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How Affiliate Marketing Works - Way to Earn Money from Your Computer

This article describes about how affiliate marketing works. It is one if many ways to earn money from your computer. This article was made as concise as possible, yet hopefully can give clear explanation about how to earn money from your computer with affiliate marketing. I hope this article can give a brief understanding how affiliate marketing works.

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Every marketing concept has its own unique properties. However, they all retain the same basic work, which is to bring products to customer's mind, make sales, and gain some profit from the sales.

In affiliate marketing, the referring products to the consumers is made through websites. The websites are called affiliate sites.

In the process, an affiliate marketer (called the affiliate) first looks for a niche (specific market) to exploit. Then he creates a website for a niche, and fills the sites with helpful useful contents. Internet users who look for solutions (products) would find the answers in the affiliate site.

If the offered products that match their need, they would make purchase on the affiliate site by clicking on an ad or link. This transaction is tracked by the marketplace owner (for example: to sell stuff from Amazon, the transaction is tracked by Amazon). If this transaction results in a sale for the parent company, the affiliate get paid for that sale.

The parent company (advertiser) that supplies the products provides the affiliate with required advertising tools. The tools could be banner ads, links, and tracking codes for the affiliate marketer.

The following describes how affiliate marketing works.

Affiliate Marketing Basics

The basic concept of an affiliate site is to provide solutions for internet users. So a starter affiliate marketer must do the following:

First finding a idea for the website niche. The idea of what you can help people with. This specific group of people that look for solution is what makes a niche.
Then a website must be created. The website content must be helpful for the visitors and can easily be found by search engines during a visitor's search.
After the site gains trust from the visitors, the visitors might make purchases of the stuff discussed in the site.
The sales will provide commission for the affiliate.
After significant revenue is gained regularly, the affiliate business will grow further.

Is Affiliate Marketing Really a Good Way to Earn Income?

First let's talk market size. The world population, according to worldometers as of December 23, 2023 was 8.08 billion. Each and every soul on earth has needs, from the moment he was born. Even writing and reading this article requires resources (such as the computer equipment) that are sourced from a market. The market is the place where we get most (if not all) our stuff.

With presence of the internet, ever worsening street traffic, and less available time to do in-store shopping, the online market share is growing significantly. The online market is a huge market. According to statisca.com, in year 2017, an estimated 1.66 billion people purchased goods online, with global e-retail sales of 2.3 trillion US Dollars. The biggest web-only retailing corporation was Amazon.com, from which there are a tremendous amount products to write reviews on.

How Do You Make People Attracted to and Make Purchase from YOUR SITE?

An affiliate site must help people first. Photo by lalesh aldarwish from Pexels

An affiliate site works by providing solutions, advice, or help for the visitors. The point is helping the visitors first. Giving solutions or advices to the problem they have. If they find your site and they find that the site content fits their needs, it is highly likely they will make purchase from the site.

A good site shall provide a truly useful benefit for the visitors. We must always remember that the site visitors come to the internet to look for a solution. It's what the visitor should leave with after visiting your site.

Your site must be the one that they remember when they seek solutions on the subject your site covers. Always keep in mind that it is the site that must be marketed into customer's mind first, only then the products. The site does not only refer products, it also compete with other similar sites.

Those are the basics on affiliate marketing. In summary:

Affiliate marketing is marketing of products through websites.
The market is of significant size and everyone has the opportunity to own his market.
An affiliate site works by providing solutions for the visitors.
To be able to sell products, the built site must be loved and trusted by the visitors.

Now that we've known how affiliate marketing works, let's see the market.

The market is where offers meet demands. It is where expectations are fulfilled. The market is vast place. There are really a lot of niches that a marketer can exploit to build his own market share. There are many other aspects or properties that can make an affiliate site unique that will attract visitors with specific interests.

How diverse is the market? Is there really a market of your own?

Let's see how diverse a niche can be. We will see that there is truly one, if not many, of yours.

We'll take the above picture (different shoes) as an example. Say you want to build an affiliate site with footwear as the planned niche.

Even everyone's need for shoes differ. Photo by Ingo Joseph from Pexels

Thus the main idea: footwear.

You can choose a more specific and targeted niche on footwear by selecting a property connected to footwear. Here are some examples on how to differentiate your niche.

1. By product types

There are shoes, sandals, flip flops, heels, boots, and many others. And each of these can be categorized further into more specific niches. Let's take shoes for example.

2. By product use

There are shoes for formal occasions, outdoor activity, sports (and many variants of it), party, casual activity. You may love running and have a good knowledge and experience with running shoes. That could be your niche.

3. By product user

Who would wear the shoes? This can also differ very much. Were them male runners? Female? Children? Professional athletes? People with specific requirements due to foot physical issue?

We can turn these list around and start from the bottom. The resulting niche could be similar. But because our viewpoint now starts from the product user factor, the site viewpoint will be different and unique, which will result in unique reviews /articles.

4. By review style

This is one of the factors affected by you, the site author. You can make reviews according to your own style. Say you're a casual runner, running in the morning several times a week. You'll know what aspects are important for the activity.

What aspects will be stressed on your reviews or articles? They could be price, durability, weight, comfort, even product guarantee can be the main review point. Unique of your site.

Many other aspects that can also secure a place for your site in the market. Language (not all world residents can read English), language style (formal /casual) can also be a differentiating factor.

5. By market coverage

Aside from language barrier, many products could not just be marketed cross-countries. Among the obstacles are country regulations, shipping cost, ethnic /race uniqueness, local ethical norms (social barrier). Thus a site could be limited to cover only specific markets.

Thus you can now see that you can build and have your own place in the affiliate market, and grow your own audience.

If you want to start immediately, click "Try It Now!" button below. It will give you a quick start and more thorough information necessary.

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I Want to Try It Now!

What if an affiliate-marketer-to-be does not know how to build a website? Don't worry. Building a website is not as difficult as it was anymore. Here's what it takes to build an affiliate business.

What stuff are necessary to start an affiliate business?

The unique marketing properties of Affiliate Marketing dictates the following requirements:

1. The idea itself

The meaning of an idea here is what subject the site will help people with. Therewith, you should target a specific group of people will be served. Which of their needs /expectation will be covered. That's what a niche is about. It is a market with specific targeted customers.

The niche will be the main subject of the site. It should be tightly connected to targeted visitor's mind. In other words, this the subject of questions a visitor seek help for. The subject /niche of the site MUST MATCH to the targeted visitor's question subjects. Hence, the site contents must be the answers to the visitor's questions.

The niche should focused enough, yet still have enough target market size to be commercially viable.

There is a good article from Wealthy Affiliate discussing a niche on golf ball. It shows that the "golf ball" niche is not too broad to be made a niche.

For a more detailed information on how to find a niche that suits you, read this Article (How to Quickly Find A Niche Market).

2. Website domain name and hosting

You'll need an identity for your site. The domain name is the identity of the site. It is the address of the site (the one ending with .com, .net, or others) visitors must type to visit your site.

Hosting is the space used by the site files. For sites to be online, the files are stored at computers that are online all the time. Hosting providers are the ones that provide such service. Among the popular ones are GoDaddy or HostGator that can help with this matter. Registration and and subscription are usually required.

Before signing for a service, it is advised to compare overall cost and benefit of each provider.

3. Content management system (CMS)

An affiliate site needs to be managed appropriately. As an affiliate site relies on quality content, chosen site management should make it easy to create, put and arrange new contents on the site. It is called a content management system (CMS). There are few platforms available for this.
One of the most popular content management systems (CMS) is WordPress . It is very popular particularly due to ease of use, which is a favorite for blog and affiliate sites. It is available as a platform that can be selected when building a website. This site you are viewing is using WordPress.

4. Basic knowledge on business, marketing, and affiliate marketing

For a good result, basic knowledge is required before taking any action. For Affiliate Marketing, basic knowledge on business, marketing, and affiliate marketing make the necessity.

There are many sources of good marketing knowledge site. One of them is Sharp Edge Marketing, which has some downloadable resources.

Affiliate Marketing Debunked has some descriptive explanations on the basics of business and marketing which are useful for an affiliate marketer.

As for books, the Principles of Marketing can make a good start reading. This is the standard marketing books for Marketing course in colleges.

5. Additional tools /software

Some additional support tools which will boost functionality /the look of a website. And these tools /software make it easier to manage the affiliate site. Here are some basic samples.

a. Front end plugin for WordPress

Using WordPress to create site content is quite easy. But creating a plain format article is one thing. To create an stunning, action inspiring page needs more than the standard WordPress editor. These are called front end editors.

A front end editor allows site authors to design web pages directly on screen as it would show on a computer screen. No difficult coding is required. It will help to easily create enticing landing pages, animations, call-to-action components, and usually it comes with many customizable templates. Overall, a front end editor helps to create web pages with much improved function, look, and conversion rate.

Among the most popular ones is the Elementor (free for basic version). Another good one I can recommend is Thrive Content Builder from Thrive Themes. It is very configurable and features hundreds of ready-to-use beautiful templates. While it may take some time to learn using it, Thrive Themes provides training videos that makes learning easy.

b. Image editing tool

Images attract attention quicker than text. If this page were all texts, would you make it to this point? But for an image to work appropriately in websites, it must be edited to match the content purpose.

Speaking of image editor, of course Adobe Photoshop is king. But for simple editing, there are free good alternatives. Among them is the very popular GIMP, which has a lot of features and works with almost any file format. It has an open source program. The interface looks like Photoshop. Tons of plug ins are available for GIMP, and it even takes Photoshop plugins.

If GIMP feels too complicated, there's Paint.NET, which is simpler and easier, but still useful for a blogger /affiliate marketer. This is recommended because we must keep in mind that we must focus on overall site function, not to immerse ourselves with tool complexity.

Techradar has made reviews on the best 8 free photo editor of 2024, which article is very helpful to decide which fits an affiliate marketer's need.

c. Video editing tool

Video creation is an art and knowledge that can be learned. We cannot just use a movie coming out of the camera. It must be edited to suit its purpose. Thus a video editor is required.

Free video editors, such as Lightworks is a good way to start with. It's quite powerful, even initially what a starter marketer needs is the basic features such as trimming, sizing, combining, adding captions, or some effects. For starters, this video editor could be the right choice.

A paid one, such as Filmora from Wondershare is a full packed editor, with lots of features. This is one of the easiest to use. I've tried to use this for one of my sites, and it suits my needs very well.

6. Writing skill and consistency

Affiliate site is about helping people. And it is done through articles. Writing skill is the key here. We might have a lot of ideas to help people with. But turning ideas into written articles may not be as easy as it sounds.

We should just admit it. Most of us are not familiar with writing quality content. Writing a good content will be hard initially . But it can be learned, and will improve over time.

Neil Patel has an article on How to write a 2000 word article in 2 hours. it is a very useful article a blogger should read.

For another quick spin, Thrive Themes has a short course on how to create a powerful article for websites, which would not end up not being found and read by anyone. This is a very useful article complete with step-by-step instructions which will make writing easier.

For more serious writing course, the Writers Bureau offers courses on Writing Articles. This is a paid course, but it's worth the price.

7. Affiliate marketing community (highly recommended)

Taking a new journey on an unknown rocky, muddy, dark road is scary. Soon the feeling of being lost, confused, disoriented will emerge. What we need at such situation is good help from experts who know the way.

It's just the same with starting an affiliate business. We need trusted friends and support to light the way toward the end. Good support will provide a starter affiliate with know-how, solutions, ideas, and confidence to build and grow his business.

More over, being with more successful, harder working people will bring out the better in in you. So you'll need those people around, usually in an internet forum.

There are forums such as Warrior Forum that discusses everything about affiliate marketing.

Some affiliate marketing courses may also come with the community forum where the users can help each other. A good example of such community is Wealthy Affiliate (try-out is free, requires email). It is worth a try.

Conclusion

The first thing required in starting an affiliate business is the idea. Of your own. You are the center point for the idea. You must decide which niche you consider will bring out the best of you.
Then to have a website running, site domain and hosting are needed, usually requires annual subscription. Among the features to look for aside from price are support, site speed, up time performance, and easy account management. Remember that an affiliate will concentrate on how the site serves its function, not how the site can run.
Creating and designing new articles should not be a tedious process. Thus a website platform should be selected with easy content management system. The system must allow easy arrangement of articles and also produces a functional website that matches the site purpose.
No matter how fun affiliate marketing looks, some knowledge is required. Sufficient basics are required for a business to stand. The basics on business and marketing are needed to understand how affiliate marketing works. Other supporting knowledge, such as computer, internet, and software skills are needed to improve and expedite the building process.
Extra tools and software will greatly ease content creation, improve site function and affiliate performance. Among the required are image editing, video editing, and front end editors.
Everyone must have an idea to write. To turn it into a quality article, it requires knowledge, skill, persistent practice. There is no way to a better writing except to start writing. Like Mathematics, writing is not a spectator's sport. We must jump in.
Support and help from experts will improve our knowledge, skill, outlook. Surrounded by skillful people can only improve ourselves. Thus a community with the same spirit is highly recommended.

More detailed on corresponding subjects will be covered in respective articles.

If you have any comment /suggestion, leave a comment or email me at hendra@worldbestaffiliate.com. Thank you.