Affiliate marketing is one of the many ways people, including bloggers and various small businesses, earn passive income to support their primary income. The idea behind it is promoting products that are not your own and make a fixed commission based on what you were able to sell.

Affiliate marketing is all about finding the right product with the right commission to promote. And you don’t have to be limited by a single product as you can be an affiliate marketer for several products as long as you have the time and right channel to market it to consumers and earn your commission.

Before you start, we encourage you to read this definitive guide for affiliate marketing to learn the rules, possible mistakes, and everything you need to know about affiliate marketing.

Definition of Affiliate marketing

You must have gathered the meaning from above, but for clarity purposes, here is what affiliate marketing means; it is the process of promoting products owned by companies or individuals and earn profit from each sale you make. It is a commission-based income and not salary-based.

Products can mean anything from fashion items, household items, books, to software and online courses. It could also be a service, but this could depend on the location of the merchant.

Now there are various people involved in affiliate marketing to make the program successful. We have the merchant, affiliate, publisher, and the customer.

The merchant

The merchant is the person who has created the product that is now ready for sale. It could be a significant and well-known company, a start-up company, or a solo entrepreneur. They also prepare the affiliate program in a way that benefits everyone involved in bringing the consumers.

The affiliate

The affiliate is the person who promotes the product through various channels to attract prospects and convince them to make a purchase. And it doesn’t have to be an individual, but companies also participate in the business of affiliate marketing and are earning millions off it.

Affiliates decide the various methods to promote the products, which could be through a blog, website, social media platforms, digital billboard, etc.

Understand that to make it big in affiliate marketing; you should be ready to go the extra mile to get your prospects and convert them.

The consumer

The consumer is who everyone is targeting including the merchant and the affiliate. They bring in the revenue and allow affiliates to earn their deserved commission.

It is the job of the affiliate to reach the consumer and bring them under their watch because sometimes the consumers do not make an immediate purchase.

The affiliate might wish to inform the consumer that they are part of an affiliate program or pretend like it’s their product.

The network

The network is the medium through which affiliates can get to know about various affiliate programs. They are like the middlemen between the merchant and the affiliate. Examples of networks are ClickBank, Amazon, where people can choose the program they want to be involved with.

How to become an online affiliate marketer

So this article is a guide for affiliate marketing, and we will concentrate on how you can become an online affiliate marketer and earn some cool cash. Here are some steps to become a successful affiliate marketing and get a tangible commission.

Choose a niche

While you can choose any product that comes with a big commission to promote, you are not going to make much of an impact if you don’t understand them. For instance, you can’t go promoting automobile parts when you don’t know anything about cars, not even where to locate the clutch.

Before deciding to promote a product, you need to have a connection with the product to make it easy to write about it. That is why most affiliates will set up a blog to write content relating to the product and then promote it any chance they get.

 For example, someone with a health blog can easily promote products relating to health on their blog because it is something they know about it. In the same vein, a lady can support a make-up product especially if she uses make-up every day.

So rather than trying to jump on every affiliate program, choose the products you can effectively promote.

Build an email list

Every serious online business should have an email list with customers and prospects contacts as you need to communicate with them continuously even after they’ve made a purchase. But how do you get their emails in the first place? You can offer them something in exchange for their contact. It could be an ebook, report, or anything you feel will be of value to the customer.

When you’ve collected your email list, don’t just store it on your desktop and forget about it. Use it to keep the communication lines open. Send them regular updates about your blog or anything of interest.

You could send them a product, review, blog update, etc. And if you decide to review and promote more products, you can let them know about the new products right their in their email, or lead them to your site to get more information.

Make use of live webinars

Videos will always increase engagement, so aside from other marketing efforts you’ve been trying to drive traffic to your site and social media platforms, you want to try out some video marketing.

A webinar is the best way to increase the credibility of your site and the product you are promoting. Moreover, Google’s algorithm picks up videos, and this will naturally increase the search rank of your product.

Talking about the credibility of your product, people will readily purchase a product they’ve seen in action than the one they read. Through a webinar, you can do a live presentation of the product and all its functionalities.

You only need to create a landing page and get people to sign up for the webinar by promoting it via social media and email. And then stream your webinar using Google hangout for your audience to watch live.

After the webinar, you can easily refer your audience to the affiliate link where they can purchase an excellent product.

Use PPC advertising

Even if you don’t go through this route in the first stages, you will need to make use of a paid advertisement. Aside from boosting sales, it helps you grow your email list as well as get people to sign up for your webinar.