If the past two years taught us something, it is that you can never rely on just one source of income. Most online businesses grew their revenue during 2020 and 2021, but others had to close permanently. It's all industry dependent. And, in a global economic crisis, survive those with multiple streams of income, preferably not linked to one another.
Following that train of thoughts, affiliate marketing is a really smart idea to strengthen your online business and generate passive income. How much you would make depends on your flair, effort, and the solutions you use.
What is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of a revenue sharing model or commission-based sales. In plain words, you get paid when someone buys a product or a service from a third party thanks to your marketing.
For example, you are a beauty blogger, and you wrote an article about top 10 foundations to use on dark complexion. Some of the brands you featured in your blog will have affiliate programmes you can join. Usually those are published on their website. You can contact them and request to become an affiliate representative of the brand.
The link you include in your blog or on your website is called affiliate link. Every time someone buys a product through that link you receive your commission for the sale. So, practically, this is how you make money while you sleep.
Affiliate Marketing Solutions
Going to different companies to request affiliate links is so 2014. In 2021, there are tons of solutions and softwares to help with affiliate marketing for different online platforms.
Being a fan of Wix as a user-friendly and modern-looking website builder, I was very excited to find an affiliation for Wix software, which makes life so much easier. In fact, there are two different softwares or plugins you can install on your Wix shop, blog or website and generate links to earn commission. These are iDevAffiliate and OSI Affiliate and you can check the main differences between them here.
Not a Wix user? No problem! You will find a number of affiliate solutions, compatible with almost any existing online platform on smartideas.cloud. With those you can easily manage your affiliate programmes and the earnings generated from each.
How to Make Affiliate Marketing Work
Obviously, just placing a link on your website and integrating a software solution will not be enough to generate good passive income. To get to the point where you actually make money while you sleep, you would have had to put some effort into optimising your website, building traffic and a strong community interested in your content first.
There are many ways you can help your blog or website appear higher in the results of search engines. It includes both technical and content improvements and tweaks. Two of the most important things to consider when building your traffic is the keywords and phrases, as well as the speed of your website.
The higher your position for certain search phrases and words, the more chances you have people to discover your content. Once they've clicked on your link, it is important to retain and engage them. This is where the loading speed of your website, the design and the quality of content play the biggest role.
Engaged users are those who are most likely to click on one of your affiliate links and complete a purchase.
In addition, don't underestimate the power of social media. This is usually where you can build your very own community and loyal network. Bloggers love Pinterest because it is an avalanche-style traffic machine. Facebook and Instagram are also great places to build a large and engaged following, constantly looking forward to your updated content.
If your network finds you inspiring and values your opinion, you can easily influence them into buying the products and services you recommend.
Social media, of course, is not the only route to building a close-knit engaged community. In fact, there is a much more secure way. A network that you truly own and is not dependable on a third party – email marketing. Work on expanding your email list and start sending regular newsletters to your fans, customers, or readers. I'll tell you more about how you can easily send mass emails to your audience in one of the next blog posts. So, use the subscribe button below and be the first to get any new update.
The Takeaway
Affiliate marketing is an incredibly smart idea to take up in 2021, especially if you already have been involved in some form of online business. The steps you need to take to make it work:
Build a user-friendly and optimised website or a blog
Work on expanding and strengthening your community and network
Find the right affiliate marketing software and integrate it with your online platform
Make sure your website or blog is maintained and updated regularly with valuable content and keep building traffic, using social media and email marketing.
Include affiliate links in your most popular articles and enjoy your passive income.
Disclaimer: This blog post does NOT include any affiliate links.
