Anyone can promote products online and earn commissions. It’s a business model known as affiliate marketing.
With affiliate marketing, you don’t need your own products and you don’t even have to speak to any customers or personally deliver products. Instead, you “partner” with a program and link to their products. When you make a sale through your affiliate link, you’ll earn a commission based on your referral.
Certain affiliate programs pay 1-11% commissions and some even pay up to 40%-100% commissions on certain products. So which ones are the best programs for affiliates and how do affiliates get people to purchase products through their links?
Promote Products Online And Earn Commissions – Best Programs
The “best” product for you will depend on how you want to go about promoting your affiliate product/s and your own particular style of working. Some affiliates want to build a huge business online and be free of their job – escape the 9 to 5. Others just want a side income which will help them out with their monthly payments. So depending on your own personal circumstances, you could go in a few different directions.
There’s a few ways to do affiliate marketing. Ultimately you need to put yourself between the customer and the product in some way. Many affiliates start out creating content (like this article). If someone purchases something from my website, I earn a commission based on the sale. Some affiliates build review websites and link through to them in their content.
You can also use paid marketing to send people directly into a sales funnel and sell products and services through email marketing. This is the fastest way to build a profitable online business, but also more expensive.
Promote Products Online And Earn Commissions – Types Of Products
Amazon is often where many affiliate marketers start out. Amazon is a trusted brand and most people are comfortable buying from the site. So affiliates can join their program and link to certain items on Amazon’s website. This is a good idea if you already have a functioning website based around an interest or passion. You can simply link to relevant products which your visitors might be interested in and monetise your site.
However, it’s worth noting that Amazon only pays its affiliates between 1 and 11% commissions on its products. So it’s hard to build up a large income from a small amount of traffic (website visitors). Plus, it’s difficult to use paid marketing using low value products like you would find on Amazon. Take a look at Amazon’s payment structure in the image below.
Promote Products Online And Earn Commissions – Digital Products
Digital products tend to pay larger commissions to their affiliates (40%-100%). However, digital products can be more difficult to sell. Everyone knows and trusts Amazon and it’s clear what the products are and their value.
But certain online products are sold by unknowns, and this can make them harder to sell. Some people are still sceptical of buying products from certain websites. Sites which have been around for a while now like eBay and Amazon tend to have built up more trust.
Plus it’s difficult to know the value of some digital products unless you have a direct experience of them. It’s a little like buying clothing online without knowing the size!
Despite some obstacles to selling digital products I would definitely recommend going down this road if you want to stop trading your time for money and create a full time income online. Physical products are much more difficult to earn from because of the lower rates of commission. This also means it’s difficult to grow and scale your business if you’re solely relying on organic traffic.
Choosing Products With Multiple Earning Strategies
Many affiliates struggle when starting out because they don’t get the help they need. They also make many mistakes as I did, when they don’t know a good direction, or find an affiliate marketing mentor. Choosing products which continue to pay you over and over is much more rewarding than only using “one-off” payment products like you might find on Amazon and in most other affiliate programs.
Residual Income
Amazon will reward you once for a referral. Amazon wins a customer and you get paid. But you need to keep finding new customers in order to keep making commissions. With recurring commission affiliate programs it’s different because you continue to earn revenue from customers you have referred previously. Products which include memberships and software are typical examples of those kinds of products which reward you continuously for a referral.
High Ticket
High ticket programs offer large value products and often larger commissions than the average online products would. A sale of a $2500 product could earn you $1000 in one sale. Compare this to a low value sale of a physical product which only pays you 5-10%. A book on Amazon for example would only pay you 5% of $20, or $1. See highest paying affiliate programs list.
Multi-Tier Commissions
Multi-tier commissions come from sales made by your referrals. So if your affiliate program offers multi-tier commissions you can build a team and benefit from sales they make. Not many programs offer multi-tier commissions but it’s another thing to consider if you’re going to learn affiliate marketing.
“Up-Sells”
You know the annoying “up-sells” you’ve probably seen them. They are starting to offer you chocolate bars in service stations here in the UK now! That’s because they know in every 100 customers some will say yes and over all the service stations run by a particular company their profits will increase.
On the internet up-sells can be completely automated so it makes sense to use them. If you join a program which offers up-sells, you can benefit from sales made by a sales team and automation. You only refer the first sale, but benefit from later purchases made by your referrals.
Using A Product Range
A product range is basically a number of up-sells or products which the customer can choose from. Each up-sell is more expensive than the last product. It’s a little like a company like Apple. If Apple had an affiliate program, (they don’t), it would be a great program because they have many products. With a product range you can refer a customer once and benefit from later purchases they might make from a range of products.
Lifetime Value Products
If you’re going to promote products online and earn commissions from them, it’s worth choosing products which have a lifetime value to the customer and which reward you for that! With membership products and software products you can earn ongoing commissions as an affiliate marketer.
But if people drop out because the product is no longer any use, you’ll cease to earn commissions from that sale. So really it’s worth choosing your products very carefully. Choose products which reward you for referrals and on an ongoing basis. But also choose products which are necessary and vital for people and massively improve their lives.
Lifetime value products can include thinks such as:
- Software products which are needed for online businesses to run
- Training and coaching products which help people create more freedom in their lives and escape their jobs
- Any products which helps people solve their biggest problems – the bigger the problem, the more likely people are to stay with a product or service
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