Affiliate Marketing Definition and How To Make Money With It

In this article, I will define and explain to you what are the concepts surrounding affiliate marketing and why more and more people make money by this way. This article is not enough to help you become a top earner with Affiliate Marketing but, It will equip you with the basic idea to start making money with affiliate marketing.

1. Affiliate Marketing Definition

Affiliate Marketing is a form of online business it is almost like a collaborative model. With this form, you can find distributors who support affiliate products, sign up and promote their products, you will receive commissions.

What is Affiliate Link

Affiliate link is a specific URL, it 's provided by the merchant or affiliate network, that use to track the commission of each affiliate.

How to Become an Affiliate

Just sign up for the large affiliate programs like Amazon, commission junction, Clickbank,... there 're a lot of quality products for different niches.

If you want to promote the products you love but that doesn't have on the large networks above, you can go to the office merchant website to find their affiliate program or referral program and join it.

• For example, if you make an affiliate for Amazon, you must register with Amazon Associates, after which you will be able to advertise any Amazon product by the specific links (or affiliate link) when a customer buys through your link, you will be commissioned.

Commissions can range from 4-8%, maybe 10% in some special categories if you sell well

In summary, what you do is create affiliate links and get customers to click through them to buy, it may not seem simple, but in fact. The number of people making affiliate programs for Amazon is quite large, making a few hundred to a thousand dollars a month is normal.

The affiliate model accounts for 40% of total revenue for Amazon, so let's imagine how terrible affiliate war. Besides Amazon, there are thousands of other businesses, networks deploying this model and you can start at any site.

That is for physical product, with digital products, the commission can be up to 50-100%. For example, you can go to Muncheye to see the product coming out, of course, there is an affiliate for you to do.

Affiliate marketing has been established and developed rapidly in developed countries such as the US, UK, Japan, ... Then with many success stories revolve around affiliate marketing and ability to bring ultra-high revenue from this business model, affiliate marketing gradually introduces itself to other countries in the world

2. The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing.

The first and most important benefit of affiliate marketing that is you make money without effort to create products or have your own product.

There are dozens of available networks available for you to choose from.

For example, Commission Junction is the number one affiliate network today.

The second benefit is the ability to make money with affiliate marketing is extremely high. In the United States or other English-speaking countries, there are many people earning more than $ 100k per month. Some millionaire affiliate blogger who you can follow like Pat Flynn, Harsh Agrawal, Chris Lee, ... and a lot of other individuals.

If you want to find out how to make affiliate website, RankXL of Chris Lee is an awesome blog you cannot ignore, here are a lot of good tutorials for both newbies and enhancers:

Here're an example of RankXL Blog

The other advantages when you do affiliate marketing are:

• You can work anywhere with just one computer connected to the internet.

• No need to take care of customers (or very little), no need to worry about shipping, deliver products to customers. These jobs are the responsibility of the person who creates the product.

• It is possible to start with a low cost, even with a few hundred dollars that you can invest time and effort into learning and start making money with affiliate marketing.

• Diversification Options: Many affiliate middleware networks sprout up, they are the people who help affiliate marketing popular, introduced to the shop owner, reseller ... so you will have a lot of products to choose from a variety of different niches, both short and long-term. When making an affiliate through the network, all billing issues, performance statistics will always be transparent.

• Replication, passive income: When you know how to make money with affiliate marketing, you can replicate what you do, hire the referral team, so you have 1 passive income

3. Steps to Make Money Affiliate Marketing:

There are many different ways to make money with Affiliate, depending on the field, each type of product. However, I will say the first four steps to make money with affiliate marketing as follows:

Identify promotional products

There are many different popular affiliate networks such as:

• Physical Products: Amazon Associates, CJ, Shareasale, Linkshare, ...

• Digital Products: Clickbank, Jvzoo, WarriorPlus, ...

• CPA Network: Peerfly, MaxBounty, CPALead, ...

Analyze & plan promotions

This must be an important step that most of you just sketchy. You notice that you sell the products to others, but you have to see it as your product, because it helps you make money, so you have to carefully analyze the following;

• Products with the high or low commission

• The product will be sold to whom, what their needs

• Draw the customer avatar, buyer journey

• The product is good or not, there are many customers use it

• Affiliate competition is high or not

• The main way to earn customers

• If you do website and SEO, you have to choose keywords. If you run ads, then which direction to whom,...

• What type of website should you build?

......

For example, Nootriment is a blog specializing in Supplement. And they earn very well with affiliate marketing for Amazon:

From what you analyze, you will have a specific direction and proceed to promote base on the way outlined. For example, low commission physical products cannot run ads with Google Adwords or Facebook Ads, it is best to choose the budget savings direction as SEO (search engine)

Acting along the available way

If you build a blog to earn money with affiliate marketing then start the first set, like learning how to make a website with WordPress, how to research keywords & build content.

If you choose to advertise by running ads, conduct research on Facebook Ads, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, ... or other large advertising networks.

Optimization, measurement, replication, management.

This step only happens when all three steps are successful. With Affiliate, if you already know the formula to make money, you can expand, optimize the results obtained to bring you more profit.

When there is a lot of capital, you can hire people to work in a number of stages, to shorten working time as well as bring you passive income.

4. Promote Affiliate Marketing - SEO or Ads?

In Section 3 you can see I have talked about SEO or Ads, and there are two main directions to do affiliate marketing (of course there are many other ways but I just talk about two main directions).

• With SEO: You will build a blog/site, and optimize your website to rank high on the search results, mainly Google.

• Run Ads: You choose the network that allows ads to run and put your ads on that network (For example, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Google Ads, Bing Ads, ...)

So what affiliate marketer should choose? SEO or Ads Run?

There is no answer to this question because choosing a promotion depends on a lot of factors, such as product type, product price, commission and your understanding of the product. I have the following examples:

You can not bring a $ 100 physical item on Amazon, 5% commission to promote on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, .. because you will certainly lose compared to the money spent running ads. With the physical products, you should choose SEO and build a niche site or authority site.

With the ClickBank product, you can choose SEO or Ads, because the commission is very high because SEO will be very competitive at the present time.

With affiliate T-shirts, you should not select Google Ads, because the bid in this segment is very high, and SEO is also very difficult, but Facebook Ads is the right choice.

....

So choosing SEO or Ads is your understanding of your field and your product type, you can study from the "competitor" ahead of you are doing to promote their products and then follow.

5. Thinking and attitude when doing Affiliate Marketing

Failure is the thing that "most" new affiliate marketer meet, I am no exception. Not only failed once, but this thing came to me many times.

There are always initial failures for new directions. Success will come to you when failures n times. These numbers depend on your thinking and attitude plus a little luck when you do affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is about building a serious online business for yourself, but with online and offline business, the risks are unavoidable and the risks are always associated with losing money.

Earn money with Affiliate marketing is not difficult but not easy. If you succeed, you will get the results you deserve. So, improve your knowledge to get started

There are 2 articles on affiliate thinking that you should read if you want to start with affiliate:

Affiliate Marketing Mindset For Beginners by Digital Bloggers

Affiliate marketing mindset - 15 steps to success by Bogdanfiedur

 Two articles above that have the most accurate affiliate mentality from predecessors and have been successful, so you do not need to go looking for a more distorted material. However, if you are a person with a personal identity, you may have an affiliate mindset of your own. Since there is no definition, thinking that applies to all

6. "Personalized" Trends in Affiliate Marketing.

Customers are learning about a product, they will certainly believe from those who used the product, the reviewers, experts, .. in this field rather than belief in advertising of this product on the official website.

This feature will allow the affiliate to develop in a "personalized" way, meaning that you will "play" a specialist in a certain field, who has deep knowledge of the field and then promotes this product wisely.

You will build a blog to express your feelings about the products (review), compare products, buy the guide, provide tutorials, tips, and tricks, etc. with one common feature. That is: You write in personal writing.

For example :

As I'm writing this blog, the T-affiliate site is also writing personal style, feel and your knowledge, and I think you also like and trust these blogs more than websites that provide general information

However, not everyone has enough knowledge about what they are doing to develop a website, blog or social profile in this form because if you want to be an expert then you have to be knowledgeable.

So you will have to "invest in knowledge" first. You have to understand the market you are doing, the benefits, pros, and cons of the types of products you intend to do, then you can develop in the direction of "personalization"

This "personalized" form is difficult and does not have much documentation, However, its potential is extremely large, if you do well, customers will come back to visit your site and make additional purchases again.

This is also a trend from 2017 back with the appearance of many "personal" blogs and naturally, they become a specialist in any field and is a destination of many loyal customers...

They spend a lot of time researching everything related to their field, then they will share their knowledge for everyone, and everyone will trust them, the more knowledge they have, the more trusting they will be.

Jon Loomer is a blogger specializing in Facebook Ads and Facebook Marketing. His blog is a place where I go regularly to study and update new knowledge. And it is inevitable that I have bought some of the tools related to Facebook Ads that he promoted via email.

And many other markets such as health, travel, beauty, aquaculture, ... there appear experts and they can all make money with the affiliate.

"Personalization" is an affiliate marketing trend that will continue to grow in the future, and you can also turn your blog, your website into a "personal" style rather than a page that brings general news.

7. You Will "Die Out" When Promoting.

From 2015 onwards, Google has a lot of intelligence, Google knows what you are doing with your website/blog. For example, your blog is only for the purpose of making money instead of bringing useful knowledge to the reader, Google will not appreciate.

The goal of Google is to: Push sites with useful knowledge to the reader, pull the site "high self-interest" or crap down.

You can see the top niche sites that have a page like this:

And along with this, over the years, customers are becoming smarter, they know you're making an affiliate and they will decide who they buy through. If you just say good for the product, they will find you are a fraudulent blogger and they will choose another blog to read.

All products have advantages and disadvantages, please carefully analyze them and review in the most honest way, customers will choose their own thoughts + with your suggestions, that opposite to say “all are good products, let buy a great one”.

Always choose good products to promote and honest review of the product will help customers trust you and the rate of purchase through your link that is higher, do not think customers will leave

8. Do You Dare To Accept The Challenge?

Affiliate marketing is not difficult, but it’s not easy, undeniably there are many people who have good thinking, success and have a high income with affiliate marketing, and maybe you will achieve success with this array in the future.

With over $ 6.8 billion in sales in 2016, and the number is growing every year, affiliate marketing is always a lucrative path if you have the key in hand.

When making affiliate marketing, you have to accept many initial challenges, and you also have to consider a lot as a new brand, always have the trap, trick in any field. But the most important thing is your passion.

If you want to earn money or earn a lot of money from affiliate marketing, your task must overcome these challenges, There are many people who will equip you with the knowledge, but no one will be able to help you make money, You have to do it for yourself, do not expect anything.

You can learn more about other affiliate marketing tips on my blog, including marketing methods such as SEO or Ads. However, if you are new to blogging, do not forget the Serie article for beginners.

9. Do Not Stop Creating

When you learn about the forms and the affiliate direction I mentioned above, you will probably find some guidance from the people who go online and you can follow these directions.

However, there are times when you will find some “strange” ways to promote affiliate and few people do, let me take some examples will make you more understandable:

• Smartpassiveincome is an "Expert Model" site, where Pat Flynn shares his knowledge, his path of success and revenue each month, and the Resource Page of the site has brought big affiliate revenue every month

• Promoting Affiliate Marketing through "free ebook": There are many experts who write ebooks that provide useful knowledge to customers, the ebook will recommend a number of products and of course with affiliate links.

There are many other forms that when you do, you will see it appear, but strange forms will probably come with "hard".

 You think you have enough credibility to make people purchase through your Resource Page

Or do you think you have the ability, knowledge to make an Ebook?

After all, they all ask for you: knowledge & ability. And you will always have to start with the easiest knowledge and forms, materials available on the net. When you have a foundation, you can associate, create your own way, this is also a gold mine you can exploit = your potential.

Following the guidelines of successful people is always a good choice to start. But do not stop there, always be creative.

10. The End

Although it is the promotion of other people's products, however, if you decide to make money with affiliate marketing, you must always have the same attitude and actions as you are promoting your product.

And at some point, the way you promote gives you a lot of profit, you can consider selling your own product, your service instead of promoting the affiliate, many have done so.

Hopefully, through this article, you have got more knowledge about affiliate marketing. If you do not understand, think about it or ask yourself questions under the comment section. With the experience of "affiliate war" for a long time, I can forward any of your questions revolve around affiliate marketing.