My purpose for writing this article is to offer you an outline of how to make money as an affiliate marketer. You will then be able draw your own educated conclusion on how you want to kick start your affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing is really my field of expertise as I joined my first affiliate program back in 2001. At that time there was not much available in the form of training. But that really didn’t matter very much as the competition was not as fierce as it is today.

But anyway, Affiliate Marketing proves to this date to be the easiest, cheapest and most lucrative activity to be involved in. At the time of writing this blog post, I am making a very comfortable residual income from home from several of my affiliate businesses.

However, my favorite which is very much suitable for a beginner is …

Hope that you have bookmarked that page for later, if not I suggest that you do it now. Okay? And if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask them in the comments section at the bottom of this article, okay?

So, let us continue …

How to make money as an Affiliate Marketer …

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Habitually, I can classify the various ways of earning money with Affiliate Marketing into 3 basic groups:

1. The direct promotion
2. Building a list
3. Create a useful website

…and, we are going to talk about these 3 approaches here:

First approach – The direct promotion

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The first approach to make money with affiliate marketing is by promoting the service or product directly.

Usually, most beginners are taught to search for a great product from the ClickBank market place; create an advert for it and advertise, or share it on social media to get traffic and sales. It is also recommended that you find a serious seller on Fiverr who can do an excellent job for you.

Or, if it is a business opportunity, one may simply advertise the affiliate link to get traffic and referrals.

This technique looks very simple, especially among the newbies. I have discussed it with a number of business people who agreed that this was their preferred method because the income is quick. Also they don’t have to worry about customer care and website maintenance.

This may be the easiest way to start making money with affiliate marketing. But if you asked me, I would advise you to put in a bit more work and gain more sales.

Why?

If you are a regular reader of my articles, you will know that I am not a quick money supporter. My goal has always been in favor of building up a relationship.

If you really want long term prosperity, you need to spend a lot of your time building something. Whether it is building a list, a network, a website or an association. What doesn’t strike me about the direct promotion method is that you are transferring your hard earned traffic away; without taking the time to build anything long term for yourself.

Then, there is an issue with that, that didn’t exist a couple of years ago:

You see, I have been promoting my affiliate programs very successfully on Twitter (and other social platforms) ever since it came available, back in March 2006. It was very easy to post a few words and my affiliate link, and I made a lot of money that way.

But things have changed and little by little, Twitter became aware of the fact that their platform was becoming littered with scam opportunities.

Then, they also thought that perhaps they could charge advertisers to post their affiliate links on their home page, instead of letting them use their platform to do it for free.

So, they progressively chased away affiliate marketers who were sharing their businesses unless they bought advertising space, which is needless to say, very expensive!

How did they do that? …

Simply by refusing to show some of your adverts for the reason that it is not safe for their viewers. Or even better, they just suspend or delete your Twitter account. Did this happen to you?

Well, it happened to me several times, and even very recently …

Of course I have appealed and with time they might unsuspend it, but it is not a guarantee, and it might take a long time. So, as I said earlier, this approach is not reliable anymore. Instead, I would rather recommend the second and / or the third approach which are explained below.

Update: Twitter has un-suspended two of my major accounts. The one above mentioned and another major one. I have now appealed for a third one and I am still waiting for their decision.

Update November, 3rd, 2019

Second approach – Building a list

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A more profitable and smarter replacement to the first approach is to build your list at the same time or separately. So, instead of sending YOUR traffic straight to your affiliate site, you use your own marketing efforts in building a list FIRST, then promote other affiliated products LATER.

You can learn more about building a list here: How To Build Your Email Marketing List? 

The client list is often overlooked in companies and the self-employed. Yet, it should be the central part for the growth of your business. So, it is very important to learn how to create a customer file and why this valuable database can boost your business results.

It serves as a base (which you can import into different software packages) to improve the performance of your business. By gathering accurate data from your customers or prospects, you can refine your offers, build customer loyalty and define behavioral trends. For best results, you must have a client file that is updated regularly.

"How To Make Money As An Affiliate Marketer" – A FREE Guide – Click Here To Share! Click To Tweet

Know your customers better

A customer is not just an e-mail and a name. Your file will be there to gather all the necessary information on a client, to achieve your goals.

The data will be used to personalize your messages with a name or a first name, or to personalize your offers according to their needs, their budget and purchase path. Working with a file makes it possible not to work simply by feel.

Remember that it is of most important to remember that a prospect is a real person with a personality, taste of their own and feelings. The more you treat them as humans, the more chances you will have to make a sale, and have a return customer.

Keep your customers loyal

Knowing your client well also helps to build loyalty.

Depending on the information collected, you may, for example, regularly offer additional products or services; additional discounts or gifts to activate a subscription again.

It is 5 times cheaper than finding new customers

Making more sales or reducing your un-subscription rate with your existing customers is a good way to get the most out of building your list.

It is easier to make a sale with someone who has bought from you already by maintaining the communication flow active than to gain the confidence of a new prospect.

There are many variances to this system

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The most common strategy is to create a squeeze page, give away some valuable freebies to attract people to opt-in.

An approach that I have been using for years, which works extremely well. It is to offer the free eBook which you can see on the image on the side.

It is totally un-intrusive and very informative. Click on the image to get it yourself. 

An even smarter strategy is to create a product of your own, in your niche, then devise a massive launch around it, get other distributors to promote it for you, and you will promptly build a huge list that you can use at your convenience.

This will take a lot more time to set up such as compared to the first approach but you will be building yourself a list and a reputation in your niche. You can then build upon any success you have set for yourself and make more sales later. This a very popular method of how to make money as an affiliate marketer.

But there is one significant downside to this approach.

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Apart from your free gift or product, there is nothing much to show on your website. Once your visitors have got what they wanted, chances are very slim that they will come back to your website again at a later stage, on their own.

The only way you may be able to keep a relationship with them is certainly by means of a newsletter. For example, a regular newsletter teaching your readers how to make money as an affiliate marketer.

Third approach – Create a useful website

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Now, the third way to make money with affiliate marketing is to build a useful website around your niche.

The easiest and most common way is to start a blog. You could build a list and then start a blog to update your list with useful tips and advise, promoting affiliate products at the same time.

Also, you could create a “service site” that provides useful online tools that people in your niche could use. This will seduce them to return to your website over and over.

One of my favorite methods is to create a content website or blog and post useful articles on a regular basis and in a particular niche. These quality articles will help me receive free and organic traffic from the search engines. The website will have several good products that I recommend and, of course, they will be products or services you are affiliated to.

For example, the blog post that you are reading now is posted on a blog that I have created. It is intended to educate my readers and show them how they could do the same and make money from it …

How to make money as an Affiliate Marketer

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The inconvenience of this approach is, as you might have guessed, the time and effort needed to create and (for some) to regularly add quality content to the sites. But the benefits are evident. Once the initial traffic is created, you will most likely see endless traffic to your website and, as a reward, a steady affiliate income to your account.

Although this third way is my favorite way of making money with affiliate marketing, it may not be the best way for you. We know of many success stories in each of these approaches. You will have to test the different techniques to see which one you are most comfortable with.

I hope that this discussion will give you an idea of how to make money as an Affiliate Marketer.

If you wish to learn more about starting your own online business from home, click on the banner below …

You might also like to read the below articles that I have selected for you:

• How To Create A Niche Website ?
• Where To Find Ideas To Write About In A Blog
• Why Is Self Motivation Important – Believe In Yourself

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And now it’s your turn! Are you …

Ready to make money in Affiliate Marketing?

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Now that you know how to make money as an Affiliate Marketer,  if you have any experience on the subject, we would love to hear from you. And, if you have any questions, please use the box below and I will respond as soon as possible. If you enjoyed this article please share it socially and leave a comment below, I will highly appreciate it!

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