If you’re an influencer who is looking for a new revenue stream, affiliate marketing is a great opportunity to explore the world of eCommerce and earn money from it. With affiliate marketing, influencers are earning a solid income while exploring new products, services, and niches.
Affiliate marketing allows you to focus on the creation and promotion of your content while the vendor handles the order fulfillment.
Affiliate marketing is a multibillion-dollar industry that offers exciting professional opportunities to influencers and creators. In 2022, the affiliate marketing industry is expected to reach an estimated worth of $12 billion.
In this article we will discuss the basics and benefits of affiliate marketing, how you can get in on the action, and which tools you may find useful for your work.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy that allows you to promote products or services from different brands and earn a commission for each sale. By selecting an affiliate program that you like, choosing a product or service you enjoy, and promoting it in a unique way, you can build a strong business while avoiding order fulfillment, client complaints & returns.
Why become an affiliate marketer?
– Low cost & low risk
With affiliate marketing, you start earning income without having to invest upfront to get started. You don’t have to pay for expensive equipment, rent, and employees, or spend time on management. The advantages are easily seen by affiliates: no product storage, no risk of damage or loss, and no worry about returns or refunds.
– Easy to scale
Affiliate marketing offers you tremendous freedom. As an affiliate marketer, you can promote a variety of products from different companies, and earn commissions from all of them. This means that if you want to be an affiliate, you don’t have to commit to any one company or product. You can sign up with multiple companies, promote different products and even switch companies if the need arises without having to take a break from your online presence.
– High earning potential
Monetize your niche with affiliate marketing. It offers the chance to turn traffic into income with products and services you know people will be passionate about. You may not bring in a lot of money right at the jump, but there is real potential for affiliate marketing to replace your 9 to 5. Most people who make affiliate marketing their full-time job do so because they have built an effective system that has started generating a full-time income.
How to get started with affiliate marketing?
To get your affiliate marketing business started, follow these four simple steps:
- Choose your niche
- Pick a platform to sell
- Build an audience
- Convert traffic to sales
Step #1: Choose your niche
While there is no “one size fits all” approach to affiliate marketing, the most popular categories that sellers choose to sell in include:
- Lifestyle and wellness
- Technology
- Personal finance
- Pet care
These aren’t your only options, of course. There are hundreds of options available. Don’t just choose a niche you think will make you the most money — find one that you love so much you’d be willing to make a career out of it. Affiliate marketing is a business, and like any successful business, it requires hard work and dedication. Finding a niche that excites you is important in order to see your business grow.
After you decide on your niche, identify potential brands you can collaborate with. If you don’t know where to find them, you might want to put your confidence in Brand Directories where different businesses list their products and make them available for potential affiliates.
Step #2: Pick a platform to sell
With a wide range of platforms and products to choose from, the hardest part of getting started is choosing where you’ll do affiliate marketing and which product(s) will work best for your audience. There are myriad affiliate platforms out there to choose from:
Individual Affiliate Programs
To find good affiliate opportunities, ask your favorite brands if they have an ambassador or affiliate program. That way you can promote products you already appreciate and enjoy.
With affiliate programs like these, you’ll receive a unique link or code that will allow the companies to track every customer you send their way. Whenever your customers click the link or code, they get sent to the business’s primary site, and you get paid a percentage of each sale that your customer made.
Affiliate Platforms
The next best thing in the affiliate marketing realm is affiliate platforms.
It’s highly recommended that you use a well-established platform to start your affiliate marketing — one that will provide you with the tools you need to succeed. You need to make sure you’re getting the most out of your affiliate platform by looking at the details: commission rates, customer service, high-quality technical support, and more.
For example, you can start as an affiliate marketer with UCX. You get your personalized online store that reflects your personal brand. You combine different products from different brands, to turn your store into a diverse product portfolio that caters to your audience. You can earn extra income with no financial risk since the UCX Affiliate Program is free to sign up and use.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks act as a middleman between affiliates and brands. It is basically a marketplace full of affiliate programs. The sales are tracked via affiliate links from one website to another. However, be aware that affiliate networks charge substantial membership fees for their services.
You can find products and brands to work within the following affiliate marketplaces: ShareASale, Commission Junction (CJ) Affiliate, ClickBank, and more.
Step #3: Build an audience
After choosing an affiliate platform, it’s time to build your buyer audience. The best way to do that is by establishing who your target audience is. Once know who your audience is, use the following methods to discover more about their behavior online:
- Research competitors – you learn about which communities your customers are active in and what topics they respond to.
- Monitor your traffic – you know what kinds of articles and images resonate most with your current audience.
- Design content – you engage with subscribers and customers directly.
Once you’ve created a trusted community, create engaging content and place advertising throughout your site to attract new visitors. Recommend products that complement the ones your customers have purchased from you, and suggest items that will likely appeal to their tastes.
Step #4: Convert traffic to sales
In affiliate marketing, two conversions need to take place for you to make money.
– The first conversion is the click to the product page. This is one of your strongest areas — because you have direct control over the ad copy that leads readers to your site.
In order to succeed with the first conversion, it’s important to create quality content. The better your content is the more visitors you’ll have and the more sales you will make.
– The second conversion is when the customer actually purchases the product. One of the easiest and most reliable ways to improve your conversion rates is to play by the vendor’s rules.
This can be a challenge for many affiliate marketers, but once you understand how a vendor’s program works, you can take advantage of it to convert better.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn extra money on the side. It is a very effective, low-risk investment to help expand your marketing efforts. It provides you with a cost-effective way to sell different products through your personalized affiliate store while not spending huge sums without results.
The question of “How to make money with affiliate marketing” has a fairly simple answer. All you have to do is choose your niche, select products through affiliate programs or platforms, craft your content, and get paid.
Want to become an affiliate marketer with no investment? Get started with the UCX Affiliate Program.