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If you’re interested in affiliate marketing – congrats! You are about to learn one of the most lucrative business models of the 21st century! I chose the affiliate business model because there is very little-to-no money required to start affiliate marketing, endless possibilities, and huge growth potential. In fact, affiliate marketing is a multibilliondollar global industry that shows no signs of slowing down.

In other words, you are definitely in the right place at the right time!

 

How Affiliate Marketing Works

If you’re new to the concept of affiliate marketing, it’s very easy to understand. It’s essentially a revenue-earning strategy of promoting other company’s products and receiving commissions for every sale, lead, or click that is made.

Affiliates are provided with a unique link that includes their unique identity code. Every click, lead, and sale coming from this link is tracked by the merchant or the network and the affiliates are paid according to the contract (per visitor referred, per lead collected, or per sale). There are thousands of online merchants offering affiliate programs in every industry you can think of, and the earning potential is unlimited.

Some merchants even pay a commission every time the referred customer renews his subscription or buys the product again, resulting in residual income for the affiliate.

Source: www.thedoublethink.com

 

 

Getting Started As An Affiliate

With the low barrier to entry, anyone can sign up for affiliate programs and start promoting offers. However, the most successful affiliates consist of bloggers, vloggers, and social media influencers. A knowledge of content creation is essential to becoming a high-earning affiliate marketer.

Content creation is the foundation of affiliate marketing.

 

Posting affiliate links all over the internet isn’t what this is about… nobody likes spammers!

I’ve broken down the process of growing a profitable online business with affiliate marketing in 5 easy steps:

 

Step 1:  Choose Your Niche

The first step is to pick your niche, or topic of your content. There is an affiliate opportunity for almost any niche you can think of. There are two main essential elements you should consider when picking your niche:

You’re passionate about it – If you’re not very interested in the topic, you’re likely to get bored with creating content and quit.

It’s profitable – Pick a niche where either the demand of the products is high or the products are sold at a price where you’ll get a good commission.

Pick a niche you’re passionate about and that’s profitable.

 

Step 2:  Create Content

Now it’s time to decide on the type of content platform you’ll be using to share valuable information related to your niche. It could be a website, a YouTube channel, or a social media profile… or a combination. You can develop a brand identity of an social media influencer or become an expert of your niche with a “niche blog”.

It really depends on which content platform you feel comfortable using and your target audience frequents. If you enjoy writing articles, maybe create a niche blog. If you’d rather create videos, start a YouTube channel. There’s no right or wrong way method of creating content as long as it’s providing value to your target audience.

 

 

Step 3:  Research Affiliate Programs

Finding the best affiliate offers for your target audience is the fun part! Simple Google “your niche + affiliate program(for example: natural skincare affiliate programs) to find a list of companies offering affiliate programs. Alternatively, you can head over to a reputable affiliate network like Share A Sale, ClickBank, and Commission Junction to search for the affiliate programs that match your niche.

It’s important to select affiliate products or services you believe in and would feel comfortable recommending to your closest friends/family – NOT just the offers that pay the highest commission. If you want to market with integrity, carefully select your offers because your reputation is on the line.

Affiliate marketing with integrity will cause you to earn more commissions overtime.

 

Applying for Affiliate Programs

Once you find a suitable company with products you’d like to recommend to your audience, apply to become an affiliate by completing the affiliate application. This is much easier than it sounds. Many applications do ask about your website or social channels, which is why I recommend creating your content platforms and website before applying – to increase your chances of getting approved. Sometimes it doesn’t matter and you can get immediate approval to an affiliate program regardless of your web presence.

Upon getting approved to any given affiliate program, they will likely email you a unique tracking link or provide access to marketing materials for you to promote. These can include banners, additional links, videos, email swipes, and other creatives.

 

Step 4:  Promote Your Affiliate Offers

Some affiliate marketers will start posting their offers straight away without providing any valuable content to their audience first. I do not agree with this method. By posting quality content and build trust among your audience first, your visitors are much more likely to purchase your recommended offers. It makes more sense to implement revenue-earning strategies once the trust is built.

Blogging is a great way to provide valuable content for your audience.

 

There are many ways to get creative promoting your affiliate offers with your content. Some include:

  • Embed your affiliate links in your blog content
  • Add your banner ads linking to your affiliate offers to your blog sidebar
  • Post your affiliate links in your YouTube video descriptions
  • Create a sales funnel with embedded with your affiliate link and promote it on your Instagram profile
  • Write articles on Medium and embed your affiliate link within the content
  • and much more…

 

Step 5:  Grow Your Online Business

At this point, you continue creating new and engaging content on your chosen platforms and recommending your affiliate offers to your audience. Your audience will continue growing as your affiliate income and any other revenue streams you decide to add. Now the possibilities and endless for your new online business!

More content leads to more traffic, resulting in more affiliate profits.

 

The All-In-One Affiliate Marketing Platform

I’ve been teaching myself internet marketing since 2009, but in 2013 I was fortunate to come across the most trusted and respected affiliate marketing platform in the world – Wealthy Affiliate!

Wealthy Affiliate was a complete game-changer for me because the training allowed me to piece together everything I’d learned previously and finally start moving forward with my business. You can read my full review of Wealthy Affiliate in this post.

 

Wealthy Affiliate Isn’t for Everyone

The truth is, you can learn affiliate marketing on your own just by watching YouTube videos and reading articles online. If you’re really self-motivated, driven, and able to quickly absorb information from a wide variety of sources and put everything together on your own, you probably don’t need Wealthy Affiliate.

However, if you want to speed up your results and take your online business seriously, you may want to consider investing in the proper education, training, support, mentorship, and tools to grow your online business…and Wealthy Affiliate has you covered on everything.

Additionally, Wealthy Affiliate is not for those who do not want to create content. If you do not enjoy or have time to create content on a regular basis, then Wealthy Affiliate probably wouldn’t be a right fit for you.

Here are my top 5 reasons I recommend anyone try it out:

 

No Cost or Risk Involved

You can get the free lifetime Starter membership with zero risk and zero obligation. There’s no credit card required, so you don’t have to worry about getting charged for a trial.

 

Industry-Leader

Wealthy Affiliate has been in business for 17 years, in 193 countries, with over 1.4 million members! It’s the largest and most trusted internet marketing community in the world!

 

Help When You Need It

Get 24/7 tech support for your blog and access to an entire community of coaches and other thousands of affiliate marketers globally who are there for you every day. You can actually contact the owners of the platform, Kyle and Carson, directly!

 

Save Money

Many affiliate marketing courses provide training and education, but Wealthy Affiliate goes beyond by also providing access to the tools and resources you need to run your business from scratch… including reliable, secure WordPress hosting, keyword research, domain management, site feedback and comments, and more!

 

Surround Yourself With Successful People

Part of being successful is surrounding yourself and networking with other successful people in the industry you want to succeed in. There are 1,000’s of people succeeding every day within Wealthy Affiliate, and as a member, you’re able to mingle and interact with them directly.

 

Create Your Free Account

 

Affiliate Disclaimer

I earn money by participating in affiliate programs. Many of the links on this blog www.passiveincomerising.com (and also those in the email newsletters) earn affiliate commissions. This means I earn money whenever you purchase a product that I link to. When you see links on this blog, please assume they are affiliate links. At the same time, I must say that our core goal is to always recommend useful and valuable resources and content that empowers and educates online entrepreneurs to become financially free.