Why Affiliate Marketing is a great place to start your online business

Posted By Patrick on Oct 22, 2019 | 8 comments

You want to make $1,000 per month online but the question is how? 

I say that affiliate marketing is the best place to start and here are the reasons why.

• You don’t need a lot of money to start
• You sell someone else’s product, meaning you don’t need to develop your own.
• You don’t have to understand what a sales funnel is
• You don’t have to write any sales copy for the offer
• You use other people’s systems and processes
• You don’t need JVs or product launches
• You can make money easily and quickly

What overwhelms most people is that to have an online business and one that works involves a lot of moving parts.

And there is a lot to know. I was going to write a long list here but I thought actually that is not helpful. Why? Because you probably know that.

The thing about affiliate marketing is that you can start earning pretty quickly, you have to just focus on getting traffic to the product or service you are promoting.

You want to prove to yourself that you can make some money. As I said in one of my earlier posts (Breakthrough our glass ceiling part 2). You have to provide evidence to yourself that you can do this. That proof drives your feelings which drives further action. So, this is why affiliate marketing can be a great place to start.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the system by which you (the affiliate) earns a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products or services. 

As an affiliate you promote that product and earn a piece of the profit from each sale you make. The sales you make are tracked via your own unique affiliate id so that you are paid correctly. The affiliate id links from one website to another.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work

So let’s quickly look at the main players in affiliate marketing

1. Owner of the product or service. This can be a company or any individual that has the rights to set the price and are able to provide the product and service. 
2. The affiliate. This is the person who promotes the product and looks to drive traffic to the product or service sales page so that it can be bought.
3. The buyer. These are people that are interested in the product or service and who may or may not purchase. Typically, the term traffic is used to denote the amount of people that you  can drive to the sales page. 

The Affiliate Process

Your job as an affiliate marketer is to learn how to get traffic to the offer page. But I would like to look at the two types of promotions affiliate marketers use.

1. Simple affiliate process
2. Advanced affiliate process

Simple Affiliate Promotion Process

In this process you simply send traffic to the sales or offer page. There are many different types of traffic but the point here is to get as many people to land on that page. 

Figure 1: Simple Affiliate Promotion Process

After they land on the page, the traffic is under the control of the owner of the product. They set up the sales funnels, decide what upsells to offer, what bonuses to give away. All you are looking for here is for someone to buy the product or service.

Once a sale is made, you are paid. Generally, you have to wait 30 days to ensure that the buyer does not request a refund as most refunds are 30 days.

The seller knows it is you because the buyer landed on their sales page through your affiliate id link.

This simple step is fine in the beginning but you want to move to the advanced affiliate process as soon as you can. The reason why you may want to do this is so that you can believe that it is possible to earn money using affiliate marketing, i.e. build your confidence and improve those feelings so that you can take action.

The Advanced Affiliate Promotion Process

This process involves a little bit of work from you the affiliate marketer but it allows you to build a list.  Your own list is the most important asset that you can build for online marketing (but more of that later).

Figure 2: The Advanced Affiliate Promotion Process

In this process you build a bridge page. On this bridge page you have a variety of options. For example, one option is to be very simple, i.e. you have a simple page that hasan headline, a subtitle and a call to action. On this page you will collect a name and email address and once they have clicked the button, you then pass them on to the sales page of the product or service. 

Another option for the bridge page, is that you can make an additional bonus offer letting people know that if they purchase the product you are going to forward them onto then they will get the additional bonuses on the page. 

The second option allows you to practice your marketing skills. Can you make a bonus offer so compelling that they are forced to buy from you rather than someone else. 

It allows you to distinguish yourself from the majority of affiliate marketers who will just use the simple process.

The List

In the advanced affiliate promotion process, those that click on the link to indicate they want to go to the sales page are saved in a list.

This list is made up of people that have shown an interest in the product you are promoting and have also taken an action in adding their name and email to your page and submitting it to you.

Now this list is the long-term marketing gold that you will cherish and keep. It is what you will build your success on so you need to take care of your list as if your life depended on it. Because your online marketing life will!

Summary

In conclusion, I believe affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn money online and to start your online marketing business. 

• Provides you with the skill sets necessary, i.e. learning how to drive traffic and making offers and getting sales whilst not having to deal with all the other areas. 
• Stops overwhelm as you only have a few things to work on and do.
• A gateway to the growth of your business. Once you have that working, you can then start moving into your own product creation, but affiliate marketing is the place to start.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Do you think there is a better way of starting online marketing? Share with your friends and ask them what they think. I would love to hear your comments, enter them below.

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You can always contact me on email patrick@patrickmattis.com

Towards your online success,

P.s. Why not get some help on your affiliate journey. Click here.