How Can I Start Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a type of marketing where you promote and sell other people's products for a commission

Some people do this as a sole business, just promoting a particular product while some others combine it with their own businesses by promoting other people's products that are related to their businesses

So are you wondering how you can start affiliate marketing?

In this post, I will help you to understand how you can get started with affiliate marketing either by combining it with your already established business or starting a new business as an affiliate marketer.

What we will look at;

What is affiliate marketing?

Who can get involved in affiliate marketing?

How to combine affiliate marketing with your already existing business

How to choose affiliate products

How do I get my affiliate commissions?

What is affiliate marketing?

I have already defined this at the beginning of this post but look at it again, affiliate marketing is a type of marketing business where you promote and sell products belonging to another person thereby getting paid a certain percentage as commission in return.

For example

You may promote a product worth 50k at a 50% commission

This means that you will get a payment of 25k each time you make a sale.

In affiliate marketing, the product does not belong to you, it belongs to someone else, your work is just to promote it and bring customers then get your commission and go your way.

Who can get involved in affiliate marketing?

Any body in any line of business can get involved in affiliate marketing

As a business owner, a housewife, a student, a graduate, a job hunter, a seller, a worker in any field, any body with the desire to start or grow a business can get involved in affiliate marketing

You just have to identify the opportunity and make up your mind to start.

How to combine affiliate marketing with your already existing business

If you have a business already, another source of income for your business could be affiliate marketing

May be you knew this or may be you did not know this but it's true

You can add affiliate marketing to your business either online or offline

If you are an hairdresser offline, you can promote hair products made by other people to your hair customers and as they buy the products, you get paid commissions

So in this case, you make money from your hand work and also by selling other people's products.

The same is applied to other businesses out there.

All you just have to do is get affiliated products that are related to your business. There are products that you get paid commission when you promote and sell them, you can get them and start promoting them to your already existing customers.

How to choose affiliate products

You may have difficulty in choosing products to start your affiliate marketing business.

The products here could be digital products like ebooks, online courses, video tutorials, etc or physical products

This is what you have to consider

If you already have a business, then choose products related to your business

If you don't have a business at all but you want to start affiliate marketing, you can do it online or offline but online is the best

Consider these simple steps to start affiliate marketing business online

Step 1: Sign up with an affiliate marketing platform like Digitstem, Expertnaire, etc

These are platforms where you can find lots of products under different categories to promote at very mouth watering commissions

The products available on these platforms are digital products like online courses, ebooks, etc

For physical products like hair products, clothes, etc you can carry out market research on social media like Facebook, or e-commerce websites like jumia or jiji then contact sellers and ask for their affiliate links so that you can promote their products

Step 2: choose a niche, a niche here is simply the line of business you want to focus on

Example fashion, beauty, fitness, etc

Step 3: choose a sub niche

A sub niche is a section under the line of business you are interested in

Example under fashion you can have ladies wears as a sub niche

Step 4: Choose products under that niche

Example: Gowns, ladies shoes, handbags, etc

Step 5: Start promoting the products

How do I promote affiliate products?

You have picked a product to promote so now what?

There are different ways with which you can promote your affiliate products

You can use social media like Facebook, Whatsapp, youtube, Instagram, etc

Blogs

Podcast etc

You have to set up your social media profiles and make noise about your business

Focus on helping people solve their problem related to the product you are promoting and they will be happy to patronize you.

Who doesn't want his or her problems solved? 

How do I get my affiliate commissions?

You may be wondering how you will get paid when you have made a sale.

This is done in different ways.

It depends on the affiliate company you are partnering with or the owner of the product you are promoting

Different affiliate companies have different ways of paying their affiliate partners, the common ones make use of bank transfer.

They transfer your commission to your local bank account when you have made a request for payment.

Some have a particular day for payments. Example: Expertnaire pays their affiliate partners on Fridays while Digitstem pay their affiliate partners on Saturdays

Conclusion

Starting affiliate marketing is simple and affordable but you may not know how to start unless you find someone to put you through

Affiliate marketing has made a lot of people millionaires, it's not a business you take for granted unless you don't know what you are doing

Choosing a niche is very important because you are starting a business so it's important you choose your line of business and be known for that

If this article helped you in starting affiliate marketing drop a comment and share to help someone else