Affiliate marketing is an incredible way to start making money online. What is affiliate marketing? It’s how a company “rewards” someone for sending sales (or sometimes even leads) to them.
Simply put, you send traffic via special links to a company’s website. You’ll get paid when anyone buys a product at that website. It doesn’t even have to be the product you sent them to. It’s that simple, and can help you earn enough money to pay a few of your bills, or can even become a full time income.
Here are some reasons why you should try affiliate marketing:
It’s Affordable and Easy to Get Started
Affiliate marketing is free, as there are no costs to get started. They pay you, you definitely don’t pay them. First you find a product that you’d like to promote. Then you get permission from the company to promote their products. They’ll give you special links to use. You post those links online – on social media, in emails you send out, on your website, or wherever else you can think of. Then, you get paid whenever someone buys something through those links.
The only cost(s) that you can incur is if you’d like to start your own website or blog, then you’ll need hosting and a domain name. If you’d like to send out emails, you’ll need to use a company for that as well, although you can start for free with many companies such as Aweber. Those are both optional, as you can promote in other ways that won’t cost you anything.
You Can do Things in Short Bursts of Time
If you don’t have a lot of time at once, you can still do affiliate marketing. You can find a product that you want to promote, get a link, and talk about the product in a short amount of time. It only takes a minute or two to get your link once you know where to get it from.
As far as writing an article, creating a video, or posting to social media, those don’t take all that long either. If I had to come up with numbers, I’d say you could write a good blog post in about an hour. It’ll only take 10 or so minutes to create a video where you talk about the product you want to promote and then post it to YouTube. It can take 5 minutes or less to write a social media post about the affiliate product and include the link.
You don’t need hours at a time to be an affiliate marketer. Just a few minutes every now and then and you can start earning money online.
It Builds Passive Income
Passive income is a wonderful thing. You do the work once, and can keep making money from that work indefinitely. Let’s say you spent an hour or so to write a blog post that promotes a product you really like. Now, any time someone sees that blog post, they might click on that link and buy the product you were talking about. This could happen today, tomorrow, next week, or even next year. As long as new people keep seeing your blog post, you can keep earning money from it.
You Don’t Need Specialized Knowledge
A lot of people don’t think they can earn any money online because they don’t think they have the right knowledge. The truth is, if you have bought or used any products lately, you have the right knowledge.
All you need to do is talk about the products that you use. You can do that by saying it out loud in a video, or writing it down and doing a blog post, social media post, and more. Tell people what you like and what you don’t like.
Share why you bought the item in the first place, and if you’d buy it again. You can go into all sorts of details about the product. Be honest, and give the negative things too. People will appreciate it and trust you more when you do.
You Don’t Have to Do the Selling
You may be thinking that you’re a horrible sales person, so why on earth would you be able to be an affiliate marketer? I have great news for you. You don’t have to sell the product at all! Of course it helps if you can, but that’s not your job. Your job is to get the person to be interested enough in the product to click on your link. That’s it! Once they get to the website, it’s up to the product page or sales page to sell the person on the product.
If you’re worried that you don’t want to have to “sell” products, then don’t! Be honest, give your opinions about them, and send them to the product page to “learn more.” You aren’t being a sales person and don’t have to feel like you’re forcefully selling something, and yet you’re giving them enough information to want to learn more.
You Don’t Need to be Known
If you’re trying to sell your own products, it can be difficult if no one knows who you are. But if you’re trying to promote a product from LEGO, Macy’s, Nordstrom, and more? Your audience already knows these companies, and likes and trusts them.
It doesn’t matter that they don’t know who you are. They need to trust the companies they are buying from. When you’re promoting these big companies, it’s a lot easier to make sales. They’re well known to your audience and it’s easier to get them to click on the links you share.
It Boosts Your Reputation and Credibility
Affiliate marketing is the best way to increase your reputation and credibility online. The main reason behind this is that affiliate marketers are not seen as salespeople. Instead, they’re seen as people who are being helpful. They’re just recommending products from their own experience, which makes them credible.
However, note that working with the wrong brands can ruin your reputation, so it is vital to only work with the brands you know your target audience will need or enjoy. Don’t promote products just because you’ll make a lot of commission off of them. Only promote products you trust and like.
There are many reasons to take advantage of affiliate marketing. It builds passive income and gets in front of your target audience. It can also help establish your trust and credibility as an entrepreneur, making it easier to build your brand and reach your goals. In the end, it’s your choice to take advantage of affiliate marketing. Getting involved with affiliate marketing is an excellent decision if you are willing to do the work required.
Enjoy,
