What is the best affiliate program? Can you make money with them? Here we look at both sides of the business to provide you with the tools to succeed.
Wealthy Affiliate the beginners' friend
We will look at more sites but let's start at the top with arguably the best affiliate site for both newcomers and those experienced people.
That was a big call of mine but let me explain before you wander off to the next shiny object.
Affiliate marketing is nothing more than selling other peoples products on the internet.
It may be with a webpage, a blog page, a funnel or any other marketing method on or offline.
You can sell on Amazon as an affiliate or at any number of high stakes pressure sites.
You can have a recurring income, a fixed amount or a percentage of the sale and it can be paid in several ways. Cheque, Direct Debit, Credit Card or in fact hold until you reach a certain level of money.
As an online marketer, there are things you must have.
A domain name that is hosted by a carrier. Wealthy Affiliate does that for you.
Training on just about any issues you have. Starter and advanced.
Instant affiliate program.
Support group.
Recurring income to build your own business from day 1
Access to other affiliate programs that are recommended
No marketing is easy, affiliate sales are the same
To do any marketing properly you need to understand what you are doing, marketing on the Internet has a whole bundle of what I call rules to be followed.
You will need to know some SEO and Keyword research to have any hope of ever being seen.
Then there are rules for writing and headlines and meta descriptions that must be done correctly.
If I have lost you already you need the basic training at Wealthy Affiliate and by the way, you can start for free
I created a short blog recently on how to start a blog with no money. This will give you some of the grounding and things you need to think about.
Affiliate marketing can be a well-paid business
We will give you lots of opportunities to sell a product and to make money. However, make sure you understand what you are doing before you commit to a single focus.
You can be an Amazon affiliate once you have a bit of infrastructure in place.
Then you could promote $12 books and make a 5% commission or about $0.60 each.
You need to sell a truckload of books to make any real money so you are really just wasting time.
Let me back up a bit here because you need to understand what direction you will travel.
- One-off commission sales by percentage
- Agreed value sales in dollars
- Recurring monthly payments
- income from advertising
So which is best for you?
Percentage based sales can be good if you are selling higher-value products. On Amazon suppose you sold $2000 watches and got paid 20% or $400 a time. You don't need to sell a lot of watches to make money. But remember there are many more book buyers than high priced watch buyers, so a much smaller market.
Retailers will pay an agreed sum of money for every successful lead. The sum will naturally depend on the retail price. This could be a high ticket training package as an example
Recurring monthly payments are when the buyer commits to paying an amount every month for the product so you also get a monthly percentage.
However, this small amount can grow as you add clients every month and build a substantial income. For instance, the monthly fee for Wealthy Affiliate is $49 and your percentage is about $24. Therefore every client is worth $24 a month for as long as they stay.
As you build your blog or page and get a large following you can sell advertising in your space and get paid per click.
Internet affiliate marketing explained
How do you become an affiliate?
There are literally hundreds of thousands of businesses looking for affiliates, they all want your business and they are prepared to pay for it.
However, you must have a sales channel and most often a proven channel that can produce results.
The sales channel can take many forms both online and offline and it must be visible to the market.
| Web Page | Blog page | Content marketing | Funnel |
| A sales site | Information page | White paper | Capture account |
The difference between the above is really minimal as all are just selling a product in slightly different ways.
| Fixed location | Online shop | Personal effort |
| Generally a business Shop or site | Like Shopify or WooCommerce | Brochures and speaking |
As long as you have an outlet you can promote a product.
Tell me, he said, where do you hide all these wonderful opportunities?
I don't like telling everyone this secret because you may compete with my ideas,” said a friend recently.
For that my reply was I understand but do you really know how big this field is?
Think of a product, any product that you may find interesting I said to challenge the discussion.
He replied with a smirk what about “cat food” tell me how good you are?
My reply was that he should use Google and do a search, type in Cat Food leave a space and then affiliate.
The result is pages of opportunities, including 13 affiliate companies looking for people like you.
Over 10 pages of different results begging for contributors in this one small subject.
I guess I have let the cat out of the bag on this and see you madly googling ideas to wet the appetite.
However, make sure you come back and read more because that is just the tip of an iceberg.
It is a massive market but one that wants performance.
What are all the companies in this market?
You will see a lot of companies promoting affiliate products.
- Wealthy Affiliate
- Amazon
- Share a sale
- Max Bounty
- Click Bank
- CJ affiliates or Commission Junction
- JV Zoo and Warrior forum
- Pepperjam
- Shopify and on and on
Each of these has many thousands of opportunities that just want good resellers. However, they want good resellers or they just cancel your contract. Gone overnight because you did not get any sales or often many sales.
Put yourself in the role of the seller
A couple of people rock up and say ” Hey, I want to flog Cat Scraps for you, where do I start?”
The seller is going to ask a few simple questions;
- What experience do you have?
- How will you sell the product
- Do you know anything about cat food?
- And finally, where do I send your money
We can all answer the last question but the finalist will be the one with a background and proven performance in product selling.
Where do you get some experience that you can use as a testimonial?
You would want a market opportunity that is easy to enter and you stand a chance of getting paid straight away if you sell anything.
Amazon is one that stands out from the crowd, the products are endless and the opportunities keep rolling out but they also want performance. Plus the commissions are lousy and the competition massive.
You are facing problems on many fronts to win this war and be as successful as you would want.
It is no good selling low priced items with small margins because the returns don't justify the effort. Likewise, trying to sell high priced options without traffic is also a difficult problem.
You need to find the right place and have some knowledge of the basics.
If you were to post a sale on a keyword like cat food you would never be seen.
- Catfood has a monthly search volume of over 27,000 hits
- 4620 of those will only be seen in the first few lines on the page
- Over 150 web posts will be before yours, that about 15 pages deep
- Over 80% of visitors never go past the first page
- Calculate your chances of being seen.
Figures from Jaxxy keyword tool
We can teach you about Keywords and being seen so you know and understand how this works, without this knowledge you will never drive your product, never be seen and never earn a brass razoo.
Have you heard about SEO
For those that don't know, that is Search Engine Optimisation. It is Google speak for being found on the web.
Even if a correct keyword does not guarantee success, there are other rules that you need to understand. Headings and Meta descriptions need to be in place before you write a word.
The internet is a big place and your presence needs to be at the top of the list.
With Keyword Cat Food, you have little to no chance of getting to page one of a search.
You would need to leap over 150 other sites with more experience than you.
How do you do it?
You could try something like Dry Foods for cats and that is easier by about a page but you are still out at sea.
What you will learn to do is target more directly to your best customer. They may live around you and have different needs so we might target The Best Cat Food in Miami for long-haired moggies. You may get to page one, the traffic will be lower, the competition less and the opportunity to make a sale realistic.
What about videos for affiliate sales?
This is an interesting part of this exercise. Did you know that YouTube is searched nearly as often as Google? People want visual answers so they go on a visual journey.
The number of searches is considerably less than before but I still found 4 pages of videos on this exact subject.
Making videos is very easy, in fact, you can be up and going in a couple of hours looking like an expert.
What's more, you can earn affiliate income in the process.
Be wary of internet scams and affiliate sites
The internet is full of scams, people wanting to take your money and give you nothing.
Then; Pay more to get more. Then a bigger amount to be huge and so it goes on until you stop paying money. Therefore the best option is to pay to be an affiliate, low ball offer.
It is a get rich scheme, they get rich, you get scammed. Don't ever pay out money until you know what you are doing.
How to get traffic as an affiliate?
This is a difficult problem that can be solved in many ways.
Your website or blog will gather traffic organically as you grow. As you gain Google trust more and more people will come to your site providing you maintain a lot of activity.
- Link from other sites to your page or post
- You should also link between your pages or posts
- Capturing from Social media
- Show a link to your stationery
- Attend shows and hand out cards
- ADVERTISE (not until you have everything else in place)
- Write for others and include a link.
As you develop you will find more and more ideas to gather a following.
Other income from marketing
Your affiliate income maybe just a part of the whole earnings production.
You may develop your own virtual products and sell them online. For example, your first eBook on how best to clean the ears of a cat without being clawed.
Or a real product like a cat scratcher for small animals made from Hemp sisal.
When you have enough traffic the advertisers will come, they will have pop-up ads on your site and you get paid every time someone clicks or even views an advertisement.
Finally, you could do online audio or video training sessions on all sorts of unusual activities of cats, coaching or training
This is not a conclusive list but one that will be ready when you complete the early parts of the puzzle
Now you are armed with information what are you going to do about it?
The starting point is having a basic training course to see if this is what you want to do.
It will also give you a grounding in all things Affiliate so that you can do this with confidence.
Everyone wants the same thing, good marketers that can sell their product without a lot of fuss. It is not much to ask.
Your entry to Wealthy Affiliate will be free and you will gain;
- Domain names and hosting, plus a free start-up web page
- Affiliate opportunity from day one
- Basic training in all areas of the Internet
Wealthy Affiliate has one of the most lucrative “recurring” affiliate programs on the planet and within the first phase of training we are going to get your business built on a solid foundation. All long term businesses start with a vision and a brand and we are going to help you get this in place in the first phase of the Affiliate Bootcamp training.
Jay, Wealthy Affiliate
This course is a 10 lesson course and by the time you finish this course, you are going to have your foundation for a long term and very lucrative business online set out!
Support with Internet sales
If you think this is not really necessary, just wait until you have a problem.
Problems are everywhere. Google will be a great friend and YouTube however they will take a whole bundle of your time and often do not come up with a solution.
Hosting problems
Even the best hosts will present little speed bumps along the way. They don't like some plugins or perhaps your appearance does not work. They could be slow or any number of things.
What you do need is 24-7 access to a solution.
Somewhere you can get an answer and a solution in a timely and proper manner.
I use Wealthy Affiliate as my host and the services and support are great.
Website problems
Many of us use WordPress as a page builder and at times we need to understand a bit more.
Your Domain host won't answer these questions and sometimes it can be frustrating for
themes, widgets, plugins, appearances, social sharing settings and the list goes on.
Again, Wealthy Affiliate has training on every aspect of this and I often go back looking for answers.
Community support
Internet activity is often lonely, You tend to spend time talking to your computer and ignoring the real world. Frustration often comes in and even despair when you are not hitting your targets. Sometimes this is when your mind will wander and you spend time on frivolous wandering and losing precious time.
However, a great community will do many things for you.
- They will provide encouragement and enthusiasm
- Solve many issues by responding to questions
- Compared to other like-minded computer joggers
- Provide examples to follow or emulate
- Give yourself a chance to express yourself in whatever is important
We all think the Wealthy Affiliate forum is a Family, You have your favourite members and follow and like their progress. I like a young Kid in Taiwan by the name of Nathanial, he recently sold a website for $30K that was years old, not just one but several working as an affiliate marketer.
Another is an 80+-Year-old Lady that lives in Alaska who is an excellent writer and contributor.
I am in Australia so it is really a small world with contributing members from many countries.
Planning and timing
Just like any business, and this will become a business, you need a long term plan and to set your goals and timelines.
Some will tell you that you can be an overnight success and others that it takes 12 months to start getting traction. Both are true however it is generally not a short term exercise.
For a start with a new web site, you do not gain full Google trust for at least 9 months so your SEO will not be as successful as you want.
As well you need a following of people that read your work and are prepared to commit money because they know you like and trust you and this takes time.
A good blogger or website builder will take 12 months to get traction however along the way there will be mini achievements that give you great cause to celebrate.
You must choose a direction and a product group and follow that for the long term. You get discouraged and disappointed and that is just part of the journey. Without a plan, you will give up early, throw your hands in the air and say this won't work. When you understand it is just part of the journey you have written down and it is but a small speed hump you can recover quickly.
Conclusion
It has been a bit of a journey to this point and I hope I have been able to cover a lot of your questions and hopefully pave the way for your future.
Affiliate marketing is the best job in town, you just need to learn a few rules, follow a few steps, and get to the end of the road that starts a lifetime career.
Affiliate marketing is a growth industry, so much so that the result is that many retail operations are closing down.
None as real as the book store Borders. A worldwide group of shops destroyed by Amazon, an upstart online book store that very few considered had any chance of success.
It is your choice
You may not choose affiliate marketing as your product but one of the other online contributors that better suits your style.
The basics are the same and you can be more than one thing at a time.
Choose your path, get the running shoes on and fire the gun, the first step is the big one.
as they say at Nike “just do it”
Start your affiliate marketing career here and I shall guarantee success,
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