All right, I am going to simplify this process as much as I can for you because there is so much information, outdated, and confusing information as to how affiliate marketing works. It isn’t complicated at all and you are just as capable as I of creating an affiliate marketing business if you have fingers and a drive to succeed.
Alright, I am going to simplify this process as much as I can for you because there is so much misinformation, outdated,
and confusing information as to how affiliate marketing works. It isn’t complicated at all, and you are just as capable as I of creating an affiliate marketing business (if you have fingers, and a drive to succed).
So if you have a few minutes, I am going to show you how I have built successful affiliate marketing businesses over the years and helped literally 100,000’s of people do the same through the WealthyAffiliate.com platform that I co-founded in 2005.
So let’s have a look at the process of affiliate marketing, and how that works…and then I am going to be jumping directly into the process on what and how to start an affiliate marketing business looks like and how you can get started TODAY (no joke), with your own business online.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
There is a plethora 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.
I have been running successful businesses within the affiliate marketing space for the last 20 years, and during this time not a lot has changed to be honest. The same “simple formula” that worked back then, continues to work to this day. You have a product, and you have a customer. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to align these two things. That’s it!
Here is a diagram outling how affiliate marketing works:
Now I am oversimplifying this a tad, but I am doing this for a reason. I don’t want you to be scared of the word “affiliate marketing”, becuase you are just as capable of creating a full-time and very successful affiliate marketing business as me. All you need is the right training, the right guidance, and the tools necessary to get you there.
The thing is, affilaite marketing at it’s core is very simple. There are a few terms that you will want to become familar wth.
Affiliate (YOU). You are the affiliate, this means that you can join companies like Etsy, eBay, Walmart, 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 of the sales you generate.
Affiliate Program (company like Amazon). Most companies have an affiliate program, 99% of all of 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?
Earning Affiliate Commissions. Affiliate programs will give you a kick back if you can send people to their website, and they end up buying something. Say you send someone to Amazon through your affiliate link, and they end up buying a fridge, Amazon will pay you a % of the total sale. Amazon offers around 3-6% commissions, so a transaction like this may yield you $50-100 (depending on the price of the fridge). Depending on the company and affiliate program, they will typically pay between 2% and 75% in commisisons.
Unlimited Potential. 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 dollar 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 a Starting 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 necesseary 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, Passion or Interest (your niche)
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 buisness. This is also called the “niche” stage of your business, where you get to choose the audience and the category of your business. This could be anything, from training a puppy, to basketball sports betting, to video games, etc. There are literally millions of potential directions that you can head with your business. This is the exciting part.
I tend to recommend to people to 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. The Internet and the affiliate marketing industry has afforded us all this very opportunity.
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.
Step 2: Build a Website (your foundation)
Your website is your 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 a hope of running an online business. It is the first and key neccesity you need to creating 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. This can give you a competitive advantage and can lead to a lot more opportunity as you build out your website.
Step 3: Get Traffic (attract your audience)
In the Internet world, your website is also the place where your “traffic” will arrive. Without people coming to 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. 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 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, you have access to elite SEO training, along with classes and access to experts that will personally hepl 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, Yotuube and video blogging, podcasts, and paid traffic channels. These are all covered in detail within the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
Step 4: Make Money $$$
Last but no least, the “make money” part of your business. 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: Finding affiliate programs can be an inefficient task at the best of times. 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, critical information if you want to become a high performing, and successful affiliate marketers online.
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 ther results you want, I CAN PERSONALLY HELP. I am helping people just like yourself every single day within Wealthy Affiliate. 😉
Again, I have been at this 20 years full-time and you can immediately connect with me within my homebase, WealthyAffiliate.com Upon creating your account, you will get access to the training, websites, hosting, research tools, networking, mentorship and direct support.
It’s also free to try, you can get a “test drive” Starter account for no cost…no credit card required. I highly recommend if you are even the slightest bit interested in becoming an elite affilate marketer, you get rolling right now with your account. I will be reaching out to you within 30 minutes or so, of you joining. 😉
===> Click Here to Create Your Test Drive Wealthy Affiliate Account!
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’ve dabbled and made a few $$. I’m ready to ramp things up. Thanks, Kyle! It for sure is not a get-rich-quick scheme! I want to share products and info I endorse and enjoy!
Awesome Anne, it is not a get rich scheme but you can get rich doing it if you put forth the time and the effort.
Thanks for sharing this great article. I have been a member of Wealthy Affiliate for more than six months and this is where my passion for affiliate marketing was born.
Before I came to Wealthy Affiliate I was under the misconception, like most newbies, that affiliate marketing is quick and easy money. Here I learned affiliate marketing requires a lot of work, dedication, perseverance, research, testing, and optimization. But with an excellent team accompanying you on this adventure, you can build a profitable business.
Hope this article can help many others to choose WA to build their business.
Awesome Pablo, sounds like you have gotten the “affiliate marketing” bug. I have had that for 20 years now, and there is no stopping it. It is fun, the opportunity is vast, and you can truly do something that you love and build a full-time business in the process.
And in respect to quick and easy money, I have yet to find a way to accomplish that. There is straightforward, a bit slower and vast levels of income to be made within the online world for those that are willing to put forth the effort, but many want a “get rich quick” scheme (which unfortunately doesn’t exist).
There are 4 simple steps (covered above) to building a highly successful business online. The only missing piece to that formula is a bit of hard work and time. If someone can offer that, we can offer them everything else they need within Wealthy Affiliate. 🙂
Kyle,
Once you have chosen your passion, hopefully from an honest review of what your interests are, it is time to start learning what is needed to put that passion to work.
Learning to bring your passion to the world may sound simple but it takes courage, time, effort(lots of it), and a desire to succeed. You may fail in the beginning but with perseverance, hard work, determination, and sweat equity you have the opportunity to become successful.
There will be mistakes that are made along the way but learn from those mistakes. If you are unsure of how to overcome those mistakes reach out to someone who knows how to overcome mistakes of that sort.
The most important part of any business venture is having the will to overcome mistakes, failures, and taking the wrong approach. Having the resiliency to take the hard knocks and continue on takes courage. Face the world with the unshakable knowledge that you control your destiny.
I very much agree with you here. All businesses start with a seed (an idea), and then making that idea come to life is when the real work starts. The beautiful thing about running an online business though is that you can choose an passion/interest as the direction for your business.
When you enjoy what you do, you don’t have to feel like you are “working” when you progress your business, it can be fun. That is why we push people in a direction that they are passionate about within WA, I mean who doesn’t want to earn a living doing something they love? That is what the internet business affords us all!
I really like this quote Kyle, “once you have traffic, you have opportunity.” I think you hit the nail on the head with that one! I guess what I am wondering is how much traffic do you really have to have to have a REAL opportunity? There is a lot of work involved in getting that traffic I am sure, and as you say I am just as capable of creating a site to draw that traffic as anyone else, so what is the factor that makes the difference between one website(with tons of traffic) that pays off well in the long run and another website(with tons of traffic) that doesn’t pay off?
Getting traffic is not a lot of work, if you know what you are doing and you follow what is taught within Wealthy Affiliate. There are 5.25 BILLION people online, and this is a lot of traffic every day…people searching for stuff, people on social media platforms, people watching youtube videos, etc. There are plenty of sources of traffic.
The problem I see these days if people focusing more on “what they will sell” before they have an audience (traffic). That is a recipe for failure.
Focus on building your audience, your brand, and then you can easily integrate product/service recommendations that will lead to ongoing and passive income. That is the approach you take with success, and ANY website with quality traffic is quite easy to monetize.