Can you make a living from affiliate marketing? The answer is an emphatic yes – you can! Many people are already making affiliate marketing their main income source and using the internet to escape their regular jobs. But affiliate marketing isn’t easy. It can be difficult to get traction as an affiliate, especially early on. See how difficult is affiliate marketing.
There’s a few affiliate strategies which work better than others too. So it’s well worth investing in your education so you know the best ways to go about it. In this article, I’ll share some of the best strategies which have worked for me, over my years as an affiliate.
Can you make a living from affiliate marketing? Yes you can. But in order to do so, you need to navigate affiliate marketing in the right way. Otherwise you can spend a lot of time and get nowhere!
Can You Make A Living From Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular business strategies on the internet today. It’s a simple strategy where anyone can refer customers to affiliate products through their own unique affiliate link. When a customer purchases something through your link, you earn commissions based on sales you have referred.
There’s many ways to refer customers through your own affiliate link. You can start a blogging website (like this one), build an email list of subscribers, or even use paid advertising to generate traffic to your website (or to build your email list). You can even send people directly to affiliate products from your marketing too. Depending on the products you promote, your budget, and particular circumstances, you may choose one or all of those tactics.
Your strategy, choice of products and determination, all play a factor in determining how well you do as an affiliate marketer.
Can You Make A Living From Affiliate Marketing?
For a long time I struggled as an affiliate marketer. I don’t believe my journey is unique either! Affiliate marketing is hard, especially in the beginning. When you start out, you don’t know what you’re doing. Your belief is low, you’re sceptical, and you can easily spend a lot of time on the wrong activities.
You might have high expectations of what you can earn with little work too; which goes against you. And many affiliates will quit in their first year without having made any sales at all! But don’t let that put you off! The fact that many affiliates quit leaves less competition for those who persevere. Plus, I’m going to share some important strategies which can make a massive difference to your affiliate journey.
You really can earn a good living from affiliate marketing; if you stick at it, refuse to quit, and take the right action steps!
Using The Right Products – Recurring Commissions & High Ticket Items
When I began doing affiliate marketing, I joined Amazon’s and eBay’s partner networks. At the time, they were all I knew. But both these platforms pay very low levels of commission to their affiliates. Amazon pays between 3% and 11% commissions to affiliates who refer customers to their products. eBay is similar, although they pay a percentage of the fees they receive from auctions and sales. Both eBay and Amazon has recently cut affiliate rates and you’re better off not using them if you want to earn a living as an affiliate.
See https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-rates-for-affiliate-program.html
and https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2020/05/31/ebay-changes-affiliate-rates-a-second-time-this-month/
As eBay and Amazon have become more popular, they’re less in need of referral traffic, and are cutting their commission rates. So affiliates who spent years promoting items from these sites are losing out.
Instead, you should concentrate your affiliate efforts on programs which do reward affiliates appropriately. Items such as these are far better to promote for affiliates:
- Digital products – pay larger commissions (40% and above)
- Software products used by online businesses pay a recurring income to affiliates
- Membership products which pay affiliates recurring commissions.
- High ticket digital products – pay larger commissions on larger value items.
- Multi-tier commissions – let you earn money through sales made by your referrals.
- Product ranges – instead of promoting a single product (which only pays you once), you can promote a product range to earn more commissions from later purchases by existing customers
- Use a product range with a built in sales team – closing sales on your behalf.
Ideally, use a product range which offers all of the above such as the SFM Digital Business System.
Advantages Of High Value, Recurring & Digital Products
High ticket, recurring commission (digital) affiliate products have a few advantages which low value physical products cannot give you. Even high value physical products will only pay out lower rates of commission. Given manufacturing costs, postage and handling, physical products simply can’t compete with digital products in terms of rewards for affiliate marketers. See also highest paying affiliate programs list.
With digital products you can not only earn recurring commissions, which physical sales can’t give, but you can also earn 40% and above commissions. Some digital products even pay 100% commissions on sales you refer. (See All In Package commission rates below).
With high ticket commissions, there’s another advantage besides the obvious monetary one. With a high ticket sales funnel it’s far easier to use paid marketing methods in your advertising and still make a profit. For low value physical affiliate products, it can be very difficult, or impossible to run paid marketing campaigns and still make a profit.
But with a high ticket sales funnel, it’s much easier to come out with a profit and still use paid marketing. Paid marketing is far quicker, and more scalable, than other affiliate marketing methods you need to use with low value products.
Affiliate Marketing Strategies
Anyone can start doing affiliate marketing from anywhere with very little investment. All you really need to get started is a laptop and internet connection. There’s many cheap methods of marketing products such as content marketing: blogging, video marketing and by using the various social media platforms.
But if you want to make affiliate marketing your income, there’s many roadblocks too. Getting traffic is a major one which can be more quickly overcome with paid marketing. But having low value products can limit your ability to use paid marketing. So, it’s worth at least using recurring income products whatever you do.
You should also get your own website and build an email list too. An email list, a website and recurring income products should be the very least you do if you want to take affiliate marketing seriously.
You can access everything you need including training, products and support through the SFM digital product suite. Click on the image below to learn more and access a free video series, or join Mentors All In to get started.
