How Much Can I Earn from Affiliate Marketing
What is Affiliate Marketing?
According to Wikipedia
“Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts”
Affiliate marketing is probably one of the quickest and cheapest (not the easiest) ways to start making money online as you don’t have to create any products yourself. You simply link up a buyer and a seller, and you take a commission on the sale that has been referred by you.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
When you join an Affiliate program and choose the products that you want to sell, sellers provide you with a unique affiliate code that you can use to refer traffic to the target site. Most affiliate programs will offer ready made text links, banners and other forms of creative copies whereby you only have to copy the code and place it on your website to start referring traffic. When interested visitors click on these links from your site they get redirected to the product site and if they purchase a product or subscribe to a service you as the referrer make a commission.
The sellers can track your performance through your affiliate ID and the affiliate softwares (eg. WP Affiliate Platform) that they use. You also have complete, real time access to all sales and commissions stats.
You don’t need to sell products all the time to make a commission. Different affiliate programs can use different payment terms such as:
- Pay per Sale: In this program a merchant pays you a percentage of the sale price when the purchase is completed.
- Pay per Click: In this program you get paid based on the number of visitors you redirect to the Merchant’s website from your affiliate site, whether or not a sale is made.
- Pay per Lead: You get paid once the referred visitors provide their contact information on the target site by filling out a simple contact form.
Why be an Affiliate Marketer?
Affiliate marketing is considered to be one of the world’s fastest growing and best internet marketing techniques to earn money online and I will explain why:- Cost effective: Marketing on the internet is cheap and you don’t have to worry about the production cost as the product is already developed by the seller. You don’t need a physical business location or hire employees either.
- Global Market: Online marketing gives you the opportunity to reach people all over the world easily.
- No Fees: You don’t need to pay anything to join affiliate programs.
- No Storage No Shipping: You don’t need to worry about storage, packing or shipment of the product. They are all taken care of by the seller.
- No customer support: You don’t need to provide any customer support or deal with consumer complaints as the Seller does that for you.
- Passive income: A regular job can give you a fixed income as long as you continue to work. Depending on your marketing skill Affiliate marketing can create a steady flow of income even when you are not in front of your computer.
- Work from home: If you make enough money then you don’t have to worry about going to work at the same time every day or getting stuck in traffic. You can work in the comfort of your own home.
Earnings?
How much can I earn affiliate marketing is a question that gets asked a hundred times a day by the new students when they first arrive at the Wealthy Affiliate University.
Unfortunately, although it’s a pretty straight forward question, there isn’t really a straight forward answer.
How much someone can earn affiliate marketing will depend on a myriad of factors but I’m going to try to break those factors down here and at least give you some idea of the earning potential with affiliate marketing.
How Much Can I Earn Affiliate Marketing?
There are two main factors that will determine your earning potential when you first start your affiliate marketing business.
- The niche you choose
- How hard you are willing to work!
Choosing Your Niche
It seems that everyone who starts affiliate marketing wants to conquer the “Make Money Online Niche” because they have listened to all the so called “Make Money Online Gurus” telling them how much money they make with affiliate marketing.
You know the ones I’m talking about.
They normally have a big flashy sales page with a video that was made on their laptop, sitting on some Caribbean beach whilst sipping a piña colada!
Or they’re talking to you while they drive their brand new, bright red Ferrari around that they won from some affiliate marketing company for being super affiliate of the year.
Whilst I’m not saying that they are blagging you or that it’s impossible to make that sort of money online, (I personally know several people who do make that much money) what I’m saying is that the “Make Money Online Niche” is not the best niche for someone just starting to learn affiliate marketing to get into.
Making money online is in fact one of the most difficult niches to actually make any money with because of the fierce competition so my advice when you first start your business is to look for a smaller niche with less competition where you can start to make some money fairly quickly and not get disillusioned and give up in the first few weeks!
How Hard Are You Willing To Work!
Oops! Did nobody tell you that affiliate marketing is hard work!
You’ve been watching those guru videos with their overnight millionaire instant money sales pitches again haven’t you.
Let me tell you straight.
Affiliate marketing is hard work!
When I first started learning affiliate marketing I was still working full time and putting in more hours in the evenings after work than I was putting into my full time job!
I struggled and almost gave up several times during the first couple of years before I started to see any real returns on my efforts.
But let me tell you, when that first affiliate sale came and I saw my first affiliate commissions arrive in my bank account it was like the best feeling I had ever experienced.
All my hard work had paid off and I am now reaping the benefits but it didn’t happen overnight.
The first twelve months can be hard work unless you choose your niche wisely.
How hard you are willing to work on your niche in the first twelve months will determine how quickly you can succeed and both of those factors will have a direct affect on how much you can earn.
The answer to the question “How much can I earn affiliate marketing” depends completely on the individual but the truth is that there are no limits to how much you can earn as long as you choose your niche wisely and are willing to work hard at making your business successful.
I will be covering choosing your niche over the next couple of weeks but if you would like to find out more about the earning possibilities with affiliate marketing then come and join me at The Wealthy Affiliate University where you will find plenty of people who are making a very comfortable living from affiliate marketing and who are more than happy to show you exactly how they do it and help you get started!
And remember…..
Today, somebody somewhere in the world will be giving up their 9 to 5 job and enjoying the freedom and financial independence that affiliate marketing has given them.
Tomorrow it could be you!
Source: http://onlinewithalan.com/how-much-can-i-earn-affiliate-marketing/