Is affiliate marketing worth it to boost your income?

Everyone wants to generate some passive income. I think you want to!

If you have followers and traffic, then affiliate marketing can let your dream come true.  You can make money while you sleep or go hiking. 

What you have to do is promote somebody else’s products on your social media or website. You will earn a fixed % or commission of the sales that are generated through your marketing affiliation.

Most of the new marketers are hoping to make easy passive income without much effort.

Though, It seems easy and attractive. But the fact is that it’s not easy at all.

Most affiliate programs don’t generate enough revenue for a marketer as expected.

Data shows that fewer than 10% of affiliate marketers drive 90% of total conversions & sales.

This means that there are a few affiliates in the industry who make profits.

So making a living by affiliate marketing is not an ideal situation.

Before going further, let’s see the definition of affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

As per the definition of a digital marketing leader Pat Flynn, 

 “Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.”

Before going ahead,  you must know the secrets of affiliate marketing: 

1. The parties involved in the process
2. The types of affiliate marketing channels
3. How to get paid
4. The tips for success

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing focuses on multiple parts, such as:

1. The advertiser
2. Publisher
3. Consumer

In simpler terms, affiliate marketing focuses on the seller and the affiliate.

It is an idea of selling products and seeking out others to promote those products on their social media pages or website. In return, the affiliate marketer gets some percentage of profit.

Let’s break it down with an example:

Nike sells their products on Amazon. Amazon wants to sell more of those items. So they ask people to promote or advertise Nike’s products on their websites and help drive more sales.

[Read How to become Amazon affiliate? With 5 best Amazon affiliate sites examples]

In exchange for advertising Nike’s products, you get a certain commission on every sale via your links.

Now, let’s explore the most profitable niches in affiliate marketing. If you go to Google and type “profitable affiliate niches,” you will see the following broad categories on your screen.

Different Affiliate Marketing Channels

Affiliates have several advertising channels to increase their target audience.

Here are 5 important affiliate channels,

1. Reviews or Blog Posts: Offer your services or products to bloggers to write a post or review for their followers on the website. This method helps to rank your products by investing little to no effort.
2. Influencer or Popular Site Owners: These influencers have active and regular readers who follow these influencers and buy your products. The influencer takes commission when your product sells via their link.
3. Paid Advertisement: This channel of affiliate promotion includes a paid sponsored ad on a search engine page or partner’s website. This is a call to action to your target audience.
4. Email Marketing: Affiliates promote the seller’s products via newsletters, digital marketing, and email lists.
5. Media Sites: These are large websites that specialize in marketing services. These sites use affiliate links and banner ads and affiliate links to draw traffic and sell the products.

 How to find a profitable Affiliate Niche?

• Research

Searching for a niche can be one of the most challenging aspects for most marketers.

Let’s ask about a niche Google:

A niche can be a service, product, or interest.

For example,

An organic face soap.

The niche bath soap is mass-produced and found in large quantities. 

But, organic face soap is a relatively smaller and less competitive market. 

It isn’t easy to compete with Dove, but you can compete with smaller organic face soap companies.

To start research, go to Quantcast and click on the explore button.

Then, click on the top 100.

You will see a  top 100 sites list at a given time.

Go to 2^nd and 3^rd pages to check trends and niches in the companies you see.

Next, all you need is to and head over to Quora and search for a broader category. 

People ask and questions on any topic and get detailed answers on Quora.

Let’s type “travel” in the search bar and see the results.

Travel is a broader category, and you can’t compete with popular travel sites. The tip is to find a long-tail keyword or niche, such as “travel hacks.”

• Monetization check on ClickBank

The next step to check the monetization of “travel hacks” on ClickBank

Click on the affiliate marketplace button and find your product.

• Check your niche on AdWords

The next step is double-checking of cost per click of keywords in that niche.

Let’s go to Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner.

Go to “search for new keywords” as shown in the picture below,

Now, type your niche-related keywords.

For example, let’s type “travel” and see the results.

Click on “Get ideas” to look at average monthly searches & competition.

The competition means the difficulty in ranking while monthly searches 

Once you’ve found your profitable products, then start selling them.

• Selling products on Affiliate Programs

When you’ve found a profitable affiliate-marketing niche, sell it on your favorite affiliate programs, such as ClickBank & Amazon 

Join for free and start selling instantly with these affiliate programs.

Tips for success in Affiliate Marketing

A passive income is the biggest attraction to become an affiliate marketer. You can make money online with an affiliation program while you’re watching your favorite sports or running errands. 

Being an affiliate marketer, you act as a third party and linking the seller with the customer. Not you, but it’s the seller or the customer who takes care of the post-sale activity.

It is a no-cost startup where you don’t need to take out a business loan. 

Your paycheck depends upon how little or how much you’ve worked.

If you have a strong readership and following on your website and social media pages,  find reliable affiliate programs such as Amazon or Clickbank to work with those who have products that are related to your content.

Here are some tips for success in affiliate marketing: 

• Find a related niche. Always choose services and products within your niche and promote them regularly. Tailor your campaign to that niche

• Prefer Quality over quantity. Fewer quality campaigns are far better than poorly promoting a bulk of products.

•  Try multiple sources to generate more traffic. Utilize your Google Adwords, website, and social media platforms to generate more traffic. Stay updated with new affiliate marketing techniques, and don’t be afraid to try something new.

• Product demand Research. Always do research beforehand because low-demand products won’t sell even if your marketing effort is strong.

• Choose Reliable Sellers. Choose your sellers wisely and only work with reliable products. Unhappy customers won’t visit your site again. 

• Don’t become inactive. Stay active and updated with new affiliate marketing strategies and techniques and do experiments.

Affiliate Marketing Payment Structure

All the affiliate programs are not the same.  There are 3 basic payment structures, 

These structures depend on the personal preferences of the affiliate and seller.

1. Per click
2. Per lead
3. Per sale

Bottom Line

The idea of affiliate marketing is great.

By marketing the seller’s products, affiliates can make a passive and highly lucrative income.

 As per reports in 2020, affiliate marketing was a win-win situation.

But it doesn’t happen all of a sudden. To get to the affiliate income, you first have to be clear and active.

You can do that by creating an effective affiliate marketing strategy to earn some additional money.

Using your website audience, you can boost the affiliate business and fill your own pockets.

Nowadays, affiliate marketing is a saturated market because less than 10% of affiliates drive more than 90% of the conversions.

This means making a profit living by affiliate marketing can be a little tough.

But, you can do this by finding some profitable niches that will boost your income.

First, start with researching a niche topic. Then use Quora to find trending niche topics.

On ClickBank, check if you can monetize these topics. Now research on AdWords to find keywords. 

Lastly, start selling your products via reliable sites like ClickBank and Amazon.

Have you started affiliate marketing yet? Let us know.