Affiliate Marketing Questions And Answers

Affiliate marketing has been around for many years. Changes in the way Google ranks pages now may benefit more people because of the approach people can take. It’s all about keywords and content, and a few other factors covered below. YouTube tutorials and many, free tools, gives you a huge head start. Learning the right way of approaching affiliate marketing has never been easier.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

To put it as simply as possible, affiliate marketing is referring customers to companies selling products and/or services. Upon the successful sale of a product or service, excluding returns or refunds, the referring affiliate earns a commission. Either a one time commission or a recurring commission.

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Can I Make Money?

That’s the million dollar question! The good news is that yes, you can make money in affiliate marketing. The biggest factor however is you. Like learning any new skill, it takes time and commitment! If you are getting into affiliate marketing to make fast money, then you will more than likely be disappointed.

Those people telling you that they are making thousands of dollars monthly, weekly or even daily (and many of them are doing just that), have been doing this for years. They have learned what they need to know to earn those big commissions. That’s not to say you can’t do the same.

Consistent Work Time

I realized one very important thing from learning how to play the guitar. The more time I devoted to practice, the better I played (practice makes permanent). In fact because of the Pandemic, and the amount of time I now had on my hands to practice, my playing level excellerated.

Even though you may not have a lot of time to focus on your business, it’s crucial to allocate a certain amount of time, whether it’s daily, every other day or even once a week. The important thing is to make it consistent, plus doing what the experts are doing to become successful.

Becoming good at affiliate marketing is like learning any new job or skill. You need to zero in on your niche, get focused, find the experts that are successful and are willing will show you the ropes and keep at it.

What’s Are The Biggest Obstacles To Success?

In all my years of doing this I have found that there are two factors that can be a major roadblock to your success.

You Might Be Your Worst Enemy!

Your willingness to get organized, set a plan, find a niche and follow the experts who are successful and are willing to show you how it’s done. The key is to realize that if someone else has done it, you may be able to as well.

Look Out For Squirrels!

There are so many distractions online, and it is really hard not to get distracted, I know I do. You need to focus on your task at hand. If you see a great idea don’t get distracted by diving into that but rather take note of it. When you have finished your job at hand, you can always go back to do research on other topics.

What’s The Importance Of Setting Goals?

To be honest this is one area I work on constantly. I’m a jump in with both feet, kind of person. I work on this each day and have come up with a simple plan of setting and achieving goals. Goals can be lofty (long term goals), such as ‘becoming financially independent in 5 years’. Goals can be less lofty (short term goals). A short term goal might be ‘I will finish this section of my article today’. In other words, short goals are stepping stones to the ultimate goal.

A simple Plan

Your long term goals can only be achieved by completing all of the other short term goals. Writing one paragraph in a long article is a short term goal. When I sit down to write or do any other task, I set a goal for that day. I write that goal down and then mark it off the list when completed.

If your long term or ultimate goal is to become financially independent, or even, make an extra $1000 per month, then write that down so you can read it every day. Many of your short term goals may not even be apparent to you yet. make sure you write down or take note of ideas as you get them.

Goals Can Change

You don’t have to come up with a list of all of your short term goals. If you discover something you need to know that is not on your list, write it down. As I complete each of my short term goals I mark them off. This gives me a sense of accomplishment when I see all of the tasks I have completed. You can even change your long term goal. It may be too hard to accomplish or not lofty enough.

For example if your long term goal may be to make an extra $1000 per month in 2 years. Once you achieve that you can change you long term goal. Your revised long term goal could be, becoming financially independent in 5 years.

Don’t get hung upon long term goals and timelines. Your success may happen soon, or take longer than anticipated. many things can happen along your journey. Nothing is carved in stone, but goals just give you guidance to get you race.

One Time Commissions

Recurring commissions are earned, mostly through memberships or monthly billing. A lot of online services that charge monthly fees pay recurring commissions. Most of these companies are in the digital industry.

If the customer you referred pays the monthly fee, you earn a commission for that sale. You earn a monthly commission as long as that customer you referred remains a customer. This is more lucrative but also very competitive as far as competing for paying commissions. More on online digital companies that pay recurring commissions later in the article.

If it sounds exciting, it is when you receive your first commission. (A good goal here: Earn my first commission in three months!)

Who Can Do Affiliate Marketing?

Basically just about anyone with a website, blog, YouTube channel, Facebook account or even just with email can apply to become an affiliate. Most companies affiliates apply to would have their own criteria for approving affiliates. Some companies automatically approve affiliates. However the majority of companies would manually approve affiliates.

Do Affiliates Work For The Companies They Are Referring?

All affiliates do is to refer customers. Once a customer clicks on a referral link, a banner or click through in an email, they are referred the company’s website. The customer then deals with the company when it comes to any sales, billing, complaints or refunds. Affiliates would have no other dealings with that customer.

Does An Affiliate Have To Stock Products Or Deal With shipping?

Once the customer clicks through to the company’s website, the company handles all stocking of products and the shipping of those products and/or services.

How Much Does It Cost To Start Affiliate Marketing?

To go live online online with your own website it should cost you no more than $45 to $50 dollars (US) per year. All you need is a domain name and web hosting. Affiliate marketing can also be done on social media or by email without purchasing a domain or hosting. this type of affiliate marketing is not covered in this article.

Domain Names

You can purchase domain names through Name Cheap and other registrars. Most domains cost an average of sixteen dollars per year. Researching a good domain is always recommended. Your domain should reflect your business.

Web Hosting

Web hosting can be purchased through HostMetro. The cost is $88 for three years of hosting. Host unlimited domains which is good for publishing landing pages plus small and large websites.

Can You Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money?

How Do Affiliates Find Products And Services To Sell?

This may be the easiest part of affiliate marketing. If you go online and browse websites of companies selling products and services, and if they do offer an affiliate program, you will probably find a link, normally at the bottom of the page, that will say “Affiliates”, “Associates” or even “Partners”.

Each site that offers an affiliate program and should answer these two important questions. What and how you can promote their products and/or services and how much commission you can earn referring a successful sale for those products and services.

Applying For Affiliate Programs

There will be one of two ways to apply to a company’s affiliate program. Either the company runs it’s own program or they have a third party affiliate service handle the affiliate program for them. Many companies will require that you have a website that directly relates to the products and/or services that those companies offers for purchase. You will also need to supply how you will promote their products and/or services (website, social media, etc.), how much traffic you get to your site, how much your site earns monthly.

If you are just starting out you can project numbers as a guide. Programs run by the companies themselves tend to be a little more difficult to get approved for unless you have been online for awhile and you can convince them you are going to refer their products and/or services to their satisfaction.

Third Party Affiliate Services

Third party affiliate services, such as Shareasale, handle all of the affiliate details for companies that do not want to handle that task themselves. These services normally represent thousands of companies who are looking for motivated website and blog owners who want to supplement their income.

These services handle all of the affiliate applications, the distribution of affiliate links and banners etc., all of the affiliate reporting and the paying of commissions. When initially signing up at these third party services you should be as detailed as possible with your information.

Once you receive your log in details you will have your own dashboard where you will be able to apply to companies as an affiliate, get all your promotional links or also known as tracking links, banners etc., set your affiliate marketing campaigns, use API, see how your links are performing, affiliate stats and see how much, if any, commissions you have earned.

Applying To Individual Companies

When applying to affiliate programs through these third party services you will notice that some application are manually approved by the company itself while other applications are automatically approved. Sometimes you get an answer back quickly while other times you will wait for approval. You should apply to a couple of programs that fit your niche in case you don’t get approval from one.

When applying to companies you should take note of the average payouts for that company and if they are in good standing with the third party service. Read customer reviews of that company to make sure you are referring a company that has a positive rating.

Can Any Company Offer An Affiliate Program?

Which Affiliate Marketing Is Best For Beginners?

What type of affiliate business you choose should depend on your passions, your interests or something you have experience in. Then you should look for a non competitive niche where you can compete for business. Once you find out what niche you fit in, you really have only two choices for creating income from affiliate programs.

One Time Commissions:

In other words a one time commission is for a one time sale of each product and/or service you refer to a company. Alidropshipping is an example of an online business you could start to sell products. They make it easy to open a drop shipping business online, providing you with a website and products to choose from to sell. The object is to refer sales of as many products as possible. I would say this is where the majority of affiliates venture into when they first start out.

Recurring Commissions:

These are the best kinds of commissions because they come every month, as long as the person you referred keeps paying their monthly fee to the company you referred them to. These commissions are earned mainly from online digital companies that charge a monthly fee for services, companies such as SemRush SEO Marketing.

Income from this avenue can be very lucrative, and in my mind from doing recent research on ranking on the first page of search engines, it is more to my liking for the way I want to market my business. Basically keywords and content.

I’m not to choose between the two because everyone has different likes, different passions or just have experience doing things I have never done myself. Personally I promote digital products and services for two reasons. I have a knowledge of affiliate marketing and I like the way I can do my marketing online. You have to decide where you fit in the grand scheme.

How Affiliate Marketing Works On Instagram?

Instagram is a great social media funnel for traffic to your website and many people on Instagram point people to pages or to their website. If you do this it would be a good idea to have a landing page where people are greeted to your site from Instagram. On this page or resulting you will have a smatering of affiliate links in your content that you can point your visitors to.

How Affiliate Marketing Works With Facebook?

Affiliate marketing can be done on Facebook but you really need to ahee to their policies when it comes to promotion of products and services. You can use the Business Page to promote your products and services, Facebook ads for affiliates, creating a Group and Facebook Live are other ways to do it on Facebook. Make sure you know the do’s and don’ts of doing any business on Facebook.

Can Affiliate Marketing Be A Career?

Of course anything you do to make can become a career. It may start out as a part time gig, but may develop into a full time gig, with hard work and emulating what the successful affiliate marketers are doing.

Where Do I Start?

There are a multitude of affiliate marketing training programs online and many will want you to buy an upsell for more information. As well the best two online affiliate training options would be Wealthy Affiliate and Affilorama who offer free very good basic training.

What I am using is a simple plan that experts use to obtain success. The hardest part of this business is the patience to make it happen. I have laid out a step by step process you can follow, as well as links to the experts tutorials. Do what others are doing but do it better.

The Problem With Affiliate Expectations

Expectations can be high, especially if you get caught up in the hype. The reality is quite different.

Normally the number one expectation is that of making money. Money is great, but it doesn’t come easy. Here’s the deal. Your first expectation should be to learn.

Learn first, don’t quit, and you will see some level of success.

Affiliate Marketing Programs