Wondering how to make money with affiliate marketing?
You’re not alone! A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs have this question in mind after they sign up for an affiliate program. They know that the affiliate marketing business model provides a lot of benefits, and dive in without having a plan on how to make money with it.
Affiliate marketing seems lucrative to people who just start their online business as they don’t need to take care of product creation, delivery or customer support – just marketing. Nevertheless, if you don’t have a strategy on how to make money with affiliate marketing, you may feel lost and overwhelmed at the beginning.
While there are a lot of resources that can help you get clarity, the majority of them don’t go into much detail about what exactly you need to do to start earning affiliate commissions.
In this article, we’ll dive deep into a strategy you can use to start earning money with affiliate marketing even if you’re a beginner.
Here’s what we’re going to cover:
Choose An Affiliate Product
The first thing you need to do is to choose an affiliate product you want to promote. It makes sense to pick a product with a high-ticket or recurring commissions. It’s up to you which approach to choose – to aim for high payouts now or to work towards a long-term recurring passive revenue.
Where can you find products to promote? You can look for:
- affiliate programs directly from companies who offer products/services
- affiliate networks that are congregations of various affiliate offers
- influencers that have their own products and look for affiliates to promote them.
You can also have a look at our list of the best affiliate programs with recurring commissions. It includes the best affiliate programs for 2020 which pay monthly commissions as long as users you refer use the product.
Once you choose a product you should think about how to create an offer around it. Why should you do this?
One of the downsides of affiliate marketing is that you need to compete with other affiliates who sell the same product. So creating a unique offer will let you stand out and give people a reason to buy from you instead of your competitors.
Here’s the approach you can use to craft an offer for your affiliate product:
1.”Unpack” the product
Peruse your affiliate product and analyze what it has to offer. List out all the features as well as the benefits they give to customers. “Unpacking” the product and presenting everything it includes doesn’t require a lot of time but will increase its perceived value.
2. Add support
Consider adding some kind of support for your customers so the people that buy from you know that they have somebody to help them if they have any questions.
You can provide support in the form of a Facebook group with weekly calls or even 1-on-1 support. Just come up with a way to be there for your customers when they need you.
3. Add bonuses
When it comes to the bonuses creation, don’t try a bunch of things that nobody will need. Think about what can help your customers to get better results with the product you’re promoting or what’s is missing in this product that you can supplement.
It can be things like software, case studies, interviews, checklists, tutorials, explanatory videos. Come up with at least 3-5 complimentary resources that will form your bonus offer and help your customers.
Define Your Sales Process
Now, after you chose a product and crafted an offer around it, you should think about how to sell it to make money with affiliate marketing.
While there’s a bunch of ways to promote affiliate products, it makes the most sense to stick to one platform at the beginning. And once you start getting consistent results with it, you may add something different.
Utilizing social media, Facebook namely, is, probably, one of the ways to promote affiliate products that brings results relatively fast. That’s also something we’re going to focus on in our example.
The easiest way to get leads on social media is by connecting with people in your niche and having conversations with them. By talking to people and being genuinely interested in what they’re doing and what challenges facing, you’re building a relationship and trust.
If during your conversations with people you see that your affiliate product can help them solve their problem you can make an offer. They can choose to buy or not to buy.
If you’ve created a great offer, you connect and talk with people on a daily basis, you’ll make sales. That’s one of the easiest but proven ways of how to make money with affiliate marketing.
Leverage The Power Of Content
Besides connecting with people and having conversations with them, you should start posting content that provides value to the people in your niche consistently.
Help them solve problems, have some “aha” moments, and breakthroughs with your content, and you’ll position yourself as an expert and authority in your niche.
Now, you may ask yourself what kind of content you need to post for that? In our opinion, the best way to go is the combination of three types of content – value, results, and lifestyle.
- Value
You can share tips, trainings or other useful information to get your audience closer to their goals.
- Results
It’s always great to share the results or testimonials from people who are using the affiliate product you’re promoting. Social proof plays a great role when people decide whether to buy something.
- Lifestyle
Don’t hesitate to add some content about your lifestyle. It helps people to relate to you more and get to know you better. And people buy from somebody they know, like, and trust.
If you share all types of content mentioned above, you’re going to build trust, rapport, and authority with your audience. People will be naturally interested in what you’re doing, in opportunities to work with you or learn from you. This creates perfect situations for closing sales.
Final Thoughts
The strategy of how to earn money with affiliate marketing we laid out in this post is quite straight forward and will fit you even if you just starting.
It includes three main steps: choosing an affiliate product to promote and creating an offer around it, connecting and talking with people on a regular basis, and post content that will be valuable for your audience.
This all will let you create a following of people who will know, like, trust you and view you as an expert in what you’re doing, which creates perfect conditions for closing sales.
In our post, we were talking about how to utilize social media to promote your affiliate products. But it’s only one of the ways to do it.
If you want to learn other strategies of how to make money with affiliate marketing, check out the Affiliate Bootcamp, free training from Clickfunnels super affiliates. They lay out what they’d do if they needed to bring their affiliate business from zero to making a full-time income in just 100 days.
The Affiliate Bootcamp will show you what other strategies you may use to promote affiliate products so you can decide for yourself which way works the best for you.
How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing F.A.Q.
How much money can I make with affiliate marketing?
The affiliate marketing income is quite scalable that’s why you can even make a full-time income out of it.
At the beginning, you may expect to make a couple hundred dollars per month. But there’s almost not limit to it.
Some super affiliates make $50,000+ a month.
How long does it take to make consistent income from affiliate marketing?
Don’t expect to become rich overnight. It can take anywhere from 6 months to several years to make consistent income from affiliate marketing. All depends on your skills and previous experience.
What are popular affiliate networks?
The most popular affiliate networks are Clickbank, JVzoo, Clickbooth, Commission Junction, Amazon Affiliate Program, and eBay Partners Program.
What is the best free affiliate marketing training?
One of the best free affiliate marketing trainings is Affiliate Bootcamp created by ClickFunnels. The training includes 15 strategies laid out by Clickfunnels’ top affiliates on how they would bring their affiliate business from zero to making a full-time income. You may promote any affiliate products using these strategies.