Can you imagine a life where you don’t need to manufacture or buy any products, and yet enjoy profits from their sales? Can you imagine a life where you can work anytime or anywhere you want, and no official authority would ever question you? Can you imagine a life where you can have multiple businesses, earning passive income without making any investment?

The answers to the above questions would obviously be a resounding “NO,” if you haven’t heard of affiliate marketing. You’ll find this buzzword everywhere on the internet but no one explains this lucrative business clearly. In this article, you will learn the main structure on which affiliate marketing works; and also you will learn how associating with Amazon can make things easier and profitable for you.

 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a form of online internet business where publishers (that would be me and hopefully you also) promote the sales of advertisers’ products and earn commission from sales.

Let’s learn the structure of the affiliate marketing business to better understand the earning capabilities in affiliate marketing.

To simplify: the structure of the affiliate marketing business comprises of advertisers (businesses that own and/or manufacture the product), publishers (the affiliate marketer) and internet shoppers.

The advertiser, who wants to see his business expanding, needs publishers to promote the product. The publisher is the affiliate marketer who owns websites, blogs, social media accounts, internet marketing tools, etc, that help in the promotion of the product.

The shopper is a “hungry customer” who lands on the publisher’s blog or website to get information about the product. If the shopper actually buys the product, the affiliate marketer is paid a commission on the sale.

 

How to Start Affiliate Marketing

To start an affiliate marketing business, you’ll primarily need: use of a computer, an internet connection and, if all goes well, a bank account.

Once you have these, you will then need a publishing blog or website which you can get free right here.

Next item on the agenda should be your choice of “niche”. A niche is essentially a specific segment of the market.

 

Affiliate Marketing Niches

The consumer awareness in the digital age of information gave birth to the fashion of selecting a niche before starting an affiliate marketing business. For example, in the earlier days, we had industries like health, books, electronics, etc. Those topics are so broadly marketed that we affiliate marketers have no chance of “ranking” high enough in Google for that term and really you need to get your website to the first one or two pages of search results.

Let me give you an example:-

I just did a Google search for the term “how to sleep better”.

Search shows 260,000,000 results – yes 260 million.

I then “niched down” to search for “how to sleep better with stress” – now shows 64,400,000 results – not a lot better.

Next searched for “how to sleep better with sleep apnea” – now at 730,000 results.

Next, search term “cervical pillow for sleep apnea” – now down to 20,800 results. You get the idea. (By the way, the term “cervical pillow” was a type of pillow that showed up when I searched for “how to sleep better with sleep apnea”).

Believe it or not, that is probably a pretty good niche to go after.  Let me explain the number of search results. In this case it means that some 20,800 websites have something relevant to our search term – it doesn’t mean that it is a prominent item on the website or that they are promoting such an item. According to the keyword tool I use, you would probably only have about 30 competitors for that actual search term. Don’t forget, you are selling to the whole world, not just your local area.

To help you further choose a niche for your affiliate marketing business, consider the following examples and see how they have been “niched down”:

• Health—increasing testosterone, joint pain, diabetic recipes;
• Wealth—investing in gold, learning Forex trading, online casinos;
• Romance—senior dating, marriage on a budget, East Indian matrimony.

Have a go yourself at this.

Other things such as gathering search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to promote the product will be required, but they will follow later.

Finally, choose the relevant products that you wish to promote and sign up with advertisers. LEARN ABOUT THE MAJOR PROGRAMS AVAILABLE TO YOU AND FIND OUT HOW TO GET STARTED WITH THEM RIGHT HERE.  

The above can be a lot of work but one of the best things about affiliate marketing is that once you have done the above, and your site gets up and running, the rest is generally maintenance and publishing small articles regularly.

 

 

Final Thoughts

To recap, in this article you learnt about (a) the structure of affiliate marketing, (b) how to start affiliate marketing, (c) selecting a niche before establishing an online business and, if you followed the link, sign up with a marketing program.

Hopefully the subject of affiliate marketing is clearer to you so go ahead, pick a niche, select the products, build a site, increase traffic and conversions, and enjoy your journey.

Take action right now and start your own affiliate marketing online business without forking out your hard earned money.