How can you earn a living on the internet? Many people now earn a full time living from the internet as affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketers earn a living on the internet by promoting and selling other people’s products online. There is nothing to sell personally and you get paid by referring customers to various products and services which are readily available on the internet.
Earn A Living On The Internet
One of the biggest affiliate marketing companies is Amazon. Amazon,com launched its associates program in 1996 allowing affiliates to link to their site and promote its products. As an affiliate you are paid on a performance basis for sales you make from your referral links. Many companies offer the same or similar deals to Amazon – paying their affiliate referral payments based on sales coming from the affiliate’s website or blog.
Earn A Living On The Internet – Digital Products
The rise of digital products on the internet gave affiliates the opportunity to earn greater commissions on sales. Digital products include products which don’t need sending out and which can be accessed digitally online by either:
- downloading information – like an ‘e-book’
- accessing an online membership area or
- watching videos in an ‘access only’ area
What this means for their creators is that they can pay affiliates a greater percentage of their cost because:
- They don’t need to be stored anywhere – products are entirely digital and can be stored on a hard drive in digital format
- They don’t have to be posted out physically
- They don’t cost anything once produced
- Their main cost is advertising – which can be done by affiliates
Digital products therefore offer the affiliate marketer the greatest compensation – sometimes around 50% of their cost. This is far better than the compensation paid for physical products from Amazon for example.
Earn A Living On The Internet – What Do Affiliates Do?
To earn a living on the internet, affiliates must promote and successfully sell products time and again. There are various strategies which affiliate marketers employ in order to do this:
- They create content (like this article)
- They create video content and upload to YouTube, for example
- They create adverts and target specific people (or specific search queries on Google)
- They build email lists and offer value to their list (while promoting affiliate products)
Affiliates can build an online presence in their own right and suggest products they genuinely like. Affiliate marketing is simply like recommending a good restaurant to a friend or family member. The difference is, by recommending an online product, you earn a commission from each sale which you have referred.
Earn A Living On The Internet – Trust
Obviously this can lead to people recommending everything and anything simply to gain a commission. However, if someone doesn’t trust you, they are unlikely to buy from you and use your recommended products. This means you need to create trust with your visitors. You do this be giving value and being genuine and trustworthy.
Earn A Living On The Internet – Google
Google is the main search engine on the internet. You probably used Google to find this article. Although it is very competitive to rank content on Google, this is a tactic used by many affiliate marketers to get found by their visitors. One of the main problems for affiliate marketers is attracting enough visitors to their website or traffic. Without enough traffic to their website, making money become more difficult. Traffic is the number one priority for affiliate marketers.
Earn A Living On The Internet – Products
Choosing the right products to promote is another main issue for affiliate marketers. Having the wrong product on your website for your visitors will mean very few or no sales. Your content needs to match with your visitors intent. If you create a website selling car tyres but like to blog (write) about dogs, you will attract the wrong audience to your website and sell very few car tyres!
Although this example is a little simplified, it’s amazing how easy it can be to get this wrong. Getting specific about your target audience, writing the right content for them, and promoting and selling the right products is key to making a living on the internet. Take a look at this article for more information on this : why is target market important.
Earn A Living On The Internet – The Right Business Model
Earning a living on the internet can be hard. Selling your first affiliate product is quite a great achievement, however, this must be repeated over and over in order to replace your current income. The internet allows this to be achieved largely on autopilot, but you must put in the work in order to reap the rewards!
Choosing the right business model can help massively with this. Once you have found a product which sells and which you have a passion for, you can create content around that product and sell it over and over. As you create more content which is found and shared this can ‘snowball’ into a ‘free running’ business model. Taking the time to find the right business model is well worth the effort though. I spent years trying many different ideas and strategies and wasted a lot of time.
A good business model allows an affiliate to:
- Make membership commissions every month for each sale
- Sell high ticket products and earn high ticket commissions
- Up-sell to higher value items after the initial sale
- Has a built in sales team
- Has a community of people
This model has more longevity than a model based on only selling a ‘one off’ product for $100. By selling higher value products with these other membership benefits, you can ‘build a business’ rather than sell a single product. Selling a single $2000 product with a 50% commission means you earn $1000. To make this same amount from a $100 item you would need to sell 20 items at the same commission rate (50%).
Earn A Living On The Internet – The Power Is In The List
All the top affiliate marketers have a list of subscribers to which they promote offers and give value. Having a list of subscribers is the best way to build a long term and sustainable affiliate business. If you intend to make your affiliate business a lasting one, make sure you have your own list and are not simply building a list for someone else.
Many new affiliates send traffic to affiliate products who then build a list from the work of the affiliate. Avoid this trap and make sure you build your own list to which you can promote products of your choosing.
Earn A Living On The Internet – Get Started Today
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