Affiliate marketing is a great way to make a regular income. In fact, theoretically, with a large enough audience, a couple of hours at the computer can make you almost another minimum wage monthly income.
If that appeals to you, you might want to think about pursuing affiliate marketing for yourself. Read on to find out how you can do it step by step.
How does it work?
Affiliate marketing means gaining payment for putting a spotlight on products and services to your audience. So that can mean making content and including a sponsorship, adding a link to text content, or showcasing it on your social media account. If you have a large following you can make money showcasing products to your audience.
How much can you earn?
Well, it’s worth starting with the fact that you’re likely to be working on a pay-per-click format. If you read about influencers and brand ambassadors in the link above, you’ll see that they are paid a set rate, but an affiliate blog is usually performance-based. You will be paid on how many clicks your affiliate gets since the link will deliver traffic and data to the brand, which is perfect if you’re looking for regular income.
So, it’s a sliding scale, depending on how many followers you get mainly, but doing it right can earn you anywhere between £500 and £1,000 a month for one article.
Choose your platform
Before you do anything, you’re going to have to choose how you expect to move forward, and that mainly comes down to a platform. Do you want to start a blog? Focus on social media or content? All of the above? Work for many brands or one?
You can find out more about creating an affiliate marketing blog here, but the long and short of it is that it is a blog specifically designed to spotlight products that apply to your demographic, for a commission. An affiliate blog is the most straightforward way to make money with affiliate marketing, losing the muss and fuss of becoming an influencer or a brand ambassador, which incorporates affiliate marketing into a bigger role. You can find outlines of each of the roles here.
If you’re looking to establish yourself on social media, you might be better off becoming an influencer or earning affiliate commissions as a side hustle alongside your small business.
Decide on your niche
This means different things depending on the role you’re taking on. If you’re looking to simply start an affiliate blog, you will only need to think of the demographic you’re looking to appeal to. Think about your customer and create a fully formed idea of them in your head, and with every partnership, ask yourself what that customer will be interested in.
Influencers have to think about that too, but their choices will be dictated by the audience they cultivate from their content, so you will have to consider the customer you will attract with your gaming, crafts, DIY, fashion, lifestyle, and industry, etc.
Always keep in mind, whether you’re making content or promoting products, to keep your customer in mind. They keep coming back to you for a reason, for more ideas on what to buy, and if you start promoting things they’re not interested in, you’ll lose them and then you will have less income coming in next month.
Look for companies that you can promote
There are two main ways you can pursue an affiliate deal. The first is to simply acquire your affiliate link through a program posted on the site, or you can contact the brand directly with your online following as proof that you can deliver results and perhaps offer an outline of how you intend to get those results.
Or promote yourself so that they find you
The other approach is to keep building your following and wait for brands to approach you. However, logic dictates you will need a lot of followers to be worthy of a commission.
These brands are likely to keep it a temporary contract too, and simply pay you a fixed rate for a piece of content, which isn’t useful if you’re looking for a regular source of income.
So, how do you become a partner?
The process is simple enough of becoming a partner after you have found the brand you want to work with. First, complete a registration form for the affiliate program. Your application will be analysed, your platform checked for traffic, and the quality of your content evaluated.
Once you pass these checks, you will be granted access to a web platform where you can choose the products you want to promote. You will have to take into consideration what would appeal best to your audience, rather than to you.
You will then be given a personalized monitoring link to the product which you can embed somewhere in your content.
If you’re looking for more advice on affiliate marketing, you can take a look at our blog. Or for more personalized advice, book a free call with a member of our team.
