Making Additional Income with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing can be a bit of a mystery for many so today I’m going to help you understand what it is, how it works and how it can help you create more revenue streams in your business while doing what you do anyway. We’ll also look at how you can create your own affiliate programme. Cool right?

So what is affiliate marketing?

It’s a wonderfully simple process of recommending someone else’s product with a unique link that they provide to you. You can give the link to someone directly after a conversation or you can include the links in your marketing content and products.

The best thing about affiliate marketing is that all you need to do is recommend. They take care of the customer service so it’s a really neat stream of income and a lot less time intensive than creating your own products.

How does it work?

If someone buys through that link the sale will be credited to you. When you sign up for a new affiliate programme make sure you complete the account section and include your PayPal email so that they can pay you.

This is a really easy and lucrative way to increase your cash flow by recommending products that you support. I would never recommend a product that I haven’t used myself or am very familiar with the creator and trust their expertise.

Some affiliate programmes pay quicker than others but usually you receive payment sometime after 30 days when the money back guarantee date has passed which is fair enough.

How can you create more revenue streams with affiliate marketing?

As I said earlier you include the links in your marketing pieces. Make sure you do this at a relevant place in your information so that the person consuming your content can benefit from checking out the affiliate link and is more likely to buy.

Add a resources blog link to your site which is so easy to do with wordpress, or create a dedicated page on your website with your recommended resources.

Be on the look-out for new resources that can compliment your education so that you can invest in them (it’s a tax write off) and you can also recommend them and add in some lovely streams of income.

Some affiliate programmes pay a little per customer such as AWeber, the premiere email marketing service. This really adds up over time and is completely passive and residual income for you. (You don’t work for it other than the initial recommendation and people stick with this service for years)

Other affiliate programmes pay high commissions even up into the thousands just for referring them a new customer.

If you weave your recommended links into your marketing and business you will be able to add in over time additional revenue streams with very little effort because if you have an online business you need to be creating content anyway.

If you are creating a niche expert business then this is a very solid way of collaborating with other people in your niche. When other leaders create products that have synergy with your message and compliment what you do you can add them into your recommended tools.

Avoid products that are delivering very similar content to what you offer but choose the ones that are serving the same niche as you and bringing some value to your customers that you aren’t delivering.

If you’re new to the expert industry this is a fabulous way of generating some streams of income as you learn from the top experts. You can also build relationships and the foundation for future strategic alliances with them.

Affiliate marketing is also a generous way of marketing because the affiliate product owner is sharing the revenue.

Why would they do this?

Because they only make money when someone buys and that money comes only as a result of the referral. It’s a real win-win and some affiliate programmes pay up to 70% for each sale.

How to create your own affiliate programme

I’ve had affiliate programmes in the past but to be honest they were not that user friendly. If you’re at the stage where you’re ready to create a product or already have one then creating your own affiliate programme is highly recommended.

After much research I finally found a user friendly resource to create my new membership site and affiliate programme. I’ll be doing a review about it but in the meantime if you’re at that stage check this out as it’s the best I’ve found: Digital Access Pass or: DAP Software

If you’ve found this article useful and would like to set up your own online platform to promote your services, products and affiliate recommendations check out my new Niche Expert Bootcamp which shows you exactly how to do it.

When you sign up you’ll automatically receive a unique affiliate link so that you can begin recommending and be able to fund your own marketing education as you provide value to others looking for solutions. That’s how affiliate marketing works.