If you’re new to online marketing you may not be fully familiar with the term Affiliate Marketing yet and want to know more about its potential as a home business.
Or maybe you’ve made your own start as an affiliate and you’re looking for advice, clarification or a hefty dose of motivation.
If so, you’re in the right place because in this post I’ll explain:
- Exactly what affiliate marketing is
- What being an affiliate marketer involves
- How it stacks up against other home businesses
- How to approach it the efficient and profitable way
Looking for the perfect online home business?
Sounds like a headline on a guru salespage I know, but in my experience affiliate marketing IS the perfect business.
It’s more popular than you could ever imagine, as it’s been an established and efficient online business model for decades.
Whether it’s the biggest Blue Chip brands, or smaller successful companies you may never have heard of, they’re all hungry for good affiliates and ready to pay huge commissions. In fact thousands of companies swear by it and there are millions of work from home affiliates around the world.
Hmmm . . . sounds popular, I wonder why?
Simple really. It works perfectly for both parties.
Here’s how it works and why it’s the perfect business model . . .
Businesses:
Online businesses want to sell more of their products without huge marketing costs and affiliate marketing is the perfect way to do that.
Affiliates spend their time sending targeted visitors to the business via their website and if those visitors buy the product, the business pays the affiliate a commission.
The commissions are paid out every 2 to 4 weeks usually, so the business is paying the affiliate after they’ve made the sale, which keeps their up-front costs way down.
Affiliates:
People are drawn to affiliate marketing when they want to earn online without having to create products of their own.
As 1000’s of businesses will pay a commission for each sale that an affiliate refers to their product site, you can get started immediately, with a simple website, without creating or sourcing products of your own.
It’s a match made in heaven. The product owner, affiliate marketer and customer all benefit.
As an affiliate you don’t deal directly with customers, there are no deliveries to worry about and you can work the hours that suit you. And with commissions anything from 5% to 80% of the product price, your income can soon add up and all while you’re sat in your PJ’s.
It’s sounding better by the minute, right? So what’s the catch?
There isn’t one.
However, it takes work to be successful, so don’t believe the hype from the sales-pages promising ‘Push Button Riches’. Affiliate Marketing is the same as any other business, you’ll get out what you put in.
The exciting thing is though, compared to most other home businesses, you don’t have to leave the house at all and you don’t deal with anyone face to face. It’s ridiculously cheap to get started and with the right approach and information, you can grow your business and income rapidly.
Initial outlay can be a huge barrier to many people looking to start a home business. Affiliate marketing is so accessible because you only need web hosting (£10 a month) and a domain name (£10 a year).
What other business can you start for £20?
Such a low cost also means if you try it and for some reason decide it’s not for you, you haven’t wasted much money.
Compare that to trying a traditional offline business, where you’ll pay a £100,000+ franchise fee, tie yourself into property and equipment contracts, have stationary printed and countless other large costs associated with setting up a bricks and mortar business.
Online is the way to go if you’re looking for the perfect home business. Low cost, low maintenance and you can grow at your own pace, without worrying about paying business bills.
Getting customers is much easier too as millions of people now shop online and with more and more people joining them every day, your pool of potential customers is almost infinite.
So how do you become an affiliate?
Here’s an overview of how to do it, step by step:
Choose a niche
Your niche is simply your subject. There are many to choose from but you’re best with one that is popular, well established, has a ton of traffic and of course has lots of relevant affiliate products to promote.
You can choose something you know about or go for one of the big niches popular with affiliates.
For instance, health and make money online are perfect niches for affiliates. Millions of people are actively looking for info and products in both of these niches. And they are spending a fortune to get the solutions they are looking for.
They are also great because they have so many sub niches, which are easy for the new affiliate to promote in and it’s much easier to attract targeted traffic in a sub niche.
For instance, health sub niches include weight loss, fat burning, muscle building, every health problem from acne to diabetes, sexual health, mental health, hypnosis, the list goes on.
Products include informational reports and videos, equipment, DVD’s, books, nutritional supplements, foods, clothing and a whole lot more.
Build a website
Don’t worry if you’ve never done this before, it’s really easy. When you get your web hosting, you’ll have access to WordPress, which is a very powerful yet very simple to use website builder.
You can choose from 1000’s of free and paid ‘themes’ to make your website look professional and relevant to your niche, in just a few clicks. Once installed you simply create a post, add your content, images and affiliate links or banners to products, then publish it.
You can set up your website in a couple of hours max, even if you’re brand new to this.
Add content
The content on your site is usually based on valuable niche information or product reviews and all the info you need to write your posts is available from a simple Google search.
Find valuable info, re-write it or present it in a different way and you’re an instant expert in your niche. You don’t have to know much about the niche to profit from it.
Each post you add becomes a doorway for more free visitors, as your posts get ranked in the search engine results. You can also add relevant videos, infographics, diagrams, lists, quizzes, questionaires, related to your niche for extra varied content, to keep your visitors engaged.
Find suitable affiliate products to promote
Go to Google and type in ‘niche affiliate programs’ replacing ‘niche’ with the actual niche you are interested in. You’ll need to sign up to the affiliate programs you’re interested in before you can promote their products, but it’s fast and free.
You could focus on promoting one particular product and focus your site around that, but it’s best to promote multiple products, at multiple price points.
Remember, if the company creating the one product you’re promoting goes out of business, your site does too.
Multiple products, from multiple vendors, along with a variety of price points however, offer your visitors much more and will appeal to virtually all of them.
Don’t forget, here at ClickSure we have lots of great products for you to promote, with excellent commission rates, so make sure you check out our marketplace.
Add your ‘affiliate links’ to your site
Once you’ve signed up to your chosen programs, you can then grab your affiliate links or banners to promote products on your site. It’s very easy to set up and all explained step by step when you join.
When your visitors click them to view the product site, the coded links identify to the product owner that YOU made the sale and earned the commission. You can use in text links or banners provided by the product owner to promote with on your site.
Attract visitors to your website
Visitors, also known as traffic, are obviously the life blood of your business and luckily there are now 100’s of ways to attract them to your website.
You can aim for free or paid traffic, or a mixture of both.
Paid traffic can be virtually instant and doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be pennies per visitor and you can control your spend very easily by setting daily limits.
Free takes a little longer, but keep in mind once it starts arriving, it will grow organically as your content is constantly indexed in the search engines, bringing you more and more visitors.
Whichever you choose, it doesn’t take very long to build up your traffic and income.
What I’ve given you here is just a quick overview.
All of the above takes just a few hours to set up and you then focus on writing your content and attracting traffic on a daily basis. Keep doing this and success will come, it really is that simple.
Low cost start up, easy to learn as you go along, thanks to a ton of easily available, expert info and virtually no limit regarding how big you grow your income, make affiliate marketing the perfect home business.
A little dedication, a daily work plan, a positive attitude and no more chasing non-existent push button solutions, will ensure you build your salary replacing affiliate income much easier than any other home business.
