It is no secret that anyone can make money from a website or on social media. It was hard to believe people could make money online and even pay their bills and live entirely off their online earnings. Today, it is not only seen as possible but also a career path that is getting normalized. Freelancing, YouTubing among others are great, but they are platform-based. Which means you are subjected to the rules of the platform. Facebook, YouTube, Upwork, Fiverr, and all other great earning platforms periodically change their rules which are sometimes not very well received by creators and talent on the platform.
Unlike relying on platforms to make your money online, there are other options. If you are looking for such opportunities, you might want to start an affiliate marketing moneysite. The ideal of a money site is quite simple. And you get to use what you build (your platform) to make money. It is entirely yours to control and you can be certain of a stable earning that is based on your output without any external platform rules determining how you should do your work. If this sounds great, welcome to affiliate marketing using high conversion moneysites, designed to make money and nothing else.
What Is An Affiliate Marketing Moneysite?
An affiliate marketing moneysite is a website or blog that has been created with the sole purpose of making the owner money through their affiliate marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing moneysites are highly optimized over time to increase conversions and drive sales. And an increase in sales means the moneysite owner gets paid more commissions which is good business.
If you are familiar with affiliate marketing, you would know it doesnt require a website and neither does it require a blog. You can make money as an affiliate marketing using different social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. This often means you have a lot of following that trusts your picks. Heck! Some even use spamming which is a bad way of promoting any product or service through affiliate marketing. But these tactics all depend on a platform thus Facebook or youtube. If youtube suddenly changes their rule and terms that limit your features, you may not be able to promote your products well, or it may decrease your reach, harming your business.
Therefore, whether you are already successful as an affiliate marketer or not, having a reliable money site you can call your own is always a good idea.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing involves promoting a product or service as an affiliate of a brand whereby you get paid commissions whenever a predefined action or result is achieved, you get paid a certain commission. As people, we recommend products to our friends every day. But when they buy, the brand never recognizes our effort in acquiring the customer. Affiliate marketing changes that by rewarding people who successfully recommend or lead others to buy a product or service. It isnt always about buying. It could be app downloads or some other action. However, in all cases, affiliate marketing involves driving actions. Affiliate marketing is a performance-based online business.
The rise of affiliate marketing as a legitimate and highly results-oriented form of marketing has led to many people carving up a career for themselves as affiliate marketers. Today, you can readily find people who call themselves affiliate marketers, a signal of how profitable it gets.
As an affiliate marketer, you rely on several tools and platforms to get your work done. But in most cases, you need an audience that listens to you enough to take your advice in the form of product recommendations and more. This means you need to build an audience. Most affiliate marketers rely on social media. But if there is one thing we have learned about social media algorithms, it would be that they are not predictable. Platforms like Facebook have constantly made it difficult for brand accounts to have quality organic reach. On the other hand, having a moneysite as your digital real estate can be greatly rewarding.
Affiliate marketing has no salary as you may have concluded. As promoters, they make commissions and receive a specific amount per action generated. The fact that the affiliate marketer’s income is not definitive, is a good thing. You are free to earn as much as you want. The caveat here is that you can also earn nothing. As a rookie in the industry, you may struggle to find your feet and may typically earn from nothing to $1,000. But as you grow, learn more and build your knowledge and skills.
The potential here is, you can sign your paycheck as your knowledge, skills, and results multiply. The use for your early days as an affiliate marketer is to learn as much as you want to earn in the next months and acquire as many skills as you would need to grow your reach and increase your results for the brands you promote. And they will pay you handsomely. High-earning affiliates and influencers make over $100k a month and so can you.
What is an Affiliate Marketer?
An affiliate marketer is an independent online marketer who promotes a product or service and receives a commission for each action-driven. Affiliate marketers are often very good digital marketers who use carefully selected marketing strategies to drive sales for the brands they promote. The way an affiliate marketer promotes an email marketing tool would be different from how they promote a home improvement tool like a lawnmower with special features. To succeed as an affiliate marketer, it helps to have a clear-cut strategy that you optimize over time to create value.
Key Terms in Affiliate Marketing
1. Publisher/Affiliate
A publisher could be n individual or an organization that drives traffic to a brand’s store, website, or some other asset. The publisher gets paid when a user successfully referred takes a predefined action such as buying a product, signing up for a service, etc. A publisher could be an influencer or another brand owning an asset or a platform such as a large following on social media, a blog or website, a shopping platform, a browser addon/extension, or a mobile app. A publisher is sometimes called an affiliate marketer.
2. Advertiser
An advertiser is a brand to which the publisher or affiliate marketer drives traffic. The advertiser usually has an offering that the publisher is meant to promote on behalf of the advertiser.
3. Affiliate program
An affiliate program is an established program designed to attract affiliate marketers to promote an offer from a publisher. Various brands have affiliate programs meant to boost their marketing and drive results. It is common to find “Affiloate Program” on brand websites. An affiliate program not only attracts marketers but also has a determined way of compensating specific results generated for the brand. Such programs have tracking guidelines. The program works by giving the affiliate marketer a link that can be tracked by the affiliate program. Anytime someone buys or takes an action after visiting the brand website through the affiliate marketers link, they get compensated.
4. Tracking links
Tracking links are generated by the affiliate program to track the source of the traffic or user. Links are based on individual users or affiliate marketers and tell who deserves the credit for any purchase or actions driven on the brand’s website. The tracking links usually work for a specific time after the user has clicked on them. For instance, a user clicks on an affiliate link on an article on your moneysite, the link will track the user’s activities for a specific time such as 24 hours. This uses cookies.
5. Cookies
Cookies are little robots installed on a website that tracks user activity on the website. When a user visits your affiliate marketing moneysite, your website’s cookies will log the user in. In the same way, when they click on your affiliate link to the brand’s website, the cookie starts to track their activities. However, it doesn’t track them forever. Instead, affiliate cookies work for a few days with some such as Amazon’s cookies lasting only 24 hours. Some studies show that shorter cookie lifetimes produce more results.
6. Commission
A commission is the percentage or amount of money an affiliate marketer is paid by the brand or publisher for each action generated. Most programs are geared toward sales. So if you generate a sale, you get paid your commission.
7. Affiliate Network
An affiliate network is a network of affiliate programs which features that allow brands to in a way outsource their affiliate marketing programs and still get the necessary results. To get started as an affiliate marketer, sign up for any affiliate network, verify your details and build your profile. Then start applying to affiliate programs. Once you are approved, you can start promoting the brand.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Affiliate marketing is simply referral marketing. Doing referrals in a physical, traditional way is however very limiting not to mention very challenging. Affiliate marketing takes referral marketing to the digital world allowing people with millions of reach to refer their friends, family, and followers to buy. Here’s how it all works.
A brand or publisher creates an affiliate program and invites affiliate marketers to join the program. The brand could also use an affiliate network to roll out its program. Either way, you get started by signing up for the program either on the brand website or through the affiliate network.
The next is, you get a profile with marketing tools and materials for your activities. The key feature here is the affiliate link with tracking features. These links are the way the program can connect you to the traffic you drive to their website.
Once you start promoting the brand’s products and services through your unique links, the cookies will start tracking each visitor that is delivered through your links. And as they browse around and take actions like buying, your commissions start to build up.
It’s that simple!
Building a portfolio of assets that deliver traffic to the brands you promote is the key to generating real passive income through your affiliate marketing business. The use of a moneysite with content that attracts potential customers for the products you promote is perhaps the best organic way to achieve your goal of passive income.
How to Grow Your Affiliate Marketing Moneysite
Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is critical to your success as an affiliate marketer. A lack of knowledge of who your audience is may lead to choosing the wrong products to promote, creating content that is of no value to them, and using the wrong strategies to market to them. Once you understand the audience, you get a better perspective to run your moneysite and promote the right products in the right way.
Build an Email List
Building an email list is an excellent way to personalize your relationship with your audience. As much as personalization goes, you can get better attention from your audience through an email than a blog article. An email list can also be valuable in many ways as you grow your moneysite.
Create Quality Content
Content is the single most important thing when you are operating a moneysite site that relies on organic visitors to earn and grow. It is only through creating and promoting quality and regular content can you build a community around what you do.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a wonderful way to build links for your blog while building authority and traffic. When you write posts for other websites and blogs, they link back to you. This builds up your authority in the eyes of users as well as in the Google algorithm. You are also able to get a fraction of the readers coming back to your site to explore and read more.
SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO involves increasing your organic traffic from search engines like Google without paying for ads. It is an entirely organic process and involves a lot of time and effort.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a great way to create a full-time career. However, working on platforms involves a risk. And when the platforms make changes, your business can be affected. They aren’t bad entirely and can be part of your assets, but investing in building a moneysite that serves you even when others are faltering.