Making money by selling other people’s products online has been a thing for many years now. The whole concept is actually called affiliate marketing and in this article, I am going to show you how to make money through it.
Before I dig deeper into the subject though, I want to let you know that you can save yourself tons of time and energy trying to find out how to make money by selling other people’s products online by joining Wealthy Affiliate at once.
Wealthy Affiliate is a dedicated affiliate marketing training platform and it is FREE to join. As a free member, you can access tons of free training modules, create 2 free websites as well as host those websites for free for as long as you want, no strings attached.
Wealthy Affiliate is responsible for tons of success stories over the past few years and it can absolutely help you become one those stories yourself.
Moving on.
What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a business model whereas a company agrees to pay you (the affiliate) commissions, for every purchasing customer you send to its website. Usually, the amount of the commission will be a percentage of the total price paid by the customer while on the company’s website. For example, if the customer spends $200 and the company offers a 20% commission then you earn $40.
Affiliate marketing is actually employed by many large global corporations including Amazon, Apple, Adidas, Google, Microsoft, etc.
Having an affiliate program available, a company might end up having thousands of affiliates selling their products, thus increasing its revenue. WIN!
Believe it or not, there are millions of companies out there that simply wouldn’t survive if it wasn’t for affiliate marketers selling their products.
So, what’s in it for you, the affiliate marketer?
Well, you can make money by selling, already existing products.
This means NO
- Need to invest huge chunks of your time, energy, and money to launch your product
- Product maintenance, upgrades, testing, etc
- Customer service and handling complaints and refunds
- Storage, packing, shipping, and other expenses
- Technical issues to address and correct
- Additional staff necessary
- Payment processing
Everything mentioned above is basically taken care of the company or the merchant. WIN!
Affiliate marketing is a win-win for both companies and their affiliates.
The only thing that you have to be careful of as an affiliate marketer is to not sell crappy products to your audience. Selling crappy, low-quality products, puts your reputation on the line and if you cannot be trusted then no person is going to buy what you sell ever again.
Best Affiliate Marketing Courses
Best Affiliate Courses
Forget About Selling
Wait… What? I thought that we were talking about making money by selling other people’s products online, weren’t we?
Well, yes and no.
Actually, the role of an affiliate marketer is more of a helpful consumer advisor rather than a salesperson.
This means that as an affiliate marketer you will be recommending products that people actually need, instead of trying to actively convince people to buy products that they don’t really need.
In other words, you will be making money by actually helping people and not by being an annoying, creepy, little *beep* (where *beep*, use swearword of preference).
Your role in affiliate marketing is to give the buyer valuable guidance along his way to the purchase. You provide helpful information about products or solutions the buyer is searching for. And you refer him to online spots where he can find the best offers for his query. – entrepreneursunstuck.com
Having said all that and in order to make my life as well as yours easier, from now on, I am going to be replacing the word “sell” with the word “recommend”.
How To Start Making Money By Selling Recommending Other People’s Products Online
To start making money recommending already existing products online, there are a few things that you have to take care of first such as
- Determining your product(s)
- Locating affiliate marketing programs for your chosen products
- Build a website
- Creating content
1 • Determine Your Product(s)
In order to get started, you first need to determine the product or products that you will be recommending. As a beginner, it might be better and easier to just focus on recommending just one product that you have been using or have used at some point yourself.
A couple of tips to get you started
- Make sure that people are already buying the products you want to recommend. If no person buys or uses the product besides you, then it might not be the best idea to start recommending it
- The products have to be of high-quality. If someone has a bad experience with a product you recommended, he may no longer trust your recommendations. And this is the best case scenario
- It is optimal (but not mandatory) to have extensively tried the products you recommend yourself. Most affiliate marketers, especially beginners, are not able to do that mainly due to lack of funds. If this is the case for you, before recommending a product make sure that you do your research. Find out every little detail about the product, so much that it feels like you have actually bought it and tested it yourself
- Again, do not try to sell… Try to help! 99.9% of people hate salesmen and if you have no previous experience selling you are most likely going to be lousy at it. On the other hand, they do trust those who want to genuinely help them. The more people trust you, the more likely it is for them to buy what you recommend
2 • Locate Affiliate Marketing Programs for Your Chosen Products
In order to start making money by recommending your chosen products, you have to locate affiliate marketing programs which will pay you commissions every time a person purchases them.
Whatever the product, I am sure that you’ll be able to find an affiliate program for it.
Once you join your product’s affiliate marketing program, the company will give you access to unique affiliate links which you can share with people through your social media, forums, or a website. Through these unique links, the company can track when someone clicks your link and makes a purchase in order to pay you the commissions you deserve.
3 • Build a Website
While many might argue that to be an affiliate marketer you don’t really need a website, if you are a beginner to the whole concept, it will most probably be nearly impossible to make any money without one.
On top of everything else, most affiliate programs, including Amazon’s and Ebay’s, tend to reject applicants who do not own a website.
Moreover, having a website offers way too many perks to ignore such as
- Increased credibility and trust
- Wider audience reach
- 24/7/365 availability which could result in earning passive income
- Increased sales
- Monitoring the behavior of your visitors
- Easier and faster interaction with your customers
- Surpassing your competition
- Becoming an authority
- Repetitive business
- Loyal customers
- etc
I know that building a website might sound scary and even impossible to some, but let me assure you that it is one of the easiest tasks that you’ll have to complete as an affiliate marketer.
It might sound crazy, but you are actually just a few clicks away from getting your very own affiliate marketing website up and running.
Just go ahead and take a look at Create Your Own Business Website for Free, in Less Than 2 Minutes.
4 • Create Content
While having a website is great, incorporating a blog on it is even better.
The difference between a website and a blog is that a website has static content while a blog is constantly updated with new content.
The benefits of having a blog on your website are:
- Keep your audience up to date
- Increases visitors, sales, conversions rates
- Better search engine rankings
- Builds more authority and trust between you and your visitors
- Shows that your website is active and growing
- Creating various product reviews. For example, you can start creating negative product reviews in order to help your audience avoid useless and crappy products
- Expressing your personal opinion
- Humanizes your online business
- A way to address various issues and problems of your readers while offering them solutions
99.9% of affiliate marketers can’t make it to success without a blog, at least not if they are beginners.
Your articles have to be relevant to the products you will be recommending as well as the people who will be buying those products.
Lastly, the content of your website, either this is articles or static pages, has to be helpful, informative and give people solutions to their problems, concerns, and queries.
People come to you for help… Focus on that and at the end recommend a product or two which are going to make their life even easier.
Helping people is the only way to get your readers to trust you so that they buy what you recommend.
Some Useful Tips
1 • Be Patient
One of the most common reasons that people end up failing in affiliate marketing is because they don’t see immediate results.
I don’t really blame them since in today’s world it is all about instant gratification. I mean yeah, out lives have become easier with all this instant chat and instant food applications but when it comes to succeeding in business, it doesn’t come with a push of a button.
Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You won’t become rich overnight and you will not make your first $1000 before tonight as many people might claim.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and running an online business is no different than running a regular one.
What determines your results is the attitude with which you approach your business.
You might get the perfect training and all the tools you need but at the end of the day, if you don’t have the willingness and patience to put everything together, you’ll end up right where you started… Nowhere.
It might take months of upfront work until getting your first sale but once this happens, then everything starts slowly unraveling.
So, be patient, and just keep moving forward until results kick-in.
2 • Beware of Scams
When I was looking for a way to make money online I came across tons of scams.
To tell you the truth, I have never been scammed. Maybe I was just lucky or maybe I have some kind of built-in bullshit detector.
On the other hand, I know many people who have been scammed for thousands of dollars by those who claim that they have uncovered the “roadmap” to making money online or the “ultimate blueprint” to success.
This is just a pity because those who get scammed lose faith in the whole concept of making money online and end up dismissing it forever.
The ultimate sign that a website is a scam is asking your credit card info in order to “sign-up for free”. When you come across such a website, start running in the opposite direction. Never, ever, EVER, give away your credit card info online except if you are about to make a purchase.
Another sign that a program or website is full of shit is promising extraordinary results in a very short amount of time. So when someone claims that you are going to make thousands of dollars without lifting a finger in a week with their new “Ultimate Super-Duper-Blueprint to Online Success”, they are probably lying their ass off.
What sounds too good to be true, well, usually is.
3 • Get Training
The whole concept of making money online by selling other people’s products might sound simple but it is no piece of cake.
To become a success story yourself you will need to be extensively trained in stuff such as
- Writing awesome and helpful content
- Using specific keywords to get your posts and pages show up in the search engine results
- Leveraging social media for more traffic
- Finding and joining affiliate marketing programs
- Creating a good-looking, simple, and easy-to-navigate website
- Including your affiliate links within your content
- Adding plugins
- Optimizing your website and content for the search engines
- etc
If you don’t know how to do any of that stuff just mentioned, then you are definitely in need of some affiliate marketing training.
As said earlier, Wealthy Affiliate is a dedicated affiliate marketing training platform which has been helping people become successful affiliate marketers since 2005.
Affiliate marketing FAQs
Affiliate marketing is an online business model that involves promoting products or services created and distributed by third-party online merchants in exchange for getting paid a commission for each sale you refer.
In layman’s terms, affiliate marketing is the process of being compensated for helping businesses sell to more customers.
Here’s a bird’s eye view of how affiliate marketing works.
- You join a merchant’s affiliate program
- The merchant gives you a unique affiliate link that points to their e-shop
- You promote your unique affiliate link online (blog, forums, social media, paid ads, etc.)
- Every time someone clicks on your unique affiliate link and makes a purchase on the merchant’s e-shop, the merchant pays you a commission
There are thousands of successful affiliate marketers all around the world. Some of the most well-known ones are:
- Pat Flynn
- Matt Diggity
- Matthew Woodward
- Doug Cunnington
- & more
You can check out a roundup of my 17 favorite examples of affiliate success and their backstories right here.
- Billion-dollar industry
- Very low startup & operational expenses
- Huge income potential
- Flexible & versatile
- Passive income
- Simple to implement
- No technical background
- No customer support
- No physical setup
Affiliate marketers can be divided into five main income groups:
- Total beginners: $0 – $20,000 per year
- Low-level affiliates: $20,000 – $50,000 per year
- Intermediate affiliates: $50,000 – $100,000 per year
- High-level affiliates: $100,000 – $500,000 per year
- Super affiliates: $500,000+ per year
According to PayScale, the average annual income for affiliate marketers in the US is over $54,000 per year. Statistics reveal that 13% of affiliates earn more than $75,000 per year.
Some of the factors that influence how much you earn as an affiliate marketer include:
- seniority
- target niche
- available resources
- previous experience
- marketing efforts
- & overall mindset
Here’s a rough income growth timeline of a typical affiliate marketing business:
- months (0-3): no earnings
- months (3-6): first affiliate sale
- months (6-12): $100-$500 monthly
- months (12-18): $1000 monthly
- months (18-24): $3000+ monthly
This timeline isn’t a guarantee of future performance but rather a mere approximation of the income growth of an average affiliate business. Your own timeline could be shorter or longer than projected.
Over the years, I’ve seen aspiring affiliates striking a gold vein just a few months into the industry. On the other hand, I personally know people who’ve been struggling to grow their affiliate revenue to $1000 per month for several years.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most affordable money-making models out there.
Here’s a breakdown of everything you need to get started as an affiliate marketer along with their associated costs:
- web hosting & domain name: $2.95/month (Bluehost)
- keyword research tool: $49/month (Jaaxy)
- expert guidance: $49/month (Wealthy Affiliate)
- email autoresponder: Free for up to 1000 subs (MailerLite)
Please note that on top of expert guidance, Wealthy Affiliate also provides free access to hosting and a keyword research tool so you don’t have to purchase them separately.
Yes, you can do affiliate marketing without a website by promoting your affiliate links on other marketing channels, such as:
- Social Media
- Paid Ads
- YouTube
- Podcast
- etc.
The process of getting started with affiliate marketing can be broken down into the following four simple steps:
- Pick a niche
- Launch a blog
- Build an audience
- Promote affiliate products
No, you don’t.
Affiliate marketing is very simple to get started with by virtually anyone regardless of age, education, background, available capital, tech-savviness, professional network, etc.
In fact, most 6-figure affiliate marketers were no more experienced than you currently are when they first ventured into the affiliate marketing industry.
Nonetheless, being knowledgeable in fields like marketing, sales, content production, business management, etc., could help you reach your financial goals somewhat faster.
Join Wealthy Affiliate for FREE Right Here!
If you need to find out more about Wealthy Affiliate, you can go ahead and read my Wealthy Affiliate review.
If you have any questions or need any further help or guidance from me, I encourage you to leave a comment below or email me at harry@dearboss-iquit.com.
You could also drop me a PM on my Wealthy Affiliate Profile.
Whatever the case, I will get back to you as soon as possible.
My best regards to you,
Harry,
dearboss-iquit.com
