WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

People have been exciting passive income in recent years. The idea that you can earn extra money without sacrificing too much time and effort to hold a part-time job on top of your day job is a dream come true. You can use the extra money to save up for that new phone or be smart about your money and put it in your retirement funds.

No matter what your reason is, you have the option to choose from different methods to generate a passive income. For example, you can put all your savings in a high-interest savings account. Or, you can invest your money in stocks. But if you don’t have any capital to start with, maybe you should do other side gigs such as affiliate marketing.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

If you have a blog, website, or even just a public social media, you can use links that work as a referral to a company. You aim to encourage people to buy the products through your links. You’ll earn money based on how the affiliate program works.

The wonderful thing about affiliate marketing is that you only need to do work initially, and you can wait for the money to come in. Of course, you might want to maximize your income by posting more or promoting your products further.

Program Compatibility

What is your target customer’s profile?
Arguably the most crucial step in any business is creating your target customer profile. You must understand who you’re selling to strategize correctly. Knowing your audience and who you want to sell to can help you choose the right programs to join. You can also optimize your marketing campaigns if you know your target customer’s likes and dislikes.

What products or vendors fit your niche?
You can join hundreds of affiliate programs, but you should stick to those guaranteed your audience will like. You want to give them high-quality recommendations and build their trust in what you say.

Who you are as an affiliate will matter to what you’re selling. You should present yourself as an expert in the industry. This means you need to find your niche and stick with it.

Vendor and Affiliate Program

Does the affiliate program have a good market reputation?
Affiliate marketing can become a lucrative business. But if you’re not careful enough, you might lose your audience’s trust and loyalty if you promote a product from a shady vendor. A good market reputation is a must, and you should stay away from affiliate programs with any issue.

You can Google the company with the keyword “issue” or “scandal” to see if anything in their history might cause people to avoid using the product.

Aside from staying away from companies with past issues, it would be best to differentiate those with a good market reputation. Cruelty-Free and Fair-Trade brands are the best ones to collaborate with since people prefer ethical products.

Are valuable tools and resources included in the program?
This is a quality-of-life upgrade that is not necessary for earning but can help you in multiple ways. First, you should efficiently track sales that can help you check your performance and adjust your marketing efforts. It should also be easier to communicate with the vendors when you have particular questions about the products.

Does the affiliate program have a good cookie life?
It’s known that people don’t buy on their first visit. Instead, they might only want to check out the product and ensure that it’s what they want and are currently browsing different options. Either way, the affiliate program you’re going to join should have a good cookie life.

Usually, cookie life is set between 1 to 30 days, depending on the affiliate program. If anyone who clicked the link didn’t buy until past the cookie life, you wouldn’t earn money. A cookie life of more than 30 days is favorable, but you need to see if the company has a good reputation.

Do they host frequent sales?

Since you need to make a sell within the set cookie life, promoting any product that is on sale can prevent your audience from buying at a later date. Since there is a sense of urgency, they’re more incentivized to buy now. They might even possibly only require one visit before doing so.

While this is unnecessary, it is good to check how many sales and discounts the vendor has hosted in the past year.

Market Research

Is the affiliate program in a highly saturated niche?
Joining an affiliate program with a saturated niche is a double-edged sword. Yes, people will likely trust your brand, but chances are they’ve already bought the products from someone else’s affiliate links.

Does this mean you should avoid affiliate programs with too much competition? Not necessarily. But you can still join and earn, but you have to understand that you won’t generate the same amount of income compared to joining one where it’s less crowded.

It’s advisable to use these popular affiliate programs to buffer your other ones with a higher potential to generate more income.

Does the affiliate program have a reasonable conversion rate?
You have to familiarize yourself with conversion rates by now. In affiliate marketing, it’s the number of people who bought through your link over the number of people who saw the link and did nothing. A 2-5% conversion rate is ideal, but it depends on the industry. The higher it is, the better.

If the conversion rate is too low, it simply means the product is not selling. And if the product is not selling, it means you won’t be getting enough money for your efforts.

How well do the products sell compared to its competitors?
It’s also worthwhile to check the competitors of the affiliate program you’re trying to join. They might be offering a program that fits you more, or they might have a higher conversion rate. Since you can enter as many affiliate programs as possible, joining the competitor’s affiliate program can also provide variety for your audience.

Takeaway

Contrary to popular belief, you still have to work and strategize when doing an affiliate program. But as time passes by, your workload will slowly decrease as your customer trusts you more.

Stay tuned!

Hey, what are you up, guys? ODI Productions here. If you’re new to this channel, let me just give you guys a quick background about me.

My name is Odi Go by ODi Productions on YouTube. I have about 33,000 subscribers right now. And a little over ten million views. So I am a full-time entrepreneur and affiliate marketer.
And two years ago, I actually dropped out of the most applied-to-school on the planet and my dream school, UCLA, with a 3.5 GPA my senior year to pursue entrepreneurship and online business.

Thankfully I found affiliate marketing which has given me the lifestyle of my dreams today just two years later. I live in my dream apartment here in downtown Chicago. You guys want to peep the view. Peep the view for a second right here. Do a little pan, nice and easy. And every single day, I get to drive my dream car, which is a custom Porsche 911 Turbo.

I’m gonna put some clips or something right here. But anyway, let’s get on with the video. I want to teach you guys what affiliate marketing is. So I’m going to show you guys the basics. Just explain how it works, and I’m going to hop into my computer, actually. And show you guys some real examples and show you step by step how people are using affiliate marketing these days to make money online. And trust me when I say this.

Everyone does affiliate marketing. All the famous YouTubers, all the tech reviewers, people on Instagram, all those fitness people. Big companies like Uber, Lyft.

Blogs like Smart Passive Income. And even small food blogs, “small” food blogs do affiliate marketing.
So, let’s just hop into the computer so I can give you guys an actual click-by-click, step-by-step on how affiliate marketing works and what it is.

Alright, let’s get into it.

Alright, so we have transported inside of my computer using a little technology called Magic. And now I’m going to show you guys step-by-step some real-world examples:

how affiliate marketing works

But just to get things started, a basic description at its core of affiliate is that it is just referrals, okay. So affiliate marketing it’s kind of a fancy term for just referrals. It’s basically referring people to products and services of companies that are not your own and then receiving a commission if those people sign up or take action upon your referral, usually through a link.

So just to give you guys a quick, quick example.

So this is my video. It’s a review of a very popular headphone called the Audio-Technica ATH-M50x, which I actually have right here. It looks a little different from the video because I put some skins on them. But basically, you guys can see 300,000 views.

And if you scroll down to the description, the first thing you see here is an Amazon link. And you guys, as long as you weren’t born yesterday, if you watch any sort of tech review on YouTube, you’re gonna see Amazon links or some sort of funny-looking links in the description, And nine times out of ten, those are affiliate links. And what is an affiliate link? Basically, Amazon Associates, if I just go right here, it is Amazon’s affiliate program.

Let’s just log out of that real quick.

Amazon Associates is Amazon’s affiliate program.

And as you guys can see, earn up to 10% advertising fees with a trusted e-commerce leader, so if you join Amazon Associates, which you guys can do today. It’s completely free, but you might need to have a website in order to get approved. Some people are able to without it.

But I would have a website just in case. Alright, guys, so if you log in and then you just look up products for Amazon Associates that you can promote. As you can see here, we have the M50x.

And all you have to do is click here and then get a link which basically is the personalized tracking link that you can include in your videos, on your website, on your landing page. And then, this link is personalized to your account. Now what that means is it has a tracking code through cookies. Where if somebody clicks that link, it’s gonna be tracked back to you.

And for Amazon Associates, at least, if somebody buys anything from Amazon, not just the product, which is the headphones. If they buy anything within 24 hours, you receive a percentage of the commission.
Now, the commission ranges. It definitely ranges based on the product category. It can range from 4 up to 10%.

So if I just look up Amazon Associates rates, we can actually see each specific product category and how much they pay.
So let’s just look down. If we scroll down here, you guys can see a fixed rate for each product you sell. So if you sell something from, let’s say, in the PC category. So this could be computers, laptops, DVDs, Blu-ray, et cetera.

You get 2.5% of that sale. So if you sell a laptop for $1,000, you will receive 25 bucks basically. So basically 2.5% right there. So that’s how it works at its core. Amazon Associates is the largest .in terms of affiliate programs because it just has the widest range of products.

But there are many sorts of affiliate networks that have more exclusive offers with the companies and with the products that May yield you a higher percentage of commission. So this is just a quick example right here of how people do it on YouTube. I’m gonna move on to the next example, which is blogs. And my favorite affiliate marketing blog. It is intelligent passive income.com.

It’s created by a guy named Pat Flynn, who is awesome. He has an awesome podcast that you guys should check out. But basically, Pat’s been crushing it with affiliate marketing for as long as I’ve been in the game, basically. And if you look at this, this is his income report. And as you can see, two mills during the last 12 months.

It’s insane. These numbers are crazy. Six figures a month. Six figures a month when a lot of people are trying to strive for six figures a year, this guy’s making six figures every single month. And it’s just insane. But basically, if you scroll down. If I just choose the latest income report. So we’ll do August 2017. I just scroll down, and I’ll show you guys that he actually is transparent enough to share his affiliate marketing earnings broken down by the company.

So as you guys can just scroll down here, you see Amazon. He made about 600 bucks, not too bad. But if you scroll down to some of these other companies like Bluehost, you see $19,470 from a single source of affiliate marketing.

So from posting links, guys. Again, it’s that simple. It’s that easy. It’s completely passive income. Which is one of the reasons why I believe it is the best online business that anyone can take up today. So just to give you guys a little more detail into how this works. Bluehost right here they are a web hosting company, and it’s obvious they have an affiliate program because he’s earning close to 20 grand from it. Now, if we go to Bluehost’s website, you guys can see right here bluehost.com.

It’s web hosting. Anyone who wants to create a website can sign up for Bluehost right here with WordPress or whatever.

But if you scroll down to the very bottom. And now, this works for most companies that have affiliate programs. You will see affiliates at the bottom footer.

Now, if you click that, it will take you right into their affiliate program.
And you guys can actually see over five million paid in commissions last year alone.

So as you guys can see, this isn’t some sort of scam or anything. Definitely do not confuse affiliate marketing with network marketing, which is multi-level marketing, which is pyramid schemes.

Affiliate marketing is not a pyramid scheme at all. It is legit sales and commissions. So basically, you’re a salesman for real companies. You’re not selling energy drinks and driving around base three series. This is a real business right here.

This right here, I mean, look at this right now. Bluehost is a legit company. They also have affiliate programs for companies like HostGator, GoDaddy. You’ve heard of these companies. You’ve seen them on TV. You’ve seen them in ads. These are real companies that we were talking about. So anyway, getting back into Bluehost’s affiliate program.

Suppose you scroll down, as you guys can see, free to join as with most affiliate programs. You guys can see how it works.

Basically, you have custom banners and links just like Amazon Associates for every visitor who clicks your link and signs up within, I believe, a 30 day period. Now Amazon’s is only 24 hours.

But for most affiliate programs, it’s usually. Around a 30 day, it was a tracking cookie. It’s between 14 days to 30 days. Sixty days, sometimes 90 days. But 30 is the industry average for tracking links. And Bluehost will give you $65 a pop for everyone who signs up through your Bluehost link. Completely free to join, just like Amazon Associates.

Again, this is affiliate marketing. It’s very simple. It’s very basic. I figured I’d just peel back the kimono and show you guys how people are really making money online behind the scenes. Now I’ll give you one more example.

This is Instagram. One of my favorite YouTubers slash people that I follow on Instagram is Maxx Chewning—been following him since the first few days back when he started doing the Full-Day of Eating videos. Those were my favorite.

Basically, here is an ad. This is for MVMT watches. And this is a little different because the thing is with affiliate marketing is you usually have links, right. But another way that you can do this, now some people call this sponsorship, it’s all the same thing to me.

It was providing coupon codes. So as you guys can see, Maxx has its own coupon codes. It’s personalized, says, “MAXX15”. You get $15 off your order at MVMT.

And basically, what is happening here is if you use Maxx’s link, yes, you get $15 off, but he also gets attribution for your sale, and therefore he gets a kickback or commission. Now I don’t know how much he makes off the sale.

I’m not an MVMT affiliate. I cannot speak on that. But it’s probably somewhere around 10, 15 bucks per sale, which is a very nice extra source of income considering how passive it is. He just has to post one photo like this. Or make one video, and he can continue to earn money off every single sale from that video. And as you guys can see, the power of the internet, the power of scale. This has over 10,000 likes.

And you can bet that of those 10,000 likes, the chances of a few people buying a watch using his code are pretty high. Let’s be honest. It’s just math at the end of the day. Marketing is a numbers game. And if you’re getting 10,000 likes, you’re getting 10,000 views, and you’re getting 10,000 clicks.

Chances are someone’s buying something, and you’re gonna be making a commission. So basically, those are all my big examples. It’s very simple. I hope I can show you guys behind the scenes of

How affiliate marketing actually works in the real world. And how people are using it to generate large sources of side income that is different. And it’s more effective than just doing Google AdSense.

What is just Showing Ads? Just for an example, YouTube only pays two bucks for every thousand views in my experience. Now, this changes depending on your niche or your industry. But just to put things in perspective. If Maxx sells one of these and he makes $15,12:46, just think about the number of views he would have to get to make that same amount of money from one sale of selling one watch.

So really less is more. You don’t have to sell as much. You don’t have to get as many views. But if you get sales, you get more commission than getting thousands upon thousands of views.

But obviously, if you have both, then it’s a win-win for everybody. Multiple streams of income always the way to go. Alright, guys, so that wraps up this video. I hope you guys found value in this free lesson. And if you guys like the video, please thumbs up the video and leave a comment below letting me know because I really appreciate it.

And it will allow me to continue to make more videos and free lessons just like this. If you have any questions about affiliate marketing, feel free to leave a comment below or contact me via Instagram by ming me at odi_productions.

So leave a comment, Instagram; either way, I’ll get back to your question as soon as possible. Now for anyone who is serious about affiliate marketing and you want to use it as a vehicle to wealth and living a life of passive income and basically, hopefully, one day achieving your dream life as it gave me.

Guys, definitely check out my brand new course called Affiliate Marketing CHAMP at affiliatemarketingchamp.com. Where I just released my brand new course, that’s five hours of HD video if you guys enjoyed my teaching style. Suppose you guys enjoyed learning from me. And if you want me to be your mentor and your guide for affiliate marketing, then definitely check out this course.

I share a bunch of really awesome lessons, such as the best examples of successful affiliate marketing in the real world. So it’s an extension of this video. I’m showing pretty much every single example.

Out there of how affiliate marketing works. And I am also giving you guys a step-by-step plan on how to start a successful affiliate marketing business.

So basically, I give each step on how I’ve created my affiliate marketing businesses, and you guys can replicate that same process. And by doing each one of these steps, increases your chances of success by that much more. Also, I share the most profitable niches in affiliate marketing, which is a complete game-changer.

Cause this could be the difference between making a thousand a month and 10,000 a month. And trust me, I learned that from experience. Aside from that, I teach you guys how to rank on the first page of YouTube and Google while still being a small channel.

I’ve been able to surpass YouTubers who have millions of subscribers. Millions more than I do, and I’ve been able to surpass them on the Google rankings on the first page.

And also, I’m going to show you guys how to use paid traffic and show you guys a secret paid traffic source that will turbocharge your results for not much investment, along with creating a Facebook ad for affiliate marketing and even creating an affiliate marketing website from scratch.

Lastly, I share my top five mistakes of affiliate marketing that I wish I knew when I got started. That would have saved me months, if not years, of frustration and failure.

But that’s basically the core of the lessons, guys. I’m going to be adding more modules, more lessons in the future. And I’m going to keep expanding this course to be the most comprehensive and the best possible course in affiliate marketing to get you guys started today.

So if you guys are interested in that, I actually have a $100 off discount that is going to be for a limited time if you guys use the link in the description.

So the code is gonna be already applied. As you guys can see here, there is no discount or anything like that. But if you guys apply the code, then you guys will see a $100 off discount.

And there are limited spots available. So if you guys are really interested in this, I suggest you get on it ASAP. But if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Instagram DM me, whichever way you can reach me. And I’ll be happy to answer those questions. So anyway, on to the next video. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

Alright, Peace.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”– Mahatma Gandhi

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”– Friedrich Nietzsche

“We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.”– Virginia Satir

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