Affiliate Marketing: Where to Start and What to Expect
Think back to the times when you were a kid a few decades ago. Naturally, you would dream of your future profession, and you would be curious about what your friends’ parents did for a living. Did the idea of working from home ever cross your mind? Probably not. Earning money from the comfort of your own home was a relatively novel idea then — in fact, it’s been estimated that the numbers have grown by a whopping 400% in the last decade.
And it hasn’t all been just office workers moving their routine tasks to their home environments, either: due to ever-improving technologies and great Internet coverage worldwide, lots of people are enjoying the flexibility of working from anywhere and setting their own hours provided by freelancing. If you have also been tempted to become your own boss, there are many ways you could go — and one of the most enticing is affiliate marketing.
What Exactly Is Affiliate Marketing?
Some people worry taking up freelancing requires some extraordinary skills or exclusive training. Don’t get spooked by the name of affiliate marketing — while it is technically a branch of digital marketing, you don’t need to have a marketing degree or industry experience to start generating a solid income this way. All things considered, starting out as an affiliate marketer is not hard at all.
To put it simply, affiliate marketing is a promotion model that includes three parties (the seller, the affiliate, and the client) and is based on revenue sharing. The seller is typically a company that provides products or services for a charge. As they set up an affiliate marketing program, people can sign up and start promoting those products or services online to attract new customers for the seller in exchange for a financial reward. As for promotion techniques, you can use banners, write product reviews, recommend them in forums or social media, and do almost anything you can think of — as long as you’re not hurting the brand’s reputation.
The commission size is normally based on a predefined percentage (fixed sums are pretty uncommon) — for example, if the affiliate program offers a 10% commission rate, you’ll earn a fiver every time you attract a new $50 sale for the seller. It’s important to note that most sellers include the cost of maintaining their affiliate program in their pricing, so the customer pays the same amount whether they find the product on their own or by clicking the affiliate link.
Advantages of Affiliate Marketing
Aside from no education or experience requirements, affiliate marketing is also highly attractive due to minimal to none upfront costs. There’s no equipment to purchase, no investments to make, and no team to hire. You might experience some extra costs if you decide to set up your own website or use Pay-per-Click advertising, but these are in no way must-haves. Of course, you will need to cover your electricity and internet bill — but you’re probably doing that anyway!
Affiliate marketing is also admired for unmatched convenience, as it provides you with a lot more flexibility than most other types of freelancing. Think about it: if you’re, for example, a freelance graphic designer, photographer, or make-up artist, you might not have to respond to any boss, but you’re not also completely independent: you do have your daily schedule shaped by clients, meetings, appointments, and deadlines. You can’t just wake up in the morning and decide you’re not going to be working today after all if you have clients waiting.
If you’re an affiliate, however, you are completely free to plan your time and work as much as you want (you can even keep your 9-to-5 and pursue affiliate marketing on the side at first if you’re the cautious type). Still, remember your earnings are purely performance-based and while a blog can become very profitable with affiliate marketing, you shouldn’t expect to make a fortune by working five hours a week!
How to Pick the Right Program
Understandably, one of the first steps of becoming an affiliate marketer is the one that raises the most questions. Which seller’s program should you pick? Is it better to go for retail giants or niche players? Most experienced marketers would advise you to go for a product you believe in and would actually want to become more popular even if there were no financial incentives for you involved — and they’d be right. The reason why affiliate marketing tends to be more influential than your usual ads in lifestyle magazines is because users view them as recommendations. Even if they know it’s paid advertising, they also understand you trust the seller enough to associate yourself with their brand — therefore, the products or services must be reliable and worth their while.
BitDegree is an EdTech startup that allows its users to learn online and receive blockchain-based course completion certificates. Constantly collaborating with instructional design specialists and educational scientists, it follows a research-based approach to making e-learning engaging and boosting the students’ motivation (e.g., by offering a fully-gamified learning experience on the platform). If this sounds like something you would actually love to see going viral, you’ll be happy to hear BitDegree also has an affiliate marketing program, which is not only free and easy to join but also virtually effortless to use. Best of all, it offers a comparatively high commission rate of 30%, which translates to earning up to $299 with a single sale for the most exclusive courses.
To smooth the way for first-time affiliates, BitDegree provides a wide range of free tools and materials: you get practice-focused e-books, ready-for-use banners in different sizes, and an online dashboard that allows you to easily keep track of your referrals, clicks, earnings, and other important numbers. You also have a personal affiliate manager who you can contact at any time if you experience any issues or simply have questions about promoting the courses.
Developing the Right Mindset
Picking the right product or service to advertise is a brilliant first step for an aspiring affiliate marketer — however, it’s far from the whole journey. Next, you should do your best to know your target audience and try to accommodate their needs. For example, if you’re promoting online courses, you should spend some time learning which subjects people are interested in the most, which categories they visit most frequently, and what skills they are most eager to gain. Are they more interested in traditional videos or interactive courses? Do they tend to pick shorter or more comprehensive courses? Alternatively, you could try to forecast which topics will gain popularity (e.g., by identifying specific needs that arise in the job market on time) and try to meet the demand in time — this tactic could prove highly effective, but it requires some experience and understanding of the industry.
To maximize your earning potential, cast a wider net: try different programs and different techniques, see what converts best for particular products and audiences, and use this knowledge to your advantage. You can also join a well-established affiliate marketing network that will make it easier for you to connect to potential sellers and discover products you would feel good about promoting.
Most importantly, you should arm yourself with patience. While affiliate marketing does technically let you earn passive income, it doesn’t come with being passive from the get-go: you need to invest quite a bit of time and effort into building your audience and gaining their trust first. You could place thousands of links everywhere and still generate no sales — or, even worse, get banned from some sites due to spamming. Focus on creating useful (and, if possible, timeless) content and optimizing it for search engines so you can be exposed to more organic traffic: the more people see your content, the more time they spend on it, the more likely you are to generate clicks, sales, and, in the end, stable passive income. BitDegree’s affiliate program is a great place to start your career as an affiliate marketer — don’t hesitate to try it out, and good luck promoting!
