The regular 9 to 5 job isn’t the most desired way of working and earning an income anymore. For the last couple of years people have been deciding against it and have been dreaming of getting six figures but as a passive income.
While there are several ways in which you can earn a passive income, the one that’s gotten the most traction and gives you the best chances of actually making a profit is affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is the process through which you can earn a commission by promoting the products or services of a company. You will earn a percentage or a set amount of the profit for each sale the company makes thanks to your referrals.
Similar but different to the classic marketing and advertising you are probably picturing right now, for affiliate marketing you don’t just put ads everywhere and call it a day, you can subtly embed product links in your content.
Basically, affiliate marketing is when a person or group of people promotes products or services to an audience through a website or a blog and when their target audience buys the product/service, they earn a commission.
Pick a Niche & Create a Website/Blog
Before jumping in you have to do your research and choose a niche. Just going with the flow and jumping from one thing to the next won’t really help you if you want users to value your opinions and expertise and Google to know how to index and rank your website.
There are countless niches you can choose from. What you should do is think about what you know, what you like and what you think your audience would be interested in.
After choosing your niche, you can create your website or blog. You dont have to be the best at coding, you might not even have to know how to code at all. If you pick a platform like WordPress it will look great, give you the kind of UX you desire and work just fine without you having to write a single line of code.
If you want an example of a niche and a WordPress site that does affiliate marketing so you can understand how it works better, picture this. The niche is online gambling and the affiliate marketing website that uses WordPress is SlotsCalendar.
Choose What Products to Promote
After you’ve chosen your niche, the products or services that go with it shouldn’t be hard to find. They will have to fit the niche you’ve chosen and the content you will have. Continuing the example above, if your niche is online gambling then the obvious products are online casino sites and bonuses.
Since there are thousands of online casinos and new ones being launched monthly, then you will have to discern amongst them and pick the ones that will make you money, but make sure that they are not scams and that they will benefit your users.
You can promote them by reviewing them, truthfully, and offering exclusive bonuses like Each Day Free Spins, no deposit offers and so on.
Remember that you don’t have to do this alone unless that’s what you want. You can get help and join affiliate networks which can help connect affiliate marketers who want to promote products to the companies that make the products. And this way, all three parties involved can make a profit.
Create Your Content
In case you haven’t noticed the the pattern, it’s highly important that everything goes together. You can’t randomize anything and just go with the flow. You will have to really think about the content you put out and make sure that it fits your niche as well as the user intent. Also you can’t throw random links in somewhere in the content.
You must meet users’ expectations and help them find what they’re interested in, and then pick the product that truly fulfils their needs.
That’s why you need top quality content written based on serious research. Use SEO to your advantage, check out intent keywords and make sure that when a user searches for something in your niche they end up on your page. Not only this, but upon reaching your page they actually get the answer they’ve been searching for.
If you trick them and don’t actually meet their expectations your bounce rate will grow and you will lose them as customers as they won’t fall for the same trick again. Google is important, but users are more important.
How to Earn with Affiliate Marketing
When the niche has been picked and so have been the products, and you’ve created your content, you can go ahead and insert affiliate links. Again, everything should be connected and make sense, so make sure that the links you insert are as natural as possible and fit the content. Only link when and where it’s appropriate.
If possible, add the links as higher up in the article as possible. Then it’s time to try to maximize profit. For this you can use floating bars, sidebar widgets, banners, pop-up campaigns and email marketing.
Basically everything you can think of to draw in more users and convert all the users that reach your page. You can then slowly start to promote more products and, eventually, when you’ve optimized your processes, you can earn a nice passive income.
