Affiliate Marketing Explained

Are you looking for ways to make money online? Thinking about ways to monetize your blog?

One way to earn money is to do affiliate marketing. Actually it's more than just "one way" as people are doing this kind of marketing for living and some are making a lot of money.

If you're not into affiliate marketing already, here's true Affiliate Marketing 101 for you.

This article covers the basics of affiliate marketing and in the followup article, I'll help you to join your first affiliate program.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

"Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliates marketing efforts." -Wikipedia

Affiliate marketing can be done in number of ways, so it is not tied to blogging alone, but doing affiliate marketing through your blog is an excellent way to do it.

Affiliate marketing is a big business and there is a lot to learn about it, but at the root level, it's really simple.

• You refer your reader or friend or family member to a seller
• I liked this book, and I think you would enjoy it too, go check it out, here's a link
• Your reader/friend/mother buys the product,
• the seller gets the money, and
• the seller pays you percentage of the sale!

Affiliate marketing is sort of re-selling, but in the digital world you don't have to move any products, just REFER someone to a service or product. If they buy or join, you get percentage of the sale.

You might think yourself as a "sales person" for the company you are affiliated with:

• You try to get buyers for the products, and
• "sell" the products to the buyers you've found
• (or get the "buyer" to subscribe to a email list or join a service)
• if you succeed, you get paid and all parties benefit.

For example, you write a book review. You will most likely link to the homepage of the author and possibly to a place where people can buy that book, right? Well, that book link could be affiliate link!

Let's say you link to the book in Amazon, where your readers can immediately purchase the book you reviewed. And when they do, you can earn 4-15% in referral fees. Plus anything else they happen to buy on that same visit.

The Concept of Affiliate Marketing Explained

There's a whole lot more in affiliate marketing and there's endless number of different products and services you can promote on your blog, but the principles remain the same.

1. Choose a product that want to recommend to your readers
2. Join affiliate program for that seller or product, if you have not yet joined.
3. Get referral link to the product you want to promote
4. Place the link or banner to your blog, post or elsewhere
5. (Write, record a podcast or make a video review for the product or service)
6. Publish your link or post with the link in it
7. Your reader is interested in the product you linked to and clicks on the link
8. That reader then buys the product from the seller
9. You get paid percentage of that sale!

Making Money with Affiliate Marketing Sales

The percentage depends on the product and the affiliate programs, but you can receive anything between 0,1% and 100% of the sales. For digital products like eBooks or eCourses, you're usually getting 50% of the sale, but like said, the percentage varies on different products and affiliate services.

Let's take an example that the you're getting 50% of the sale amount. And let's assume you reviewed an eBook you read. Something that costs $30. Your reader then clicked on the link in the review post and bought the eBook and paid $20 dollars for it. You just earned $15! It's simple as that. Multiply this with tens, hundreds, even thousands of sales, and you are true affiliate marketer!

Getting your first affiliate sales feels like a million bucks, and just for that feeling I'd recommend to at least try affiliate marketing.

It is possible, or even more likely, that you don't sell anything right away, but don't get too encouraged by it.

Keep trying and do your best and the results will follow.

Next up - How to join your first affiliate program and the affiliate program evaluation.

Here's more cool posts similar to this one:

1. 3 levels of affiliate marketing – link, review and promote
2. Step-by-step affiliate program evaluation checklist
3. How To Join Your First Affiliate Program