For side hustlers and fledgling entrepreneurs the world over, affiliate marketing has been the first step towards financial freedom
It’s the perfect tool for learning the most important side of business…marketing!
It can almost be like a business with training wheels.
But what is it actually?
And how does it work?
You’ll learn all of that and more inside of this article!
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
The idea behind affiliate marketing is pretty simple, an existing business will give you a certain amount of money every time someone you told about their product buys it.
That makes sense, right?
They know that if you have your own audience it’s going to be easier for you to sell to them than it is for the business to find all of those people and sell to them
If we just stopped there you’d have enough of an understanding of affiliate marketing to go do it, but you probably want to know how the whole thing works…
So I’ll go into that too.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
In order for a business to pay you for a referral, they first have to be able to track that you referred someone to their website.
The way they do this is with affiliate links!
These are special links that have your unique affiliate ID in them, so every time someone buys after clicking that link, they know it came from you.
From here, everything else varies somewhat from business to business.
For example, everytime you visit a website your browser has a cookie from that website that shows you were there and how you got there.
These cookies can store your affiliate ID, so different affiliate programs have different timeframes that your cookies are good for.
Some will give you 30 days, meaning from the time someone clicks on your link, if they buy within 30 days you get the referral and they pay you the commission.
Some programs go as long as 90 days and beyond!
But the actual length of time that your cookie is valid for will vary.
Affiliate Marketing Networks vs Affiliate Products
There’s two main ways affiliate programs are run, either with affiliate networks or directly with the company & their affiliate product.
Affiliate networks are websites that host affiliate products from different businesses, usually hundreds of them.
With networks like these, you only need one affiliate ID and you can promote a wide array of products.
Additionally, it tends to be easier to get approved, you only need to be approved once, and all of your accumulated payments come from one place.
The downside is that usually the commission rates are lower.
Promoting affiliate products directly on the other hand complicates the process a bit more, but does give you the opportunity to earn higher commissions.
High Ticket Affiliate Programs
There are certain affiliate programs and products that pay significantly higher commissions than most.
These are almost always directly from the business and are much more difficult to get approved for…
But commissions for one sale can be $500 or higher.
I’ve even seen some as high as $2,000 per sale.
Best Products For Affiliate Marketing
Picking the right products to promote is one of the toughest parts of affiliate marketing.
The first place to start is whether you have a specific niche you want to be in or if you’re open to anything.
If you have a specific niche in mind it makes it a little easier to narrow down what types of products to promote.
The next thing you have to figure out is how you want to promote your affiliate products.
Are you going to write a blog and focus solely on SEO?
Do you want to rely heavily on social media platforms?
Is YouTube more your style?
It doesn’t necessarily matter which one you decide to use, it’s more that you know what products would do best on that platform.
For example, if you want to focus on Instagram as your primary traffic source, then it’s probably not a great idea to try to sell enterprise level software programs to CEO’s.
Likewise, if you want to use Pinterest as your main traffic source, then selling fishing reels is not your best bet.
Despite all of the variables, there are some general stand-bys you can stick to in order to find products that work for you.
Recurring Products
The first big thing is finding products that people continue to pay for.
An example would be like a software they use to run their business that they pay for monthly.
These recurring payments help you to earn more for every sale you make.
Some products that tend to be recurring are supplements and software.
Digital Products
Finding digital products can be a great way to improve your commissions since digital products have no fulfillment cost for the business that is selling them.
Additionally, companies that sell solely digital products tend to be better at marketing, which means you have a higher chance of converting anyone who clicks your affiliate link into a sale.
Quality Products
This seems like it should be obvious, but in many cases new affiliates are so excited about jumping in and starting to promote that they often overlook the most important part.
If you don’t have quality product that you’re promoting not only are you likely to get a high percentage of refunds, but you’ll also lose trust with the audience that you’re working so hard to build.
Ultimately selling low quality products might make you a few more bucks up front, but it will cost you MANY times as much money in the long run.
One thing that helps to avoid this is having as much actual experience with the product as possible.
If you’re still fuzzy on what you want to promote, you’re best bet is to start by using an affiliate network that has a variety of products that you can promote until you find the exact niche you want to be in.
4 Best Affiliate Marketing Networks
Amazon Affiliate Program
For many affiliates this seems like the holy grail of affiliate programs.
While it has its upside, it does have some major drawbacks that you need to watchout for.
On the positive side, there’s thousands and thousands of products to promote and almost anything someone buys from amazon inside of your affiliate cookie window counts towards your commission, even if it isn’t what you promoted.
The downside is that there is a ton of competition in this program, and the commissions are tiny, so to make any reasonable amount of money you’ll have to make a ton of sales.
Also, it can be difficult to be approved for the program if you don’t have an established website.
ClickBank Affiliate Program
This is one of if not the most popular affiliate networks around today, and for good reason, people make sales with their products!
Again, the good news is there are lots of different products to promote and clickbank even gives you data on how popular products are and what the average commission is per sale.
There’s even a nice mix of products that do have recurring billing.
But, like Amazon, this is extremely popular and there’s a lot of people promoting these products.
Clickbank is, however, easier to be approved for than Amazon.
CJ Affiliate
This is another big affiliate network, very similar to ClickBank.
However, it is a little bit harder to get approved for, especially if you have a newer website.
Additionally, there’s a lot more on going oversight of your website and the quality of it.
If they think your website falls below their standards after you’re approved, they will cut you from the program.
It’s not necessarily a deal breaker, but it is definitely something to keep an eye on.
Share-a-sale
Share-a-sale hosts a lot of bigger name brand companies’ affiliate programs, while also having a ton of lower quality ones.
This network is much more focused on physical products than ClickBank or CJ Affiliate are.
So if that’s what you’re looking for, then this is your network!
As far as being approved, this network is somewhere in between ClickBank and CJ Affiliate.
It’s not the easiest in the world, but it’s also not impossible to do for a beginner.
