I’m sure by now you’ve read many articles about how you can make money online, but you’ve probably been scratching your head wondering whether it’s true or not, and if it is true, just how do people do it? How do people make money online?
Well if I had to list every single method that people use to make money online, this post would never end.
So I want to teach you about one exciting and powerful way to make passive income online, and one method that I’ve been using along with thousands of other bloggers and marketers out there, and that’s doing affiliate marketing.
Affiliate what?
Doing affiliate marketing… It is one of the most profitable ways to make money online with near close to zero overheads, close.., and if you put enough research and work into it, you can make a huge amount of money from affiliate marketing quite literally on auto-pilot; in this post I’ll show you how to create a passive income through affiliate marketing the right way.
How to Do Affiliate Marketing and Create A Passive Income Online
The first thing you need is a website or even better a WordPress blog; you can get started with a WordPress blog here. Once upon a time you didn’t really need to have either to do affiliate marketing, you could use article directory sites, but since article directories have become saturated with useless trashy content, and fewer people visit pages of article sites, it’s much more effective to have your own blog.
The other vital ingredients required for succeeding with affiliate marketing are:
- Search engine traffic
- A loyal audience (email list)
So let’s assume you have a blog all ready to roll. One of the things I should mention at this stage is that content is SO IMPORTANT. If your blog has not much content you can’t expect to be successful with affiliate marketing. Unique and original content attracts traffic and customers.
Product Selection
Before you do anything else you need to select some products, and one of the best ways to succeed with affiliate marketing is if you promote the kind of products and services you love yourself. Even better if you promote the products and services you’ve either used or have used in the past.
Why?
Because you’ll be passionate about wanting to write good selling points and highlight every aspect of that product or service, from cost to features and benefits, to how the product has helped you solve problems in your daily life, to where people can purchase the product.
Here’s a tip you’re going to love, just take a look around your household or what you have on you right now, and find the products you love to use, such as your mobile phone, other devices, utensils in the kitchen maybe, car accessories the list goes on.
If you have an existing blog and want to monetize through promoting affiliate products, try and promote niche related items and preferably products that you’ve used or are using.
OK, now that we’ve talked a little bit about product selection, let’s start with me sharing with you some of the methods that I use to make money online through affiliate marketing.
1. Banner Placements
Let’s begin with the absolute simplest way to do affiliate marketing and that’s placing affiliate banners on your blog.
Whilst this isn’t my favorite method it can work well depending on where you place your banners and how much search engine traffic your blog gets. On this particular blog I have 4 affiliate ads placed below the fold, however the best place to display your affiliate ads are above the fold. I only choose to display mine below the fold because I want my own product ads to be displayed above the fold.
Here are some great places to consider affiliate ad placements -
- Above the folder in header
- In blog sidebar, above the fold
- Before post content
- After post content
- In post content
- In footer of blog
- In ‘recommended products and services‘ page
2. Product Reviews
Reviewing affiliate products is my favorite method of doing affiliate marketing as people love to read reviews and make their purchases based on the quality of a helpful review. Again I won’t ever review anything that I haven’t tried or have not used in the past, and this is a good tip to take away, always review useful, relevant stuff that you have had experience with and trust.
People put their trust in you when they purchase a product based on your personal review so the last thing you want to do is review something you’ve never tried and don’t trust, as it can sometimes backfire if that product turns out to be shady.
When creating a product review you should try and use multiple media platforms to do it in, such as written reviews, interviews (blog), video reviews, podcasting, slide shows and even consider putting out an eBook or white paper. In my experience I’ve found video reviews combined with written reviews work well. There is an awesome plugin that I’d like to recommend called Author HReview, check it out here.
3. Blog Contests
Blog contests are well worth the investment in time, money and effort. A strategy that I’ve used many times in the past is giving away premium WordPress theme packages, and in the contest page I always include an affiliate link to the product for people taking part in the contest to take it for a test drive.
Contests can attract a lot of social media interest, traffic and popularity so it’s a great way to boost your affiliate sales in any case.
4. Email List
Finally the most powerful way to increase affiliate sales and make money online with affiliate promotion is promoting to your email list. This can work very effectively especially if you have a large laser targeted email list to work with.
One of the best ways to promote affiliate products to your email list is to use unique and original content. Don’t just write a desperate sounding sales letter, instead sell a story of your experience and how you found the product to be helpful in your situation. People love to read and can relate to a good story and hear how a particular product came to good use.
What you shouldn’t do in your email promotions is brag on about how great the product is without sufficient evidence to backup your claims, and you definitely should avoid link spamming with a ton of affiliate links, particularly in the first paragraphs or so.
If you don’t have a list to work with then shame on you, you’re missing out on a tonne of opportunities, regardless don’t waste anymore time, check out my eBook to help you build an awesome email list.
Image courtesy of Photobucket user: shawnscott71
About Fabrizio Van Marciano
