There is plenty of information out there on affiliate marketing, but the problem is with so much information there is going to be bad information, really good information, confusing information, and information that lies somewhere in between.
To tell you in simple terms, You get a commission when the product is purchased by the consumer through your link. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to align product and consumer. That’s it!
Here is a diagram to show how affiliate marketing works:
There are a few terms that you will want to become familiar with.
Affiliate Program (company like Amazon). Most companies have an affiliate program, 99% of all the brands in the world in fact can be promoted online and you, as an affiliate, can earn a commission.
Amazon is one of the biggest affiliate programs in the world and will allow you to promote 100’s of MILLIONS of products, with a single account. Pretty awesome right?
Affiliate (YOU). You are the affiliate, this means that you can join companies like Etsy, eBay, Walmart, and Amazon (and 10,000’s of others) and promote their products and services.
When you join these companies’ Affiliate Programs, they will give you a special “affiliate link” that is exclusive to you, and allows you to track all the sales you generate.
Earning Affiliate Commissions. Amazon offers around 3-6% commissions, Depending on the company and affiliate program, they typically pay between 2% and 75% in commissions.
As an affiliate marketer, your potential has no limit. The more people you can get buying through your affiliate links, the more money you make.
Many affiliate marketers make several million dollars per year, and this can be a reality for anyone that is willing to put forth the effort to build an affiliate marketing business. But HOW do you build an affiliate marketing business? I am going to cover that in the next section.
The 4-Steps to Start a Successful Affiliate Marketing Business
So how can YOU create your own successful affiliate marketing start-up? There are actually only 4-steps to creating a successful affiliate marketing business, and if you can follow these and have access to the training, tools and support necessary to run your business (which I will be helping you with), you are going to be off and running! So I am not only going to be giving you the exact steps, but helping you understand how you can accomplish these steps.
Step 1: Choose an Idea/Interest.
The first thing you are going to need to do before you start the build-out of any business is come up with an idea for your business. This is also called the “niche” stage of your business. This could be anything, from training a puppy to basketball sports betting, video games, etc.
I tend to recommend that people choose a passion/interest as their niche. This way, you will truly love your business and when you love what you do, you never have to “work” a day in your life.
How to Choose Your Idea: Choose a niche or a passion. There are close to 5 BILLION people online now, so even the most obscure niches have vast audiences. If you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you have direct video classes walking you through the niche selection process along with direct help from the community (and myself) who can give you feedback on your niche.
Join the Community -> Enroll yourself here to join the Community
Step 2: Build a Website.
Your website is the foundation of your business. Think of it like a shop within the offline world. If you have no “storefront”, you don’t have the ability to attract and help customers, or the ability to sell anything.
Your website is in essence your storefront, where you are able to help your audience, communicate with your audience, and promote products/services to your audience.
If you don’t have a website, you don’t stand the hope of running an online business. It is the first and key necessity you need to create a long-term business.
How to Accomplish: You can build high-performing and profit-ready websites with ease, at Wealthy Affiliate. You can even get up and running with one for completely free, within the Starter account. Another perk to using the website platform over at Wealthy Affiliate is that their hosting (where your website lives) is high-speed and ranks better than other providers.
Build Your website here -> Create Website
Step 3: Attract Visitors.
In the Internet world, your website is also the place where your “traffic” will arrive. Without people visiting your website, there is no way to make money. So it is important to understand how to attract traffic to your website.
Traffic can come in many forms, but one of the most sustainable and long-term traffic methods is through search engine optimization(SEO). This means, getting ranked in search engines like Google, and as a result getting all sorts of FREE traffic to your website. Once you have traffic, you have the opportunity.
So this is the next focus, once you have your website up and running. Building out your website in a way that leads to traffic.
How to Accomplish: You need proper “traffic” training, along with a website that is set up to rank well within search engines. These are both things that are provided within Wealthy Affiliate training, you have access to elite SEO training, along with classes and access to experts that will personally help you with your traffic campaigns.
Plus, there are many other ways you can get traffic to your website as you build it out. Social media channels, YouTube and video blogging, podcasts, and paid traffic channels. These are all covered in detail within the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
Start Training -> Enroll Here to Get Started With Training
Step 4: Earn Revenue.
This is where you earn money through affiliate programs. Basically there are over 550 MILLION products/services that you can promote as an affiliate marketer, in exchange for a commission.
You will be adding these special links on your website from companies like Amazon, Etsy, Nike, Apple, eBay, etc…and you will then earn a “kickback” if someone goes from your website to theirs and ends up buying something.
The affiliate marketing industry is growing at the fastest pace ever, and affiliates stand to earn $12 BILLION online this year…with this growing even more next year. You can get your chunk of this pie.
How to Accomplish: You typically have to go through a bunch of Google searches, just to find what you are looking for. Within Wealthy Affiliate, you have instant access to an Affiliate Program search where you can search through 10,000+ affiliate programs, across some of the top affiliate networks online.
Not to mention, the training you will be getting on how to properly integrate affiliate promotions into your website to maximize conversions….along with some insight into the customer purchase lifecycle, and critical information if you want to become a high-performing, and successful affiliate marketer online.
Create Your own online business -> Enroll Here to Get Started With your online business
So there you have it, how to effectively start an affiliate marketing business in a nutshell. If you are interested in creating your own affiliate marketing business and have no experience, or you are currently trying to build out or scale an affiliate marketing business and you are not getting the results you want, I CAN PERSONALLY HELP.
upon creating your account, you will get access to the training, websites, hosting, research tools, networking, mentorship and direct support.
And if you have any questions you want to leave here for me, feel free to do so. I will make sure I get back to you as soon as I can (usually within a few hours).
I love this approach to internet marketing my friend and especially am thankful for the clarity with which you explain all the steps to success in affiliate marketing.
I do wonder about the time investment involved though as there is a ton of content creation required to attract the kind of traffic to your site that will convert to a full time income. Do you have any insight on the timeframe typically involved from the time a person employs this strategy until success or does it just vary from site to site?
Hi Joseph
You are correct, this process takes time and effort. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. This needs to be considered as real business and spend a consistent amount of time is required in creating content.
Yes, this can vary from site to site, you need to select the niche which you are good at. Then, you may not feel the work as work, you enjoy it.
I hope the above steps help you in getting started.
Thank you 🙂
Hello! I just finished reading your post on Starting Your Online Business in 4 Easy Steps. I quite enjoyed reading your article. You outline very well in 4 steps how to start an online business/ website. And obviously, with the help offered by having an account at WA, these steps are even easier. I think WA is an excellent recommendation for a platform to help you build out a great website/ online business. As a fellow WA user myself, I have found their tools and resources to be better than any other platform I’ve ever used thus far.
And if you actually want to get down to the nitty-gritty of it all, tools such as Jaaxy if you paid for them independently without a WA account, would cost you upwards of $50+/ month. And with WA you get Jaaxy and MORE! So MUCH MORE! I especially love the site content editor, even if you aren’t a super tech person it proves to be easy to write your articles/ posts for your website, it’s easy to add photos, affiliate links, etc within the editor.
And best of all if you need help, this is an excellent community to be a part of. There’s always 24/7 a live chat running on the website so if you need an answer to a question you have hundreds of people at your fingertips who can help you out. You can also reach out to the owners of WA themselves for more answers if you wish. Not very many platforms offer that feature at all!
You can create many websites/ domains within one platform, and manage them all in one platform/ website. And you have access to TONS of training, and not just the training offered by the owners, you can join other classes offered by other WA users who have their own classes too. And in many different subjects, not only limited to website design and profitability.
I LOVE WA, it’s an incredible learning opportunity and one which if you put in the time and effort could help you earn a little or a lot of extra $$.
Excellent article! Thank you for such an interesting reading experience!
Hi Cal
I agree with your points and view on the wealthy affiliate. It is definitely a great place to start. Also, you will be with a community of similar interests helping each other.
Mainly I like the support they provide, it’s 24/7 and they really helped me when I got stuck in any technical issue.
Thanks for the comment, Cal 🙂