One of the richest men in the world warren buffet says that if you cannot or failed to find a way through which you can make money when you are sleeping, you will most probably work till you die.
Considering the statement, you should know how important passive income is.
To start having a passive income, you have a lot of options in the online business world. However, the one which is better than the others in terms of profit, money required to start it, and how fast you can earn through it is considered by many to be affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make passive income. And that passive income keeps increasing over time. You might be thinking that starting affiliate marketing will require a lot of investment, well you are wrong then as the money required by affiliate marketing is little to no.
In this post, I will tell you how you can start affiliate marketing as a beginner by explaining every step in detail, so stay tuned.
What is passive income?
Passive income is referred to as an income source where you once put some effort into making that income source stable and once that income source is stable, in the upcoming time, you will not need to keep putting effort into that income source but you will still be earning a lot of money from that income source.
what is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a method of making passive income by promoting products of another company and whenever a sale is made on a product by your specific link, you get a commission.
In simple words, you will be choosing a product, after choosing the product you will be promoting it to other people on the internet and when someone will buy that product from your special link which will be given to you by the management of the affiliate product, you will get a commission.
So the first thing that you will need to do is to choose an affiliate product. for this, you can either choose an affiliate network like CJ where you will have thousands of affiliate products to choose from or you can apply for an affiliate program that will be specific to a product like Getresponse.
After you have chosen an affiliate product, then you will need to apply to the affiliate program of that product. You can take an affiliate program as a deal between you and the management of the program where you are promised a guaranteed commission on each action you do which in most cases is when you make a sale.
To be an affiliate for some affiliate products, all you will need to do is to just fulfill a form and after you have provided them with the necessary information, you will be approved as an affiliate instantly. This means that you will not be analyzed, you will just be given your affiliate account directly.
However the story is different for other affiliate programs because when you apply to become an affiliate for those affiliate programs, you will not be approved as an affiliate directly, rather you will first be analyzed where the amount of audience you have on social media and on your website will decide whether you will be approved or not.
This is done to keep scammers away from becoming an affiliate which not only costs the product owners money but it also damages their reputation because some people just spam everywhere just to get a sale for their affiliate product.
when you are a beginner, you will most probably not have a good amount of traffic on your website or a good enough audience on your social media accounts which will make it difficult for you to get approval from some affiliate programs or networks.
So in your early days, it’s better to apply for affiliate programs that do not require approval. Later on, I will mention some affiliate programs which do not require approval.
choosing an affiliate product
Choosing the right product to promote can greatly affect the amount of money that you can earn from affiliate marketing.
There are a lot of things that you should be considered while choosing an affiliate product but the most important one is your niche. A very popular and successful online marketer Niel Patel says that if you choose an affiliate product based on its commission and not according to your interest, you will eventually get bored promoting that product and will give up.
choosing the right product is not only limited to the niche of your interest, a good affiliate product also has a good commission which is worth the marketing that you do for that affiliate product.
A product having a high commission might seem like a good affiliate product but it might not be if its conversion rate is low.
Conversion rate is defined as out of 100 visitors how many of them do the required task like sign up or buy the required product.
Let’s take a real-life example. You have two products let’s name them products A and B. Product A has a commission of 100 dollars with a conversion rate of 1%. product B has a commission rate of 50 dollars with a conversion rate of 3%.
so for every 100 visitors, you get on product A will get you one sale which will earn you 100 dollars however for every 100 visitors you get on product B will get 3 sales which will you earn you 150 dollars.
Product A even after having a greater commission made you earn less as compared to Product B. so now I hope you know how conversion rate in affiliate marketing can affect your earnings.
The type of commission you get on affiliate products also matters a lot. there are mainly two types of commission that you get on promoting affiliate products.
One is the bounty commission which means that you will get a one-time commission. Other is the recurring commission which means that as long as the customers who bought the affiliate product from your affiliate link keep paying, you will also keep getting a commission.
I will mention a lot of affiliate products with a recurring commission as well as with one-time commissions.
it’s better to choose affiliate products that offer recurring commissions because not only are they a source of passive income but they are also way more profitable than one-time commissions in the long term.
this does not mean that I am saying that choosing a one-time commission is bad but a recurring commission is better for most people who want to have a completely passive income source.
best affiliate programs with recurring income
Getresponse
Getresponse is an Email marketing software that also has features to create websites and much more. It has been a great software for 20+ years which means it has a good reputation.
Getresponse is one of the best affiliate programs when it comes to recurring commissions. Not only does its recurring commission make it a really good choice but also it does not ask for any approval which is very beneficial for beginners who can start right away promoting Getresponse.
Getresponse offers a 33% recurring commission which means that every month you will get 33% of what your affiliate users pay to Getresponse.
You might be thinking how much money is that 33%, well it depends on which plan of Getresponse is bought by the customer because Getresponse has many different plans for its users.
The lower one starts from 15 dollars which means that if someone has bought the 15-dollar plan from your affiliate link, you will make about 5 dollars every month as long as the users keep paying.
However the higher plan of Getresponse costs more than 100 dollars so if someone from your affiliate links buys the higher plan, you will be making something like 35 dollars every month as long as the customers stay there.
with its great UI, your visitors are much more likely to convert which also increases your earnings from the Getresponse affiliate program.
Clickfunnel
Clickfunnels has been long paying millions of dollars to its affiliates in commission. Some of its affiliates are even earning up to 100k dollars.
Clickfunnel gives up to 40% recurring commission. It costs about 97 dollars so you will get like 39 dollars per month on every sale you make. so even if you are able to make 30 to 40 sales you will be able to make above 1000 dollars per month in a passive way.
But there is something with the Clickfunnels affiliate program that you should keep in your mind and that is that it does not directly give a 40% commission.
In the beginning, you will be provided a 20% affiliate commission but after you have earned 1000+ dollars through its affiliate program, you can apply for a 30% commission rate.
Once you have 40 sales, you can apply for a 40% commission rate but keep in mind, that those 40 sales should be active, which means that all of those 40 customers should be paying to Clickfunnels actively every month when you apply for its 40% commission.
Clickfunnels has a really good reputation in affiliate marketing.
a lot of people are earning thousands of dollars through it. So if you do the work, you can also be one of them.
Kartra
Kartra does not only offer features for building landing pages and sales funnels but also it can manage your online business as well by providing you with a lot of features like Email marketing.
like Clickfunnels Kartra also offers a 40% commission. In Kartra, you are provided 40% commission directly which means unlike Clickfunnels, you will not need to achieve some achievement to get a 40% commission rate, you will be given it directly.
Unlike other affiliate products which can be promoted only to a specific audience, Kartra can be promoted to a wide audience.
Kartra is not as popular as other affiliate programs that I mentioned.
However, its affiliate program is worth giving a shot at.
Systeme.io
Systeme.io is a new website launched in 2018, it offers features ranging from email marketing to evergreen webinars.
it also offers features to create sales funnels, automation, and much more.
it also gives a 40% recurring commission but you do not need the approval to join their affiliate program. They pay 200k dollars every month to their affiliates as told by its owner.
These are the 5 of the best affiliate products with recurring commissions.
however if you do not care about the long term and want to earn more money faster, then affiliate products with a one-time commission might be a good option for you.
here are some of the best affiliate products offering one-time commission.
Semrush
Semrush is one of the best tools for people searching for SEO tools.
It offers all the features needed for optimizing the search engine ranking of a website.
it offers 200 dollars one-time commission on every sale. It is one of the few affiliate products in the SEO niche.
Its competitors like Ahrefs do not offer an affiliate program. So if you are in the SEO niche, Semrush can be a great choice for you if you are looking for an affiliate program.
Getresponse
Not only does Getresponse offer one of the best affiliate programs with the recurring commission but it also offers a really good one-time commission.
it gives 100 dollars on every sale you get, considering its base price of 15 dollars, its one-time commission is unexpected.
other email marketing affiliate products like Convertkit only offer one type of commission. So if you think that its one-time affiliate commission or recurring commission is not good for you, then you can switch to the other type of commission.
Bluehost
Bluehost is considered by many to be the best shared hosting service, especially for beginners due to its high performance and low price rates.
Bluehost offers 65 dollars affiliate commission. However if you already have great results in promoting affiliate products, you can ask them to increase your affiliate commission to 100 dollars.
with some people getting an average of 5% conversion rate on promoting Bluehost, you can expect to make a good amount of money from the Bluehost affiliate program.
also, when you are applying to become an affiliate for Bluehost, you will not need to wait to get approved as you do not need any approval to become an affiliate for Bluehost.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue is another email marketing service launched in 2012.
unlike most of the other affiliate programs, Sendinblue does not only give money to its affiliates when they make sales but also when a user from their affiliate link signs up for their free plan.
It gives 100 Euros when you get a sale and 5 Euro when you get a free sign-up.
this might be the best choice for those who want to make money fast as it gives you money even when you only get a sign-up on their free version.
Skillshare
Skillshare is a website where people come to learn various skills by purchasing courses while other people upload those courses.
Skillshare offer 7 dollar commission to its affiliate on every sign up you do not need to get sales to earn money through Skillshare.
Skillshare can be promoted to any audience as it has courses on every niche.
Promoting the affiliate product.
After choosing the affiliate product of your interest, the next thing you will need to do is market the affiliate product you have chosen.
After getting approval for an affiliate product, you get an affiliate link that will track all the visitors and sales. You will need to use that affiliate link every time you link to your affiliate product.
If you use a normal link for promoting the product, any sale that you make will not be traced as your affiliate sale. That is why you are given a special affiliate link that has a special code at its send and you have to use this link so that your sales can be traced.
there are a lot of ways of promoting affiliate products.
I have mentioned some of the best methods for marketing an affiliate product.
content marketing
Content marketing means creating content in any form like video or text and in that content promotes a product or a brand.
you write an article or make a video, you give valuable information in your content and promote your affiliate product in your content as well.
After you have prepared your content, you will need to publish that content, and that is why you will need to have a website.
A website is very important for your marketing strategy because if you start getting traffic to your website, you can start converting them into customers.
However, if your content is in video format, you can also use Youtube as a platform.
Your content will need to provide something unique, some valuable information that can get the attention of the people.
Also, keep in mind that while preparing your content, focus on the quality of the content rather than the quantity of the content.
The reason you should be focusing on quality over quantity is a lot.
But one of the main reasons for doing that will be is that there are already a billion blogs on the internet.
This means that on almost every topic, there is a blog already written.
If you focus on quantity, the content that will be produced by you will not be helpful to people and since there are a billion blogs on the internet, the topic you will discuss will already be presented in a better way on some other website.
So to beat your competitors, you should be focusing on quality so the content that you produce is better than the content they have produced.
Now, after you have published content on your website, you will now need to get traffic to your website so people can read your content, and you can make visitors from your website into customers.
There are a lot of methods through which you can get traffic to your website.
below, I will be mentioning a lot of ways to get traffic to your website.
SEO
SEO is such a big topic that I cannot describe it here but I will try my best to explain it to you in some words.
SEO stands for search engine marketing. SEO means optimizing your website and its content in such a way that when someone searches for the keyword related to your website, your website appears in the top results.
Simply, you will be improving the ranking of your website on the search results on google.
SEO is further divided into two types.
1 = On page SEO
On-page SEO refers to all the things that you will do on your website in order to improve its ranking.
This includes doing keyword research and finding keywords on which your website can rank easily and other such things.
Keyword research means using keywords in your content that are not that hard to rank for on google. To do keyword research, you can use Ubbersuggest which also has a free version and will provide you with a lot of features for doing keyword research.
2 = Off page seo
Off-page SEO refers to the things that you do off your website which is most of the time referred to as building backlinks.
Backlinks are the links that direct users from one website to another.
For example, if I mention the link to your website in my article here, it will be a backlink for your website since it will be directing users from my website to your website.
Building backlinks is the most important task when it comes to doing the Off-page SEO for your website.
Backlinks give a signal to the google that if a website gets linked by a top-ranking website, Google will know that the content on this website is really good.
To learn more about SEO, you can check out Neil Patel.
Putting your content on other websites
Other than posting content on your own website, you can also post parts of your content on other websites, and then from those websites, people can see your content and then come to your website.
Such websites where you can put your content on include Medium, Tumblr, Facebook, etc.
You can go to these websites, take a part of your content and paste it there and then at the end, put a link for your website so people who will want to see your full content can visit your website.
On websites like Quora, where people are continuously asking questions, if you think that an article from your website can answer that question, you can suggest to them the link of your article as well after you have written some lines for the answer.
Linkedin gets hundreds of millions of traffic to it every single month and millions of visitors every single day.
Linkedin can be a great way to get sales to your affiliate products because most of the people on LinkedIn are business-related.
On Linkedin, the more targeted connections you have, the greater results you will get.
To make connections with someone on Linkedin, first, you will need to send them a request for making connections.
This should be simple but can be bad in the same way if the person is annoyed by you for sending them a request, they can even report you for spamming and block you.
This can also make your account banned if you receive a lot of reports.
To solve this issue, you can first engage with the person you want to send for the request for making the connection.
To do this, you can join a group that is also joined by that person as well.
In this way, there will be way fewer chances of you receiving a report for spamming from them.
You can also utilize in the mail which is an excellent feature of LinkedIn with amazing results but the catch is that it is a paid feature of Linkedin which can cost you 80 dollars per month.
However, you will soon forget about paying those 80 dollars per month for in-mail when you will start experiencing those amazing features of In-mail.
Using In the mail, You can engage with Linkedin users even with those who do not even have a connection with you.
So by using in Mail, your marketing on Linkedin can be way faster as you will no longer have to spend time and wait to make the connection and then do the marketing.
With In mail, you can directly do that.
Linkedin has great potential to get thousands of visitors to your affilaite product and to your website. A successful online marketer Neil Patel gets more than 60000 visitors per month only from Linkedin. So you can estimate how helpful Linkedin can be in increasing revenue from your affiliate marketing business.
So knowing how helpful Linkedin can be, you should not wait to post your content on Linkedin.
Considering all these things, you should start posting your content on LinkedIn and after some time, you will start seeing a good amount of traffic coming to your website.
Quora
Quora is a question-answer website but it also has Quora spaces where you can publish your content.
Quora gets almost half a billion of traffic every single month.
so even only getting a tiny part of that traffic to your website can result in huge gains in sales.
On Quora, there are a lot of ways through which you cannot only do marketing of your affiliate product and of your content but can also increase the revenue from your online business by getting more sales.
The traffic which comes from Quora has a lot of advantages over other forms of traffic as well such as traffic from Quora staying longer on the website they visit and also they have a good conversion rate.
A reason for these advantages can be due to the people who will visit your website will also be interested in similar content as that of your website on Quora.
What you will be doing on Quora will be answering questions related to keywords in your niche. For that, you will need to insert keywords related to your niche in the search bar of Quora.
After that, you will see a list of questions that will be directly related to the keyword that you have entered in the search bar.
You will need to answer those questions by providing value as well and not insert affiliate links ever. Only insert usual links after you have spent some weeks on Quora and even that in 3rd or 4th questions.
To avoid inserting affiliate links, you can make a web page that will direct people to your affiliate product so whenever someone will visit that landing page, they can click another link and visit your affiliate product. So, you can use the landing page link as an alternative to the affiliate link.
To make landing pages, you can use any service like WordPress, etc.
Another thing you can do is to either join others or create your own space. Quora space is somewhat similar to Facebook groups but not completely similar.
You can publish your content in your space and in other spaces, your content will be published after it has been approved by the admin of the space.
As time will go on, your results from Quora will start increasing.
you can check this amazing article by H-Educate if you want to learn more about marketing on Quora.
Facebook needs no introduction. Facebook is taken as a website for social engagement however it can and is a great source of marketing.
In fact a lot of top websites offering tools like Mailchimp get tens of thousands of traffic from Facebook every single month.
on Facebook, you can publish your content in many ways from joining other groups and posting in them to creating your own group. It’s better to do both. Most Facebook groups have some rules, so make sure you do not break those rules otherwise you will be banned from that group.
You might find it difficult in the beginning to have successful marketing campaigns but as time goes on, you will start seeing good results from Facebook.
Once you will start engaging in the conversations of other Facebook group members, They will start recognizing you and will recognize you by any post you make.
just make sure you provide value and do not get kicked from the group admin for spamming or for other such reasons.
You can also use Facebook marketing to make your messenger contact list which can be used by you as an email list with amazing results.
You might think that making a contact list for messenger may be as difficult as making an email list which may become true in some upcoming years but for now, it is false as it is easy to make a contact list than to make an email list.
To learn more about making a messenger contact list, you can read this article by Neil Patel.
Email marketing
Email marketing remains one of the best ways for increasing the sales of the business.
Email marketing also has one of the highest returns on investments as well. With an ROI of 4200%, it is definitely one of the best choices you can make for your online business.
With email marketing, you will also get a high conversion rate and click-through rate.
For email marketing, You will need an email list which can for some take a while to make.
Other than collecting leads, you will also need to choose an email software such as Getresponse.
It’s on you which one you choose but Getresponse is one of the best email marketing software for the value that it will offer.
The money that you will pay is a lot lower than other email marketing software such as Constant contact.
To make an email list, you can read this article by Hubspot which will break everything down into simple terms.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing can easily be considered one of the best and fasted ways with little to no investment, unlike SAAS which requires a lot of money just to start it.
While Affiliate marketing sounds amazing, it may have a lot of complex things which can maybe difficult to understand for beginners.
I have broken those things down into simple pieces which will make it really easy for you to understand those things.
Tell me in the comments if you will be starting affiliate marketing after reading this article and if you are not interested in starting affiliate marketing, is there any reason for that?