What is Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing and Why You Should Do it

Ever seen videos of people claiming they make ‘a million a day posting a few ads’? If so, then you’ve come into contact with affiliate marketing. Sure, affiliate marketing is not particularly likely to make you that much money unless you’re an absolute pro, and as a general rule, it will involve a lot more work than ‘posting a few ads a day’ – particularly to begin with!

But despite all this, there is truth in the claim that you can earn an awful lot of money doing very little with affiliate marketing. In fact, affiliate marketing is really the only legitimate tool you have to accomplish this kind of lifestyle. Affiliate marketing is simply the very easiest way to get set up with a money-generating business model that provides passive income and that doesn’t see you exchanging time for money.

In other words, whereas working in an office requires you to slave away at a desk in order for you to get paid by the hour; affiliate marketing is something that lets you earn cash while you’re asleep. You need to be smart setting it up but once you’ve done that successfully it will be automated; all that’s left for you to do is to handle a little maintenance.

Does this mean you should sign up to one of those ads on Facebook? Heck no! Whenever you see an ad like this, what you’ve always got to question is: what’s in it for them? If they’re offering to help you earn money online so easily, you need to wonder why they need you at all. Most likely, they’re recruiting people like you to act as ‘grunts’ meaning that you’ll promote their offers and they’ll ‘share the revenue’ with you. This is obviously not the most efficient way to make money online and you shouldn’t touch it with a barge pole! The other possibility is that they’re going to sell you a very expensive course or make you sign up to some kind of expensive program – either of which will benefit you far less than it will benefit them.

The earliest warning sign with programs like this should always be the lack of information. ‘Make money posting a few ads a day’ is very vague and it’s a rather big promise. There’s no explanation up-front as to how this would work and no mention of the word ‘affiliate marketing’.

In this scenario, those people selling the courses and programs have the advantage of information over you. A much better strategy then is to simply learn the basics  of affiliate marketing yourself so that you can create your own business model to suit you. All you need to know is what affiliate marketing is, how it works and what the best techniques are for ensuring your success. That’s precisely what you’ll learn in my posts.

Throughout the course, you’ll be learning every last thing about how affiliate marketing works fundamentally, the various different techniques used and crucially the various growth hacks and tricks you can use to get ahead of your competition.

Will you be able to make a million dollars a day by posting a few ads? Maybe, maybe  not. But what you will have is the knowledge to potentially make that possible and certainly to generate a lot of income on an automated basis. You can’t say fairer than that!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

So enough beating about the bush! At this point if you’re a complete beginner you probably still don’t know what affiliate marketing is. As we’re not trying to sell you anything, it makes sense to get that bit out of the way first!

(If you aren’t a complete beginner and you do know what affiliate marketing is, then you’re perfectly okay to skip this section. But you will be missing out on some useful information if you do that could help you later.)

Simply put then, affiliate marketing is a type of online marketing where you will be selling a product for commission. This is precisely the same business model as being a door-to-door salesman: you are selling something that someone else made but for a cut of the profit.

There are a few key differences between being an affiliate marketer though and being a door to door salesman – key differences that make what we do far more appealing and potentially profitable.

The first and most obvious advantage of being an affiliate marketer is that you’ll be selling products online rather than having to do it face to face. This makes the job considerably easier if you’re someone who doesn’t have the ‘gift of the gab’ and it also means you’ll have considerably lower overheads and considerably less work to do yourself. You can simply sit at home and make a very healthy income by sending a few e- mails and by running a website/social media channel.

What’s more, is that you will be able to reach a huge number of people compared with a door-to-door salesman because the business is far more scalable. The internet makes it possible for us to reach a gigantic number of people at once and potentially to promote a product to thousands of people every day. Considering that a salesman will have a good day if they manage to get around 10 people, you can see right away that this has a far bigger potential for earning.

So the volume is much bigger when you work as an internet marketer versus a face-to- face salesman. This alone means that you could potentially increase your revenue and thereby your profits – but it goes beyond that. Because actually, affiliate marketing gives you considerably more profit per sale and more commission. In fact, a very standard amount for a product creator to share with affiliates is 60%. That means you’re actually earning more than the person who created the product in the first place! Products can  be found for a range of prices too – but if you’re selling a digital product such as an eBook then you can expect to make anything from $30 to $100 for a sale. Online courses and seminars can go for a lot more – sometimes as much as several thousand dollars. Better yet, if you can sell membership to a gambling site, a trading site or a bingo site, you can actually profit from that member for the lifetime of their membership!

All you have to do then is to advertise the product online – which often really does just involve posting ads to Facebook or sending e-mails – and you can profit every time someone listens to the ad. And we’ll be looking at all sorts of tips to ensure that you’re posting in the right places and promoting your products in the right way too.

So you have a bigger profit margin on each sale and you’re now earning a lot more each time someone bites. This is the promise of internet marketing and it’s what makes the whole idea so appealing to so many people.

What’s in it for Them?

You don’t really need to know anything else about affiliate marketing to start learning the ins and outs. All you really need to know is that you’re selling products for commission and getting a very good profit for each sale.

But that said, it’s always good to ensure you fully grasp a concept like this if you want to make the most from it possible.

A question you might have then is: what’s in it for them? Why would a product creator be happy to give away more than half of the profits for what they’re selling?

The answer to this question is simple: it’s all about volume. Let’s imagine for a moment that you’ve created a product like an eBook. This is a digital product meaning there are no manufacturing costs, no delivery costs and no storage costs (which collectively is known as COGS – Cost Of Goods Sold). Each sale of this product is pure profit for the creator. They’ll then do their best to spread the word and to generate as many sales as they can, but there’s only so much they can do as just one person. They might make 100 sales a day but they could always still make more by getting marketers to sign up and help them sell.

Imagine how good it would be for them if they had a legion of marketers, all promoting and selling their product for them? Imagine the kind of profit they could generate then! Especially if those marketers were full-time marketers who knew all the ins and outs of successful marketing!

So why offer such a high percentage? Simple: they want to attract as many affiliate marketers as possible and to lure them away from promoting other products and deals. They might lose 10% per sale by offering 60% instead of 50% but if that means they get one more marketer who sells an additional 300 items a year, then that’s still a much better scenario overall.

As you can see then, this is one of those rare business models where it genuinely offers a win-win situation for the marketers and the product creators. You’ll now be earning a huge 60% for each sale and they’ll be maximizing their income!

Of course it’s only going to be truly win/win all around if the people buying the products are happy too. So how do you ensure this? Simple: you make certain that whatever you are selling is genuinely high quality and is genuinely something that people want.

Now you’re providing value to the end user and to the product creator and you’re earning a lot of money doing it. This is the ideal scenario for any affiliate marketer.

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