Every time you go to Amazon, and buy a product, you’ve been exposed to “affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when companies will pay someone a commission or percentage of any sales that they generate.
The answer is that affiliate marketing is beneficial for both companies and consumers. Companies can get their products in the hands of more people, oftentimes without having to spend money on advertising. As a consumer, you can make money online by reviewing products for companies.
As with any form of business, there are some ups and downs. There are thousands of people that make affiliate sales every day and there are also thousands of people that lose money on affiliate marketing.
I want to explain all the aspects of affiliate marketing so that you can understand why companies use it and why YOU should take it seriously.
In order to understand affiliate marketing, you have to know what affiliate advertising is. Affiliate marketing is the act of earning a commission from an advertiser’s product sales.
If you aren’t familiar with affiliate advertising, then you might be asking yourself how that works.
It works like this: Most companies know that if they want to make more money, they need to advertise their products.
These companies have tons of money to throw at advertising but they would rather get the word out without spending any of their money.
This is where affiliate advertising comes in. In order for a company to gain more sales, they need people like you and me to market their products. This works out great for both parties. The company can advertise their products and they have no expenses, while you get paid by the company for each person that you refer to them.
So how does it work? Let’s say that you want to make affiliate marketing your full-time job. How would you go about generating sales and making money online?
First, you have to find a company that will let you promote their product. They will usually give you some sort of a brief description of the product (and they most likely have pictures of it). Then, you go out and market this product.
Here is a step-by-step guide of how to make affiliate sales.
Step 1: Identify Products That Interest You. This sounds really simple but it’s extremely important to do this step right. What are you passionate about? Figure out what products you would love to have an interest in and research them thoroughly. The more information you get, the better off you will be at selling the product.
Step 2: Find an Affiliate Program for the Product. You must first find an affiliate program for the product you are interested in. Having an affiliation with the company through their affiliate program will make you look more credible as a seller.
Step 3: Create an Account with That Program and Comply with Their Requirements. As long as the requirements are not too high, go ahead and complete them.
Step 4: Promote Your Products. You must promote your product on a fairly regular basis. It’s very important to keep promoting the product you are affiliated with.
Step 5: Keep Tracking Your Sales. Like anything else, if you aren’t careful, you can lose money doing this too (and that is not the point of affiliate marketing). The best way to keep track of the sales that come in is via software like ClickBank.
Step 6: Keep Promoting the Product. After you have completed step 5, you should keep promoting the product until you make a sale. This is extremely important because it all goes back to when I mentioned that most people fail at affiliate marketing. The main reason for their failure is that they stop promoting their product. If you don’t promote your product, no one will buy it and if no one buys it, there is no money to be made (and that money could be yours).
Everyone that is interested in affiliate marketing should read the entire article for tips on how to be successful at it. You can increase your chances of making some money at affiliate marketing if you do:
- Research Products Well
The more research that you do about a product before promoting it, the better off you will be. The reason for this is that you need to know whether or not the product is worth promoting.
Many people think that just because a product is popular, it means that it’s a good product. This is not always the case.
When you look at something like Fiverr, you may think that it’s the “best job on the internet” but there are 3 million people who work with Fiverr every day.
You have to take into consideration the amount of time that they are working and how long it will take to make money off of their work. In the end, it’s up to you whether or not you want to spend your time promoting this product or not.
If you are going to go through with promoting a product, you need to be certain that it’s something that is worth doing otherwise you will lose money.
- Read the Fine Print
You need to take a look at the affiliate program agreement before you sign up for it. This is important because you want to make sure that you are eligible for all benefits that are included in the contract. If a company denies your affiliate account, then it’s not going to be worth your time promoting their product.
- Follow the Rules
Promoting a product is not as easy as people think it is. It’s important that you follow the rules that are given to you by the affiliate program too.
If you don’t, then you will lose money and this may put a lot of people off from affiliate marketing altogether (which means that they won’t be able to make money).
If you keep following the rules of the affiliate program, then you can be successful. Of course, everyone isn’t going to follow the rules exactly as they are written, but if you are looking to make money then you should follow them anyway.
- Research Products Continuously
Never stop researching products once you have found something worthwhile. You never know what will become popular in the future and while a lot of people think that they’ve seen it all before, they may have missed something new.
If you find a new product that is worth promoting, then you need to promote it. The idea is that you will always be promoting something, so never stop looking for good products to promote.
- Your Program Should Have “Follow Through”
You need to choose a good affiliate program if you are going to make money at affiliate marketing. If there is no follow-through on the sale of the product, then you won’t make any money at all in the end. See more on this here.
You need to decide on a program that will allow you to make money. Always try to focus on programs that have solid follow-through because that’s what will make you money in the end.
- Conduct Your Own Research
If you are going to be promoting a product, then you should learn about it yourself before you start sending out emails and social media posts. Learn about it so well that you can say that it’s the best product in the world without even reading reviews online.
- Have the Proper Mindset
You need to have the proper mindset if you are going to be successful in affiliate marketing. If you want a passive income, then there is no other way around it: this requires hard work. You need to put in the extra hours for your blog, social media accounts, and everything else that you do.
You don’t want to wait for anything good. You can only make money when you are working as hard as anyone else, so you need to get started now.
- Don’t Trust Your Eyes in Affiliate Marketing
The best affiliate marketers don’t trust their eyes; instead, they rely entirely on the numbers. You need to be looking at sales and revenue before you start trusting what is in front of your eyes. If you consider your site’s traffic and sales to be an accurate barometer of the health of your business, then you are most likely going to fail in affiliate marketing.
Even if you rely entirely on the numbers and ignore everything else that’s going on with your business, there is still a risk of failure. There will be fluctuations in sales that may look like an indication of failure or sabotage, but they could just be temporary phases that don’t mean anything long-term.
So, if you can’t trust your sales numbers alone then how can you determine whether or not you are failing in affiliate marketing?
What’s the Difference Between Failure and Sabotage?
The main difference between failure and sabotage is that failure happens slowly over time while sabotage happens quickly. Therefore, when it comes to determining which one is taking place, there are many indicators to look at. However, some of those indicators occur long after the sabotage has taken place which means the damage may already be done.
For example, if you see big drops in traffic numbers on your website then you may be sabotaged. If you get flagged for bad behavior by Google, then that’s another sign of sabotage. In the case of both of these instances, your business has already been damaged. You want to make sure that this isn’t happening, but more importantly, once it does happen, you have to come up with a solution right away.
How Do You Know For Sure If Your Site Is Being Sabotaged?
There are many ways that you can tell if your site is being sabotaged. For example, one of the signs is that you’re getting a lot of bad reviews from customers (i.e., negative reviews). This is a sign of sabotage because it’s not something that will usually occur naturally.
The other signs that something is wrong are if a competitor starts doing better than you or if your site starts receiving new visitors. These are usually signs of sabotage because they’re things that aren’t typically happening on their own. While it’s possible that these things could happen, they won’t in a normal situation. The fact that they happen all at once could be a sign of sabotage.