Is there anything as easy and sweet as making cool, passive income from affiliate marketing? For 9-to-5 earners, a side income is an excellent idea. Not only does affiliate commissions boost your earnings, but it also requires less effort, and its startup cost is next to nothing!

For a rapid-growing industry that is worth well over $16 billion in 2021, affiliate marketing is easy to start up. All you need to get started as a newbie is the right resource, a solid online presence, and a positive attitude about making money.

What is affiliate marketing and how does it work?

This is what affiliate marketers do. They join reputable affiliate programs online, source great affiliate products with profitable commissions, and promote those products to their audience. When the product generates sales through your affiliate link, you earn a commission and you smile at the bank.

However, you need a strong online presence to get started.

Create a blog website

First, create a niche blog website and optimize it with the right SEO keywords for Google search ranking. WordPress is an excellent, cost-effective platform offering countless themes and functionalities. If you’re not tech-savvy, you can hire a WordPress expert to get your blog running fast and drive organic traffic.

While you can promote many different products, ensure to also organize your blog into categories so your target audience can easily find what they need. However, you can add a sign-up form to your blog to build an email list and have your prospects subscribe to your newsletters.

Select a niche and post informative contents

Pick a niche or audience category and stick to posting high-quality content that resonates with them. This content marketing strategy will be the backbone of your affiliate promotional efforts.

You can write compelling blog posts, product reviews, or create infographics and video content that are educational. But avoid creating sales content because this comes off as aggressive marketing, and it makes prospects uncomfortable. Focus on building confidence and authority by posting information that is only useful, valuable, and educational.

Use social media marketing to get organic targeted traffic

After creating your blog and optimizing it for SEO, the next best thing is to get organic traffic from social media. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram are good places to get tons of traffic to your website.

While at first, you can focus on using social media as a free way to get organic targeted traffic, you can also explore paid ads to reach more target audiences, and redirect this traffic to your site or your partner’s offers.

Find a reputable affiliate network

The list of popular and trusted affiliate marketing networks you can explore includes Clickbank, System.io, CJ Affiliate, Amazon Associates Program, Shareasale, eBay Partner Network, and many more.

Each time a buyer journey through the sales funnel and checks out, the merchant checks the sales record for a cookie that identifies your referral link or an affiliate ID. And at the end of each payment period, the merchant shares reports of your referrals and pays your affiliate commission accordingly.

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