What Is Affiliate Marketing? And How Does It Work?

1.9K followers

Updated 5 years ago

Hello dear friends and fellow entrepreneurs! Want to take a moment and let you know how much I appreciate all of you and your questions and comments. It makes me feel like I am accomplishing what I set out to do, and that's deliver value to everyone I can. So, thank you for reading my blogs and participating in the comment section!

Now, today we're going over something that I would say most of you already know. However, I don't like assuming things because you know what that can do...

So, I just want to go over quickly what affiliate marketing is and the way it works.

Affiliate Marketing

The dictionary shows the meaning as this;

affiliate marketing[affiliate marketing]NOUN

a marketing arrangement by which an online retailer pays commission to an external website for traffic or sales generated from its referrals. "most of my earnings are from affiliate marketing, direct ad sales, and sponsored posts"

In other words, if you decide that you really love Wealthy Affiliate and you would like to promote them, you would go to their affiliate section and there, they would have your own personal affiliate ID embedded in all the Wealthy Affiliate product links. You would simply choose the link you would want to promote and put it out there for everyone to see.

You could do this by sharing it on social media, with paid ads like Google's Adwords, or Bing Ads, or Facebook Ads. You could put it emails, messages, etc. (There are right ways and wrong ways to promote your affiliate link. You don't want to just get on social media and regurgitate the link everywhere. This would be the wrong way and the quick way to failure. We'll go over this also later on in another blog.)

Then, when someone clicks on that link, it will take them to Wealthy Affiliate's promo page, or whatever sales page affiliate link you chose. If they go through the page or sales funnel there and join Wealthy Affiliate, since they clicked on your personalized affiliate ID, YOU would get credit for that new member.

Here at WA, they have free access and don't ever have to go premium if they don't want. However, if they just create their profile with a picture, Wealthy Affiliate will pay you $1. And if they finally go premium, no matter when that happens, you'll also get credit for it and you'll make $8 commission from their first month $19 and then $23.50 of their $49 every month after that that they remain a premium member and make their payment.

HInt: The ones with recurring commissions are the ones I look for.

Now, another way you could make commissions in affiliate marketing, is join an affiliate network like ClickBank, JVZoo, or Warrior Plus. Within these platforms, they will have a whole library of products, courses and services that you can choose from to promote. In each case, you'll receive your own personal affiliate ID in your link, so they can track that it was you who referred whoever clicks on it, and if they click on your link and decide to buy, that company will pay you whatever commission was offered.

So, that's how affiliate marketing works. Pretty simple. Pretty straightforward. Sell someone else's product and you get paid a commission. As we went over in an earlier blog, the good part is you don't have any inventory to keep up with. You don't need employees and you don't have to worry about support. It's very low overhead, if any at all. The cost of your laptop or phone, which also means you can do it from anywhere.

I love affiliate marketing and if you build a strong foundation, provide value to your customers/clients and consistently take action as you learn, you can be making a decent income sooner than you may think. Of course, it all depends on you, the time you have to put into it, your work ethics, etc. Everyone is different. However, I've found that the best mindset you can have for this business is; "I'm going to work at this no matter how long it takes to reach my goal."

I hope this helps you understand affiliate marketing if you didn't before. And hopefully, I haven't confused you. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments or message me and I'll be happy to help. Also, if I make any mistakes with my facts anytime, please correct me. I don't claim to know it all. I'm always learning as should you.

Until next time...Take Action!

Grant

If you'd like more help and support on your journey, join my private FB group for affiliate marketers: The Road To Internet Success