Making money online is not anywhere as difficult or complicated as most people think. Creating a successful online business is an achievable goal for anyone with the drive and dedication to make it happen.
One of the best and most sustainable ways of doing this is with affiliate marketing! An affiliate marketing business isn’t at all difficult or cost-prohibitive to set up. I’ve been successfully making money with affiliate marketing for the past three years, and if I can do it, then so can you.
All I need is a few minutes of your time to show you how affiliate marketing works and why it’s a great way to create an additional income or replace a full-time income.
So, I’m going to break down and simplify all the elements that you need to make it happen NOW. Then, I’ll show you how I have built a successful affiliate marketing business over the years and helped other people do the same through the Wealthy Affiliate Platform that I joined in 2020.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
Affiliate marketing is a lot more straightforward than you’re probably thinking. You don’t need any special background to get started and be successful! However, there is a lot of bad or outdated information out there. It’s easy to get confused or discouraged if you don’t have the right starting point and then follow the process that’s proven to work!
The basics of affiliate marketing have not really changed much over the past twenty years. You connect a particular product with a customer that wants it to fill a need or solve a problem, and you make money (a commission or “kickback”) in the process. That’s it! In theory, it couldn’t be simpler!
Here is a diagram outlining how affiliate marketing works:
Although this is a bit of an oversimplification, it really is that easy. I tried several different make-money-online programs and wasted a lot of money until I stumbled upon Wealthy Affiliate, which gave me the right training, guidance, and all the tools I needed to make it happen!
The Four Core Components Of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is such a simple model that it can be broken down into four core components.
The Affiliate (You)
As an “affiliate,” you can join companies that have affiliate programs, like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart, and 10,000s of others, to promote their products and services! After you join these companies, you get unique “affiliate links” that allow them to pay you for the items you sell on your website. The link also allows you to track all the sales you generate.
The real beauty of it is that you don’t have to handle the products you sell! You are the “middle man,” so you simply make a commission on the transaction! This means that you don’t have to manufacture the product, store it in a warehouse or mail it to the customer. In addition, you’re not responsible for customer service or product returns!
The Affiliate Program (Amazon, Best Buy, Etc. )
You may not know this, but most companies have an affiliate program. In fact, almost all (99%) brands can be promoted by you (the affiliate) for an online commission. I’m talking worldwide here! This includes Amazon, which is one of the biggest affiliate programs in the world. As an Amazon affiliate marketer, you can promote 100s of MILLIONS of products with a single account! A fabulous opportunity, right?
The Affiliate Commissions You Earn ($$$)
Affiliate programs will pay you a commission (a kickback) when you send an online visitor to their website and they buy a particular product. Take Amazon, for example. If you send someone to Amazon through your affiliate link, they will pay you a percentage of the total sale (about 3-6%).
So if someone buys something like a refrigerator or a drone on Amazon, you can make $50-100, depending on the price of the item. Commissions can be as high as 75%, depending on the company and the affiliate program!
The Unlimited Potential You Have
As an affiliate marketer, you have unlimited money-making potential! As you continue to build your business and get more and more people to buy products through your affiliate links, your income will continue to increase accordingly!
There are affiliate marketers that make several million dollars a year, and this can be you if you are willing to put in the effort required to build a thriving affiliate marketing business! In the next section, I’ll show you exactly how to go about doing just that!
The 4-Steps To Starting A Successful Affiliate Marketing Business
Here’s how easy it is for YOU to create and set up your own successful affiliate marketing business! There are only four steps you will need to follow, and by using the necessary training, tools, and support (which I will be helping you with), your business will be off and running before you know it!
So, let me explain each of these four steps in a little more detail and give you examples of how to put them into practice.
Step 1: Choose An Idea, Passion, Or Interest (Your Niche)
It all starts with coming up with an idea to create your business around. Think of it as the “niche” stage of your business because you get to choose your interest (niche), the type (category) of the products you will sell, and who your audience will be.
This can be anything you like: mountain climbing, lizard terrariums, rock polishing, or whatever interests you! What makes it exciting is that there are literally millions of potential niches to choose from; the sky’s the limit!
I recommend that you choose an interest (niche) that you have an ongoing interest in or are passionate about. Imagine doing something you truly enjoy, how, when, and where you want to do it, and being your own boss. It can make you feel like you never have to “work” a day in your life! This is the power of affiliate marketing, which was made possible by the Internet!
How to choose your idea: It’s easy to choose a niche or passion because there are over 5 BILLION people online now, so no matter what you choose, it’ll have a vast audience!
If you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you’ll have access to video classes and expert help from me and the rest of the community to help you choose your niche and give you the feedback you need.
Step 2: Build A Website (Your Foundation)
The great part about Internet marketing is that we can build our business on a website and sell products AROUND THE WORLD from any location, so your business goes wherever you do!
Your business website is like your Internet “storefront,” which allows you to attract, communicate with, and help visitors, so you can offer them products to buy.
You can’t run an online business without a website and a place to build it. You build it on a website hosting platform, which provides the training and tools to develop your niche.
Wealthy Affiliate is where I built and run my websites, and it’s what made me successful!
How to make it happen: At Wealthy Affiliate, you can build high-performing and profit-ready websites with ease for all your niches. By opening a starter account, you can get up and running with your website completely free!
Another huge advantage to using Wealthy Affiliate is that their hosting (where you build and run your website) is high-speed and ranks better than other hosting providers. So when your website loads quickly, it gives you a competitive advantage that can lead to higher profits!
Step 3: Get Traffic (Attract Your Audience)
You get visitors to your website (“traffic”) when they find you on the Internet. You need traffic for your website to make money. So, Internet traffic is what drives your business profits. Therefore, it’s essential to understand how to attract people to your website.
Although there are many ways to attract visitors to your website, getting search engines like Google to show your site when someone does an Internet search is one of the best ways to get long-term traffic. This method uses search engine optimization (SEO), and it can get loads of FREE traffic to your website. Remember, Internet traffic gives your profit opportunity!
So, once you create your website and have it up and running, you need to build it in such a way that it will attract visitors that are interested in buying the products you promote in your niche.
How to make it happen: In addition to search engine optimization, there are many other ways to bring traffic to your website. You can use things like social media, YouTube, podcasts, email lists, and paid advertising. These methods are all covered in detail in the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
Step 4: Make Money ($$$)
Last but not least is the “make money” part of your business! In this step, you earn money through affiliate programs.
There is a tremendous amount of earning opportunity, with over 550 MILLION products and services that you can promote in exchange for a commission.
You add special affiliate links on your website from companies like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart, and 10,000s of others. These links earn you a “kickback” (commission) whenever someone goes from yo website to theirs and buys something.
The really exciting part is that the affiliate marketing industry is growing faster than ever, so affiliates are projected to earn $12 BILLION online this year! Since that dollar amount gets bigger each year, even a small slice of that pie can be a lot of money!
How to make it happen: You have to find the affiliate programs that work best with your niche. Finding the right affiliate programs to help you make money online can be challenging, especially if you’re having no luck doing Google searches to find exactly what you are looking for.
However, within Wealthy Affiliate, you have instant access to an Affiliate Program Database that contains over 10,000 searchable affiliate programs from the top online affiliate networks! This gives you a crucial part of what it takes to sell things online successfully!
With the proper training, such as understanding the customer purchase lifecycle, you’ll learn how to add the right affiliate programs to your website to maximize your profits (conversions). Knowing the correct method of setting up and running your website is critical to becoming a successful, high-performing online affiliate marketer.
The Bottom Line
So, that’s how you can start a successful online affiliate marketing business, in a nutshell.
Whether you have no experience and are interested in creating your own affiliate marketing business, or you already have an affiliate marketing business that you’re trying to build out or scale up but are not getting the results you want, I CAN PERSONALLY HELP YOU! In fact, I am helping people just like yourself every single day within Wealthy Affiliate. 🙂
Here’s a testimonial from someone I’m helping achieve success at Wealthy Affiliate, and I can do the same for YOU, too, as your support coach!
I have been very successful in doing this for the past three years and will be your personal support coach at WealthyAffiliate.com. When you create your account, you’ll get access to website hosting, networking, training, research tools, mentorship, community input, and 24/7 technical support.
Wealthy Affiliate is FREE TO TRY. You can create a “test drive” Starter account at no cost, and no credit card is required!
If you’re even the slightest bit interested in becoming a high-performing affiliate marketer, I highly recommend you get started right now by creating your free account. I will be reaching out to you from within Wealthy Affiliate within about 30 minutes of your joining to give you your first tips on the best ways to proceed.
Wealthy Affiliate has a 4.8 out of 5 Trustpilot rating with over 500 reviews!
Click on the link below, and you’ll get me s your support coach!
Click the Blue Link ===> Create Your Free Test Drive Wealthy Affiliate Account! No credit card required!
Also, if you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section below. I’ll make sure to get back to you as soon as possible (typically within a few hours).
You sure hit all the great points for this online business. You mentioned that you have been doing affiliate marketing for three years now was all that with Wealthy Affiliate? whether yes or no what were some of your shinning moments and setbacks or struggles? My opinion is maybe adding some of those like questions to the article I know for me I like to know the hard points so I know how to overcome them from the beginning, just a suggestion.
Hi, Will
Thank You for your comments and questions!
Yes, I have been at Wealthy Affiliate for the entire three years, and I’m totally loving it.
For me, the most challenging part of beginning with online marketing was understanding who my audience was and where I could find them. People can get to a website in many ways, like doing a Google search for a subject, usually to get information about a product or person or to solve a particular problem.
Some people find you through social channels, like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, or user-generated content (UGC), like Quora or Reddit. The list goes on and on, but by using Wealthy Affiliate’s training and research tools, I eventually was able to find the best ways to attract potential buyers, and my website started generating an income.
It can be a little bit of a struggle at first because it takes a while to build out a website properly, but if you learn how to do it correctly, it will slowly begin to be ranked in the search engines and generate traffic.
The “learn at your own pace” program at Wealthy affiliate makes it very doable, even if you are working a full-time job.
Please let me know if you have any other questions about online marketing or the way that Wealthy affiliate works, and I’ll get right back to you. I strongly recommend you give the Wealthy Affiliate free starter membership a try. You’ll be glad that you did! I’ll be your support coach and be with you every step of the way if you sign up through this link.
All The Best!
Frank
Thank you Frank for this interesting introduction to creating a successful make money online business, I really enjoyed reading the article and am certain others looking to make money online will find it helpful as well.
Affiliate marketing sounds pretty simple the way you describe it: identify a niche you are interested in, build a website around that niche, Gain traffic for your website and then take advantage of that traffic to monetize your efforts.
This question I have is regarding the traffic to the website. Will creating content for any non-competitive niche guarantee your website traffic?
Hi, Joseph
Thank You for your comments!
Selecting your niche is key, and ideally, it should be something you’re interested in and focused enough to be less competitive for a new website. Once you begin to establish authority and expertise in your niche, you can broaden it out to make more money.
For example, a “non-competitive” niche, like “training your German shepherd,” it’s much easier to get website traffic than with a very broad niche like “pets.”
Of course, nothing in life is “guaranteed.” It takes training and consistent effort to build your traffic to the point when you start making money daily, but it’s definitely worth it!
Frank
I have been in the Affiliate marketing business for about three years now. Although it takes a consistent effort to be successful (it’s not a “get rich quick scheme,” it takes patience), you can surely make a good living from this, sometimes combined with advertising on your website. Great article on affiliate marketing, thanks!
Hi, Lizzy
Thank You for your comments!
Yes, I agree that affiliate marketing is not a “get rich quick scheme. To be successful, it has to be done properly, which means having the right training, tools, and desire to succeed. Like anything of great value, it has to be built slowly but surely.
Wealthy Affiliate has everything you need to make it a reality!
Frank
I have been a member of Wealthy Affiliate for over six years now, and it is one membership I will probably pay for life. The training is always up to date and there is always somebody to help you when you get stuck.
Affiliate Marketing is a wonderful way to make a side income without having to lay out huge expenses. It must be one of the most cost-effective ways to start your own business. The best part is that you can tailor it around your own interests which makes the business far more enjoyable to run and be successful in.
Hi, Michel
Thank You for your comments!
You summed up the beauty of being an affiliate marketer perfectly! I’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences learning to grow my business at Wealthy Affiliate. I plan on being a lifetime member, too!
Affiliate marketing takes effort, like any successful business, but Wealthy Affiliate gives me all the training, expertise, and tools I need. The freedom to work when and where I want with such a low investment risk is a fantastic opportunity!
Frank
I like your website title. This is a good outline on affiliate marketing. You have explained affiliate marketing and being an affiliate very well. Your four steps are clear and easy to understand. I have been an affiliate marketer for awhile. I wish that I had seen an article like this when I was looking for an online business. I think this explanation with help a lot of people.
Hi, Anastazja
Thank You for your kind comments!
I’m glad that you have become successful in affiliate marketing. It’s still one of the best ways to build an online business, with such a low startup cost and the ability to work anytime from anywhere.
All the Best!
Frank