Not all affiliate programs are passive income affiliate programs. Some programs only pay you once for a sale. Recurring commission affiliate programs are an example of how to earn passive income as an affiliate. These tend to be membership products and software products, and they can be harder to sell than physical products which people immediately understand.
With a physical product from Amazon, for example, you know what you’re getting. Memberships can take a little more persuasion, especially if someone doesn’t understand the product.
Digital products too, are much better for affiliates, especially if they offer some form of passive income. Amazon pays it’s affiliates between 3% and 11% for sales. Compare this to digital products and you see why many affiliates go down this route; 40% – 50% commission is typical for digital products, some even pay more.
Passive Income Affiliate Programs
To earn passive income from affiliate programs you’ll need to have sold products already. Then, you can keep earning if you’ve chosen the right products to sell. There’s other ways to earn passively through affiliate marketing too, besides using recurring commission products.
You can also benefit from passive income if you use a product range. With a product range, you refer a customer once. If they choose to purchase another product from that range, even years later, you still earn the commission.
The best way to earn passive income with affiliate marketing is to use multiple strategies which give you an “autopilot income”:
- Recurring commission programs – business tools for online marketers, for example
- A range of products – see SFM Digital Business System
- Multi-tier commissions – multi tier commissions offer the opportunity for affiliate marketers to refer members into a program. They they earn commissions on sales their members make. See best two tier affiliate programs.
- A built in sales team – having a sales team built into the business you’re promoting as an affiliate means you benefit from sales closed by your team. You still get credit if your referred the customer originally.
Building A Passive Income Online
Of course you still need to sell an affiliate product to benefit from the recurring commissions you can generate from membership and software products. Once you get good at selling other people’s products online, you’ll be able to automate this process too. So in a way, just learning how to sell products online is a form of passive income.
Automation is built into online businesses to allow owners to work on them in their own time. Initially it takes quite a lot of effort to get an affiliate business off the ground. There’s a period of testing and measuring of advertising or learning how to generate content and get it seen. But after a while you’ll see what’s working and concentrate on the right actions which generate sales.
Paid marketing is an example of using automation to build an online business. Although paid marketing isn’t exactly passive, it’s not far off once you’ve got a profitable sales funnel and are running paid adverts generating sales. You can simply leave your adverts running on complete autopilot once you know a campaign is proven to be profitable.
Some Passive Income Programs
Ideally find a program which offers a lifetime value to the customer. Products like business tools which are needed for online businesses are really good because they are essential for the operation of a business. Once someone is profitable online, they’re definitely not going to cancel their membership if they need the software/tools.
Here’s a few examples of passive income programs which offer at least a recurring commission from referrals:
- The Six Figure Mentors – Digital Online Business Mentorship Program.
- Aweber – For email marketing
- Leadpages- For custom landing pages
- Get Response – Email marketing
- Elegant Themes – WordPress website themes
- Social Pilot – Social Media Tool
- SEM Rush – SEO tool
- Snip.ly – Conversion/opt-in tool
- HostGator – Hosting provider
- Shopify – Online Store Builder
Get Started
Depending on the affiliate program you join, you may be able to use paid marketing in order to drive traffic into your sales funnel. This is the fastest way to build an online business. Passive income affiliate programs are great if you can make your marketing work and sell them. Over time, as your sales grow, so does your income. Even a small monthly commission of $20 can give you a good passive income once you’ve got several of them coming in every month.
Access a training and education platform and learn how to sell recurring income products online using a pre built digital business system and online mentoring program. Click here for the free video series.