One of the best ways to earn commissions online is through a business model called affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, the “affiliate” promotes and sells a product available online. They don’t personally own the product, nor do they need to even speak with a customer. They simply recommend or refer a customer to the product.
When the product sells through an affiliate’s unique affiliate link, they earn a commission based on the sale. Some of the main benefits of being an affiliate marketer are:
- There’s an unlimited earning potential
- Affiliates can live and work from anywhere with a laptop and internet connection
- The entry costs are low to become an affiliate marketer
- You can sell products automatically using systems which automate sales over the internet
Earn Commissions Online – Affiliate Marketing
But there’s downsides too of course. Affiliate marketing doesn’t just work overnight. It takes time to learn. There’s pitfalls and problems which new affiliates encounter, and many give up before they see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Here’s a few problems you can encounter as an affiliate:
- Not being able to get people to your affiliate links
- Struggling getting traffic to your content
- Choosing the right products for long term success
- Relying on the wrong strategies to sell
- Focusing on long term activities which don’t work quickly
To get the most out of becoming an affiliate to learn how to earn commissions online, it’s worth getting the right information upfront. I spent years struggling as an affiliate because I didn’t get the best help. So I jumped from one course to the next, always looking for the easy route! This is known as “shiny object syndrome”. You can also spend too much time on activities which don’t work: also known as being a “busy fool”.
Affiliates are basically self employed third party referrer who refer customers to products online. Do it well and you’ll be well compensated. Don’t do it well and you can get nothing. So you need to be good a focusing on the right actions and mastering your time management.
Earn Commissions Online – Strategies
There’s various strategies which affiliate marketers use to generate sales online. Here’s a few of the main ones:
- Blogging – a cheap and slow process of building traffic (visitors) to a website in order to generate leads and sales
- Paid marketing – a faster route whereby the affiliate creates a paid advert and hopes to get a profit from the commissions they earn from selling a product.
- Email marketing – build a list of subscribers through either paid marketing or free strategies and promote products to your list
- Social media – Social media marketers build an audience through offering value and/or building content to attract an audience
- V’logging – like blogging, video blogging is done to attract organic traffic and build an audience. You can also use paid marketing with YouTube as well as building an organic channel which gets traffic for free.
Types Of Affiliate Products
Most people have bought something from Amazon before and trust the site. Well, Amazon is one of the most popular affiliate programs. Anyone can join Amazon’s affiliate program and promote products from the site through their own unique affiliate codes. Once a product is sold through your specific affiliate link, Amazon’s tracks the sale and you earn commissions online based on your sales.
But what most new affiliates don’t realise is that Amazon pays its affiliates some of the lowest levels of commission you can get! You’ll earn somewhere from 0-11% on your sales if you choose to use Amazon’s product line. Although there’s a lot to choose from, this doesn’t help you build a viable business very quickly. Have a look at Amazon’s rates in the image below:
Earn Commissions Online – Digital Products
Physical products tend to pay less because there’s less markup on each item. The manufacturer needs to earn, Amazon needs to earn and the affiliate needs to earn; you also have postage costs to consider. So the bottom line for the affiliate is considerably less than with some other products.
With digital products you don’t need to physically post anything out. Once a digital product is created, there’s no manufacturing costs either. So the savings in manufacturing and postage can be passed on to the affiliate. Typically, digital products pay out from 40%-50% commissions, and sometimes even more.
So it’s worth promoting digital products over physical products because you’ll earn larger commissions for what is often the same amount of work. Some physical products though are good because they sell at a very high price and even with a low commission rate, you’ll still earn a good chunk for the sale. See highest paying affiliate programs list.
High Ticket Products
High commission affiliate programs offer much higher paying products which are also digital. With high priced digital products you get the best of both world’s: a high cost and a large commission.
Selling the high ticket products online also enables you to use the more expensive advertising platforms. Whereas with low value products you will struggle to make a profit while running paid marketing campaigns.
This often means you’re in with a long ride if you choose the lower cost physical products to promote as an affiliate. Because your product is low value you end up using free marketing strategies which are slow. Because they are slow, your earnings only come in dribs and drabs; perpetuating the problem.
One way around this is to use recurring income products which offer ongoing value for customers. With a recurring commission product, such as a membership or software product, you continue to earn long after referring your customer; month after month.
The best way to benefit from affiliate marketing and earn commissions online is to use:
- High ticket digital products – give you maximum commissions on high priced items
- Recurring commissions – memberships and software products which business owners or online marketers need for their business.
- Multi-tier – Multi-tier commissions are commissions based on sales made by your referrals
- A range of products – most affiliate programs pay you only once for your sale. With a product range you can benefit from later sales made by an in-house sales team on a number of other products.
How Long Does It Take To Earn Commissions Online?
So how long does it take to earn commissions online through affiliate marketing? This is a difficult question to ask and is similar to asking when you’ll get six pack abs from going to a gym. Given the analogy it depends on how often you go to the gym, what you eat, where you’re starting from and a whole host of other variables.
With affiliate marketing, besides your own work ethic, time management and schedule, it depends on some major factors. These ones are pretty important:
- The strategy you use to market your products (whether its a free strategy or a paid one) – a free strategy will typically take considerably longer
- The products you use – low paying physical products will give you less traction than high paying recurring income products.
- Your level of belief and determination to succeed – this often comes down to your “why” for starting an online business in the first place. Unless you’re driven internally in some way, it can be easy to give up before you attain the success you desire.
- The support you get – Without support it can be difficult to know which steps to take and you’re more likely go wrong and veer off route. This leads to disappointment which can encourage you to quit.
Get Help And Get Started
Anyone can learn how to earn commissions online through using affiliate marketing. Much of the technical side of the business has been removed and there are programs and software available now to help even the biggest technophobes!
People of all ages too are starting online businesses, especially since the pandemic in 2020 has forced people to stay at home and look for new opportunities.
Access a webinar here and learn the strategies to turn your laptop into an income! Click on the image below to book your slot:
