Let's be straight up here, and I will do this by giving you a definition of the phrase: Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate Marketing (N): A marketing technique where a company rewards an affiliate, for directing people towards their products.
Basically, you are a salesman for another company. You are a middle man. You need to find customers, refer them to the company you affiliate with, and have them buy that companies product. In return, you get a commission (usually a percentage) on each sale.
You may ask, why is this important? What do I care about affiliate marketing! I'm not a salesperson, I'm a graphic designer (or insert other job not related to marketing here)! Affiliate Marketing is important, because it is big. With the right tools, the right knowledge, and the determination you can be making some serious cash affiliating for other companies.
I still don't get it!
That is perfectly fine! Unless you took economics in high school or are a marketing major, I don't expect you to get it off the back. It sounds confusing, but it is the easiest method to understand. Allow me to attach a little short comic that illustrates the Affiliate Marketing Process:
You see how simple that is? You are simply a middle man. You do not have to ship any products out, or keep track of orders. You just have somebody come to you looking for a product, and you send them to the big company. The company does the rest, sends you your commission at the end of the month, then you repeat!
Though people look down on affiliate marketing as not that effective, I believe it is the exact opposite. With the right amount of traffic, an affiliate marketing website can take off and make you lots of money. If you have the time, you have the hosting, and you have the $10 for a domain, you should give affiliate marketing a go.
Give me an example big boy
Here is an example, its actually a website im working on at this moment. What I am "selling" is graffiti products. You heard me right, graffiti products. That means nozzles, cans, brushes, exacto knifes and more so. (we will get into the talk on WHY graffiti products later)
http://thegraffitisupply.com/
You click the link above, and you immediately see a website LITTERED with ads and all sorts of junk. You think to yourself, this is an extremely ugly website, why would anybody buy something off it. Well I come back with the reply, WHY NOT!
Notice the insane amount of ads for Graffiti products. You may think those are banner ads from Google, but they aren't. They are actually affiliate banners. Those are the websites I work with. If you click any of those banners it will direct you to the company website where you can buy graffiti supplies. These websites create a cookie for the customer, and tells the company at checkout, that my site referred them.
That is one way to do it, you will also notice I have a few "blog posts" set up selling products. This is way number 2. I create individual blog posts for products that I think are hot and people want. I give all sorts of information, a rating, reviews, the price, description and more. So ANYTIME EVER that somebody clicks a buy link or ad through my website above, I will make a commission on their final order.
You're website is ugly!
Yes, my website is pretty cluttered and full of advertisements, BUT that's the point. That is where you will make your money. All my ads are related to the niche at hand (graffiti supplies) The idea with an affiliate website is to have the product your customer is looking for everywhere you look on your website. The more they see it, the more they go "hmm..maybe I do need this. it looks cool".
Also, I admit I do have google ads on my niche website. This is just another method to make some extra cash on your affiliate website. If you intermingle the ads within your posts and content, think of how many clicks you will get. It's a double whammy really.
SEO is key!
Think about this, you have your affiliate website selling products. But lets face it, they're probably 1000's of other websites selling the same thing as you. Not only that, why should somebody go through a middleman to buy something, when they can just go to the main company website?
Thats the honest truth, but the other side of the truth is this: the majority of people on the internet aren't really sure what they are doing. As bad as it sounds, you have to prey off of this. What do I mean by this?
Practice proper, PERFECT SEO and get your affiliate website ranked high. Once you got as much traffic as possible coming in, that's more potential people to buy your product. Lets say 5/10 of those people are beginner's in the niche you choose. Then they don't know where to get the product they want. Especially if it's specialized. So they may think that the affiliate website you own, is THE place to get supplies. They wont think twice about buying from you. Think about it, how else did they end up on your website? They did a search "graffiti supplies" because they don't know where to get them, and look, your site is on the first page! Must be legit right?
For the other 50% who knows better, offer them something special. Give reviews about certain products, WRITTEN BY YOU! Don't auto-blog it up. Unique content will get you further. Once again lets be honest, it doesn't take long to type out a decent article or product review. So put in the time to do it. Give a review about one product, show pictures, star ratings, links, and at the bottom have a link to buy it.
The big point in this section, is to be taken seriously and get customers, you need outstanding SEO optimization on your affiliate website. The higher in the search rankings you are, the more people will believe your website is the real deal.
I like what I hear, how much can I earn? When do I start?!
You start ASAP! Why wait. This is the perfect time to make some extra money especially with today's economy. It doesn't take a college degree or training to set up a very basic affiliate website and earn a few bucks.
Your earnings can be anything. It all depends on if you put in the time and effort on your website to make it successful. I have heard of people earning $2 a day all the way to $500, $800, even more a day.
You have the potential! Look for our video series coming out soon on how to get started in the affiliate market place world. I will cover: Researching good niches, picking a good domain name, setting up your website, running your website, and getting the affiliation going!
