Affiliate marketing is one of the many ways that people can earn an income online. It’s a business model that is very attractive to people that don’t have much money to invest when comparing it to a traditional brick and mortar store start up. Businesses like these can set you back a lot of money, not to mention the necessity of getting a loan and a lot of red tape to go through with legal stuff, etc.
About Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is not a new concept and has been around for years. The concept is quite simple which makes it very attractive to people looking to get involved. The way how it works is that you will promote someone else’s product and if you get a customer to make a purchase from your unique “affiliate link” then you will end up getting a commission from the vendor.
There are many different affiliate programs out there that anyone can get started with. The most popular one is Clickbank. Here, you don’t need any experience or proof of sales to join. Simply follow the sign up process and start promoting.
Commission Expectations
There are other programs out there as well such as Amazon Associates. Here, commissions are rather low, averaging about 4%. In order to make money with this platform you will need to sell a lot of merchandise. Fortunately there is a lot of trust with Amazon so there is not much ‘convincing’ needed on your part to make the sale.
Some programs will offer bigger commissions, around the 50% mark. These will be harder to sell but the commissions will be greater. If there is a particular niche you are interested in, just do a search for the niche or product in Google followed by “affiliate program” and you should be able to discover products that offer affiliate commissions this way.
Finding the Right Course to Learn
To someone new to affiliate marketing, you’re going to need training. There is a lot of free training online and while some is good, there’s also a lot of outdated material that should be avoided. Youtube is a very common medium to discover a lot of information on affiliate marketing but it would be very wise to make sure the training is coming from a reputable source. Many people might just do a review style video on a product that teaches affiliate marketing just to get a commission. If the product is good then it’s a win-win but if not, you could end up not achieving any results which would be no fault of your own.
So the best thing to do to find out how to learn affiliate marketing is to find affiliate marketing course reviews online. Reviewers that have actually purchased the product and take you inside for a close look would be best. This way you can get an idea of what is included in the course and see if the reviewer approves of it or not. You’ll also want to make sure they review different courses too, not just one of them so it doesn’t appear to be biased.
A good affiliate marketing course will have a lot of content, teach different strategies in both paid advertising and also free traffic & SEO. Buying a course that only teaches paid traffic for example is going to set you back more money especially if you don’t have a big budget to start with. There are plenty of free tactics you can use to drive traffic to your site with the goal of getting conversions.
Researching the Instructor
You should also research the instructor to see what his or her reputation is like. Do they have real testimonials from successful students? Have they won any awards, are they recognized in the community?
Online courses are now being offered every day as there are platform like Udemy and Teachables that make it very easy for creators. It’s a big business and many are cashing in on it. It’s up to you to determine if the course you are taking is worth the money and comes from a reputable instructor or if this is just someone trying to ‘cash in’ on the trend of course creation.
Conclusion
Whether you decide to get into affiliate marketing or not, learning from the best is key. If you start off on the right foot, it’s going to save you a lot of time, aggravation and money later.
