What’s affiliate marketing?

What’s affiliate marketing? Imagine being able to make money without ever having your own product or your own service. Now imagine not having to deliver and fulfill products. Furthermore, imagine not having to deal with returns. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it’s very much true, and it’s called affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is almost a 12 billion dollar industry. It’s been around forever. Plenty of online entrepreneurs start off their entrepreneurial journey with affiliate marketing and grow pretty large incomes.

Not having to do all the backend stuff in business like dealing with customers, processing products and returns is the reason why it is my favorite online business model. When you set up your systems for affiliate marketing right, the sales can even come in passively. Sales coming in passively means that you make commission all while you are doing something else. This is very much passive income and is like real estate, except it’s all online and you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to get started like you would on a piece of property. The place in which you house your content is equivalent to real estate because it is your digital property that can generate income that comes in passively.

What is an affiliate marketer?

An affiliate marketer is someone who promotes another company’s products and gets paid for the sale in the form of commission. In a way, affiliates provide free marketing for a company. When it becomes a sale, it is no longer free marketing because now the affiliate gets paid. Affiliates focus solely on the marketing and sales of the product which alleviates a lot of the tasks that a normal business with their own products would have to do. In a way, affiliates focus a lot of their time on the income generating tasks part of their own business.

Affiliates and the company usually go into a partnership with a contract. Affiliate marketers must abide by the rules of the company they are promoting for. Many companies usually have do’s and don’ts as to how an affiliate marketer can promote their product.

Affiliates have to get approved by companies they want to promote for. Some companies are very strict and have a lot of requirements usually in the form of how many people are on an affiliate’s email list, how many page views their website gets, and how big their following count is on their social media. For the most part though, the approval process is very easy for many companies as they just require a sign up. This is a good thing for new and beginning affiliates because they can get approved easily and can start promoting products right away.

Who has affiliate programs?

Many companies have affiliate marketers. In fact, one of your favorite companies probably has an affiliate program. Companies have affiliate programs because they can reach a wider audience. It is much more credible when others are telling other people about a product or service than the company itself. Ever refer someone to a product that you love? Then that person goes and buys the product. You made that sale, but weren’t an affiliate for the company so you didn’t get paid. How often does that happen? I have had this happen too often myself. 

Who can do affiliate marketing?

Anyone who is determined can become an affiliate marketer. It’s perfect for stay at home moms and anyone who is tired of working for someone else. There are many ways to run an affiliate business and if done right with systems, it can become passive and very lucrative. A bit of a warning though as a lot of people seem to portray that you can just tell others about a product and they will buy it. It takes a lot more work than that. Affiliate marketers need to get real good at marketing. This is why I say that if you can sell an affiliate product, you can sell your own product. As with any business, marketing and sales are the bread and butter to making money.

Why become an affiliate marketer?

Affiliates are able to make money by promoting someone else’s product. Profit can happen instantly and it can be scaled quite easily. Affiliate marketers don’t need to wait around to create a product of their own in order to make a sale. Affiliates focus solely on the marketing and sales part of the business and thus cutting time in business activities. This allows affiliates to focus solely on the income generating tasks. 

How do affiliates get paid?

Affiliate programs usually make affiliates fill out a 1099 form in case they do make over $600 and have to file taxes. Most affiliate programs pay through Paypal or they have their own ewallet program that they use to payout affiliates. Affiliate commissions range from  3% all the way to 100%. Now why would a company pay 100% in commission? They simply can when their upsells bring in a lot of sales that they can pay a full 100% in commission for customer acquisition.

There are many different commission structures. Some products are low ticket while others are high ticket. Affiliates could get paid $1 in commission, or thousands in commission on one product. There are products that are also recurring commissions every month. 

Cons of being an affiliate marketer

There are some cons to being an affiliate marketer, but it should not stop anyone from pursuing this business model. One of cons is that you don’t own the product or service that you’re promoting. The product or service could very well change or it could even be deleted by the company.

The commission structure could change. An affiliate could be getting paid 60% commission, then all of a sudden the company can decide to drop that commission to 40%. This is a dramatic difference in payout. It’s especially dramatic when it’s the affiliates main product that they promote and make lots of sales with it.

The affiliate program could be wiped out all together. It could be that the company decides that they don’t need affiliates anymore, don’t want to pay affiliates anymore, or they went out of business. There are plenty of reasons that an affiliate program could get wiped out. These problems could be avoided by choosing affiliate programs from trustworthy companies.

How to get started with affiliate marketing?

Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, the first step to getting started with affiliate marketing is by picking a niche. I highly recommend picking a niche that you have interest in because you will be talking about it over and over again. You’ll want to then sign up for affiliate programs to promote.

Most affiliates will use a software like ClickFunnels that can create their landing pages so that they can collect their leads. They’ll also use an email marketing software like ActiveCampaign to keep in contact with their leads so that they eventually turn into customers.

Not sure how to get started with building an online affiliate marketing business or just want the exact step-by-step? You’re in luck because there is a very good training that will teach you how to run a high-ticket affiliate marketing business in just 15 days. That means by day 15, you will have launched your own affiliate marketing business and you may have even started making money already. You’ll get the exact proven step-by-step each day to run a high-ticket affiliate marketing business. Check out this training video to get started in affiliate marketing. The best way to get started is always to find a mentor that can help and you can do that by watching the training. Mentors have already done it. They’ve built a profitable business. They’ve cut out all the unnecessary stuff and have systemized things for duplication.