Blogging Tips
Blogging Tips
Posted By Blogger

Ep 11: How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing


This article was updated on August 6th, 2020 at 05:57 am

Do you want to make money while you sleep? Are you looking for passive income? Affiliate marketing is what you should consider.

Look around you, affiliate marketing is being implemented across a wide range of social media channels. And, it is gaining popularity with the rising success of online shopping. People looking for an alternate source of income are, therefore, looking at affiliate marketing as a viable option. In fact, this has led to a 30% increase in the search interest for the term “Affiliate Marketing” between September 2016 and September 2017, according to Google Trends.

In 2016, US retailers spent $4.7 billion on affiliate marketing. This figure is expected to rise to $6.8 billion by 2020, according to data published by Statista. For bloggers, it is the most lucrative way to earn money online through their blog. Content creators keep on coming with new ways every day to promote retailers and products, and to generate revenue.

How to make money with Affiliate marketing

Source: Google Trends

However, before you can make money from affiliate marketing, you need to first know what exactly it is.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

According to Investopedia, “Affiliate marketing is an advertising model where a company pays compensation to third party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third party publishers are referred to as affiliates and the commission fee incentivizes them to find ways to promote the company.”

To put it simply, when you promote other people’s products that you like and feel have value, through an affiliate network, and people end up buying the products, you earn a commission. In other words, for each sale that you make, you earn a piece of the profit. This is called Affiliate Marketing.

Such marketing is based on a revenue sharing model. The product owner offers a financial incentive to promoters through an affiliate program, using which the affiliates attempt to sell their product. According to a report published by Forrester in February 2016, more than 80% of brands and 84% publishers leveraged affiliate marketing as their marketing strategy to generate revenue.

How Does it Help Make Money?

Affiliate marketing runs through various channels. It could be digital billboards or social networks. However, it is the content marketing on a blog that has emerged as a perfect channel for affiliate marketing.

Bloggers can either review a product on their blog or run a complete review blog for the merchant, retailer or vendor, whose products the affiliate is attempting to sell. You can dedicate an entire site to topics that promote those affiliate products and provide easy ways to the consumer to find the products.

How affiliate marketing works

The most happening way affiliates are using to market themselves and the products they are selling is through affiliate networks that serve as a database for a lot of products. The marketer then has the choice of choosing a specific product for promotion. You can start with Amazon Associates affiliate products and choose any item on their platform for promotion.

It lets you earn a small commission, if people buy through your links. There are various other affiliate programs online. However, remember to do your groundwork and research well before enrolling in any such program.

This article is meant to give you only a basic idea of what Affiliate marketing is. In the next episodes, we’ll talk in depth about what networks to use and how to start implementing affiliate marketing ads in your blog.

Stay tuned!

Series: How to Start Blogging

Also, check out other articles in this series.

  1. How to choose a domain name
  2. Where to buy domain names from
  3. How to choose a host for your blog
  4. Best WordPress hosting for your blog
  5. How to choose the right theme for your new blog
  6. How to install plugins on your blog
  7. How to set the SEO basics right on your blog
  8. How to decide what content to blog about
  9. How to write content that Google loves
  10. How to make money with AdSense
  11. How to make money with affiliate marketing

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