What is an Affiliate program, how it works, what are the benefits, how you can start and become an affiliate marketer and how to make money in affiliate programs? All of that will be covered here and your only task is to learn the basics.

Once you learn just how to make money with just one Affiliate program, you can repeat that over and over again to make multiple streams of income.

Affiliate programs are not “get-rich-quick” scheme, but rather programs who allows you to make money promoting and selling other companies’ product or services. It takes time to get results, but if you are persistent and dedicated to building your business on a long run, then that is the best way of making money online.

So, if you are ready, let’s start our journey.

What is Affiliate Program and How It Works


The entire Internet is full of merchants who want to sell their product.

They can advertise their business, but advertising is very expensive, especially on much better-visited websites.

In order to attract visitors to their website or sell the product, what they needed is an army of people who would advertise their website or product and in return receive some percent of the money from selling products.

First of all, that was much cheaper for merchants and the advertisement in that way was much better because people are recommending products to other people and that is a more trustful way of selling products or services.

And the second one is that in that way people who owned their websites can monetize them, and you can read all about that in making money website-how to monetize a website post.

Basically, an Affiliate program is a bond between 3 parties:

  • Advertiser/Merchant – Companies who are willing to pay other people to help them sell product/services and promote their business. It can be any product of digital products, books, clothing, car parts, toys, pet food, furniture and so on. It also can be some kind of services like selling policies, media design, video or music services, electrical or cleaning services, etc.
  • Publisher – Individual or company who are interested in promotion advertiser’s product or service.For this promotion, the publisher receives a pre-agreed percentage of earnings. Advertisers provide publishers with all promotional tools such as links, banners or text ads that the publisher can then embed into the content of their website. In order for the publisher to earn income, his task is to attract as many visitors to his website as possible.

  • Customer – The most important component of the Affiliate program is the customer. The advertiser and publisher are equally caring for customers. Visitors came to the publisher’s site and saw the advertiser’s ad. When they take action and click on an ad, that leads them to the advertiser’s website where they can complete the purchase process. This is called conversion and visitor now become, the customer.

For better understanding let’s see what Wikipedia say about Affiliate program

There are several ways to earn money through the Affiliate program and therefore always pay attention when you approach an Affiliate program in which way the payment is made and how much your percentage is.

PPS – Pay Per Sale – the publisher or website owner is paid on the basis of the number of sales that are directly generated by an advertisement from their website

CPA – Cost Per Action – the publisher or website owner is paid on the basis of some taking action from visitors such as for example registration, news subscription, writing a comment or review, taking a survey, etc.

PPC – Pay-Per-Click – the publisher or website owner is paid on the basis of clicks made by unique visitor

Benefits You Can Get From Affiliate Programs


First of all, you don’t have to sell your own products. You just need to integrate links or ads into your website and promote them. Also, with your website, you can promote more than one Affiliate program at once

Because of the necessary to your website to have good and quality content, you will develop some useful skills like analyzing and research all the components you need to make good quality content. You’re writing skills will get to a whole new level. Writing is something you do not have to be afraid of. This is the best skill that will bring you a lot of success if you are willing to learn and apply it.

Because of research Affiliate marketing, you will get much more knowledge about it. If you go to forums or some kind of community dedicated to Affiliate marketing you will meet like-minded people, get much more knowledge and maybe get new associates interested in your Affiliate program.

Some Affiliate programs will get you 5-15% and that you can use for covering your marketing effort, while some will bring you 50-80% and that will be your great revenue.

Basically, the same amount of effort is needed to promote cheaper products or expensive products, so choose wisely your Affiliate program products/services, but get them according to your website content.

The Best Affiliate Networks to Join


When it comes to joining Affiliate programs it all depends on many factors.

  • What is your website/blog about? The idea is to Affiliate program correspond the content of your website.
  • In which area you plan to promote your program? You can work with local Affiliate programs or worldwide.
  • In which segments you are expert or passion about? If you are expert or cultivate passion for something, you will be much better and more creative with regard to the content of the website
  • Will you prefer text ads, images, banners or combination all of them? You can choose what is the best solution for your business and which is the best way to integrate Affiliate program into your website/blog.

Here are some Affiliate networks which are among the best to join, but you can always use your favorite search engine to find more of them:

  • Clickbank – Very easy to join and ideal for beginners. Over 17 years in business as one of the largest online retailers. They have numerous unique products divided into sections, so it’s very easy to find exactly what are you looking for.
  • Amazon.com – Amazon is the largest Internet-based retailer in the United States. They have millions of products you can offer to your customers. Easy to join and ideal for beginners.
  • Rakuten – Rakuten ranks among the top three e-commerce companies’ in the world.
  • CJ – Known as Commission Junction. CJ is the leading global affiliate marketing network.
  • Shareasale – In business over 15 years, exclusively as an affiliate marketing network.
  • eBay – In business over 20 years. They connect millions of buyers and sellers around the world.

There are many more, but I think this will be good places for you to start until you get used to all of it.

If you are willing to learn from the best people in business how to use Affiliate programs and how to implement them on your website you can join Affiliate program under name Wealthy Affiliate and get all the help you needed for free.

What You Should Pay Attention To


When you are joining Affiliate programs you need to pay attention to few things:

  • Commission Amount – What is the percentage of your earnings? Don’t bother to advertise products with a too small amount of earnings and too much expensive if the percentage of earnings is too small.
  • Payments – Do you need PayPal, bank account or credit card or you will receive a check and what is happened when someone request refund?
  • Affiliate Resources – Does the program offer banners, links, ready-made text ads, promotions, coupons. Do they offer statistics on your progress?
  • Cookie DurationCheck out for more pieces of information about cookie on HTTP Cookie – Wikipedia. How long cookie last? 1 day? 1 week? Or forever? Those kinds of information are very useful to you.
  • Refund Policy – What happens if someone didn’t satisfy with the product and after one or two months request for refund? What’s happens with your commission?

Conclusion


Affiliate programs are a good way of monetizing your website, either for just covering your expenses or to make a really good and profitable business. If you want to find out more ways of monetizing website look at making money website-how to monetize a website post.

However, always try that Affiliate program corresponds to the content of your website, because of the good visitor experience.

If you not sure how to do it or don’t know how to do any of this, you can always learn it like anything else. Join the best affiliate network community for FREE, learn and earn in the process of learning.

>>>Join Wealthy Affiliate<<<

If you have any questions or unclear or want to add something to this topic, feel free to leave a comment below and I will be more than happy to discuss it.

6 Comments

  1. Weston

    Reply

    Great article! It’s amazing how much the internet has changed marketing. Like you explain, businesses can now use ordinary people like you and me to advertise their products and then they pay commissions. It’s a great system that has brought more and more people to online shopping each year.

    I’ve been an affiliate marketer for almost a year now and love the freedom it provides. I love not having to worry about shipping costs or having make my own products. I simply promote someone else’s products and get paid to do it. I think affiliate marketing is the best way to make money online.

    Thank you for the helpful information.

    Weston

    • Branislav Jovanovic

      Reply

      Hi Weston,

      Thanks for stopping by and leave a comment.

      Yes, you are absolutely right, with help of affiliate programs ordinary people now can make a sustainable income.

      Now, even the someone who never have experience with affiliate programs can easily start their own business.

      I’m glad that you enjoy in your business and freedom it provides you. Like you said, no worries about shipping costs or having own products, just affiliate link is enough to promote anything you like.

      So, we both agree that the affiliate marketing is the best way…:)

      Thanks again and wish you much success

  2. Cathy

    Reply

    Hi there, I personally use ShareASale because they have a special category for merchants called the Top 100 which enables you to discover high performing and converting products/services.

    The new user interface shows the EPCs and conversion rates very clearly, plus they also include some merchant keywords that can bounce some ideas for your posts or product review.

    Just to share my two cents.

    • Branislav Jovanovic

      Reply

      Hi Cathy,

      Thank you for the dedicated time and comment.

      ShareASale does provide many useful pieces of information, just as you have pointed out.

      You are absolutely right. 

      EPCs, conversion rates and keywords they provide are very helpful for creating new posts or product reviews. ShareASale gives us a lot of information to ease our work, so we are very pleased to work with them.

      Thanks for sharing your positive experience 

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