3 ways to earn money via affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a business model in which you (the affiliate) earn a commission on each sale you make by promoting a brand’s product.

The above definition gives a reasonably comprehensive understanding of the affiliate marketing system, but it is lacking, as it only covers three of the four parties involved in the process.

While a person can establish a direct relationship with a brand and promote its product for a commission, more often than not, an intermediary party (an affiliate network) is involved.

An affiliate network aids in payments and product delivery while also acting as a database of products that the affiliate can choose to promote.

So, an actual affiliate marketing system will involve the following parties: 

• The affiliate (promoting the product and getting a commission)
• The brand (whose product is being promoted and sold)
• The customers (who are buying the products)
• The affiliate network (intermediary)

YouTube Channel

How much would it cost?

Considering that you already have a reasonably sound computer, you’ll need to invest in a camera, microphone, webcam, and a monthly subscription of a video editing software, all of which would cost you anywhere from $300 to $500 (most of which is a one time expense).

Pros & Cons

Cons

• Video content creation is not easy. A lot of effort and time goes into writing the script, making the video, editing it, and then uploading it on YouTube.

• Niches like tech, gaming, etc. are highly saturated, making them difficult to excel in. There are others like DIY plumbing that are easier to rank but require a huge amount of effort in content creation.

What kind of videos should you make?

There are a plethora of video formats on YouTube, but just a few of them became successful for affiliate marketing. These include:

• Comparison videos/product reviews
• Best-of videos (Best smartphones of 2020, best shoes for jogging, etc.)
• How-to videos (DIY, How to build a shack, etc.)

Still, video format or niche is of secondary importance. The most important thing to remember is to provide value to your customers. If you are creating salesy content without providing any real value, then regardless of your video format or niche, you are more than likely to fail.

It is best to choose a niche you are passionate about, something you know inside and out. That way, not only can you provide value to your customers and build their trust (which will compel them to click the affiliate links), but you will also enjoy the process.

How to get traffic?

The whole idea of YouTube affiliate marketing is based on viewership. Therefore, it is only logical that a good amount of effort should be spent on getting more traffic to get more sales.

Here are a few different strategies you can employ to get more traffic:

Google & Organic Search

Ranking on Google is a great way to get more viewership.

You can do this by finding queries that have video ranking using Ahrefs (SEO tool).

Don’t forget to do keyword research to find keywords that have huge search traffic. You don’t want to spend hours creating and editing videos on a topic only a dozen people are searching for in a month.

YouTube is the second largest search engine, and you want to rank on it as well.

The fundamental idea is similar to that of ranking on Google; however, it’s a different platform and the strategies will differ.

Subscribers

Ever wondered why YouTubers always ask you to like, subscribe, and comment?

YouTube’s algorithm is designed to recommend videos similar to the ones that you’ve watched or liked in the past.

Moreover, YouTube has a subscription bar on the left of the screen that shows the channels people have subscribed to along with their number of new releases.

The higher the number of subscribers, the higher the number of viewers.

Start a blog (organic traffic)

Affiliate marketing through blogging is a common online business model, but it is far from being easy.

But if you play your cards right and are truly passionate about what you’re writing, there’s a good chance you’ll at least make an above-average income out of it.

What’s the starting cost?

With just the following three things, you can create an affiliate marketing blog:

• Domain name
• Hosting
• Autoresponder (software used to automatically answer emails)

You can buy a domain name for $9 to $12 a year from Namecheap and a hosting for $12 to $25  a month (dedicated hosting costs a lot more because of added technical support). Moreover, you can get a monthly subscription of an autoresponder for $15.

So, you can start your affiliate marketing career with blogging with just $35 to $50.

How to create your blog for affiliate marketing?

Select a niche

You should only select a niche you love, period.

However, if that niche:

• Is high in demand
• Has a good number of products
• Has an audience that is eager to buy

That’s a plus.

Create great content

The basis of affiliate marketing is content.

Your content should be interesting, informative, engaging, compelling, and valuable to the readers.

And to make such content, you need to be passionate and highly knowledgeable about the niche you’re in.

Do what others are doing, but better

Follow the top-tier influencers and bloggers in your niche. See what they have shared, if it is something that has gotten huge reach and interaction, that means there’s a demand for it.

Now that you know what sells, sell the same thing but better.

You can do this by discussing the topic in further detail, you can share infographics to make it easier to comprehend, or you can imbed relevant videos, etc.

Network

Networking is crucial to making it big in this business.

If you are commenting and sharing other people’s content, there’s a good chance they’ll return the favor and help you grow.

Promote

If your content is not visible to the target audience, no matter how well it is written, no one will read it.

The best way to promote your content is to be active on forums and social media handles related to your niche.

Answer queries, share insights and interact with others to gain more visibility.

Guest posting (writing on someone else’s website/blog) is another great promotion tactic.

Remain Persistent

There’s little chance that you’ll make any income in the first few months of starting.

Most people bail out in the first few months because they aren’t able to generate the amount of income they thought they would.

But if you remain persistent and generate content with consistency, you are sure to make a considerable amount of passive income out of it, sooner or later.

And the only way you’ll remain persistent is if you are working in a field that you’re truly passionate about.

Build an email list

Building an email list should be among your top priorities.

The thing with emails is that it helps you remain memorable to your customers through scheduled emails that provide value.

Paid Advertisement

Facebook Ads

For your Facebook ads to run successfully, you must know your buyer persona which would include gender, age, locality, interests, etc.

But even if your buyer persona is on point, directing them to a sales page won’t work. The problem lies in the fact that you are targeting a cold audience.

The best strategy should be to direct them to something of value.

Your aim should be to get them tagged by Facebook Pixel (software used to tag visitors for remarketing) and move them through the sales cycle.

Facebook Remarketing Ads

Now that you have tagged your visitors through Facebook Pixel, you can start remarketing (sending ads to people who have visited your website).

Since these visitors have already visited your site and shown interest, you can direct them to your converting pages (sales pages).

The kinds of ads you send to these visitors can be adjusted individually according to the pages they visited and what they did there.

Google Search Ads

Google search ads work by bidding on keywords.

This bidding is further divided into:

First-page bid estimate: bidding to be shown on the first page of Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Top of page bid estimate: bidding to be shown among the top ads on the first Google SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

First position bid estimate: bidding to be shown at the top of other ads

Again, people usually direct visitors to sales pages using Google search ads, which is a flawed strategy as these visitors have zero buying intent.

A better strategy is to target low competition, long-tail keywords with intent to get Pixeled visitors (for remarketing) or email addresses for email campaigns.

Budgeting for paid advertisement

Several factors come into play when deciding the budget of your paid ads campaigns, such as:

• Niche
• Target locality/currency
• Competition
• Seasonality
• Target keywords

You need to do a fair bit of research on the above factors to estimate your paid ads budget.

Google paid ads are charged through the following two models:

• CPC model (cost per click)
• CPM model (cost per mile/thousand impressions)

Suggestions

• Use the CPM model to increase visibility.
• Start with a lower budget and keep on testing and optimizing based on their performance.

Conclusion

Now that you have a basic understanding of the three main affiliate marketing models, you are in a better position to weigh the pros and cons of each model and decide which model works best for you.

But whatever model you choose to go with, remember, persistence is the key to success.