers } at over 4.2 Billion dollars.

• CJ Affiliate has differentiated itself from the competition { Affiliate Marketing Partner programs } by targeting Brands. So their niche is if you the Affiliate Marketer want to build a brand behind the products or services you have, well CJ Affiliate is the one for you. So if your thinking of creating a brand behind your affiliate website, then your direction should be to choose CJ Affiliate as your Affiliate Partner.
This is why again I've mentioned that each Affiliate Program is different and services different clients according to what the affiliate marketer wants.

• Shopify has an interesting affiliate program that's designed to "refer" people, and by referral, you get paid by Shopify for creating content teaching people how to launch a successful business on Shopify, and in return earn a commission. So to expand on this interesting program provided by Shopify, drop shippers who created successful stores can have another stream of income by educating and writing content to the audience on how they did it, and by referral, you get paid for educating people on how to launch successful stores on Shopify. There is however a barrier to entry when it comes to Shopify's affiliate referral program which is that you have to be an experienced Shopify success store owner which means you have demonstrated that you're making money on your Shopify store. If by any chance you are that person, make sure you write original content to be paid by Shopify for creating a successful store. It can either be a blog, an article, an online course, a seminar, a blog post, or even videos. However make sure you incur a dollar amount greater than $25 to be paid on the 15th of the month or the next cycle of that payment, and Shopify only supports Paypal for affiliate payouts, so again if you are that person, make sure you create a business account with Paypal.

• Sovrn Commerce is a very interesting Company because their point of difference edges on automated links that turn into a monetized affiliate link on autopilot so you get paid automatically by users sharing links to products and services they find interesting to buy, and say 10 people purchased that particular product, they click on the link where sovrn commerce picks it up and does the job for you and converts it into a paid affiliate commission for you. It's also the fastest and most flexible automated way to win in e-commerce and affiliate marketing to give you as a client an edge over your competitors. I personally haven't seen anything like this before so I'm very excited about this company and what they have for the future.
You can have it installed either by placing a small HTML code on your website or even a link to your social media account Bio or even create the link from your chrome extension. So they have pretty much expanded their way all over the place to create links for users to click on, purchase, and earn a commission, all the while tracking & analyzing where they came from.

How Much Do Affiliate Marketers Make To Make Money Online?

Affiliate Marketers earn a good 5 to 6 figure salary ranging from $40,000 to $150,000 per year.

What Is An Example Of Affiliate Marketing?

An Example of Affiliate Marketing is, say I have a blog site that I enjoy writing about and my favorite topic is computer accessories. I happen to have an Amazon Affiliate store { that Amazon or a 3rd party seller owns that they have agreed for me to promote their products as an "affiliate" } about computers & accessories. When people read my blog on computer accessories, I can link the computer chair found on my Amazon Affiliate Store and link the website address to my blog site that I'm talking about, and if people are interested in the chair and buy it { Because I don't own the product }, I earn a commission 'roughly 10% of the price' for referring the link to my audience on my blog post.

Final Thoughts

Affiliate Marketing is a great way to earn a steady income provided that you choose a steady Niche and steady long-term demanding products and services that you know would sell in the years to come. Again, affiliate marketing may not be for you, it depends if you want to pursue this business model and each business model defers from one another. I always say each business model depends on your personality, so make sure you choose a business model that suits your personality, that is in demand, preferably you have a passion for, and easy to sell. I've given you the tools now to drive that business model home, and it is now up to you to decide what you want to do with that.

Why don't you visit our website so you can expose as many business models as you need, to find out what the best business vehicle that interests you? It is an open marketplace where you can sign up, post, and talk to other people on any business model you have a problem with and share with the entrepreneurial community what issues you have and people on there will gladly reach out to you and help you with anything that you need clarification on.

Have a Great Day Everyone.