Affiliate marketing is a great opportunity for everyone who wants to earn money from additional passive income without much effort and with little too small initial investment. All you need to do for that purpose could be completed in just a few days. In short, you have to buy a domain address, choose a hosting plan, create a website, and join any or several affiliate marketing programs out there.
What Affiliate Marketing is?
Imagine a person investing a huge sum of money to buy a rental property. Most probably, they have saved money their whole life to be able to get monthly rent someday. This is the most popular way to earn profit from passive income.
And now, imagine a person who brings in similar income just by making a website on the Internet where they help with the sale of products that someone else has already prepared or services that someone else performs. And they earn a percentage of the sales revenue just by advertising them with useful blog articles and placing an affiliate link leading to the merchant's page. This is not traditional, but a relatively new way of earning money from passive income that is still unprecedented in terms of extremely cheap initial investment.
Which passive income method would you choose? We're willing to bet you're curious about how exactly the second method works. The biggest advantage of this method of making money online is that it may require absolutely no investment at all if you already have your own website. In case you don't have a website, then the only funds you need to invest are in creating one. Unlike before, these days creating a website is not that expensive anymore, and many people make their own websites even just for fun and hobby.
In addition to the low initial investments, affiliate marketing has one more very alluring advantage: it is completely risk-free due to the lack of large initial monetary input. Even if it turns out that affiliate marketing is not your piece of cake, the losses for you will be really much less significant than a hasty shopping trip to the mall on Sunday.
Why do Merchants Prefer Affiliate Marketing to Traditional Advertisement?
Nowadays, many internet businesses prefer affiliate marketing to traditional banner ads. This way they could save money from prepaid advertising campaigns that could never guarantee that the value of the earnings will exceed that of the advertisement itself.
In a world of huge competition and increasingly expensive traditional advertising methods, affiliate programs are gaining more and more weight and popularity. Unlike with the old and well-known advertising schemes, businessmen don’t have to pay anything to the affiliate marketer unless a purchase of a product or service has been completely finalized. That’s the reason why many betting companies, online casinos, cosmetic manufacturers, software and hosting providers, travel agencies, plane/train ticket sellers, insurance companies, etc. count mainly on affiliate marketing to gain new clients and reduce all traditional ads to the absolute minimum.
How Affiliate Marketing Works?
Every time a sale is made through the affiliate marketer's personal link, the affiliate program owner calculates the affiliate marketer a commission. And, therefore, the owner of the program pays it each month or once in a few months. Yes, it's that simple.
Depending on the plan the affiliate marketer uses, they may, actually, get a commission from the profit of each sale made, or they could get a specific amount for each customer referred or for each purchase made.
Affiliate links could be advertised by the affiliate marketer on social media channels, just like popular influencers do on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn. They could also be popularized by email marketing or on a website.
When a website is the main platform for popularizing the products or services advertised, affiliate links are most often embedded in click-to-action buttons or in blog texts and articles. In the textual content, all the important advantages and disadvantages of the product or service are presented in detail. These blogs and articles themselves are being promoted by implementing SEO practices or on social media channels that are owned and moderated by the affiliate marketer.
Can I Advertise Several Brands Together?
The short answer is: yes, you can.
It is quite a common practice for affiliates to publish several affiliate marketing links that lead to e-shops of similar types of products from competing brands in a single article. Often, these different brands might be present in a ranking list at the discretion of the affiliate marketer. The more honest the affiliate is with their potential customers who will likely make a purchase through their affiliate link, the more trust the clients will have in their website. And the more sustainable the affiliate marketing business could be for the affiliate.
In affiliate marketing, you can easily find a simple and adequate solution to any potential conflict that appears. For example, in case you come across a program that limits your opportunities for selling products of other brands, but you still would like to take advantage of it, you could make two or several separate sites to advertise through.
How do Affiliates get Paid?
Usually, affiliate marketers’ earnings are regularly paid by popular e-wallets, such as PayPal, or to your bank card.
A variety of factors determines the amount of money you will gain from your affiliate business each month, including the percentage of your commission, the time you are able to invest in your affiliate initiative, the niche of your affiliate business, etc. But, in our humble opinion, the most important factor is the affiliate marketing program itself.
How to Choose Your Affiliate Marketing Program in Only 3 Steps
Step #1: Choose your favorite niche
We would strongly advise you to concentrate on products and services from the niches that are most interesting for you. This would help you understand the potential customers' necessities much better than if you register on any random affiliate program. Furthermore, it will be quite entertaining for you to create and engage with content that is close to your heart.
Аlong with good marketing and SEO practices, real interest and frank passion will definitely help you a lot in progressing in the affiliate business. Remember that the more you believe that the products and services you offer are of good quality and really useful, the more convincing you will be in your advertising texts and images.
Here are some appropriate niches for particular interests:
- Sports fans and games lovers: Betting & casino affiliate programs
- Finance specialists and experts, accountants, crypto specialists: Wealth-building affiliate programs
- For those who know how important security is: Insurance affiliate programs
- PC maniacs: Software & hosting affiliate programs
- Beauty connoisseurs: Cosmetics affiliate programs
Fashion lovers: Fashion affiliate programs
- For those experienced in parenting: Childcare affiliate programs
- Bodybuilders and people who care about healthy living: Healthcare, lifestyle & fitness affiliate program
- Animal loving and caring individuals: Petcare affiliate programs
- Travel freaks: Plane tickets, trips & vacations affiliate programs
- Lovers of comfortable and shiny cars: Automobile affiliate programs
Besides these examples above, there are dozens more potentially prosperous niches that you can grab and turn into an instrument for your long-term passive income.
Another important note. To make someone buy a product or pay for a service, you shouldn’t be misleading. Unlike other traditional advertisement methods, in affiliate marketing integrity and honesty are highly valued by each of the three parties: the owner of the affiliate program, the affiliate marketer, and the customer. You could make this business generate constant and long-term income for yourself only if you are sincere with your customers.
Step #2: In the sea of affiliate programs, find the most generous ones
After choosing your favorite niche, it is time to look for an appropriate affiliate program. It might be quite a fun adventure, and you would probably be surprised to find out what a broad variety there is.
You can choose between a single or several affiliate programs to join and advertise their products or services together. Usually, no matter which affiliate program you opt for, you are free to advertise as many competing products as you want.
We would advise you to follow a few main factors when choosing an affiliate program:
- Generosity: Always choose affiliate programs that pay well for you to advertise their products or services. When you know that you are paid well, the efforts you make will really be worth it and you will be highly motivated. Thus, you will have more desire to take care of the design and the textual content of the review pages of your partner’s products or services, and you will be prone to regularly update it.
- Business freedom: Sometimes, agreeing with restrictions affecting your freedom to advertise other similar brands could result in far more losses for you than gains. Always keep in mind that you are the one and only master of your site and business. And the owners of affiliate programs should respect your desire to freely work with others affiliate programs too.
- Politeness: There are some affiliate programs in which affiliate managers demonstrate rude behavior. These are usually people who do not respect their business, their partners, or their customers. In case you feel a bad attitude from a marketing manager of an affiliate program, do not hesitate to transfer to another similar affiliate program. Especially if you feel such an attitude at the very beginning. Never forget that the purpose of passive income is to bring you funds with minimal effort and with no stress.
- Long-term loyalty: Serious affiliate programs will always try to keep you as a long-term partner. This happens by constantly and proactively upgrading the size of your commission or by inviting you to join a sub-affiliate program. That is, earning not only from your own affiliate network but also getting additional commissions from the sales of each sub-affiliate that you manage to recruit into the business. If this is offered to you, it all means that the management of the affiliate program has great, justified, and well-deserved trust in you.
- Good marketing advice: In good affiliate programs, whenever you need any marketing advice, your affiliate manager will advise you in the best possible way. Affiliate managers have a good vision of which approach is successful and which is not. Remember that you and the affiliate manager both have the same general goal: to make the products or services sellable. Therefore, we would recommend you listen to their pieces of advice, as long as they are not contrary to good manners.
- Providing marketing materials: Although this is not a mandatory factor to insist on, it is always good when the affiliate program provides marketing materials in the form of branded banners, logos, etc. These marketing materials could refresh the review pages of the products you offer, as well as save you the time you would have invested in creating such materials yourself.
Step #3: Choose a type of deal
One of the most important steps in choosing an affiliate program is negotiating the deal. Two very important qualities are needed here:
- the ability to properly assess your actual opportunities and the real strength of the market niche.
- after you have already assessed your needs in the right way, it is important to be able to choose the most profitable deal for you and to protect your interest in the negotiations with the affiliate manager.
Every single affiliate program offers its own deal types. But generally, though named differently, they follow the same pattern of deals. Here is a short list of the types of deals you would meet in most affiliate programs:
- Revenue share: You earn a percentage of the revenue generated through your affiliate link.
- Cost-per-action (CPA): You are paid a predetermined amount for each purchase generated through your affiliate link.
- Hybrid: A combination between “Revenue Share” and CPA. You receive both a percentage of the revenue generated through your affiliate link and a certain fee for each sale that was conducted through it.
- Flat fee: Earn a predetermined amount that is based on your advertising but not on the revenue you generate (Usually, many big and popular affiliate sites take advantage of it).
In case it is hard for you to choose exactly which deal type would be the most appropriate one for you, don't hesitate to consult an affiliate marketing specialist. It would be an investment that you would pay once only. But you will be sure and confident that you have done the best you could to choose the right approach.
All affiliate programs have their own terms and conditions that the affiliate marketer could agree to or negotiate. Always read them carefully and check in advance what the percentage of the commission they offer is. It is always much easier to negotiate deal-dependent terms that satisfy you at the very beginning of the cooperation than when you have already started.
Final Words
There is plenty of opportunities to create passive income in the field of e-commerce nowadays. But the one opportunity that allows you to earn well with the least investment is precisely the area of affiliate marketing. There is a sea of affiliate marketing programs that are waiting for you to register.
if your interests match perfectly with the niche of web hosting affiliate programs and you are currently looking for a way to earn passive income, do not hesitate even for a moment to sign up for any of them. It is currently one of the most profitable e-commerce niches.
We recommend you check out the types of deals on MissAffiliate.com. As a web hosting affiliate program for a long, we offer high-quality services and understand the needs of our customers and our affiliate partners, and we deeply appreciate them both. We do believe that this is the reason why we were recently ranked 4.9 out of 5 as the best web hosting company in the world on TrustPilot.
