With affiliate marketing, your reputation is key. If you’re seen as a trusted source of information in a particular niche, then your readers and audience will feel more comfortable in taking the desired action that will benefit them. Therefore, your first job as an affiliate marketer is to figure out how can you fill the needs of your readers?
What is Affiliate Marketing and How Does It Work?
Affiliate Marketing includes the promotion of another’s products or services to your target audience. And with each sale that the product or service provider gets, you get a commission. The glorious thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t offer your own services or products.
More and more online entrepreneurs are now looking to work fewer and fewer hours while earning more and more money. It is a dream for many to take up their laptop and travel to any country that they want with no hassle. That’s the sweet promise and benefit of passive income.
So now more and more online entrepreneurs and seeking different ways to work that 4-hour workweek. And affiliate marketing is the answer that many have been seeking.
Affiliate marketing gives you a share of the revenue after each sale, lead, or click for a product or service. It’s a simple strategy that online suppliers created: pay someone to promote your product and service and then give them a commission. A simple win-win situation.
The appeal of affiliate marketing is that it’s free to get started. With a little elbow grease, anyone can scale this from side hustle to profitable online income.
With affiliate marketing, there are four parties involved:
- Product creators: The people who made the product.
- Affiliates: The people who sell the product.
- Customers: The people who want to buy the product.
- Networks: The networks managing the affiliates.
Is Affiliate Marketing Safe (And Not A Pyramid Scheme?)
You may have heard some people proclaiming to the world that “Affiliate marketing is a HUGE Scam!”, or “Affiliate marketing sounds like a pyramid scheme to me!”. Even I have heard this multiple times throughout my career.
But affiliate marketing is NOT A SCAM! Trust me, at the beginning of my online career (about 9 years ago), I have experienced my own share of online scams, pyramid schemes, and MLM. But I have stuck with affiliate marketing because it’s legit and I have seen the results in just a few months.
However, that doesn’t mean that you should trust all affiliate programs that are out there on the internet. As will all things in life, there will be few unscrupulous people who are looking to make a quick buck off unsuspecting optimists (like me)
To avoid this, I advise you to adhere to the following guidelines:
- Carry out deep research on the affiliate program you are looking to join
- Scrutinize every fine detail on their website
- Read up on reviews and testimonial from third-party websites like this one.
- Stick to reputable affiliate networks such as ClickBank, CJ Affiliate, or Rakuten
- Still don’t trust it? Find other alternative affiliate programs that offer the same product or service but are more reputable.
If you stick to these strategies, you will start earning money online with affiliate marketing.
Can Affiliate Marketing Make You Rich and Is It Worth It?
If you have been living under a rock, you may not have heard the countless online entrepreneurs, who have converted affiliate marketing into a widely profitable online business. Remember, it took a lot of trial and error, work, and dedication. But once it was set up, they were making money online with this passive income stream.
Don’t believe me… here are some studies and testimonials to further convince you.
According to Statista, anyone can take advantage of the $8.2 billion that companies and businesses will spend on affiliate marketing by 2022. You can get a slice of this large pie as well.
Also, a study by VigLink shows that affiliate marketing is slowly surpassing ad revenue, especially because of the rise in using ad blockers. So obviously, now is the time for bloggers and marketers to drift away from ads revenue and jump on to affiliate marketing.
