What is affiliate marketing about and how can it help you?
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. Wikipedia
So that’s what it is but why would anyone use other people to market their products?
The answer is simple in that it increases sales thus delivering more income for the business.
It is simply a sharing of the margin in a product to accelerate sales to increase the total return.
But how does this help you?
Affiliate marketing is the best game in town.
You are probably saying to yourself who wants affiliates and how do I find them?
As I have said before the biggest is without doubt Amazon. A large percentage of sales is done by their affiliates in all sorts of markets. Plus, you can go for large or small items.
Another way if you have a particular interest in a product is to search for companies that sell those products.
A great and little-known trick
What you do is type in Site: URL affiliate Then you find all the details.
I did it with site:nike.com affiliate and there were all the details. This little trick is a well-kept secret so enjoy playing the game.
Then there is JVZoo, warrior forum, Udemi, and another big one at Shareasale.com
Shareasale has endless opportunities for a result
When you want to be an affiliate you really need to present a case of what and how you will go about it.
Having a track record really helps but starting out needs a bit of planning.
You need to have some sort of sales channel and the best is a website or sales funnel.
Doing a review of the product and adding a link to your channel can produce traffic and a great selling point. To do a review you can search the web or go to a local store posing as a buyer. The salespeople will provide plenty of information to work with.
Ethically you should own a product to review it and feature how well it has worked for you. It is not a necessity though. Sometimes doing a bad review on a product has a reverse action where people still buy because of alternate learning.
So how does this all happen?
The selected company that chooses to use you following an application process will supply you with a personal link. Example Nike.com/peter285632 (not real) that identifies you.
They process the sale, ship the goods and cut you a share of the profit. The share may be, say 2% or right up to 20-30-40 % depending on the product.
Now 2% on an $8 book is around $0.16 so you need a lot of books to make a living.
20% on a home gym at $2000 makes a big difference. $400 a sale would be great.
What do you do?
You need a web page or funnel or sales page at the minimum.
You can get this for free at Wealthy affiliate plus a bundle of training to set you on the road to freedom.
Physical products v Virtual products
We have looked at physical products but what are virtual products?
Virtual is all cloud-based material that may be E.Books, training packages online, web hosting anything you can’t touch.
I am an Affiliate for Wealthy Affiliate along with about 300,000 others. Why? Because it is the best Web hosting, Website builder and niche finder on the market. Am I biased? No definitely not I searched for many a day to find an honest site that would have everything in one place without ripping my savings apart.
If you subscribe to a free service at Wealthy affiliate what do I get? Diddly squat is the answer. But,
if you go premium, and a good percentage do I earn about $22 a month over the time you are a member. Pretty cool?
Then if you recommend someone the same things apply, you start making money every month.
I limit my exposure to a few products that support what I do on a daily basis.
Wealthy Affiliate has a great Keyword tool called Jaaxy. Now you can get access to this for free but if you really want to ramp it up there is a small cost.
Noble Samurai has a side called Content Samurai where you can make great Videos.
Videos are really the buzz and this is so easy. No camera or special equipment. This is also a great work from home business discussed in another blog on my site.
Is it the best game in town, sure is and it is easy to get into. Consider it a great career.
Peter Hanley
