what is affiliate marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?

If you have been searching online for ways to make (passive) income online, you may have come accord the term “affiliate marketing”. But what exactly is affiliate marketing and can you actually make money?

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is actually a very popular online business model. It’s a collaboration between a merchant and usually the website of an affiliate. For each referral the affilaite brings to the merchants website through an affiliate link of referral link, the affiliate receives a commision. However, there are also ways to make money from affiliate marketing without a website.

Usually the referral also has to actually complete the sale before the affilaite is eligble for a commission. There are different affiliate models.

Affiliate marketing is a cost efficient method to make money and in most cases the income you earn from it is passive. You do need to put in some work upfront just once, but after that you can make endless commissions.

How affiliate marketing works

Usually affiliate marketing is being run by affiliate networks, such as Clickbank and Shareasale. However, some merchants run their own affiliate program through their own website. This way, the merchant does not have to pay the affiliate network for partnering with them.

Affiliates, such as yourself, may sign up to an affiliate network, and choose which merchant they would like to promote. They get a referral link that they can promote in various ways.

The affiliate network may provide the affiliate with promotion tools such as banners and product images.

The network collects the commission fees from the merchants. Usually these networks pay out the earned commissions once or twice a month directly on the Paypal account or bank account.

Is affiliate marketing a scam?

Contrary to what most people think, affiliate marketing is not a scam and it is actually a legit business model. Some people make a six figure income yearly just by earning affiliate commissions. It is however advised to sign up for the bigger affiliate networks, such as Shareasale and Clickbank.

Another misconception is that affiliate marketing is all about selling. This is just not always the case. Usually people buy and use a certain product, and review it by giving their honest opinon. They then offer the affiliate link so people can buy from the link, sometimes with a discount.

Benefits of affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing has a lot of benefits. You can start a website and review products and provide the affiliate link. If people like the review, they usually convert and proceed to purchasing the product. The benefit here is that you do not have to have a product the make money. If you have a lot of reviews on your website, you can potentially make a fulltime income online. However, you have to put in the work by creating the reviews and drive traffic to your product review pages.

The most important thing is that you choose a topic you are passionate about, so you don’t get bored doing the reviews. For example, if you love make up, you can start a blog about make up and review new products. You can also post make up tutorials to drive the traffic and promote your website on Instagram.

Hopefully it is a lot more clear to you what affiliate marketing is and how you can make money.

Are you interest in starting an affiliate marketing blog? I would love to know in what niche you are! Please let me know in the comment section below!

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