Everybody wants to start their own online business, but it’s not easy. Starting your own online business takes alot of effort to get the website online, process payments, ship orders, etc. Not everybody has the time, the money, or the contacts to make this happen in real-time. The best option for anyone that wants to begin making money online is to become an affiliate marketer. Affiliate marketing generates over $8.2 billion in revenue within the United States alone.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when you promote the products or services of another company and you earn a commission for the sales that you generate. Affiliates normally get a percentage of the sale price or they get a CPA (cost per action) which is a set amount for each sale. There is very low-risk and low-cost to start as an affiliate marketer, because you don’t have to pay for products, a business location, equipment, employees, etc. The only real costs to become an affiliate marketer are web hosting, a domain name, website development, and marketing.
As an affiliate, you can promote many different products and services. You will get paid a commission on every sale that the company makes from a customer visiting through your website. You normally get paid by affiliate programs, 15-30 days after the end of the month. You won’t be paid right away for the sales, but most programs pay out monthly. Your sales will be tracked through unique affiliate links that you will place within content on your website. The affiliate program will track every single visitor that makes a purchase through your links.
Best Affiliate Programs
You cannot just setup a one page website and plaster some affiliate links, then expect that you will make money. You need to develop a website that provides valuable information and resources to visitors in the same niche as the products or services that you are promoting. Visitors to your website aren’t looking to be sold products. They are visiting your website to find out more information about something, or to solve a problem that they currently have.
Not every affiliate program is going to be profitable. There are many affiliate programs that won’t provide you with enough income to leave your job. They will provide you with extra income that you can use along with the money from your full-time job. The truth is that you need to find the niches with affiliate programs that offer substantial commissions to their affiliates. There are only a handful of very profitable affiliate niches, and most of them are highly competitive. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to compete, but it will take a lot of time to get your website ranked, to become an authority, and bring in loads of traffic.
There are three types of affiliate programs that you can join. There are high paying with low volume, low paying with high volume, and high paying with high volume. The last type is the best type and the one that you should be aiming for. It will also be the most competitive, but whatever type that you choose will require the same amount of effort to start making money. You may also want to look at the high paying with low volume affiliate programs because their are a few of these programs that offer huge payouts when you bring in a new customer.
You need to promote products or services that offer a high commission. You will be putting in the same amount of work to promote high commission or low commission products, so be smart and go with the products or services that offer the highest commissions to affiliates. When you choose an affiliate program, look for products that pay at least $50 to $100 per sale. They may pay you a set amount or a percentage of the sale, but it should be in this price range. Also, you should make sure their is a hungry market for the products or services being offered. You need to be able to get enough sales per month to make it worth all of the time invested.
Long-Term Affiliate Goals
You are not going to make money as an affiliate marketer right away. It takes time and a lot of effort to compete as an affiliate marketer in competitive niches. Don’t let anyone fool you with hype that its easy and you’ll be drowning in money in the first few months. If you follow the right path as an affiliate marketer, you will eventually make money. You need to start with some long-term goals and focus on what steps that you’ll make to get the website to the point where it will bring in revenue. Don’t listen to anyone that says you can’t make money as an affiliate marketer. Just use their doubts as motivation to eventually prove them wrong.
Recommended Affiliate Niches
If you search for the best affiliate niches or the best affiliate programs, you’ll be presented with lists of many different niches and programs to choose from. Some will definitely be better than others. These lists may not be exactly what you need. Every affiliate marketer that posts a list will have a different level of experience. Some affiliates may know what works best, while others may just be posting about affiliate programs to generate revenue from new sign-ups.
The most popular affiliate niches are hosting, finance, casinos, travel and health. These are the biggest niches that offer the best affiliate programs with the highest commissions. There are hungry customers in all of these niches that are ready to buy, but they are all very competitive. You should find micro niches within these niches that have products or services that you can start promoting that might not be super competitive for your website as you get started.
Hosting Affiliate Programs:
Gold Affiliate Programs:
You can try any of the niches listed above, and we guarantee that you will earn commissions if you develop a top-quality website with informative content and become an online authority. It will take a lot of time to become an authority. The top websites in competitive niches are making huge commissions but they’ve been around for years. You need to look at this venture as a long-term investment that may provide you with a steady income, 6 to 12 months later.
Getting Started
To begin as an affiliate marketer, you need to buy web hosting and develop a website. Create a site that will eventually become an authority in the niche that you’ll be promoting products within. If you decide to create a website that is centered around travel, then you will need to create content about the top travel destinations, best airlines, travel perks, etc. You can get started right now. We recommend that you check out these three guides to learn more.
One final thing to remember when launching your website as an affiliate marketer, is that you will be required by the FTC to be transparent and inform your visitors that you are receiving income from affiliate links. Be open and honest with your visitors about how you make money.