You’ve probably heard of ClickBank, the largest affiliate marketing network in the world. It’s essentially the eBay for affiliate marketers, connecting companies who have products to sell with those who want to buy them. If you’ve ever shopped on eBay, you’ll have no trouble at all understanding how ClickBank works.
The Basics
To get started with affiliate marketing, you’ll need a website. You can use a free blogging platform like WordPress or a premium one like Shopify to launch your site. Keep in mind, though, that the easier you make it for people to engage with your content, the more money you’ll make.
When someone clicks an affiliate link and makes a purchase, you’ll receive a commission.
There’s a lot more to making money with content online than creating web pages and plugging affiliate links into them. You’ll also need to pick your own products to promote and generate interest in. Once you’ve established yourself as an expert in your chosen field, you can begin to pitch your services to businesses who might need help getting their products or services online. Plus, you’ll need to constantly monitor your affiliate earnings and stay motivated to keep promoting products that generate money.
Pick A Niche
If you want to be able to target your content to a specific audience, you’ll need to pick a niche — a group of individuals or companies whose needs and wants you can satisfy with content you create. For example, if you’re a fitness blogger, you might want to choose a niche within that large audience of people who are looking to lose weight. Or if you run a fashion blog, you might want to target your content towards those who love to dress fashionably.
Within that niche, you can choose products that you think will be valuable to your audience and choose affiliate products that are tied to a specific platform or program. For example, if you’re devoted to fitness, you might want to choose products that promote anabolic steroids, since that’s a commonly asked question on your blog. Or if you run a fashion blog, you might want to choose products that allow you to access designer clothing lines and accessories for your readers.
Build Your Audience
To be able to successfully monetize your content, you’ll need to build an audience first. Whether you’ve got a decent following on your blog or you’re just getting started, you’ll need to engage with your audience by creating content that they’ll value and benefit from. The easiest way to do this is to connect with other experts in your niche and exchange resources with them. For example, if you’ve got a fashion blog, you might want to connect with style bloggers and other fashion content creators to learn what items they’re featuring and highlighting and then choose products that they’ve put forth effort into promoting. This type of authentic content is valuable and respected by your target audience, which will help you establish yourself as an expert in your chosen field.
Monetizing Your Content
Once you’ve chosen a niche and started building your audience, you’re ready to begin monetizing your content. The first step in this process is to choose a product or service that you know your audience will value. If you can become an expert in your chosen field and are able to demonstrate that expertise through your content, you can position yourself as an affiliate marketer for that product or service. For example, if you’re a fashion blogger promoting a clothing line, you might want to consider becoming an affiliate marketer for a major clothing retailer. Or if you’re an expert in SEO and you’ve built up a sizable audience around your blog posts about search engine optimization, you could join an affiliate network like AHSA (the Affiliate Marketing Hybrid Society) and make money off your existing audience by promoting products that relate to SEO.
If you decide to go this route, you’ll need to pick a niche and build your audience in order to succeed. You can also look into joining a network of affiliate marketers and gaining access to more products and opportunities.
The Downsides
While there are many perks to making money with content online, there are also a few potential pitfalls you should be aware of. One of the biggest issues is that, since you’re not physically taking part in the transaction, you’re not eligible for traditional forms of income like traditional sales commissions or private label products. Some of the other drawbacks include a lack of independence and the risk of being sucked into a scam.
For many solopreneurs, blogging can be a very lucrative career path. However, if you really want to make it big, you might want to consider other options like affiliate marketing or starting your own business. If you’re passionate about a particular subject and want to share your knowledge with the world, blogging is a great option. But if you want to be able to interact with customers directly, you might want to look into other options as well.