Are you a parent? A school teacher? Coach? Someone who others look up to? Maybe a manager in a company? Or are you in charge of a project? What do all of these situations have in common?
LEADERSHIP!
If you do any of the above you are a leader. You know how to take charge. Problem solving is second nature to you. I have created this website for you. I want to show you how you can use Affiliate Marketing to create a growing stream of passive income using your computer, working part time from home.
Does having more month at the end of the money feel familiar to you? Wouldn’t it be great to have an extra $200, $500 or even $1000 or more every week?
Of course, you would. At the moment you can’t see how you can do that easily and in the time you have. The only options you can possibly consider is to get a second job; change to a higher paying job; or win the lottery!
Somehow I do not think any of these options make sense to you. And the lottery? I threw that in as a lame joke! Pardon my warped sense of humor.
But there IS an option! – Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a way you can add more income to your life working part-time at home on your computer, or anywhere using your phone or iPad.
What is Affiliate Marketing and how to get started?
This question will be answered by this article. It isn’t very long. So put aside anything else you are doing for the next few minutes to read this post. Make sure you read this till the very end as I have something special for you.
What is Affiliate Marketing? In a nutshell, you make money by promoting products and services you do not own.
I’d like to show you how, using the diagram below.
Affiliate Marketing
Although this diagram is self-explanatory I wish to elaborate on each of these steps in the comments below:
1 – The Customer
All businesses start with a customer. A customer is an individual who has a problem or a need and is looking for a solution. Without a customer there is no business. What do you do when you are looking for a solution to a problem you have. Or there is a product you are interested in finding out more information before buying.
2 – Your Site
Often, these websites will be from Affiliate Marketers who have researched the product and provide reviews and feedback on their websites to help you make an informed decision. They are affiliates’ of the companies who stock or offer these products for sale.
Your website is NOT a storefront. The affiliate companies where your customers go to are storefronts. You use your website to focus only on the products that fall within your passion. There are many affiliate companies that offer these products for sale. It is your delightful action to find those companies and sign affiliate agreements with them. This does not cost anything. When you discuss these products in your blog posts. you place banners with links to these companies, often that land on the page where these products are offered for sale.
You sign an agreement with each of these companies who in turn provide you with affiliate links that you can post on your website using script or banners. When any individual searching for a product you wrote about lands on your website and clicks these links to make a purchase, they are transported to the site of the vendor. They become your customer.Â
3 – Customer Buys Product
The actual sale takes place at the vendor’s website. Payment for the product, shipping, warranty agreements and handling of returns are all handled by the vendor. The vendor is automatically informed which affiliate was responsible for the sale through the unique affiliate number.
Often, the vendor will provide the affiliate banners and other marketing materials to help make the sale. The customer pays the exact same price purchasing through an affiliate compared to going directly to the vendor’s site to make that purchase.
Many thousands of vendor’s offer affiliate programs. The above graphic shows a short list of some of these companies. It benefits them by having an army of freelance marketers promote their products And if benefits the affiliate by enabling them to earn commissions for each sale made through their website.
In addition to these companies, there are Affiliate Marketplaces who host smaller companies. I will go into more detail on this approach later. Some of these Affiliate Marketplaces are Clickbank, Awin, Shopify and CJ Affiliate. I shall be providing reviews of many of the top Affiliate Marketplaces in future posts.
4 – You Make Money!
The Affiliate company sends you a check or makes a direct deposit to your bank account or other third party entities when you accumulate a minimum commission amount, usually $50. Payments are made on a fixed day in a month when commissions exceed the minimum amount.
There is no limit to the number of affiliate companies or marketplaces an Affiliate Marketer can have an agreement with.
Pros
- Low cost of entry – Affiliate Companies with rare exceptions do not charge Affiliate Partners any fee
- Can be accomplished working part-time
- Someone else takes care of billing, fulfillment, warranty and returns
- The only resources you need you probably already have – a computer and Internet connection
- You create your own work schedule. It could be literally any time of the day or night.
- When you work at home, you can stay in your PJ’s.
- You are not stuck at any one location to conduct business. It is mobile.
- Your commissions are deposited directly into your bank account from your affiliate companies.
- You can create multiple income streams one after the other over time.
- Once you have an income earning website, it is easily scalable to create income growth
Cons
- There is an extensive learning curve to create a successful Affiliate Marketing website
- Discipline and focus is essential to be successful
- Since the learning curve takes time, patience and staying power is necessary
- You need to discover your passion and market products that fall within that interest
- Successful affiliate marketing requires that you focus on a niche within your passion
This in a nutshell explains what Affiliate Marketing is. However, the next question is how to get started!
How To Get Started – 4 Step Process
This whole process can be a lot of FUN! Unlike a job where you are working to make a corporation or someone else wealthy, here you work on a project to reward yourself. What can be more fun than doing something you like to give you financial freedom?
Let’s look at this 4 – Step process in more detail.
Step 1 – Choose An Interest
What are you most passionate about? Think about when you were a kid and had dreams about your future.
If you had all the money you needed and didn’t need a job, what would you enjoy doing the most?
Can you think of any hobbies you really enjoy doing?
As you are thinking about these interests, jot them down. Do not limit yourself. Think of this as a brain storming session. Discuss this with family members or loved ones and get their input!
After thinking BIG you need to narrow your interest down to a product category that falls within your interest. It could be any of the following in this short list just to give you some ideas:
Sports- Hi Tech Gadgets
- Convenience Products
- Fashion
- Health and Fitness
- Beauty Products
- Specialty Foods
- Travel
- Financial Products
- Nutritional Supplements
- CBD Oil For Pain Alleviation
- Arts and Crafts
I could go on and on. I think you get the idea. The range of choices is in fact limitless!
Whatever you choose, make sure you like it so much you are willing to write a lot about it when you create content for your website.
For more tips on how to find an interest niche that is right for you click on the image above.
Step 2 – Build A Website
There was a time when you needed to know HTML code to create a website. Not anymore! Want to see how a basic website can be built in about 30 seconds? Click the image below to see how!
How would you like to create a website for free right now? Check out the following:
This is a good time to tell you where I got the help to do all of this. I joined an Internet Marketing training company called Wealthy Affiliate. You can also join for free to check out how you can learn to become an expert at building websites. The platform of choice is WordPress that is used by over 30% of all published websites in the world.
I wrote an article specifically on, “How to create a website for Affiliate Marketing”. Bookmark this link and check it out after you read this post. Once you build your website, click this link to learn how to create a Blog in WordPress.
Step 3 – Attract Visitors
This is a multi pronged approach. It all begins with creating your website. We already discussed the mechanics of creating your website above. Let’s now look at the elements within your website that play a huge role in attracting visitors.
- Start of by choosing an interest. In Affiliate Marketing its narrowing your interest down to a niche. We talked about this in Step 1 above.
- The next step is to build your website. Before you can do this you need to purchase a Domain Name. The domain name for this website of mine is: affiliatemarketingforleaders. I was able to secure a .com suffix. I strongly suggest you find a domain name that has it available in .com. The next alternative would be .org. I would not use any of the others offered. I was able to purchase the domain name of affiliatemarketingforleaders.com for only $13.99 for a year at Wealthy Affiliate.
- Create a series of blog posts that have high traffic, low competition keywords for their titles. In Wealthy Affiliate we are taught how to find these using the free tools within the platform. When you are looking for something in Google you type in a phrase into the search window. That is what is known as a keyword even though it is often a phrase. This is called Content Marketing. Click this link to learn more.
- You need to learn how to use Search Engine Optimization effectively. This is taught extensively in the training provided by Wealthy Affiliate. The whole idea is to not only attract traffic, but the right kind of traffic of potential customers. Google Search Console is a free tool you can use to help accelerate getting your posts indexed by Google. Wealthy Affiliate teaches you how to do this.
- As you begin to get a growing stream of traffic, it is important to analyze your traffic to make sure you are on the right track. Google Analytics enables you to see the size of your traffic as well as where they are coming from, the age of your visitors and how the numbers match on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. There is much more you can track using this free Google tool. Once again, Wealthy Affiliate has lessons and recorded webinars on how to use this tool effectively.
Step 4 – Earn Revenue
Isn’t this what you are aiming for? To get paid for all your hard work. Affiliate Marketing is NOT a get-rich-quick business. If you need to earn money right now, there are other avenues you can pursue. Like offering services online where you get paid for doing stuff for people. But this is not passive income.
You earn revenue when visitors to your site click your affiliate links and make a purchase from your Affiliate company. It takes a while to do this right. Wealthy Affiliate has taught almost 2,000,000 entrepreneurs since they started 14 years ago. They have created a formula for success. When you follow the training and implement the lessons learned promptly, success starts very soon.
Like getting indexed by Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines. Then getting ranked on the first pages. After this momentum grows with each new post you add to your website, your income starts to grow too.
An Invitation
There are many ways you can learn to do affiliate marketing. I am just one individual who is offering you an invitation to check out my in depth review of Wealthy Affiliate. Here you will find an all service platform that will help you become an expert in Affiliate Marketing.
I tried many other companies and spent a fortune. It was too late when I discovered I got trapped in a money pit and lost a lot of money. I ended up cancelling my accounts before they totally took away all my money in the guise of training me.
Then I found Wealthy Affiliate! Finally a company that didn’t want my money to show me what they offered. So I joined for free first before upgrading to Premium. And you can too.
I wrote an in depth article on Wealthy Affiliate using diagrams and charts from their platform. In this way you can see what I am talking about without having to join first. Click the banner below to get to my article.
If you wish to skip my review and join for free, you can do that too! In this way you will be able to experience the benefits immediately. This is by far the best way to get started. Not only will you get training, but see first hand all the valuable tools and mentorship that is part of this amazing platform.
You will be able to see success happening right before your eyes. And a stream of new members joining by the hour!
The following table shows you everything you get as a starter member compared to a paid member. You have already seen the true value of what you get here in the sections above.
You can remain a starter member for free as long as you wish. When you are ready to take the next step and experience ALL the training and benefits, you can upgrade to PREMIUM any time. The cost is $49 a month.
Or if you prefer the annual membership fee of $359, the cost works out to less than $1 a DAY! There are no up sells like I experienced with those other companies. I couldn’t believe the tremendous value I had for the picking.
And I will be on the other side to guide you along your success journey!
Great info.
Thanks for breaking down Affiliate Marketing so that it is more understandable. The pros out weight the cons. Plus the cons are all things that can worked through and overcome.
Your 4-step diagram explains it all.
As long one can find a niche that they are really passionate about they can make Affiliate Marketing work for them.
I will keep your post in mind as I move forward in my quest to become a better Affiliate Marketer.
Thanks again for sharing all this grat info!
Margerette,
Thanks for those comments that I felt were spot on. I wrote a post asking the reader if affiliate marketing is right for them. Although this is a simple business, there is a lot of thought that needs to go into it, like finding the right niche like you mentioned. It requires a lot of learning, trial and error, and hard work. Affiliate Marketing is definitely not for everyone. Hence it is better to find out sooner rather than later.
I definitely wish you all the best in your online business.
Cheers!
Edwin
Thank you for explaining to me how affiliate marketing works. I’ve been considering working from home for a while now. You make it sound so easy with your 4 steps. To me the second step seems very overwhelming. The idea of creating my own website is scary. Actually it is all a bit overwhelming. I visited Wealthy Affiliate and I think I’m going to try it out. Since it is free, what do I have to lose? Thanks again.
Hi Wendy,
You are in luck! Wealthy Affiliate makes it so easy to create your own website with the WordPress platform. In my blog I placed a paragraph that helps you to do just what you fear. Build your own website. Did you try it out?
Since you joined Wealthy Affiliate you have access to the free website building tools. I suggest you go through the lessons and follow them exactly. They provide the formula for success.
I wish you much success in building your own online business.
Cheers!
Edwin
Awesome post! I started on Wealthy Affiliate as a complete beginner three years ago and I didn’t even really know what affiliate marketing meant. Ever since then I’ve learned to make a full-time income online, enjoyed the laptop lifestyle, and traveled around the world. Wealthy Affiliate literally changed my life. I hope many will take action seeing this post.
Regards!
Hey Jordan,
I truly appreciate your helpful comments. Congrats on making a success of Affiliate Marketing. You are proof that the training at Wealthy Affiliate works.
Please continue to have even more success!
Edwin
Very detailed and interesting overview. Affiliate marketing is the real deal. Just learning about it gives me joy. But I seem to be taking my time, as I am not starting in a rush. I will be in for it for the long haul, so I am just going slowly at my pace. Although, by now, I have actually learned so much from different people like you already. Thanks.
I am honored that you have been able to learn from me. You are doing the right thing in taking the learning process slow but sure. It is more important to get it right than to go through it fast and not implement the lessons correctly.
You will succeed when the time is right.
All the best to you.
Edwin
Hello Edwin,
I am really impressed with the laid down explanation you have given here about Wealthy Affiliate. Before now I had doubts about getting the right training from any online platform on being a successful affiliate marketer. Long story short I am now a premium member on wealthy affiliate and I am learning on a daily basis both from the founders and fellow members.
Although I heard there would be a point where I’ll be introduced to some tools, but I’m yet to get there. I look forward starting my own page and applying all I have been learning.
Best regards.
Hi Chloe,
I am so glad you are getting into the nitty gritty of Affiliate Marketing. When you go through the courses, our founder Kyle will teach you what tools are available on the platform and when and how to use them effectively. I also suggest checking out the webinar archives under the Live Events tab on the left.
One of the first tools you will be introduced to is how to select your domain name, select a website theme and build out your bare bones structure of your website using the WordPress software. Don’t worry about how to use it as all the HTML background stuff is done for you. Creating a website is very much like using Word!
There are other tools like Jaaxy to find effective keywords for your posts.
Wealthy Affiliate makes the learning process a lot of fun. So enjoy as you learn.
I wish you much success in your Affiliate Marketing journey.
Cheers!
Edwin
Hi Edwin,,
This is extraordinary info. Thanks for identifying Affiliate Marketing with the goal that it is developed progressively. The pros outweigh the cons. However, the cons can be overcome successfully.
Your 4-step circular graph clarifies everything.
As long one can discover a specialty that they are extremely energetic about they can make Affiliate Marketing work for them. The thought of making my very own site is terrifying. As a matter of fact the process is somewhat overpowering.
I will remember your post as I push ahead in my mission to improve as an Affiliate Marketer.
Much appreciated again for sharing this extraordinary data!
Hi Sathi,
I am glad that you appreciated the core of my article. As far as the challenges of building an effective website, having the right training and tools makes all the difference. Wealthy Affiliate provides all of this to pave the way to a successful affiliate marketing business.
You will succeed with your perseverance. I wish you all the success in the world.
Edwin
This is a very comprehensive view of affiliate marketing. I have been with Wealthy Affiliates for a little over 2 years and am so grateful for the education. It is a great way to create passive income, but as you said takes some time to develop. The most important part of affiliate marketing for me is to pick an interest you are passionate about and that you live in your everyday life. This drives enthusiasm for creating content that talks about your interest and the products associated with it.
Hi Stacy,
Thanks for your supportive comments. I wrote an article on how to select a Niche. Hope this will help you in that area. I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing journey.
Edwin
Hello Edwin.
I recommend this training for all beginners who want to start an online business. The 4 steps you have described here are very well structured.
I just created my website. I want to know something about buying a domain for my website. After I buy a domain, do I have to transfer all the content to the new domain?
Best wishes!
Thanks for your supportive comments. If you created a website using the free siterubix domain then it would be advantageous to do a complete transfer to the new website based on your own domain.
If you want to maintain the siterubix domain. you can manualy transfer whatever you want to and leave the rest behind.
I hope this helps.
Edwin
When I was at school, the one thing I hated doing was revision. Now as an adult embarking on my own in the world of affiliate marketing, I am constantly on the look out for articles that will help me further my endeavour. You post is a blueprint for success, of that I am sure.
Revision for me now, means going back over the information again and again. You have outlined many of the reasons for becoming a affiliate marketer and for me this is an invaluable reminder. It’s all to easy to get swept away and forget the basics. Certainly remembering that the onus has to be on providing a solution to a persons problem or needs, should always remain at the top of the ‘reminders’ list.
I, like you and probably many others, have been caught out by the promise of ‘virtual’ wealth. Having access to a platform like Wealthy Affiliate, that really enables you to ‘try before you buy’ and being able to have your own website for free is the ideal opportunity to see if you can cut it as an online entrepreneur. Hard work and dedication are most definitely paramount, but having the right tools and training have to be there as well.
Hi TwAck,
Well stated. I am glad that my article highlighted the fundamental reason we are affiliate marketers. And that is to be of service to others through our helpful articles. When we are able to answer their questions and help our customers make a sound buying decision we will have served them well.
I like to think of Wealthy Affiliate as being the wind beneath our wings. WA helps to propel us with the knowledge, tools and service to make it as straightforward to build a online affiliate marketing website.
I wish you all the success in your affiliate marketing jurney.
Cheers!
Edwin
Hello there. thanks for the awesome article. It has really helped me understand affiliate marketing more and the risk involved as well as the pros and cons. Nice to see the pros overshadow the cons by a big margin. The 4 step diagram really explains the whole structure of affiliate marketing. Thanks once again for enlightening us.
Glad you found this article helpful. The 4 step diagram puts the whole affiliate marketing process into perspective in one glance. Affiliate Marketing in its basic concept is simple. However, to make it work is not easy otherwise everyone would be doing it.
This means those who stick with it will come out ahead in the end.
I wish you much success in your affiliate marketing journey.
Edwin
This article is of great help to us all especially those wanting to get into this line of affiliate marketing business. Those who are already in it don’t need to pass through a lot of stress like other platforms mainly because of the ease of following the Wealthy Affiliate training program.
Wealthy Affiliate has made this line of work very easy for us. Thanks a lot for this article.
Glad you found my article helpful. I agree, if one follows the training regularly and do the exercises, that takes the stress out of the process.
Thanks for your supportive comments.
Edwin