If you are looking for a side hustle that can fetch you money asides from your daily job as a creator, then affiliate marketing is a good start. It has become one of the go-to options for making money from home especially since your earnings are commission-based.
However, making money as an affiliate requires careful planning and a thorough understanding of how it works. So in this post, we’ll show you how to become a successful affiliate marketer for brands and how to earn a lot from it.
Who is an Affiliate?
An affiliate is a person or company that promotes another company’s products or services in exchange for a commission on sales or leads that are generated through their promotional efforts. Affiliates can promote products through various channels, such as websites, social media, email marketing, and more.
Benefits of Being an Affiliate as a Creator
As a creator, being an affiliate is an extra source of income. In addition to earning money for your brand, you can earn from other brands by simply advertising for them.
This advertising doesn’t necessarily mean being a brand ambassador or creating endless videos for these brands. It could just mean referring your viewers to a link.
Once they make a purchase with that link, you get your commission. And all you need to do to get started is by signing up to popular affiliate sites like Amazon.
How Can You Earn via Affiliate Marketing?
If you choose more than one affiliate marketing program to promote, you’ll notice that there are different payment methods for each program. These payment methods will give you an insight into what your viewers need to do, for you to earn that commission.
There are five common ways to earn via affiliate marketing and they include:
- Pay per sale: this means you get paid per every sale you make. If you sell to ten people in a day, you’ll earn ten sales.
- Pay per install: This type of payment occurs when you are an affiliate for mobile apps and software services. So, you’ll for every install from your affiliate link, you get payments.
- Pay per action: PPA is common with different brands because it can be used for numerous things like newsletter signup, contact requests, form submission, etc. So depending on what the brand wants, you receive your commission when users carry out that action.
- Pay per lead: this is used as a payment method when people use your website link to sign up for the program you are serving under as an affiliate. It’s quite similar to pay-per-install but in this case, they simply sign up on a website. They also don’t need to carry out any further action.
- Pay per click: this is the easiest because you are not required to sell anything. The main goal here is brand awareness and for every click you get on your affiliate website link, you get paid.
How to Become a Successful Affiliate as a Creator
Are you ready to start your journey as an affiliate? Here’s a step-by-step guide guaranteed to help you make it a success.
1. Build your audience and niche
As a creator, if you want to become an affiliate for brands, you need to build your audience and niche. A niche is an area you want to specialize in as a creator.
The things you’ll promote in your niche are not meant for everyone and that’s why you need to build authority in your area of specialization so that people can have a better understanding of what you represent. So ask yourself, what type of creator do you want to be? Do you want to be a food blogger, fashion, health, tech reviewer, entertainer, comedian, dancer, or fitness trainer?
When you have a niche, you are bound to have people of similar interests as your audience. This is because your followers get a better understanding of where you belong compared to when you just post on random topics without specialization.
With a niche, you can know the type of brands you want to work with. For example, if you are a fashion blogger, your affiliate links will be mostly around fashion pieces like clothes, shoes and so on. People who love your style can shop your look using your affiliate link. It’s that easy.
Picking a niche can be tasking because you may have more than one area which you want to explore. To make sure you are picking the best for the channel, think about the topics you’re very interested in and those you have a lot of experience in.
2. Find brands with valuable products and get your affiliate link
There are tons of brands out there. So you want to prioritize those with good affiliate benefits and great products. This is because if you recommend substandard products, your viewers will stop trusting your recommendations and ultimately stop clicking on your links.
We recommend using Google to research brand affiliate programs so that you can understand each of them works. Once you have gotten the brand you think might be a great fit, follow their affiliate application process and establish a connection with them.
Sometimes, the company product you want to promote may not have a public affiliate program. That’s why you should reach out to them and make your intentions known. After interacting with them, they may be willing to develop an affiliate partnership with you because it’s a beneficial offer to them.
It is also important to thoroughly go through their terms and conditions before signing a deal. If you are not okay with their terms and conditions, you can always ask them to modify it or partner with another brand.
3. Strategically use your channels as a content creator
Your social media channels are assets you must utilize as an affiliate. For instance, if you are into product reviews, YouTube or Tiktok will be a great starting point. This is because they help create user trust when you review them. Before people will click on a link, you have to offer value and they need to see this value themselves.
You also have to embed your affiliate link to your social media bio and on every post that promotes the product. This way, the link is easy for them to find. For Youtube, you can add a link to the description and refer them to it. If you’re promoting your links via newsletters, we recommend attaching that link to it.
4. Review, optimize and expand
Becoming an Affiliate for brands is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes patience and consistency. Over time, you will gain clarity about what brings in more money through possible reviews you’ve gotten. You can then choose to double down on that product or expand to similar products.
Remember, don’t prioritize the income you want to receive over your integrity. This is because you need to consider your followers who are the target audience of what you want to promote. If what you are promoting is not based on truth but just to enrich your pocket, it may mar your brand.
Bottom line
As an affiliate, your followers might be encouraged to offer you cash tips too. So in addition to this, we recommend adding your tip links to your bio and video descriptions. Don’t have one yet? Get a custom tip link from Creathor and receive tips from your fans all over the world.
