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Affiliate Marketing Using Commission Junction
Affiliate Marketing is currently one of the most financially rewarding and popular company opportunities online. It is a contract in between the merchant, or the one with the product to sell, and the website owner or the affiliate, or the one who allows the use of his website to promote the merchant’s product or service.
Hence, affiliate marketing is a relationship in between the affiliate and the merchant.
In such affiliate marketing networks, affiliates can select from thousands of products to advertise. The merchants can proffer their items and look for affiliates who will promote their products.
The Commission Junction Affiliate Program is one of, if not the biggest affiliate marketing networks in the web today. It is a leader in efficiency based internet marketing offering exceptional opportunities for both affiliates and merchants. The company serves millions of customers making it among the biggest advertisement networks today.
It facilitates the relationship between affiliates and marketers and leverages its knowledge in the affiliate marketing service to ensure the best outcomes for its customers. Commission Junction has affiliate programs mainly for physical goods. The company excels in niche markets, as many niche markets require physical goods as affiliate items.
Advantages
As the market leader in affiliate marketing services, Commission Junction provides many advantages for both affiliates and merchants. As a Commission Junction merchant, you only need to sign up and have your affiliate program offered to thousands of prospective affiliates. In this way, the merchant has the opportunity to attract the best affiliates to carry his item or service.
Another advantage that Commission Junction uses to merchants is the promo to the Commission Junction affiliate network upon sign up by means of the Commission Junction e-mail newsletter. Remaining in the Commission Junction affiliate network supplies exceptional chance for the merchant to find quality affiliates who can generate more clients and more sales.
Considering that the secret to affiliate marketing success for merchants is discovering the best affiliates, Commission Junction uses the very best way for merchants to succeed, by bringing merchants and affiliates together. The merchant’s affiliate program will likewise be noted in the Commission Junction Account Manager for life offering you more exposure. You can likewise purchase special listing for greater affiliate exposure.
Commission Junction likewise has numerous benefits for affiliates. An affiliate of Commission Junction has access to the largest directory site of affiliate programs encompassing thousands of products and services.
Commission Junction has an outstanding record of accomplishment in the affiliate marketing organization, so it makes good sense for any affiliate to be a Commission Junction affiliate. The business uses a big variety of affiliate programs in every category of services and products. In addition, affiliates of Commission Junction receive notifications by means of email whenever brand-new affiliate programs are included.
Commission Junction provides the best opportunities to make a revenue for both affiliates and merchants. It integrates resources to advance the sales or revenue of each party.
Drawbacks
Commission Junction likewise has its drawbacks. For one, the commissions are relatively lower, being in the 7% to 20% bracket. Yet, despite the lower earnings potential, Commission Junction is still among the very best alternatives for affiliate marketers. Because of the hike in rates, Commission junction has also had its share of obstacles such as during the early part of 2002 when merchants dropped out.
Conclusion
All the same, Commission Junction stays as one of the best options when it pertains to affiliate marketing. It uses the best features and opportunities for merchants and affiliates. Its marketing options help online marketers increase their profits. There are numerous reasons why any affiliate or merchant who desires to succeed must sign up with Commission Junction.
The Commission Junction Affiliate Program is one of, if not the biggest affiliate marketing networks in the web today. As the market leader in affiliate marketing solutions, Commission Junction offers numerous advantages for both merchants and affiliates.
As a Commission Junction merchant, you only need to sign up and have your affiliate program offered to thousands of potential affiliates. Because the secret to affiliate marketing success for merchants is finding the best affiliates, Commission Junction uses the best way for merchants to prosper, by bringing affiliates and merchants together. Commission Junction has an exceptional record of achievement in the affiliate marketing business, so it makes sense for any affiliate to be a Commission Junction affiliate.
Click here to join the Commission Junction Affiliate network
Do you already use Commission Junction? What do you think about it?
Different Types Of Affiliate Marketing
The advantages of affiliate marketing are more noticeable today than before. This is one of the primary reason for the tremendous popularity of affiliate marketing programs among so many thousands of internet marketers.
Most current web innovation has allowed the affiliate marketers to obtain their data and earnings figures the minute they make an affiliate sale. It is now possible to utilize business like PayPal for payment and receipt processing. This has highly cut the time that an affiliate online marketer has to wait on his payments to be gathered from the merchants.
Both the affiliates and the merchants have now understood that affiliate marketing is effective for both of them. The merchants view affiliate marketing as a chance to market their products at a much lesser expense. On the other hand, the affiliates see affiliate marketing as a straightforward method of earning revenues online by doing something which they like most, and that is web publishing.
Just as the popularity of affiliate marketing has gone into overdrive, likewise the outlook of individuals has changed for the better about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is no longer thought about as a secondary technique of marketing by the merchants, or as an extra income source by an affiliate marketer. For merchants and affiliates alike, affiliate marketing is now considered as a primary source of earnings and revenues.
Do we need to evaluate what type of affiliate marketing will work best for any person? Are there any differences in affiliate marketing programs? Are the paybacks from these programs the same? Which are those affiliate marketing programs that work much better than the others?
There are actually varieties of affiliate marketing, and the types will depend upon how you are going to categorize them. The main classification of affiliate marketing programs falls under 2 categories: pay-per-click (Pay Per Click), and pay-per-performance (PPP).
Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small sites, and most likely the easiest way for them to earn loan. In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his website, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant’s banner or text advertisements.
Pay Per Efficiency (PPP)
PPP affiliate marketing is well liked among merchants and is likewise the most satisfying type for the affiliates. In this type of affiliate program, the merchant pays the affiliate only when his recommendation converts into an action – that is whenever the visitor he has actually referred in fact buys something from the merchant’s site or when the visitor ends up being a lead. On the other hand, this type of affiliate marketing becomes financially most fulfilling for the devoted affiliate, for commissions in PPP affiliate marketing generally comes in the range of 15% to 20% of the real product sales.
Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can, even more, be categorized into two types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL). Both these are extremely popular.
a) Pay Per Sale (PPS) – In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant’s site, in fact, buys something from the merchant’s site. Affiliates are frequently paid on commission basis, although other merchants would choose to pay a repaired cost. But no matter what the basis of the charge is, it is usually higher than the charge paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.
b) Pay Per Lead (PPL) – The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a small variation of the PPS type and is frequently utilized by insurance and financing companies and other companies who rely on leads for their business to grow. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant’s website fills an application form or any similar kind related to business of the business. Payment for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a repaired charge whose rates approximate that of the repaired fee in the PPS type. Normally, the sales conversion rate is the greatest in the case of PPL, because, the visitor is not needed to acquire anything however only complete a non-financial transaction, like, filling an application form, registering for a newsletter, and so on.
Aside from these three specific types of affiliate marketing, a great deal of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is also another type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each time the consumer he has referred purchases something from the merchant’s website.
Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing
These types of affiliate marketing are based on the various levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made.
A) Single Tier – In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are just paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant. All the previously pointed out affiliate marketing types (i.e. PPS, PPL, and PPC) fall under the single-tier category.
B) Two Tier – In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliates are not just spent for the direct traffic or sales that he brings to the merchant’s website, but also on every traffic or sales referred by other affiliates who signed up with as sub-affiliate of the above affiliate marketer.
C) Multi-Tier – Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the affiliate gets additional commission for more variety of levels of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network.
D) Residual Earnings Affiliate Marketing – In this type, apart from the affiliate earning money for every consumer he has actually referred to the merchant’s site, the affiliate is likewise paid whenever the customer he has actually referred returns to the merchant’s site and purchases another item. Commission for such kind of affiliate marketing is based on either percentage of sales or based on fixed cost.
Every affiliate online marketer discovers that these various affiliate marketing techniques work in a different way for each of them. Multi-tier affiliate marketing, also called Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is a highly tough type of internet marketing and it does not work for everybody. As a matter of fact, numerous genuine online marketers consider MLM as illegal or something which is unwanted.
An affiliate online marketer needs to try out different methods and choose which will work best for him or her. He or she must then focus on those affiliate marketing techniques which are suitable for his/her design of online marketing service.
What is your favorite way of affiliate marketing? Let me know by leaving a comment below!
How To Find Your Perfect Niche In 5 Steps
The biggest struggle that a beginner in online marketing face is choosing a niche. But what is a niche and how can you find a niche that fits you and the market?
What is a niche?
Before we dive deep into finding a niche we have to understand what a niche is and why it is important to choose a niche.
A niche is a distinct segmented of a market, in other words, an audience.
That sounds really complicated but is in reality not. Let’s have a look at the market fitness.
Inside the market fitness, there are many different niches, like weightlifting, bodyweight training, running, swimming, etc.
Sometimes even the niches itself can have sub-niches like bodybuilding, cross-fit, etc. inside the weightlifting niche.
Each of these niches has their own audience and their own topics.
Why should you choose a niche?
As I already mentioned, each niche has its own audience and topics. That is important to know so you can really address the interests of an audience. The more specific your blog is the higher will be the engagement rate on your blog.
If you have a blog about running and somebody comes to your blog as a runner he will be really interested in your articles. And if you can solve a problem he has (e.g. finding new running shoes) he will be happy to click on your affiliate link.
The more you know about your audience and their problems/interests the easier it will be to create new content and build a follower base.
Now that we know what a niche is and why we need to choose a niche, let’s have a look at how to find the perfect niche for you!
The 5 steps of finding a niche
Step 1: Brainstorming
At first, we have to collect a lot of different ideas. At this point, it is important to know that there aren’t good or bad ideas.
I say that because I often see people only thinking about very good ideas and they come up with nothing. That’s why you should write down every idea you have.
Take a piece of paper and answer yourself these questions:
- What am I interested in?
- About what topics I love to read books or read blogs?
- What are the topics I can talk about for hours?
- What would I do if I had one million dollars in my bank account? (That sounds really stupid but it can really help finding hobbies you are passionate about)
Don’t judge yourself. Just write down every single idea. As I said, there are no good and bad ideas in the beginning.
Step 2: Get specific
Usually, you have now a lot of generic ideas like sports or technology (like in my case). Now you have to get more specific for every idea. Here you can ask yourself the following questions:
- What makes this topic interesting to you?
- How far are you an expert in this niche?
- Who is usually asking you for advice on this topic?
- How old are they?
For example, you wrote down technology as a topic but what does this mean? Let’s assume you are very good at assembling computers. You build together a lot of computers for your friends and family. Usually, you help people who need a lot of power but don’t have a lot of budgets.
That can be gamer for example or spare time cutters. And usually, they are in the age between 25 and 35.
That has to be made with every idea you had.
Step 3: Eliminate ideas
While thinking more about all your ideas you usually find a lot of ideas that are not that good. In this step, you can eliminate all the “bad” ideas you had.
Step 4: Chose your niche
At this step, you should have a list of different niches that you are interested in and you could start a business with.
This step can be one of the hardest of all. Now you have to choose one topic you want to start with. That can be really tough because these are all topics you are very interested in.
However, the great thing is that every idea you have now will allow you to work more with your interest. You’ll find people that are also interested in your interests and you’ll connect with new people.
And the best part of all: You’ll be paid for it. You’ll be paid for talking about one of your favorite hobbies.
And that’s how you do work you love. I think work is in this context the wrong word because it doesn’t feel like work. And that’s the most amazing part about starting a blog!
Step 5: Start
Now that you have chosen your niche you only have to start. It is more important to start imperfect than to never start perfectly.
Maybe you aren’t an expert in your niche. However, investing time and energy in your niche makes you one. Don’t believe that you can only start as an expert.
Every expert started once as a beginner.
Maybe your blog doesn’t look as perfect as you would love to. Maybe your articles as good as you thought. Maybe you’ll make some mistakes. That’s no problem!
Creating a profitable blog is a process. On your way, you’ll learn more and more and someday you’ll make a living from your blog. It will not happen overnight.
Put in the work and be patient. No one was able to run a marathon in 2 weeks.
Your next steps will be:
- Register for a domain and web hosting (start here)
- Install WordPress
- Write your first 5 articles and launch your blog
- Start building different traffic sources
As I said it is important to start! Start within the next 72 hours because if you don’t start within the next 3 days you’ll start never.
Conclusion
There isn’t the one perfect blog topic. There is only one perfect blog topic for you!
Maybe you have to change your niche a little bit by the time. But that’s normal and no problem at all.
That’s all part of the process. You start as a beginner and work your way up to an expert. Don’t let yourself encourage by the mistakes you make. Mistakes are the foundation of success.
You’ll never find a successful person who hasn’t made any mistake at all.
However, the most important thing you need is fun. If you have fun working in your niche it will be much easier to create a successful business.
Now I want to hear more from you!
Have you already found a niche you are interested in? And how have you found your niche? Let me know by leaving a comment below!
Earning money with the Amazon Affiliate Program
If you want to earn money with your website, the Amazon Affiliate program can be your solution.
Besides a huge number of products, Amazon has already built up a lot of trust which really helps to turn visitors into income.
How can I start?
To start earning money with the Amazon Affiliate program is very simple.
You don’t need much knowledge or technical skills. In this article, I want to give you some more information about this affiliate program and how you can start.
How does the of the Amazon affiliate program work?
As an Amazon affiliate, you can create affiliate links for every product they offer. The link contains your partner ID and every link looks very similar.
With your affiliate link, you can now start earning money.
You can place your link inside your blog posts, your emails, you can post them on your social networks or you can create price comparisons.
Tip: If you use Amazon for several websites you can create custom tracking links so you can measure the performance of every single website.
If someone clicks on your link and buys something from Amazon you get a commission. You also get paid if they buy a different product than you have them linked to.
That means if someone buys a TV for $1.000 and you get 10% commission you get $100 for a single sale! Of course, the probability that someone buys a TV is very low but it still can happen 😉
These form of marketing is called affiliate marketing and is one of the most effective and most spread marketing form in the world! (If you are a beginner you can check out this guide)
For which niches is the Amazon affiliate program?
You can use Amazon in almost every niche possible! As they have products in every category and niche you’ll always find products for your website.
From different books to refrigerators (Yes that is also a niche) to sports equipment to milk and coffee.
That makes it very easy to find a fitting product and to place your link on your blog post, in your email, or on your landing page.
How can I sign up?
Signing up for the Amazon affiliate program is not very hard. You have to go to the Amazon Partner website and create an account. If you are already a customer of Amazon you can use this account so you don’t have to type in your contact details.
Amazon advertising tools
After signing up for the Amazon partner program you have access to all the different advertising tools.
You can edit most of the creatives so they fit for your website and audience.
In the following, I will show you all the different creatives you have access to:
Recommendation Ads
Amazon will place relevant products on your website. The products are based on your website content and the visiting user. That means if you have a website about fishing they most likely will show products about fishing.
However, if they see that the user was very interested in buying a new camera (had one in his shopping cart but didn’t buy) they will maybe show him cameras.
Search Ads
This will place a short search box on your website. The user can now search for products inside Amazon. That means the user can search inside Amazon for products without leaving your website.
Custom Ads
Here you can choose between 4-8 products you want to show on your website. So for example, if you have a blog about photography you can have a widget like “My favorite cameras for 2017”.
“My wishlist”
You can create a wishlist within Amazon and post that on your website so maybe one of your visitors will buy something from your list for you.
Some bloggers don’t want to earn money with their blog but they are happy about a small gift.
Amazon Site Stripe
This can be a very useful feature if you have several products you want to advertise. If you are logged into your Amazon Affiliate account and search the website you have a small stripe on the top of the website where you can instantly create links and banners of a product.
One final tip
Take your time and read the Program Policies.
You don’t have to study them and remember everything but you should read and understand the most important points.
So for example, it is now allowed to use more than 100 product pictures of Amazon. That doesn’t apply to the Amazon logo.
You won’t risk your account by violating any given rules.
How to successfully sell products with affiliate marketing without any cost
Affiliate marketing is awesome!
All you need to do is to send traffic to another website and someone else takes care of the rest.
You don’t need to work on the product, create a sales page, take care of the customer support or anything else.
Plus, you can get 50% commissions with digital products.
If the price of the product is higher you can easily earn between $100-$500 per sale!
That sounds great, right?
But how can you get traffic to affiliate websites so that people will buy the product and you get your commission? And how can you do that without investing into traffic?
There are many different ways to do that, I’ll show you the most lucrative tactics in this article.
1. Write a blog article
Do you have a blog?
Then why don’t you write a review about that product? You don’t have to invest any money, just some time.
Attention!
Do never write about a product that doesn’t fit into your niche! That is the best way to destroy your blog.
I give you some examples:
- Do you have a blog about golfing? Then don’t write something about online marketing.
- Do you have a blog about finances? Then don’t waste your time writing about dog training.
- Do you have a blog about electronics? Don’t write about a smoothie recipe book.
Why shouldn’t you do that?
1. The wrong target group
People who are visiting your blog have an interest in your niche. However, if you sell something from another niche you would have a very low sales rate.
2. You scare off your readers
You readers wouldn’t understand why you are writing about something completely different. Or they do understand (that you only want to earn money) and they never visit your blog again.
That’s why you should always market only products that could be interesting for your audience.
How to write an article that sells a digital product
Now you have found one or more products that fit your niche and now you want to sell them by writing a blog post.
So what do you need to do?
It is always a good idea to test the product. Only then you can really see for whom the product is for and what ad- and disadvantages the product has.
Only sell the products that you are using yourself and that you like. (Don’t recommend anything you wouldn’t buy yourself or recommend your best friends)
If you want to market a product you don’t know, buy it. You can see that as an investment because you’ll sell it in the future. Plus you’ll learn something from this product 🙂
If you don’t have the money to buy the product you can ask the vendor for a free copy of the product. Often they help you because they want you to advertise their product!
However, if course not everyone will help you if you don’t already have a successful blog or an email list.
After testing the product, you maybe already have results you can show and if you are convinced you can write an article about it.
It is important that you give value to your reader.
Don’t use the blog copies of the vendors! This can harm your rankings within Google and cost you a lot of traffic.
Write about a problem and how the product helped you to solve your problem, what experiences you have made with the problem and who you would recommend buying this product.
There is no product that is perfect for everyone. There are always target groups for products. So for example, Wealthy Affiliate is great for everyone who wants to build an online business based on affiliate marketing.
However, it is not great for people who want to sell their own products/services.
The more honest and authentic you write your article the more trust you build with your readers. That can help you with future recommendations.
2. Email Marketing
If you have an email list you can promote products to your affiliates. That’s free because you already generated the leads.
Here applies the same concept like with blog post.
Only recommend products you have tested and you would buy again.
You can either send the link to the product or you send a link to your blog post.
Small tip: It is a good idea to send out several emails to your list. In the first email you can send out your blog article and 2-3 days later you can send out an email with the affiliate link.
Is there another possibility if you don’t have a blog or an email list?
3. YouTube Video
To create a YouTube video you need some equipment. You need a microphone. That doesn’t have to be expensive. I have two different, one is a little more expensive and the other a little cheaper.
If you are planning on making several videos then I can recommend the more expensive one, you can really hear the difference. But both are very good for that cause.
If you are planning on recording your screen you don’t need a camera. Otherwise, you can take the camera of your phone, that should be enough for the beginning.
You can easily create a presentation with Google Drive.
Now you need a program to capture your video.
I’m now using Camtasia. This program is very good, however, it has also a very good price 😀 You can use it for free for 30 days and in this time you can make as many videos as possible 😉
Or you can use a free tool like Screencast-O-Matic. I did make my first videos with that, it is very simple to use. However, you can only take 15 minutes videos and the video is watermarked with their logo.
But it is for free 🙂
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is amazing.
You don’t have any work with the product itself.
However, you can only make money if you send the right people to the right product. And that takes time.
But I believe that is a very good investment 🙂
Now I want to hear from you:
How do you recommend digital products?
And if you don’t what do you think is your favorite way? 🙂
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
If you are new to online marketing or blogging you may have already heard of affiliate marketing. But what is affiliate marketing and how can you use it to monetize your website?
What is affiliate marketing?
In affiliate marketing, you earn money by promoting and selling products from merchants. Usually, you get a link from the merchant referring to the sales page or checkout page of a product. If a user clicks on your link and purchases the product you’ll receive a commission.
That means the more people are purchasing a product over your link the more money you can make. There are many different affiliate programs with different commissions and products.
Why is it so effective?
Let’s say you are searching for a new book to read and you ask your friend for a recommendation. Your friend recommends you a book and says that it was very exciting and well written. What’s the possibility that you’ll buy this book?
I’m sure the answer is: really high. That’s one of the reasons why affiliate marketing is so effective. Because when you already build a connection to your audience and gained trust it will be very likely that they will buy your recommendation.
And for the process of building a relationship/acquiring new customers, your merchant is giving you a commission. Because they don’t need to do anything for marketing they are willing to give a part of their profit.
The second reason why affiliate marketing is so effective is that you can start right away. As you don’t need to create a product you can start selling right away. If you don’t have a website yet (create one in 30 seconds) you can post a picture of yourself with the product on Facebook.
Add the affiliate link and you have your first affiliate business. Very easy and fast, right?
Of course, on this way, you can’t get rich but you can start earning some money. However, there are other ways to sell your affiliate product.
How can you sell an affiliate product?
There are different ways to sell your affiliate product. I’ll show you the in my eyes the two most effective ones.
Write blog review
An effective way to promote an affiliate product is to write a review about it in your blog. You should write an honest article about that product. Say why that product excited you and to whom you would recommend it.
When people read your review and they liked it the possibility of a sale is high. Important is that the product fits into the interest of your audience. If you have a blog about losing weight and you write a review about a book that helps people earning money online you’ll not make a lot of sales.
If you can solve a problem if your audience with your product the conversion can be very good.
Email marketing
If you have an email list you can promote affiliate products to your subscribers. Here is again the rule that the products should fit the interests of your audience.
You can either write the review within the email text or you can refer them to your blog article. Both ways are good and effective.
If you don’t have an email list you should either start building one or borrow an email list.
Of course, you shouldn’t spam your email list. Try to alternate content emails and promotional emails.
With these two methods, I’m sure you’ll sell your first product soon. But where can you find affiliate products for your audience?
Where can you find affiliate programs?
Almost every bigger merchant/online shop has an affiliate program. Just search Google for a product and add “+ affiliate program”.
It is incredible how much affiliate programs out there: Amazon, Apple, Nike, Adidas, NBA and much much more. Just search around a little bit and you’ll find an affiliate program soon.
There are also affiliate networks. They have many affiliate products in one program. That makes it easier to keep track of your referrals and sales. Here are some examples:
And as I said there are many affiliate programs for online shops.
How much commission can you get?
The commission depends on the affiliate program and type of product. Digital products have usually a higher commission than physical products because they don’t have production costs. Also, the storage and the shipping costs fall upon.
There are also products like Wealthy Affiliate or GetReponse where you can get a monthly commission.
If you look around a little bit you can see that Amazon is giving you very small commissions (between 1% and 10%). However, I still recommend you to join the Amazon affiliate program. Why?
At first, Amazon has almost every type of product. I believe they have products in every niche you can be. That means you’ll always find products for your audience in Amazon.
Secondly, Amazon is one of the most trusted online shops worldwide. I believe that everyone trusts Amazon. That means the conversion will be much higher than with an unknown online shop.
Lastly, Amazon is giving you the commission for the whole shopping cart and not only your product. Let’s say you recommended a book to your visitor. He’s now visiting Amazon and purchasing a new TV (why not) and not your book.
But you get the commission! And for an expensive TV, the commission can be really high. That means a single sale can get you hundreds of dollars of commission. Of course, it is not very likely that they’ll buy an expensive TV but they could also take a second book and your commission is doubled.
That is why I think you should use the Amazon affiliate program.
I hope you can see now why so many people do affiliate marketing and why it is so effective. You can start selling products within minutes.
However, sometimes it is not that easy as it sounds. The principle of affiliate marketing is very simple but to really make good money you need to invest a lot more time and effort.
You need to learn how to build an online business, how to market to people, how to get traffic and so on…
If you need help with that I have written a free ebook where you’ll learn all the basics to build a successful online business (sign in here).
Now I want to hear something from you. What has been your biggest problem with affiliate marketing? What experiences have you made?
Should you sell affiliate products or your own products?
If you want to earn money with your online business there are many different possibilities. I believe that one of the best ways to monetize your traffic is to sell products.
If you want to sell products you have two possibilities. You can either sell your own products or sell products of someone else (affiliate marketing). Both of these choices have different advantages and disadvantages.
Now I want to have a better look at both sides so you can choose the side what is best for you. I’ll start with the most common way the affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing
If you sell someone else’s products you call that affiliate marketing. The principle is very simple and effective. As an affiliate, you get an affiliate link referring to the merchant. This is usually an online shop (for example Amazon). When people use your link to buy something you get a commission.
When people use your link to buy something from that merchant you get a commission.
The commission depends on the product and the online shop. In the Amazon affiliate program, you get up to 10%. The commission for digital products is usually much higher as there are no production costs. These can be between 50% and 80%.
Advantages of affiliate marketing
The big advantage of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to take care of several things.
At first, you don’t have to create a product. Creating a product can take a lot of time and if you don’t have a lot of experience you never know if you can sell your product. That means creating a product can be very risky.
Also, you don’t have to create a sales funnel or a sales page. Creating a converting sales funnel or page can be very costly. And again, if you don’t have a lot of experience it will be very likely that no one will buy your product.
In addition to the product creation and the sales funnel you also don’t have to take care of shipping or the sales process.
And lastly, you don’t have to take care of the support. These are all processes that take a lot of time and effort. And also you need experience so you’ll have a converting product.
But with affiliate marketing, all you need to do is to send traffic and you can earn money. The better your traffic converts into paying customers the more money you’ll make.
That means you have to “warm up” your traffic. I give you an example. Someone is searching for a coffee machine with vintage design. So they search in Google for “coffee machine vintage design”. Now they (hopefully) visit your
Now they (hopefully) visit your website where you have written a review about a coffee machine in vintage design. If they like what they read they maybe will click on your button and buy the coffee machine at Amazon.
That is called “warming up” the traffic. The easiest way to warm up traffic is to solve the problems of your target group. If they have a problem and you explain to them that they can solve that problem with this or that product the conversion rate can be very high.
Another benefit of affiliate marketing is that it is easily scalable. As the merchant is responsible for shipping all the products you don’t have more effort to sell 10 coffee machines or 1,000.
As it is in life, there are always advantages and disadvantages. Therefore there are also disadvantages in affiliate marketing.
Disadvantages of affiliate marketing
The biggest disadvantage of affiliate marketing is that you only get a part of the profit. If you would sell the product on your own you would have a much higher profit.
I’ll explain that more in detail when I talk about the advantages of selling your own product.
However, there is one other disadvantage that many people don’t know. What I talk about is controllability. In control of your commissions and your paycheck is your merchant.
I’ll explain you more in detail what I mean. Let’s say you sell a product with a monthly commission. And after some weeks you made it to earn more than $1,000 with this product.
Suddenly they drop their commission payout from 50% to 25%. That means that your monthly earning shrinks from $1,000 to $500. Of course, not many companies will do that but it can always happen that the company goes to bankrupt.
That’s why I would always have several affiliate products and not focus on only one.
I think you can see now that affiliate marketing can be a huge opportunity if you don’t have a lot of knowledge or experience. It is absolutely possible to earn really good money with affiliate marketing.
Sell your own product
Besides affiliate marketing, you have always the possibility to sell your own product. Selling your own product can be a huge challenge but also offers you a lot of opportunities.
If you have a good idea and there is none or no good affiliate product you can sell you can fill that gap with your own product. A product can either be a physical product or a digital product.
Selling a physical product is a much higher effort as you have to produce, store and ship it. In addition, you need money beforehand to start producing. However, if you have a product that you can produce and sell then go ahead 🙂
But this blog is more about online marketing businesses so I want to talk more about digital products. Digital products can be an ebook, a video course or anything like that.
The advantage of a digital product is that it is easily scalable. It doesn’t make a difference if you want to sell 100 or 10,000 ebooks. Also, the money you have to invest is very low. I think you can start selling a product with less than $100.
Advantages of selling your own product
The biggest benefit of selling your own product is that you make 100% profit and not only 50%. That means you have more money with the same number of sales.
In addition, you have much higher controllability. You can raise the price at any time and earn more money with the same number of sales. That means you are much more independent from other companies and their decisions.
Disadvantages of selling your own product
The advantages of selling affiliate products are the disadvantages of selling your own product. If you want to sell your own product you need besides your product a converting sales funnel.
This can be a really high challenge if you don’t have a lot of experience. There is the possibility to outsource these activities but this can be very costly.
If you sell a product you have also take care of the product. There are always people who have further questions or problems. And as the product owner, you have to take care of it. This can cost you a lot of time.
A very fast way to sell a product
There is one possibility how you can get the advantages of selling your own product without most of the disadvantages. You can sell PLR products. I already wrote something about PLR products in my last article (read here). These are products you can buy and then sell as often as you want.
They can be used as a freebie or you can sell them. The benefit is that with PLR products you have already a product and usually a sales page and promotional tools like banners or email swipes.
With a sales system like Sellfy, you can start selling your own products in minutes!
If you are in the personal development, earning money online niche I have something very cool for you. With ViralPLR you get one PLR product per month for free you can either sell or use it as a freebie. With an already built in sales page, web hosting and much more. And the best part is that you can use it for free.
I believe that selling products is one of the fastest ways to earn money online. If you want to you can take a picture with your most favorite book and post it to Facebook. Now you only need to add your Amazon affiliate link and you could make some money really easy and fast.
If you are new to online marketing I would recommend you to start with affiliate products. You have a much lower risk selling products from other people and you can make really good money with it.
What experience have you made? Have you already sold your own product? Let me know by leaving a comment below 🙂