What is affiliate marketing?

By now you’ve probably seen the ads – “make money online with affiliate marketing!” “You can earn $521 per day with almost no effort.”

So, is this legit, or is it too good to be true? Like a lot of online promises, it lies somewhere in between.

Can you make money with affiliate marketing – oh yes. Many have made good money with affiliate marketing. A few have actually become very wealthy with it. That part of the claim is legit – it is possible to change your life this way.

The second part of the claim – the part about little effort, or about this being passive income? That isn’t likely true, at least at first. It can be, once things are up and running, but at first there is a lot of work.

So what is it? Affiliate marketing basically allows you to be the advertiser. Someone has a product they want promoted, and you can help. Each time they sell as a result of your efforts, you get a commission. Sounds great in theory, and it can be, but the cautious reader is already feeling some hesitation. How do you get in touch with the vendor? I don’t know how to make online ads or videos. And how do you get your ad exposure so you can earn those commissions?

Turns out, only that last point is really sticky, so that will be a topic for a future post. The first two challenges are really quite simple; an ingenious type of marketplace has sprung up that makes an entire industry possible.

These marketplace web sites present you with many, many different products, broken down by categories. You then find a product you want to promote, and lo and behold – they provide a bunch of marketing materials. There is a landing page, for which you get your own special, trackable link. This is the sales funnel – you want people to get here. If they buy, then you have earned money.

The better vendors provide you with all sorts of help, by way of email ‘swipes’ – pre-written emails which you can send to direct people to the sales funnel. There is often text and image samples for you to put on your own page, to help with the marketing. You really don’t need a lot of technical skills, but that doesn’t mean there is no work involved.

Most opt for some sort of a web site to present all of this material. There are many ‘funnel’ providers which can help with this, providing (relatively) easy to use design tools – you definitely don’t have to be a programmer. There are also services which will help you collect emails, to build up your own list of subscribers. This can be very helpful in the long run.

The real trick is getting the traffic to your site. There are various forms of paid ads – these can be effective, but they are seldom as fast as you would imagine. There are online services that can drive traffic, and sure enough you will get a bunch of clicks, and maybe even a few subscribers. (note – be careful about the really cheap ones. If someone promises you 5000 visitors to your site for $5, they are probably just bots. Your site will get visitors, but you won’t get any sales or even subscribers to your email list)

This is what we will discuss in the next post – how to get traffic. Spoiler alert – this isn’t as easy, or as hard, as many think. Like everything in life, it requires work.

BTW – for entrepreneur themed encouragement, please check out my Instagram page – https://www.instagram.com/morecashlesswork/