Should i do affiliate marketing

The main question you need to ask yourself at the beginning of your journey to become an affiliate marketer is this: what product do you want to sell? There are so many niches — or categories — of products you may choose to focus on in your affiliate marketing activities. Affiliate marketers usually choose the niche based on a few different factors:. Most affiliate marketers operate a website or multiple websites. There are plenty of other digital marketing channels and platforms where you can promote your affiliate activity.

However, if you are just starting out, you might want to invest the time in creating a website. It can serve as a central platform to work on your performance marketing skills while slowly building an income stream. Money, money, money — for affiliate marketers, earning income is the most important goal. Whether you can make money, and how much you can potentially rake in, will depend on a bunch of different factors.

Any way you look at it, the industry is growing and thriving, which means there is ample opportunity to make money as an affiliate marketer. There are many affiliate marketing myths around this topic, truth is the amount of affiliate income earned varies greatly.

There are plenty of successful affiliate marketers out there, and not all publicly share how much they are making. Plus, one of the most popular influencers in the affiliate scene, Pat Flynn, has published income reports in the past, which give a fascinating glimpse into the financials of a thriving affiliate business. There is no hard and fast rule. How quickly affiliate marketers manage to make money, or even grow their business to something resembling a more full-time career, is highly individual.

Or read this fascinating post in which dozens of affiliate marketers talk about how long it took to make their first sale. Actually doing this successfully and making money from it is part science, part art, and lots of determination and persistence. Most affiliates will use websites to drive traffic, clicks, conversions and income. Here are some tips and guidance about how to create an affiliate marketing website. There is no need for a fancy, expensive website to get started with affiliate marketing.

As long as it looks attractive and professional, is easy to navigate and has interesting content and compelling sales copy, that is more than enough to encourage conversions.

Check out some tips about how to create a professional-looking website here. As an affiliate marketer, your main money-making weapon is content. There are many different types of content that you can use in affiliate marketing. One of the most popular is blogs.

Setting up a blog is fairly simple, and if you are familiar with the product or niche, you can naturally share your insights and enthusiasm — and that makes for compelling content. You can also create videos, reviews, ebooks, landing pages and more. Check out these affiliate content marketing ideas.

There are loads of content writing services available that provide quality content at reasonable prices. Although affiliate marketers mostly use their own websites or landing pages and sometimes more than one , you can start affiliate marketing without a website. Here are three alternative ways to do affiliate marketing without a website:. As an affiliate marketer, you need to identify a type of product or service to promote. There are several niches that are most popular among affiliate marketers, such as money ie.

You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Oct 13, , am EDT. Aug 24, , am EDT. Aug 19, , am EDT. Aug 12, , pm EDT. Aug 3, , am EDT. Jul 27, , am EDT. Jul 22, , am EDT. Jul 6, , am EDT. This is changing. With affiliate platforms providing new attribution models and reporting features, you are able to see a full-funnel, cross-channel view of how individual marketing tactics are working together.

For example, you might see that a paid social campaign generated the first click, Affiliate X got click 2, and Affiliate Y got the last click. In the past, large affiliates were the mainstay, as catch-all coupons and media sites gave traffic to hundreds or thousands of advertisers.

This is not so much the case anymore. With consumers using long-tail keywords and searching for very specific products and services, influencers can leverage their hyper-focused niche for affiliate marketing success. Influencers may not send advertisers huge amounts of traffic, but the audience they do send is credible, targeted, and has higher conversion rates.

This is forcing some affiliates to obtain user data through opt-in consent updated privacy policies and cookie notices , even if they are not located in the European Union. This new regulation should also remind you to follow FTC guidelines and clearly disclose that you receive affiliate commissions from your recommendations.

Merchants receiving a large percentage of their revenue from the affiliate channel can become reliant on their affiliate partners. This can lead to affiliate marketers leveraging their important status to receive higher commissions and better deals with their advertisers. Also make sure you never tell anyone to directly buy a product, you are simply recommending the product. The more helpful you are and the more you make quality recommendations, the more likely your web visitors will come back for your expertise.

It is important to work with many different merchants in your niche and promote a wide range of products. This affiliate marketing strategy will diversify the number of commissions you make and create a steady stream of revenue when building an affiliate website. Which sounds easier? This can include landing page optimization, testing your calls-to-action, and having a conversion rate optimization strategy in place.

This will allow you to customize your messaging so that you can provide the best affiliate product recommendations. Traffic sources may include organic, paid, social media, referral, display, email, or direct traffic. You can view traffic source data in Google Analytics to view things such as time on page, bounce rate, geo location, age, gender, time of day, devices mobile vs. This analytics data is crucial to making informed decisions, increasing your conversion rates, and making more affiliate sales.

Plus, the more referrals you drive through the program, the higher your commission tier will go. BigCommerce uses an industry-leading day cookie, so you will receive credit for up to three months for the referrals you generate.

Also, there are no obligations or minimum commitments to join the program. Our affiliate dashboard offers a comprehensive look at your clicks, trials, sales, and commissions. You can view your earnings, track performance, and get paid at the same time every month. You will have direct access to an affiliate expert who understands your business and your goals.

BigCommerce will work with your team and our conversion rate experts to maximize your commissions and earnings per click. We provide 1-on-1 support through phone and email, quarterly affiliate contests, and our latest product updates. In your dashboard, you will have easy access to our pre-made text links, banners and content. Promote BigCommerce anywhere on your site by simply inserting our affiliate links on your pages. If your audience is looking to launch an online business , migrate their ecommerce platform , or simply interested in ecommerce content, we encourage you to apply for the BigCommerce affiliate program.

Our team will carefully review your application. Once approved, you will receive access to support, tracking, reporting, payments, and have your own unique affiliate link to track every referral you generate. BigCommerce is committed to the success of our affiliate partners.

Table of Contents. Does Affiliate Marketing Work? Pros of Affiliate Marketing. Cons of Affiliate Marketing. Successful Affiliate Marketing. Learn about our editorial policies. Article Sources. Your Privacy Rights. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data.

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