What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Many people ask me the question, “What is affiliate marketing”, or “How do you make money online”, or even, “I can’t see how having a website can earn you money” or “It sounds like a scam to me”! The problem is that most people do not know how to make money online or they have purchased a scam product or some people will actually sign up for something but take no action! Here I want to explain more about what affiliate marketing is and how you can earn money from selling other people’s products.

So what is affiliate marketing?

This is how Wikipedia explains affiliate marketing “Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts”.

So in other words, your selling someone else’s product, for example; you have your own website and then receiving a commission, you do not physically handle the product or deal with any complaints or issues.

Let me explain more, I have a website that sells garden machinery, I believe I have something like 6000 products on the website, but I never see the actual physical products, I don’t deliver any products and I don’t deal with any defects that the products may have. Incidentally, you may be thinking, I don’t have a website, so I can’t start affiliate marketing, well maybe you don’t have a website, but is actually very easy to build your own website, I will explain more in another post.

To sell affiliate products you will have to join an affiliate program,  this is a very simple signup process, you need to find an affiliate program for your particular niche and then apply. Ideally, you need to have content on your website before you apply, otherwise, you may not be accepted, the affiliate provider will check your website out, but at the same time, they want to sign you up as they want you to promote their particular products.

Once you have joined an affiliate program you will receive your unique tracking ID which tells the affiliate company that the customer purchase from your website. You can actually send someone to an affiliate website or you can send them directly to the particular product that you are promoting.

I am in quite a few different programs, there are lots of affiliate programs to choose from.

Finding the right affiliate program

You may be thinking that your particular niche may not have an affiliate program, but if you carry out a search on Google you will find that there is an affiliate program for almost every niche. I just carried out a search on Google for “programs for garden products affiliate” and there were numerous amounts of programs available. Admittedly, garden products are probably quite popular, so I tried another search which was “affiliate programs for telescopes” which I guess is not so popular. Even for the above topic, which I would imagine is not that popular, numerous affiliate programs appear in the search.

When and how do I get paid?

Affiliate programs vary on how they pay their clients, some affiliate programs pay out monthly and others you can set a minimum payment threshold. First of all, before you get paid you have to drive traffic to your website, there are many ways of doing this, I will cover this more thoroughly in future articles.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, one way is to write a genuine product review, as most of us know Amazon sells lots of their products to people reading reviews, me being one of them.

Another popular way to promote affiliate products is through social media, you could create a Facebook business page, open a Twitter account, in the name of your business or product, Google plus is another good way to share your brand or product.

There are numerous ways on the Internet to promote a product, you can also go down the line of paying to promote your product, popular places to advertise your product are, Google AdWords, Bing, Facebook ads, Twitter ads, LinkedIn ads and classified places like Gumtree and Craigslist.

Can I make money from affiliate marketing

This is probably the big question that most people want to ask, “Can I make money from affiliate marketing”? The answer is yes, you definitely can and I do! Like any business, whether it’s an off-line business or online business, it takes time and you have to work at it, but all things are possible. I remember that the first moneymaking website that I put up in 2007 sold the product the first day that the website went live, it wasn’t an expensive product, but I actually sold something and made a commission, if I can do it you can also do it!

I would say the best way to move your business forward is to try and do something each working day and be consistent, consistency is almost the biggest way to success in my experience.

What do I do now?

I know too many people who say, “I’m thinking about what niche I could promote online” or “I want to start something online, but I’m not quite sure when”! If you have this mindset, you probably won’t do anything! The best way is to find a niche that you like and have an interest in and then do it and take action!

Many people make the mistake of not having the proper training, I started working online over 10 years ago and I learnt the hard way, thankfully help and training is available! I’m a member of this Internet marketing membership site and I have been for the past 3 years plus and I will carry on being a member! If I had found the site earlier in my early Internet marketing days, it would have saved a lot of money because they teach you step-by-step about affiliate marketing.

If you have any questions or need any help, please feel free to comment below this article.

The Christian Internet Marketer