Affiliate Marketing - Real Deal Affiliate

Fake Affiliate Marketing Companies. Be on the Lookout.

July 16, 2018July 16, 2018 by Kyle

There are many companies and individuals out there deeming themselves to be within the affiliate marketing space, operating an affiliate marketing business, and worse, stating they are affiliate marketing experts…when they are not.

In this little rant here, I want to explain what affiliate marketing is, what it certainly isn’t, and what to look for when aiming to determine if an individual or company is misleading you about whether they are “affiliate marketing”. There are a lot of fake affiliate marketing companies out there and they are having an adverse impact on the affiliate marketing industry as a whole, so I want to bring some clarity as to what is affiliate marketing and what is not.

The Biggest Emulator. The MLM Bait and Switch.

The biggest trend we are starting to see is companies and individuals indicating they are operating an affiliate marketing agency, when in reality they are using it as a mask to cover up the fact that they are an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) scheme.

Not to say there is anything wrong with some MLM companies, there are definitely some legitimate ones out there. However, you can almost assume that any MLM that is trying to say that they are affiliate marketing is running an unethical operation, and borderline (if not) illegal one.

There have been several take downs by the FTC in this space, with many more to come. It is my hope that they continue to tackle all the misleading programs out there operating businesses that are built around people joining and paying money, for the ability to promote that same program to others. That is the most common type of scheme that you see, with most people within these schemes losing money (95-97%).

There are some traits that you can look for in these programs that will be a key decider

Anything With Multiple Levels is NOT Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate programs are single level. If you are part of a program with 3 or more levels (including you), these are deemed multi-level marketing schemes. This is NOT affiliate marketing, in fact far from it.
Anything Where the Goal is to Promote the Same Program to Others. If you join something, or you have to pay for a program simply for the opportunity to sell that same program, then you are not getting involved in affiliate marketing. These companies have the tendency to call their “participants” affiliates, when in reality they are a notch in the MLM scheme and they are in reality network/multi-level marketers.
Anything High Ticket ($2,000+). The most common trait of “fake” affiliate marketing impersonators are those that are charging $1,000’s for information. If these companies offer $1,000’s in commissions, they are almost certainly operating their business in a way that relies on “baiting” participants with high compensation. These companies usually end in demise (or in the hands of the FTC) because their goal is to rip a few people off for $1,000’s to earn lots of money, versus actually offering a quality service to people for a realistic, market driven cost.
A Facade Entry Point Price. You will often times see a program actually offering an entry point into their program that operates in a true affiliate marketing fashion. However, once you join at the $49/$99 level of the program (or some smaller amount), you are encouraged to join at a more expensive level or BUY into some sort upline/downline platform, you have been misled and tricked to think you are affiliate marketing. This is a simple facade that has been set up, but in reality you are joining in on an affiliate marketing scheme.
Has an Income Disclaimer or Compensation Plan. All MLM companies are required to have a compensation plan as well as an income disclaimer on their website. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page and you see either of these, the given program IS NOT an affiliate program or affiliate marketing. It is an MLM.
There is a Cost to Join. Affiliate programs are free to join. If you have to pay to join an affiliate program, you should be skeptical. Some companies have a small, nominal fee to prove that you are real, but if you are paying $99 to join an affiliate program it is NOT an affiliate program.

What Affiliate Marketing Really Looks Like

OK, so now that you know what affiliate marketing is not, what is affiliate marketing? I have explained it in detail on the following affiliate marketing breakdown page already, but I want to show you two side by side examples of a program that is affiliate marketing, and one that is not.

The diagram offers you a good breakdown of the differences between real affiliate marketing, and the companies that are pretending to be affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is the relationship between an affiliate, a company selling products and/or services online, and a customer. As an affiliate, you can add affiliate links on your website or elsewhere, and if someone subsequently clicks on your link and buys something, you get a percentage of gross sale. This typically ranges between 1% and 75%, and will vary from company to company.

For example, if I run a website dedicated to selling “golf equipment” and I link off to Callaway to their website through my affiliate links, they will pay me 6% commissions for any sales that I drive to them. This allows Callaway to in essence have 10,000’s of people, across the internet simultaneously promoting their products.

As an affiliate, it gives me the opportunity to potentially promote MILLIONS of products through my websites, social channels and email and earn a great deal of affiliate income in the process. It is a brilliant business model and one that is only continuing to grow online, but there are a lot of companies abusing the word “affiliate marketing” when in actuality they are an MLM or worse, a pyramid scheme.

Affiliate programs are not multi-level, nor do they require you to pay money in order to promote a product or service at a particular level. If someone is trying to get you to join something that is multi-level or that is paid, it is NOT an affiliate program.

There is a proper process, and a proper ethical procedure that all successful affiliates are following these days, and I am going to take a minute to explain this.

Establishing Yourself as An Authority Marketer

There is a right way to create a sustainable and long term business online, and there are many wrong ways. I am not going to focus on the wrong ways, rather the proper way. Becoming an authority.

The most natural way to do this is to choose something that you are truly passionate or interested in and build a business around this. That is not the only way, but it is a great starting point. That way you can truly build a business around something that you love to do.

Let’s say I love basketball, which I do, I could create an entire business and work to become an authority website in a particular segment of the broader basketball category. Let’s say, Basketball Skills and Drills.

I would then build a website, and start building out the content, all while being able to integrate relevant promotions into my website through affiliate programs. There are all sorts of things that I could promote in a niche like this, some examples would be:

Amazon (1,000’s of products related that pay 6% commissions)
Ballers Institute Skills Guide/Training (pays 51% commissions)
Vertical Jump Bands (6% commissions)
JumpUSA (15% Commissions)
And 100’s more

This is just brushing the surface, as I build out my basketball skills website and discuss many topics within this niche, I will be integrating highly relevant and useful product/service recommendations to my audience. Through time, I could have 100’s or 1,000’s of pages on my website, driving 1,000’s of unique visitors to my website daily, generating far more than a typical full time income ($1,000’s per day).

To grow your business, you scale your content and traffic. That is the approach that can be taken within any niche, and that is the most scalable and lucrative way to build a thriving affiliate marketing business. So whether you are interested in building a mommy blog, a cats and dogs website, a tech gadget website, a knitting site, sports related site, or a hobby car website, there are literally 100,000’s of directions that you can head.

That is the reality of the affiliate marketing business, and that is how affiliate marketing works. If you are interested in building a thriving affiliate marketing business, there is only ONE place in the world that you should consider, Wealthy Affiliate. It is a community & platform that offers an “all-inclusive” environment with the training, live classes, research tools, websites, hosting, coaching and networking under one roof. Get more info here.

I hope I have offered some clarity on the differences between the REAL affiliate marketing opportunity, and those companies and individuals out there pretending to be affiliate marketing when they are not. I would love to hear any stories you have had, or if you have any questions about the legitimacy of any program (or affiliate marketing in general) I would be more than happy to help you out.

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How to Avoid the Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Scams.

March 11, 2018March 11, 2018 by Kyle

Affiliate marketing has been gaining more and more popularity in recent years, in particular as a result of the proliferation of social media and the fact that so many more people are using affiliate marketing to promote products/services to their friends and family through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

The problem is that any time there is opportunity and money to be made, it attracts the vultures and unscrupulous that are in the business of “taking advantage” of people. As a result, there are many companies portraying themselves as affiliate marketing, and many affiliate marketing scams popping up.

I want you to be very careful out there. In this post, I am going to break down what an affiliate marketing scam looks like to help you avoid getting taken advantage of.

The Industry is Changing, Be Careful.

When I started out online back in 2002, affiliate marketing was just gaining popularity. You had mostly tangible products (physical) and service based companies starting to realize the potential of having a base of affiliates promoting their companies.

Instead of these companies relying on “in house” marketing team, they were able to attract 100’s if not 1,000’s of affiliate marketers to promote their services. They didn’t need to pay them unless they generated revenue for them, so it was completely performance based and they didn’t need to pay the salary of expensive employees or deploy significant ad budgets…they let the affiliates do the work for them.

Move forward to 2018, the industry has changed and in recent years we have seen a cross over of companies trying to set foot in the affiliate marketing industry, that actually are not affiliate marketing. We see companies charging WAY too much for affiliate education. We also see companies up selling the hell out of their customers, taking a low ticket product and then forcing a customer to pay several $1,000’s by the time they are done with their pitch fest.

This is unacceptable in my eyes. It is ruthless, and it is something that ethical affiliate marketers (the ones I associate with anyways) don’t stand for.

Fortunately for you though, there are obvious signs that you can look forward when trying to determine whether a program is an affiliate marketing scam.

5 of the Most Typical Affiliate Scams.

There are a few very common types of affiliate marketing scams. You can pretty much put every unethical company within this industry under one of these umbrellas.

(1) Low Ticket to High Ticket. There are many scammers out there that will try to sell you on a very low ticket item, stating the given price and everything you need to succeed is $7-$49, but in reality there are $100’s if not $1,000’s in up sells immediately after you purchase the given product. Not only that, they make you feel really guilty if you don’t spend more money (tell you things like “you are worthless”). It is horrible.

(2) Free Plus Shipping Book. You probably have seen these within your social media accounts. Companies pitching you on the idea of getting a free book, plus shipping. That sounds good in logic, but the problem is they are doing this to get your “contact details” which they are then going to used to promote all sorts of other stuff to. The “books” are usually completely promotional in terms of their intent, lacking actual value and substance.

(3) Join Program, to Promote (MLM). Often times companies that are within the MLM (multi-level-marketing) world will present themselves as being “affiliate marketing”. Anything that is MLM, is NOT affiliate marketing. The big difference, multi-levels. You have to be careful when you are joining these programs as they will get you in, often times at a very expensive price ($1,000-$50,000) and to recoup your costs, they will get you to promote the very same program to others.

Many of these programs are taken out by FTC every year for being fraud, pyramid or ponzi schemes. The problem: If you are involved in them and promote them to others, you are just as liable as a participant as you are being the owner of the company.

(4) Social Feed “I am in” for more details. You see this on Facebook or Instagram all the time, but you will also see it within Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat as well. A marketer tells you how much they are making, how you can “change your life” and then pitch you on the idea that they are going to teach you how to make money just like them.

Firstly, most of these people pushing these videos on social media are not making any money (unless you buy into their crap), and secondly, they are almost certainly about to throw you into a network marketing scheme where you need to peddle the same garbage to others.

(5) Showcase Lifestyle and Money. You can pretty much chalk up any program that sells itself solely on lifestyle, on “mindset”, on flash cars or houses a scam. These companies tend to lack product/service substance. If you are being sold on this emotion and you want to be sitting on the beach or driving the Ferrari like the person selling on you on this idea in the video/sales pitch, make sure you know what they heck you are getting into first!

If are currently research a program and it fits into any of these categories, be careful. There is a good chance that you are about to get involved in one of the affiliate marketing scams that are present within the online world (IE, the wild west) these days)>

So if These are Affiliate Scams, Why Do They Exist?

They exist because they make money. They make money, because people get sucked into them. The FTC and other government driven regulatory entities that are created to protect you from such scams are very busy. Quite often they not going to waste their time taking down a company until it reaches a minimum of $10MM+ in revenue.

Thus many of the smaller programs will survive and survive for some time (sometimes forever). You can help prevent these companies from sustaining their unethical affiliate businesses within the online world simply by understanding that they are scams and avoiding them altogether. When you get ripped off, you are giving the monster in essence money.

If you don’t feed them with your hard-earned money, they are going to have to legitimize themselves at some point or completely get out of the affiliate marketing world altogether.

Go Affiliate Marketing Legit.

There are absolutely legitimate opportunities. If you have read this and are feeling a bit discouraged by the affiliate marketing industry as a whole, please do not be. The affiliate marketing industry is VERY ethical, it is vast, and it is full of an incredible amount of opportunity.

In fact, in my 16 years within the online world I have yet to see more opportunity. Affiliate programs are popping up everywhere, all major brands/services in the world have affiliate programs, and affiliates have a subset of over 550 MILLION (yes million) products and services they can promote in exchange for a commission.

Whether you are interested in cats and dogs, make up and beauty, sports, health & fitness, technology, etc… there is an opportunity for your to carve yourself out a very successful business within the affiliate marketing space. No experience necessary.

There is a legitimate process to building a business online though. It looks a little something like this.

Choose a direction for your business. This could be anything and there are a million and one niches out there.
Build a website/blog to promote your business. This is very easy to do these days. Within platforms like Wealthy Affiliate you can have your very own niche website ALIVE online in less than 30 seconds. Yes, 30 seconds.
Get Traffic to your business. There are MANY ways to do this. One of the primary methods is getting rankings in Google, Bing & Yahoo (which is free to do), but you can also pay for traffic, leverage social networks, and use email marketing just to name a few.
Generate revenue through affiliate programs. This is where the affiliate programs come in. There are millions of products, likely within pretty much any niche, that you can promote in exchange for an affiliate commission. These commissions range from 2% to 75% depending on the company and can lead to a HUGE stream of income.

That is it. The process in a nutshell, all you need is a platform that provides you with the training and the environment to create, grow and manage your business. This platform is Wealthy Affiliate and it is completely free to try through their elite Starter Membership (no obligations whatsoever).

By lesson 4 alone within the training, you are going to have step 1 & 2 above complete. By the first course alone, which is included in your starter membership, you are going to understand the process of getting ranked in Google with your website, getting traffic, and how you can build out you business in the most appropriate manner for long term success.

I digress. I hope this article has offered you a lot of insight into the “bad” side of the affiliate marketing world, and if you have been seeking out any of the FIVE types of scams that I have suggested you avoid, I hope you do so.

If you have any bad or good experiences within the affiliate marketing world you would like to share, opinions or questions that you want to get feedback on, please leave me a comment below. I would love to hear it, I could chat about this stuff all day!

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Can You Make Money Affiliate Marketing? In a Word, Yes.

March 7, 2018March 6, 2018 by Kyle

There’s a lot of confusion within the affiliate marketing world, and among newcomers to this space. The problem I see is there is so much misinformation out there about what it is, how you will actually be making money, and the process itself, It is no wonder that people are completely confused.

First off, I know for a fact that you can because I have been doing this full-time for the last 16 years within the online world. The idea whether it exists, to me, is no different from arguing whether air exists.

I am going to settle this argument once and for all and am going to be going into detail answering the question of Can you make money affiliate marketing, and if so what is the proper process of doing so and how exactly do you make money within the affiliate world. .

The Process of Making Money as an Affiliate

As an affiliate marketer, you have access to over 550 million products and services that you can promote as an affiliate. When you join an affiliate program, it gives you access to promote given products and services that are available within that program.

Some companies off their affiliate programs independently (they operate and manage them in-house), and some are part of what are called affiliate networks, a grouping of many affiliate programs.

When you join an affiliate program you get access to certain promotional materials like affiliate links, banners, and sometimes more sophisticated widget that you can add your website, you can also promote many other places.

For example, If I were to join the Amazon affiliate program, that would give me immediate access to promote 100’s of millions of products on Amazon. Let’s say I wanted to work within the organic skin care niche, a quick search within Amazon would indicate that I could promote over 70,000 different products and services on Amazon alone.

And that is just ONE affiliate program. Amazon pays 6% on every sale that I need, so if I sell a thousand dollars worth of product, I am going to earn $60 in affiliate commissions. These are paid either through check, or through Amazon gift cards. Every affiliate program pays a bit differently, but almost all will offer you several forms of payment.

Misinformation is Rife Within the Affiliate World.

Part of the problem with those seeking to create an affiliate marketing business, is that the industry is full of outdated or simply incorrect information being propagated through all corners of the Internet. Companies are making money selling you a course that are based on “theoretical” affiliate marketing principles, stuff that should work but probably won’t.

Then you have companies pretending to be affiliate marketing, when they are not. They are a scheme, an MLM, or something that is completely different (that is, a scam).

Then you have old products/services that were ONCE good in their glory years, but haven’t been updated to keep up with the trends in the affiliate world, new technology, new platforms, and new techniques and strategies that are being used by affiliates.

So although the opportunity is significant within the affiliate world, it can be difficult to achieve success if you are linking up with the wrong people. That is why education element, and having access to the tools and support you need to build a proper affiliate business is going to be imperative to your success.

Affiliate Success Starts Proper Affiliate Education

There is a right way to build a business online, and there is the wrong way. The proper way of building and affiliate business, has remained the same for many years.

You have a potential customer, and you have a product (that has an affiliate program). You as the affiliate, your goal is to connect the potential customer with the product through relevant content and/or through various marketing channels.

To do this, you will want to have a WEBSITE that will act as your storefront for customers, and offer you the ability to promote one of the over 550 MILLION products/services that you can promote as an affiliate.

There’re many platforms online cleaning to be high quality affiliate education, but which one do you choose. If you don’t do your due diligence, you are likely to end up joining a company that is “pretending” to be affiliate marketing and they end up offering a low quality education, and worse yet, some of these programs are multi-level-marketing and are acting as a wolf in sheeps’ clothing.

So how do you know when is a good education, from what is potentially poor or misleading education. Here are a few tips when looking for high quality affiliate marketing training.

The Company Reputation. Is the company legitimate (do they have a good standing with the BBB.org). Are there positive reviews about this company online. Have they been in business for some time.
Free Trial or Free to Try. If you can’t get insight into what a company is offering, then you shouldn’t even be considering. If there is no free trial or at least a sneak peek (outside of their sales pitch), then avoid it.
Cost Efficient. Building an affiliate marketing business should not be expensive venture, even the education aspect of it. If you are spending more than $500 per year to run your business, including the websites, hosting, tools & technology, coaching, and networking, you are overspending. Companies charging more than this are likely in the business of “taking your money” and not helping people, so avoid overpaying.
Are They Clear With What they Offer. If you are to go to a company website, you go through the content and you still are unsure of what you will be doing, and what they are offering, then avoid this company at all costs. If they are selling you on the idea of owning a big house, expensive car, sitting on the beach, or “you can do it”, without telling you what you are doing, you are almost certainly going to be getting yourself involved in a scam.
Do They Offer You Everything You Need to Run Business. To run an online business, you need a website, you need hosting, you need keyword & research tools, you need proper training (ideally some sort of interactive training as well), coaching and mentoring, and the ability to network with others that are involved in the business. If a company is missing one or more of these, then you are not getting everything you need to properly run a business.

I personally have been working directly and helping affiliates for the last 12 years of online and it has been the sole purpose of my business. My affiliate home base (and where I educate and help people) is through Wealthy Affiliate, and if you are interested in building an affiliate business, I recommend that at the very least you take a look.

Of course, you can feel free to do some research online and see what best suits you, but I can tell you that there isn’t a more progress, forward thinking, cost-efficient and caring platform in the world for affiliate marketers. That is something that I will stand behind.

Here’s the breakdown of what I would recommend as the ONLY (and top) affiliate education platforms online that you should consider, and I am basing that on the criteria I mentioned above.

WealthyAffiliate.com: Been in business since 2005 (visit website here)
Free Trial: Yes (unlimited Starter membership)
Cost Efficient: Yes, very. $49 per month (or $359 per year)
Clear What They Offer: Yes
Everything You Need to Run Business: No, there will typically be lots of extra costs.
Who It’s For: Beginner to Expert Affiliate Marketers

Quick Review: Wealthy Affiliate is the elite affiliate marketing platform in the industry. With over 1.4 million active members, you have access to the largest resource of experts in the space, but unlike most communities of this size, the environment has a true “pay it forward” vibe to it.

It offers a true all-inclusive environment where you have access to everything that you need in one place to create, grow and manage a very successful business online (or several of them). This includes training (all formats), live classes, websites, hosting, keyword/research tools, content/writing platforms, support, expert coaching, and the ability to network with over 1.4 million fellow aspiring and successful Internet Entrepreneurs.

Udemy.com: There are some good courses there, they are a legitimate platform
Free trial: Yes, you can see “some” of the courses before you buy typically.
Cost efficient: Fairly, $15-200 per course.
Clear What They Offer: Yes
Who It’s For: Generalize Affiliate Marketing Skills
Everything You Need to Run Business: No, there will typically be lots of extra costs.

Quick Review: Udemy is a wide open education platform, with training resources across a breadth of topics. You can buy individual courses and training within their network. Some of the affiliate marketing training is really high quality, but it is lacking the fundamental tools to build an actual affiliate marketing business (websites, hosting, research tools). So the courses themselves are good education, but there will be many costs beyond that.

You are also required to pay for every course, so you definitely do not have access to an environment where you have all the training you need, it is more of an la cart type education platform.

Affilorama.com: Have a long-standing track record in the affiliate space
Free trial: Yes, you get some access (including their forum)
Cost efficient: Fairly, $67 per month (+ $1,000+ in up sells)
Clear What They Offer: Yes
Who It’s For: Beginner to Intermediate Affiliate Marketers
Everything You Need to Run Business: No, there will typically be lots of extra costs.

Quick Review: Affilorama, founded by Mark Ling and expert in the affiliate marketing space has been one of the few programs to survive since the 2000s. The reason is result of the long-standing focus on offering a good service and platform at a cost-efficient price. They are also one of the few education companies in the affiliate marketing space that offer a free trial, which I am absolutely an advocate of and respect.

Although the time investment and the commitment to being update has suffered a bit in recent years, the framework and principles taught within Affilorama are still consistent with the industry. Do know that there are additional costs outside of the initial $67 per month.

So as you can see, there are appropriate services available if you want to learn how to build an affiliate marketing business and truly one that will actually generate you revenue. There is a right way to build an affiliate business and a wrong way, most companies simply do not cut it (the 3 mentioned above do though).

Why Most People Fail Affiliate Marketing.

Before I leave you today, I want to share a few insights into why people fail, and what failure truly looks like within the affiliate marketing world.

There is one contributing factor that I see on a day in, day out basis as to why people don’t achieve success online. Patience.

There is a natural tendency to treat any business venture, and compare it to a job. Most people want instant results, because well, you earn an hourly wage with a job and it should work the same way in your affiliate business right? Actually, no. It is quite the opposite.

Before you establish a business and can actually even promote affiliate programs, you typically are required to have a presence (website) and a foundation built. That is exactly what is taught within Wealthy Affiliate, but most newcomers to the affiliate marketing space never get to that point because they are not equipped with the proper tools and training to get them there.

Once you have your foundation of your business set out, at that point you can start generating success and building a business online. This success will snowball and before long, you will see your traffic and revenue grow. For me, that started around the 3-month mark in the affiliate marketing world and here I am 16 years later (being full time online and very successful as an affiliate).

So please, promise me that you are not going to treat this like a job. It isn’t, affiliate marketing is a business and the time and energy you put into your respective business today, typically takes 3-4 months to really start to materialize and show you the fruits of your labor.

I personally have a vested interest in not seeing you fail. My mission for the last 12 years through WealthyAffiliate.com has been to harbor and create very successful affiliate marketers. That is what I have been able to do, and that is what I plan on doing moving forward.

If you want my personal help and coaching (and to get rolling for no charge), simply roll on over to Wealthy Affiliate and set-up your account. Upon doing so, you will have direct access to not only the most comprehensive and elite platform for affiliate marketers in the world, you will have access to ME. 🙂

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How to Learn Affiliate Marketing in 5 Minutes

July 27, 2018February 20, 2018 by Kyle

This is going to be the quickest affiliate marketing walk through you ever have had. The problem with the affiliate marketing world is part in parcel the result of so much misinformation about the industry being out there, companies pretending they are affiliate marketing (when they actually are not), and the fact that many companies try to over-complicate things in order to sell you their over complicated affiliate marketing product or service.

I am going to set the record straight and truly simplify things for you and help you comprehend the affiliate marketing space in the most concise way possible. In fact, if you bear with me for the next 5 minutes, you are not only going to understand affiliate marketing, you are going to be well versed and ready to use my article as a “spring board” to your affiliate marketing career.

Ready? Cool, let’s go!

The Affiliate Marketing Process, in a Nutshell

Affiliate marketing has three entities. You have an affiliate (you), you have an affiliate program (the company/product owner) and you have a customer (the person buying).

As an affiliate, you can join an affiliate program and this will give you the ability to promote a product/service or a subset of products and services. An affiliate program will give you a special and unique “affiliate link” when you join their program, which will give you the ability to promote their services, and for it to be tracked.

If, as an affiliate, you send someone to the product website and they make a purchase, you earn flat rate sale or percentage commission. These typically range from 1% – 75%, depending on the company or product/service.

Let’s look at a little chart breaking down the process.

As an example, let’s say I join to become an affiliate for Amazon (known as Amazon Associates). As an affiliate I can promote over 500 MILLION (yes, million) products as an affiliate. It is actually quite amazing when you consider the sheer size of the opportunity.

If I drive somebody from my website, my social media account, or from an email I send out to Amazon through my affiliate link and they purchase something, say as an example, a toaster, I earn 6% commission for that. If the toaster is $100, I get paid $6.

Although that may not sound like a lot, people are buying 100,000’s of toaster every day, and people are buying 100’s of millions of products from Amazon every month. What if you sold 30 toasters per day? You would be earning $180/day.

What if you were selling a more expensive item on Amazon that cost $1,000 and paid $60 in commissions with every sale? If you sold 30 of those, you would be earning $1,800 in commissions every day. That is the reality of affiliate marketing and this is just one very tiny example.
So now that you know how the affiliate marketing process work, let’s talk a bit more about YOU, the affiliate.

Who Can Become an Affiliate. At What Cost.

Generally speaking, affiliate programs are completely free to join. In some very rare cases, an affiliate program will charge a small, nominal fee to attempt to prevent fraudulent affiliates (and verify you are real), but that is quite unusual.

Affiliate programs should be free, they shouldn’t charge, and if one is charging you to be able to promote their products/services, chances are they are not an affiliate program (they are likely a scam, or something completely different).

So the awesome part about affiliate programs is that they are completely free to join and as an affiliate, you can promote pretty much every brand/product/service you can imagine and earn a commission for doing so. There are over 550 MILLION products and services that you can promote as an affiliate.

How Affiliate Programs Work

An affiliate program is in essence a piece of tracking software that allows affiliates (you) to promote merchants (the company) and earn a commission. The affiliate program will typically track all clicks, all sales transactions, and calculate all commissions. They also allow you to manage your payment details and personal details.

Here is an example of what an affiliate program stats look like, these are the stats from WealthyAffiliate.com’s affiliate program.

Affiliate program stats are automated and accurate. As affiliate tracking technology has advanced, so has the ability to get more sophisticated and granular with your affiliate tracking campaigns. Affiliates now have a great deal of control and can track conversions and the source of conversions quite easily.

Affiliate programs typically offer promotional materials such as banners, widgets, or even plugins that you can leverage on your website or social platforms. The more comprehensive the affiliate program is, the better equipped affiliates are to promote that given product/service, so it is advantageous for a company to offer a high quality experience for their affiliates.

What is an Affiliate Network?

An affiliate network is a grouping of affiliate programs under one company. For example, an affiliate network like Awin.com (the largest in the world), you can promote 6,000 different companies and their respective products from under one roof.

There are 100’s of affiliate networks out there, with 100,000’s of companies and brands within their networks. Joining an affiliate network can save you a lot of time and is a lot less management as an affiliate (to manage all of your passwords, links, payments, etc).

Instead of having to join 1,000’s of programs independently, you can join one affiliate network like Awin or Cj.com and promote 1,000’s of products under one management area and get paid through a single payment for all of them.

Some of the most popular affiliate networks in the world are:

Awin.com
Amazon Associates
Ebay Partners
CJ by Conversant
Clickbank.com
Rakuten
MoreNiche.com

The Affiliate Opportunity & How to Get Paid.

All affiliate programs/networks pay different. They all have different pay schedules. Typically an affiliate company will offer multiple forms of payment.

It is also very typical for your payment to be centralized in US Dollars. It is becoming a standard within the online world to pay affiliates in US dollars, but some companies certainly will pay you in your own currency and many payment gateways will do the conversion for you from USD to your country currency (like PayPal)

These may include:

- Cheque Payment

PayPal
Bank Wire
Payoneer
Cryptocurrency

As an example, the Wealthy Affiliate affiliate program (which I manage) pays primarily through PayPal, but we also offer cheque payment in addition to those and if someone meets a certain payment threshold we can offer bank wire payments.

Affiliate programs don’t make it difficult to get paid, if they did, no affiliate in the right mind would promote the given program.

Where Do You Go to Run an Affiliate Business?

So you want to get started within the affiliate marketing world, but you are not sure where to go. It is tough these days with the influx of programs and education that are claiming to be best. The problem with many of the services out there is the fact that they are not actually even “affiliate marketing”.
Where do you start your research?

Well I am going to speed up your research drastically. There is an elite platform in the affiliate marketing space, which I happen to be very much involved with (and that I can coach you within) called Wealthy Affiliate. It is where the “who’s who” of the affiliate space not only hang out, but where they managed their respective businesses.

This is the one platform that you must have if you plan on learning affiliate marketing, but also if you want environment where you can get all the tools, websites, hosting, training, coaching and interact support to create and grow a business within the affiliate marketing world.

There are two membership options, a completely free Starter membership (free to try) and a cost-efficient, more advanced Premium option (as low as $29 per month). I recommend that you get rolling on the Starter membership, as I recommend that you always “try” a service before you consider every purchasing anything.

Within the first few lessons you are going to have your own affiliate coach, chosen a direction for your business, your own affiliate website (with hosting), and access to training that will truly take you from a beginner to an affiliate marketing expert.

I have also created a video on the process of affiliate marketing and how it REALLY works. I would recommend you check this out if you get the opportunity.

If you have any questions about ANY aspect affiliate marketing, I am more than happy to share my knowledge and help with you. Feel free to leave any questions below and I will be sure to get back to you right away.

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