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Adding Affiliate Marketing as a Passive Income Stream Can Boost Your Business
An affiliate marketer is someone who earns a commission selling or promoting the products and services of other companies. Super affiliates are those who are extremely successful affiliate marketers.
This form of passive sales is a great addition to any online business to help boost income. In a recent study, Inkwell Editorial reported that 35% of affiliates earned over $20,000 and 12% of those make over $75,000 per year. This is big business ladies and gents!
Step #1 Build a website on a niche topic
Although there are lots of businesses that do affiliate marketing without having a website, having that platform to connect with your audience can be super effective.
Creating a website to house all of your affiliate offers is easy to do and less expensive than you might think. You can have a basic website and blog set up in less than 30 minutes for under $75.
One of the fundamentals of any business marketing is understanding your audience or your niche. Having a very clear picture of who it is that you will be promoting your affiliate sales is an important part of understanding how to help them with their struggles.
Ideally, your niche should be a topic you enjoy because you’ll be writing and talking about your topic often. For example, if you’re a parent and you enjoy discussing better parenting you might choose to create a parenting website.
You can choose a tighter niche if there’s a lot of competition in your industry. For example, organic parenting or parenting special needs children. The more specific you are, the better chance you’ll have to rank in search engines as well.
Step #2 Find Affiliate Partners
Search online to find quality products and services you want to represent. These products and services will be directly related to your website topic.
If your topic is organic parenting, then the products and services you’re an affiliate for will be natural or healthy parenting items and services.
If your topic happens to be related to online businesses, marketing, blogging or entrepreneurship, check out my affiliate program which pays up to 40% for referrals!
You can find thousands of other different products and services by searching affiliate networks and directories like ShareASale or Awin.
You can also look to see if your favorite companies have an affiliate program. Most companies today do recognize the benefit of having affiliates promoting them online.
Another option is to go a search engine like Google and type in your niche and then the word affiliates. You’ll find thousands of options.
Step #3 Add your content.
The next step is to make sure you have an abundance of quality and informative content on your website. Your primary value to any prospect or potential customer is to provide information. It’s how they’ll learn to trust your opinion.
It’s what will bring them back to your website and it’s what will motivate them to click on your affiliate links and ads to make a purchase. Much of your content will also pre-sell the products and services you represent.
Let’s say you write an article or a report on 15 ways to be a better parent. When relevant you might link to a product or service that you’re discussing.
For example, if you say that to be a better parent you should occasionally treat yourself to a night out and hire a babysitter, you might make the word babysitter a link to a website that helps parents find trustworthy babysitters.
If your reader clicks through and makes a purchase, you earn a commission.
As you can see, content is perhaps the single most important aspect of being a super affiliate. You can provide content in the form of:
- Articles
- Reviews
- Comparison charts
- Videos
- Reports
- Online courses
- Checklists
- eBooks
- Audio messages
- Newsletters
Conclusion – Is Affiliate Marketing Right for Your Business?
One final word about becoming a super affiliate – always strive to provide the best for your website visitors. The best content, the best quality products and the best information.
When they trust you, like you and value your information, they’ll click on your links and make purchases.
Want to learn more about affiliate marketing? Check out my friend Cate Rosales’ course – Affiliate Marketing, Simplified.
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Thanks Sasha for your tips. I have one I use a lot on my website but I’d love to find more. I want to be sure they are targeted correctly and that it’s a product I believe in and use as well.
How many do you suggest per website? And can you use multiple ones on a blog post?
You’re welcome, Lisa! Yes – it’s a great idea to focus on 3-5 main affiliates. As long as they make sense to share and you’re not over-cramming with links, you can definitely use more than one in your posts. Hope this helps! Cheers- S
I am at the step where I add my content, so I found the list of ways you can add different content very helpful thank you.
You’re welcome, Tamara! So glad that you found a few tips to getting started with affiliate marketing! Creating really great content is definitely key to making money so that’s a great place for you to focus on. Thanks for reading and have an amazing day!
As a beginner, this is really helpful!
Thanks, Kennedy! Glad that you found the article helpful… Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make passive income in an online business. Thanks for reading and hope you have an amazing day!
Great info here. I applied to some affiliate programs right away and, in retrospect, I wish I waited until I had more content first. I got rejected by a few. Working on upping the content so I can reapply. I love affiliate marketing because it’s just getting paid to make referrals which I already do a lot in my everyday life.
Totally, Kristen! Affiliate marketing is such an easy and fun way to make money sharing the things you already use and love! I agree with you on having a bit of content to work with – I was turned down in my first week by a few as well but then reapplied later on. Thanks for reading and have an amazing day!
I took Affiliate Marketing, Simplified and it was great!
Yes! Cate’s course is incredible! She has so much insight on learning the ropes as an affiliate marketer for a beginner.
Very good your content! Congratulations on the site! Thank you for sharing quality information!
Hello I like affiliate marketing but I have no idea how to start can anyone help me out please I will be much appreciate it!🙏