Affiliate Marketing Online Business

Yes, you read correctly, affiliate marketing online business can be considered to be a business.

There is a lot of money to be made online, yet sadly still only about 5% of the people that try to make money online ever make a single dime.

The only two things you need to make money online are; something to sell and an audience to sell it to.

Many who start out, start doing affiliate marketing the hard way… doing it without the proper training and guidance so that fewer mistakes are being made. Working way harder and way longer than anyone ever should have to.

The simple way to make money online is by starting an affiliate marketing business.

Why Start an Affiliate Marketing Business?

As an affiliate you are simply introducing an audience of people to a product or a service that can help them. Then you get paid every time a purchase is made.

This way:

• there is no product to create
• no support desk needed
• no writing sales copy required
• no need of hiring designers
• and, absolutely NO RISK on your part
• upfront investment is next to nothing
• and ‘technically’ you could be into profit on day one

This is why affiliate marketing is perfect for both beginners and struggling marketers. And, it is the biggest source of many online business owners income.

The best part about an affiliate marketing business model is that the income is virtually unlimited. The money is out there, you just have to learn how to get it.

What is an Affiliate?

An affiliate is on online business owner who promotes products and/or services of sellers. They take advantage of special, unique links that are coded specifically for them. These links track sales made by customers through those unique links which then credits the affiliate’s account with a commission for each sale made from their link.

Why Would You Want an Online Business?

More and more businesses are starting up their online presence in order to generate more leads and more sales. When you start up an online business, you will find that you have more freedom to offer whatever you want to sell, as well as how to go about the actual selling.

The traditional start-up costs that are associated with a regular business tend to be a lot less, simply because there is no need to rent an office space, hire a staff, and have a large budget for offline advertising.

Your key essentials are:

1.) a computer
2.) an internet connection
3.) and, the skills to use the computer

The marketplace offers a wide range of products and services that you could become affiliated with as you may discover, they cover many different niches.

Affiliate Marketer’s Responsibilities

1.) What product are you going to promote

Just because you have decided to become an affiliate does not necessarily mean that you must promote every single product on any one platform. In fact, it would be impossible to do so simply because there are so many products out there and available to choose from, and the list of products keeps growing in the marketplace daily.

Plus, not all products will be a good fit for the people you are planning on promoting to, whether to your email list of subscribers, followers on your Facebook fan page, or followers on your YouTube account. And, in case you are wonder, you most definitely could do affiliate marketing without a website.

Your responsibility is to be a referrer to a product or service.

One irrelevant product could break trust between you and your list of followers, so be aware that you are NOT out there to promote products for the sake of promoting. Be sure to take the time to actually review every single product you plan on promoting.

2.) The issue about “cookies” in your affiliate links

When you promote a product as an affiliate, and a potential customer clicks on your unique link, their browser receives a “cookie” (code) that is coded to your link so that if they make a purchase or leave and come back later to make a purchase, you will receive the commission for the sale.

The time limit of that cookie will depend on the vendor you deal with.

It is very important that you stick to using your own unique affiliate link when promoting products and/or services so that you will be credited for the sales made from clicking your links.

In short, to “cookie” a sale means that the vendor identifies you as the referrer of that sale, which means you get credit for the sale if the person you referred actually buys.

3.) As an affiliate to a vendor

You will need to make it a habit to learn EACH and every vendor’s policies regarding the usage of your affiliate links, their images and the information about their product(s) that you share on your website. Not doing so could get you barred from receiving your commission payment should you break any of their rules.

Some vendors do not like affiliate marketers to cloak their affiliate links, while others may not allow affiliates to use their images. As an affiliate of any vendor’s product or service, being aware of that vendor’s policies is your responsibility if you want to receive commission payment for customers you send to them.

4.) GDPR now applies

The GDPR is short for General Data Protection Regulation, and is a regulation agreed upon by the European Parliament Council as to the primary law regulating how businesses must now protect a EU citizen’s personal information.

It will be your responsibility to make sure your affiliate marketing website is fully compliant and by doing so will serve to help you gain potential customers worldwide.

This new regulation alone might be worth your seriously considering signing up to learn affiliate marketing from those in the ‘know’.

Other Options

Your success as an affiliate marketer will depend on how much… and the quality of… traffic you can send to a product. There are numerous strategies as to how you can build a subscriber list in order to promote offers to your list.

For example, you could create a landing page with a giveaway or freebie, start a review website blog, create advertising on Facebook, or even create helpful videos on YouTube. There are numerous methods that you could use for your affiliate offers. And, it is most likely that you will try out a number of these strategies before you find one that may be right for you.

The easiest way to build a following of subscribers would be to become a seller of a product first. Then your customers will become your subscribers on your list, and as you launch other products your list could grow. Then you could start offering affiliate links to your list in emails.

When you promote product launches (other vendor’s products, of course) you are letting your list know that there is a timely announcement about a product they might be interested in which could decrease your chances of unsubscribers to your email list.

To handle your email lists you will need an autoresponder. There are several autoresponders available to choose from and doing a simple internet search for them you should find that you are provided with a list of options.

Be sure to always offer an outline as to what the product is in your email when you include your affiliate link.

In order to find affiliate marketing business opportunities, you can simply search the internet being sure to include your chosen niche in your search. If your niche was toys for dogs, then an example of such an internet search might be: “affiliate programs for dog toys” (without the quotation marks, of course).

You could even offer a bonus page for promotion of products that you are an affiliate of.

A bonus page might simply “echo” what the seller’s page states. It could have a video you create with your honest review of what is good about this product.

Be sure to include some information about the product which you could take from the sales page… with permission from the vendor, of course. Then at the bottom of your bonus page you would list the bonus(es) you are offering to everyone who purchases through your affiliate link.

When you are starting out in affiliate marketing, it is NOT necessary for you to create a bonus page. However, as you become more familiar with affiliate marketing and product launches to do with your chosen niche, you should look at customizing your promotions as much as possible.

Creating a bonus page and then emailing your subscriber list with the URL to your bonus page instead of a direct affiliate link is only one of the many strategies you can learn in affiliate marketing. However, this has been mentioned here as I have learned that this is the most effective method successful affiliate marketers are using to date.

When creating a website blog, be sure to stay focused on your given niche as much as possible. This will help to ensure that you will not lose the attention of your previous customers and website visitors.

As you offer new, unique content on a regular schedule, you could possibly even gain brand recognition and thus new potential visitors and see an increase in sales.

Bonus TIP

When starting up your affiliate marketing online business, be sure you only sprinkle your affiliate links on your website as Google is not fond of ranking websites very high in search results that are laden with affiliate links.