Affiliate marketing programs are the quiet driver of a lot of e-commerce. While advertisers can get attention for big banner ads on major websites or fill your inbox with email marketing campaigns, business owners of digital products know that affiliate programs are a major key for attracting new customers.
That’s great for you, because these affiliate programs are a fantastic way to make money online, and can make you money passively, especially if you have a strong web presence.
In this article, we’ll look at affiliate marketing, how much you can expect to make, how to set yourself up to make great passive income, warn you on things to watch out for, and discuss a list of the affiliate programs that pay the highest commissions.
Affiliate marketing relies on a network of people to refer potential customers to a product or service, and then rewards those affiliates with a commission based on every sale made.
It’s like a grassroots movement of marketers. Companies create an affiliate network of marketers who promote their products via landing pages on their website, links on their website, social media, or word of mouth. For those with an online business, it’s a really effective way of broadening reach. A healthy affiliate network will increase the impact radius of their marketing efforts.
Affiliate programs are popular with people who already have a strong online presence because it allows them to showcase products they like on their website or social media platform, then hang out and wait. No direct sales are needed…if people see the affiliate products on your site and like them, then buy them, you get a cut. It’s that simple.
There are plenty of ways to start making money using affiliate programs. One is to research programs (more on that below), sign up, generate referral codes, and then start sharing them on social media. The other is to set up a place on your website for affiliate links and start making money that way.
WordPress is a web hosting company that makes it easy to install plugins that will allow you to insert either recommended affiliate links or custom ones that you feel passionate about. If you’re already using WordPress hosting services (known as WP Engine) or their cloud hosting services, it’s easy to find plugins that will allow you to insert affiliate links seamlessly into your website and start earning.
WordPress’ internally made affiliate plugin is available here, but you can also insert customized, outside-made plugins such as AffiliateWP, Affiliates, and Ultimate Affiliate Pro.
If your website is not hosted on WordPress, there are ways to insert affiliate program plugins via CSS or HTML coding for custom sites, or by researching your site builder and affiliate support for that. (For example, Wix now has a way to feature affiliate products on their sites.)
Affiliate marketers can get paid in a few ways. Most companies prefer a CPS model, or cost per sale, which pays marketers every time a sale is made when someone follows a referral link.
Others will do a PPC model, or a pay per click model, where affiliate marketers will be paid every time a customer clicks on a link, regardless of whether or not a sale is made. Some are a hybrid of the two. (Obviously enough, a PPC model pays quite a bit less per click than a CPS model would pay per sale.)
The choice is yours, and depends on how confident you are that your conversion rate from clicks to sales will be high.
It would be easy to just tell you to go and sign up for the highest paying affiliate programs, but the best affiliate programs are not necessarily the ones with the biggest commission rate, but rather the ones that are trustworthy, accurate, and, if you’re lucky, deliver a monthly payment easily.
A good affiliate commission rate should be in 20 percent to 40 percent range for potential sales. Any promises higher than that should give you pause, and thinking of the old adage: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You want high-quality affiliate programs, not ones that promise higher commissions that don’t sound right to you. There are other creative ways to pay affiliate marketers, either by a flat $100 or $200 commission for converted leads to new customers, bonuses for consistent referrals, advertising fees, and more. As always, do your research.
Cookies are an online marking system which tells a website when a certain user has visited their page. In the world of affiliate marketing, cookie length refers to the amount of time that someone can visit their website via an affiliate link, buy something, and ensure that the affiliate will get the commission.
So say someone visits a website for the first time via an affiliate link you share on your site. They like the products, but don’t buy it right away. If an affiliate network has a 30-day cookie length guarantee, if the user goes back to the site and buys something within 30 days of the click from your website, you will get the commission. Different programs have different cookie lengths, but generally, the longer the better.
Below is a list of affiliate programs that are trustworthy and offer high commissions. Some of the highest paying affiliate programs are web hosting affiliate programs, though many work with brands that run the range from banking to CFD affiliate programs to apparel and more.
For people with a strong web presence or social media following, affiliate programs are one of the most effective ways to bring in extra income. If you do your research and find a company you want to partner with that works with brands you believe in, you can find an affiliate program that allows you to make money online in a non-intrusive way for your audience. Even better, you can connect them with the products that they want anyway.
This list will hopefully get you started on your journey to smart affiliate marketing.
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