APRIL 7, 2020 BY JEFF SAXTON
DISCLOSURE: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS, MEANING I GET A COMMISSION IF YOU DECIDE TO MAKE A PURCHASE THROUGH MY LINKS, AT NO COST TO YOU. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFO.
You may know a lot about Affiliate Marketing, or very little… the fact is, you care about it, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this!
You might think that big online and offline companies make their billions by simply throwing a gazillion dollars at Mr Zuckerburg and getting that one perfect ad to just make everyone go out and buy their widget.
Well, the truth is, yes many big companies, even those that make gazillions (Nope. Not a word) pay big marketing bucks to facebook, youtube, google and other marketing avenues to make lots of sales.
But who would have thought that they also pay a huge amount of money to plain, ordinary AFFILIATES who, in turn, make astonishingly big paychecks just for referring them.
It’s true. It’s true! It could be true for You, too!
I want to show you how to make money blogging using affiliate products.
For a long time, I bloged for free. But now, I am putting my money where my mouth is and monetizing blogs!
After all – THIS BLOG YOU ARE READING makes me money in various ways! So HINT HINT just see what I do, and do likewise!
You can start TODAY to monetize your blog, make yourself some side hussle green, get those MSI going (Multiple Streams of Income) and make money online. WOO HOO
Okay peeps. Let’s get rollin’.
1. What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Think of an “Affiliate” as a spokesperson, who also gets paid.
A Spokesperson who tells others about a company/business or product/service for FREE and influences them to consider doing business with them – is a referrer. And there is nothing wrong with that. As time has gone on in the modern world, people tend to buy from others. So businesses decided to pay these referring folks a commission! Smart people!
And so – someone paid to influence others to buy something – is an Affiliate!
Capish?
It’s really simple in theory. But there is a bit of skill-sets and know how one needs to actually make $1000 or more a month with Affiliate Marketing.
Let’s say you run a Diet blog, and you decide to sell someone’s video series on the Keto Diet. And let’s say they agree to give you 50% of the total sale as a commission. Pretty cool deal, right?
And keep in mind they are not having to pay these people a thing. They are paying YOU to do the selling for them and the people who buy are none the wiser.
If you take a minute and go online and search for some online products or services that people buy right on the website, check out the footer area at the bottom of the homepage. I bet you will find a link that says “Affiliate Program” where they are reaching out to people like you and ASKING YOU to apply to be their affiliate.
You can become one on YouTube, your blog, a forum or your mailing list. Wherever you have access to people.
2. How Do I Choose The Right Products?
You may not realize this but, just blogging about anything and everything is NOT a GOOD IDEA. Naw, what you want to do is to get a little bit laser-focused on a NICHE that is known to a) Have lots of eager people seeking b) Has lots of people eager to pay money and c) Has lots of eager people already paying other Affiliates.
What many newbies (like you. It’s okay. Admitting your reality (you are a newbie) is the first step in finding solutions!) don’t get at first, is that even though you may love to blog about the seashell variations off the Coast of Spain, it might not be the best topic to make $1000 a month.
Don’t make the mistake of choosing the topic, the niche, the audience before you set your blog up for AFFILIATE SUCCESS.
How’s about that?
In your research, you might find the following: that most bloggers who are currently making significant income every month from blogging, are likely blogging about these niches: health, wealth, relationships.
There. I just took care of your research for you and saved you weeks, months of pain, struggle and the worst thing any newbie affilate could experience – disappointment with poor results.
No disappointments with you, my Affiliate-in-training! We are going to position you with success – right off!
When you look at the top affiliate bloggers in these three BEST AFFILIATE MARKETING NICHES (Health, Wealth, Relationships) its kinda nuts. How nuts? Well, the top Affiliates make 1/2 Million or more – per year. Yep. Told you.
Now look, I am not saying that you cannot make significant affiliate income in some cool sub niches like writers, golfers, cryptocurrency, et.
But here’s the thing:
Why not learn how to make a blog that creates for you at least $1,000 monthly in the largest niches where you have the best chance, and then just duplicate that success with a more challenging niche that you will now have all the training and previous success!?
Don’t ya think thats a much better idea?
I am sure people could train you as a newbie to ride in a rocket ship tomorrow. But what about commanding the rocket? Okay, now that is a whole different enchilada. De Nada.
You would need to learn how to fly an airplane minimally at first before you could fly a rocket.
Or driving a stock car in the Indy 500. Wouldn’t you stand the best chance of achieving that huge goal, by making some intermediate goals a reality first? Like maybe you should enter a car race in your neighborhood. Ha
Okay, I think I made my point.
Let’s get you a blog that brings in eventually a minimum of $1000 every month. And then from there, you can aim higher!
Now keep in mind, there are all kinds of things you can promote, such as these:
- Books
- Physical Products
- Digital Products
- Services (Internet Hosting etc.)
- Products you want to buy
This will be specific to the niche your blog is in. But remember, its best to start in the BIG THREE NICHES! What are those?
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If you put HEALTH, WEALTH & RELATIONSHIPS – winner winner! Chicken dinner!
But if you have zero desire or passion or ability to write even one 500 word post about health, wealth, relationships… okay, go ahead and choose that favorite niche of yours.
But if I had my druthers, I would start with the big 3 NICHES to RICHES!
But if you have some experience in blogging, and you just cannot even begin to write about anything other than baking, fine. Then maybe you If you’re in the baking niche, you may look at ingredients or electrical products you use.
Alternatively, if you’re in the Cycling niche, you may look for oils, tools, saddle bags and pedals that you’ve been using.
For all I know, there are millions in the ever-expanding seashell niche and I was just making light of it above.
Please forgive!
Take a moment and write down said NICHE you are going to choose below, and maybe some kinds of ways you can imagine very easily getting lots of affiliate programs to allow you to promote.
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Throw down everything you can think of on to this page, and we’ll look at how you can monetize it in the next step.
3. How Do I Become An Affiliate?
If you’re ready to get started on the journey into affiliate marketing, you’ve probably been waiting for me to tell you.
So here you go!
There are really just 3 Basic Steps to Becoming an Affiliate:
- Sign Up For An Account
- Look For Products & Services You Want To Sell
- Promote Them In Your Content
For some products or services, all you need to do is sign up to their program. There are all kinds of products that have “become an affiliate” or something similar in the footer links.
If you cannot find if they even have an affiliate program, I just recommend emailing them, or follow what ever procedure they recommend.
For the vast majority of products and services, there are NETWORKS that pre-select and vet not only quality products but ones that are the most requested and purchased.
You won’t have to do much homework with these Affiliate Networks because they have done all the heavy lifting for you!
4. How Can I Become An Amazon Affiliate?
Probably right now, Amazon is the most popular affiliate network. They run a program called Amazon Associates which helps you make money from almost any product available on their site.
You used to be able to make 10% commission. Then they reduced it to 8%. And then while I was finishing this post they REDUCED IT YET AGAIN! Well, look I would still use them for now. Why? Because they not only give you commission for the product you are promoting, but they put a cookie on your readers when they click on Amazon from YOUR LINK and you also get a commission on ANYTHING else they buy on Amazon – for not only that moment but for hours after.
All you have to do is place the products in your articles, or on resource pages (more on those later) and when people click through and buy, you’ll get a percentage.
If they continue to purchase other products, you can make a commission on them, too.
So, how does it work?
Step #1: Sign Up For An Account
Go to the Amazon Associates page, look for USA (Or for your country if not USA) and sign up for free. You need to have an account in every country that you plan to link to.
Does this make sense? If you’re in the UK, but want to link to a product only sold in the US you need an account on the USA sites.
In the link below, you can find information about all of the active associate programs.
You can sign up for an account here.
Once you’ve chosen an account, you’ll be asked to fill out some details. Where you’re from, your business, the type of site you own and so on.
Just fill it all out best you can and give it a shot! And remember, if you can get to the point where people are buying products that you recommend every week, then maybe it would be smart to diversify and use another network to make even more commission!
Step #2: Find Products You Want To Sell
Hopefully, you have an idea of products that you want to sell. If not you’re going to need to do some digging around.
Let me show you an example with the Anker phone power bank. If I search it in my Associates Dashboard, it’ll come up in my search results:
You can also do this by browsing the site, too.
Pretend you are looking for the hottest deals right now.
You can head to the Amazon homepage, select your niche, and be taken to a collective page of all the items available.
Now look for hot products that have lowered their price. And then you can see your favorites list.
Step #3: Now Just Add Them To Your Content
So – At the top of your page, you should see a toolbar just like in the picture above.
You should be shown the option to take that product text, product image or text and image format, and place it on your site.
For now let’s go for text.
Click to see a box like this:
All you have to do now is take the link and add it to some text in your blog post, or on one of your pages.
So you want to convert people who take option two (the one in bold) into buying the product you recommend.
You want to start getting good a either writing reviews or personal stories.
Product reviews are of course simply your educated opinion or even better your personal experience. There is no right or wrong answer. You recommend this product. They may go and buy it. Now if they don’t like it, no worries because all you are doing is saying your opinion or experience but no GIGANTIC hype-filled promises that “this will change your life forever” unless of course, it will. 🙂
You are simply sharing you expert opinion, showing the basic overview of the product.
Personal stories, on the other hand, allow you to show how the product helped you. And THAT is always the best way to go.
Conclusion
I sure hope this basic Affiliate Marketing 101 was helpful to you.
If you just want to go over this post every time you find a new product to promote, it will get easier and easier I promise!
Hey – I will try to get a cheatsheet PDF of this post. Let me know if you want one 100% FREE!
Talk to you Sense-able people later!
Jeff
