Affiliate Marketing – Arguably the Easiest Way to Make Money From Home

As I mention in another post, drop-shipping is one of the easiest ways to make money from home, in my honest opinion. However, Affiliate Marketing is arguably the easiest way.

You see, unlike drop-shipping where you simply find a buyer to buy “your” product from your store, collect the money from them, and then order the product with their money… affiliate marketing has one huge advantage... repeat customers.

What do I mean? When you sell a product as a dropshipper, you need to keep finding new customers. For example, let's say you have a one-product store and you sell the "SB 3000 Light Torch". (Doesn't exist but it's a really cool name for a flashlight, LOL!).

Sure, you will get some to come back and buy another but that will probably be a year or two (or more) in the future. You must keep working to get new customers daily.

As an Affiliate Marketer, you set up a blog and write an article. You end the article with a relative tool, software, or whatever, with your affiliate link. But, as I teach you, you will send them to an opt-in page first with a bonus offer. This incentivizes them to purchase through your link instead of bypassing it.

Now that they are on your list, you already have a list of buyers that you can market your other products or affiliate products to.

And the best part is you don't have a store to maintain nor do you have any customer service issues to worry about such as shipping delays. Yes, the provider of the product ultimately deals with the customer service  but you still have to answer their emails when they complain because you're the one they bought the product from. 

So, what is affiliate marketing? In the broad sense of the term, it’s earning a commission for recommending a product or service. Now this can be for anything imaginable these days and when I say that, I’m not exaggerating!

Almost every product or service online has an affiliate program attached to it. Heck, even I have an affiliate program for my products. Yes, affiliate marketing is a huge business and fortunately for you, one of the easiest to get into.

The idea behind affiliate marketing is that you promote products, through an affiliate network, earning a commission if your audience buys thanks to your marketing efforts via your affiliate link.

 
The end result is you earn a commission based on a percentage set by the vendor. This percentage solely depends on the amount set by the vendor and can range from 1% to 100%.

The ultimate goal is to make money while you sleep and buy time. A phrase once coined by Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, is the ‘Work hard now and reap the rewards for years to come’.

What does this mean?

Most marketers either started or have a fork of their business in affiliate marketing. It’s
simple to setup and can earn a great income. So, when you hear ‘work hard now’ this simply means build your affiliate income stream now and the benefits will reward you for years to come as long as you drive traffic or ad revenue (which we will get to).

So, what is an affiliate?

An affiliate is sometimes also known as the publisher. Affiliates can range from single individuals to entire companies. Some of these companies you may have heard of such as Go Compare, Compare the Market, Biz Rate, etc. These are all comparison sites which turn over millions in revenue per month/year for advertising services created by other companies.

These monster size businesses use one location to promote what is essentially a service provided by another business for a commission. E.g., Let’s say you want insurance and search for a comparison site to get a great deal on your next insurance. When you find the deal you like, you are then passed to the insurance company who gave you the best deal.

The recommendation is now complete. You receive the best deal, the insurance company receives your money, the comparison site receives a commission for bringing you the buyer into the insurance company. Simple…

As an individual or small business, the focus on affiliate marketing is practically the same, simply on a smaller scale with more niche focus surrounding your own business or if you are just starting out, your choice of niche to build focus around.

The process of earning an affiliate income is the same. You promote a service or product for a set commission. The product vendor deals with the customer, and you earn an income as a commission.

Right now, you may be thinking, "This is cool, so how do I get started?".

There are multiple ways to get started and in the coming weekly posts we will look at all the
elements surrounding affiliate marketing and how you can build your affiliate marketing
business.

If you don't want to wait for the weekly posts, you can purchase my book "The Affiliate Marketer from Rookie to Pro". I pretty much break down the book into podcasts and blog posts that I post here on my website. Because of this though, I don't feel comfortable selling a book to you when you can get this information for free in this series from my posts and podcasts.

So what I will do is sell you Resell Rights to my book. Not only will you get the info you need to be a successful affiliate marketer immediately, you also get the opportunity to utilize one of the ways to earn an income from home - by selling a digital product.