The first time I dabbled in the affiliate marketing, was about 20 years ago. I was a homeschool blogger and I was trying to monetize my site(s). I signed up with ShareASale and also some other mom affiliate program, that of which I cannot recall the name. It’ll come to me eventually and when it does, I will update it here (inquiring minds wanna know).
I earned nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Apparently, I sucked at how to drive traffic to my site (yes, I tried paid traffic) and if they did come, they did not stay. That, and the fact that I was a busy homeschooling mom to 5 boys and I didn’t have the stick-to-it-ness that is required of those serious about earning money online.
Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about affiliate marketing. And now, I’m going to show you how you can be another success story in this industry. Let’s start with the basic foundation. I Googled, What is affiliate marketing. Without fail, Google replied
Okay. So affiliate marketing is selling someone else’s product or service. You do this by signing up with that company’s affiliate program, and if approved, you will be issued an affiliate link (a unique identifier just for you that the company uses to track the number of clicks and sales from your website) that you can then insert into your posts about their product or service.
So, if the reader clicks on the link and buys the product or service from that company, then you will be paid a small amount of money called a commission. The commission could be a flat rate, reoccurring rate or it could be a percentage of the sale.
This is really a novel way to make money. You don’t need to sell anything. All you need to do is recommend a product or service (or don’t recommend that – more on that later) and send traffic through your link to the company. Many people have earned thousands of dollars per month, just by promoting another company’s product or service.
Amazon Associates has an affiliate program which is completely free. You can promote any product on Amazon. Chances are, if one of your readers clicks on the link, they have already decided to purchase the product or service to solve their problem. Another interesting aspect is that the buyer might purchase unrelated items on Amazon and you will receive a commission for it (as long as it is within 24 hours).
Certainly, Amazon Associates is not the only affiliate program. The majority of companies have some type of affiliate program. It simply makes good marketing sense. Your job is to decide what it is you’d like to promote and go to it!
Want to Become an Expert Affiliate Marketer?
If you have any questions or comments, or even if you’d like to share about your successes or fails in affiliate marketing, I’d love to get your feedback in the comments below. 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼