Hi there, name’s Vitaliy. I do affiliate marketing full time, help others with it and what this post is going to do is condense my 15+ years experience in this business and explain the following:
- How affiliate marketing works
- What mistakes to avoid
- The best way to get started and reach $100,000+ levels with this business (even six figures)
If you’re a beginner or someone that’s been struggling with it, one thing I want to say is that you can totally succeed at it if you have the right guidance and that’s something I want to give you here.
The truth is a lot of sources misinform you about this business and steer you in the wrong directions (or try to get you to buy expensive courses/crap you don’t need). I’ve been in that spot many times before I became successful so I want to make sure you get it right.
What affiliate marketing is and how it works:
Affiliate marketing is the process of you promoting other peoples/companies products and earning commissions on each sale. The way it works is like this:
- You sign up with an affiliate network
- Get an affiliate link for whatever you want to promote
- Each time someone clicks that link and buys, you get paid
Here’s a simple example:
There’s no shortage of affiliate networks out there you can sign up with that give you access to literally millions of different things you can promote and here’s some of the most popular ones and how much they pay per sale:
- Amazon Associates (3%-10%)
- Commission Junction (1%-10%)
- AWIN (3%-10%)
- Avantlink (3%-10%)
- Viator (1%-10%)
- Clickbank (10%-90%)
Another awesome element of this business is that you don’t need to handle delivery, shipment, refunds and stuff normal businesses do. Your job is to (properly) direct people through your affiliate links to the product/service and the owners of those things (vendors) handle the rest. This makes affiliate marketing one of the best businesses to start in 2024 (and frankly beyond).
Mistakes to avoid and how to get sales correctly/ethically:
I might lose a lot of people here but as exciting as the opportunity is with affiliate marketing, what you need to know is that having an affiliate link is NOT enough to make a full time income at it and its something that takes time and work to build. People don’t just simply buy from you if you give them an affiliate link, they need to be convinced that whatever it is you are promoting is what they NEED and there’s a proper way to do that correctly:
Here’s how you get affiliate marketing right (4 steps):
I’m going to showcase to you a simple model that got me to where I am today and the key is that you’re leveraging your passions AND helping people. This is what makes you sales in affiliate marketing.
Your goal isn’t to “spam” affiliate links and shamlessly promote stuff but instead to build trust with your audience so they WANT to buy from you. To do this you have to actually build a valuable asset and that could be a blog, a YouTube channel or some sort of social media page. Here’s how to do this correctly:
- Choose a topic you love (let’s say it’s losing belly fat)
- Create a website, YouTube channel or social media page on that topic
- Create valuable content that helps people (this gets you visitors seeking help/info on the problem)
- Promote an affiliate product that (in this case) solves the problem of losing belly fat
What you’re doing here is flipping the script. Instead of YOU finding people to promote your affiliate stuff, they find YOU because they are looking for solutions for (in this case) losing belly fat and provided you give them good information on this, they’ll trust you and buy from you.
A key component in all this: If you’re going to build a successful affiliate business, you need to choose a topic you love. This is important because you’ll be able to create better and more trustworthy content that people can relate to. So in the above example, if you personally know a lot about losing belly fat, it’s easier to make content on that topic and relate to people, thereby making them trust you more and that helps the sales process.
How to reach $100,000+ with this business model:
Let’s take the above example of losing belly fat. Suppose you find a belly fat loss program (that’s legitimate, please don’t promote any scams) and pays you $50 per sale. To reach $100,000 you would need to:
- 5-6 sales a day ($250+ day)
- Make 2,000 sales every year ($100,000)
This is something that is totally doable through the above formula and I’ve personally done that before (more than once). To get to that level, I would follow the above steps, make content across a blog, YouTube channel and social media pages on anything involving losing belly fat (review programs, cover common questions, etc…).
This will get you visitors, some of which will buy from your affiliate link, provided you give them good information. If you can make 1 sale, you can make 5. If you can make 5, you can make 10, 100, 1000, etc…
You can even promote multiple things if you want. You don’t always have to stick to promoting just 1 item. You have the flexibility to promote whatever you want. I just recommend it be something related to a topic you love, know a lot about and helps people because value > trust > sales.
Getting started:
Learning/doing affiliate marketing on your own is tough. This is something I learned the hard way when I was getting started and what I strongly recommend is a program that can guide you from start to finish to making it all work and that has the following things:
- Proper affiliate training
- The right tools to get started
- Help if you run into any problems/have questions
- Has plenty of success stories
- And you can try it for free
There is only 1 program I have found that has ALL of these things and it’s the Wealthy Affiliate program.
Here’s how it works:
What they do is teach you how to build profitable affiliate websites on ANY passion you have in life (among other skills). They also have tons of success stories (including my own):
Here’s some quick facts about the program:
- You can try them for free (no CC required)
- They have over 2.7 million members
- More success stories than any other program out there
- Beginner friendly training
- 4.9 stars out of 5 from Trustpilot (500+ reviews)
Bottom line: Affiliate marketing can totally work for you and programs like Wealthy Affiliate create that bridge to help you reach that success.
Furthermore they’re free to try and while they do have 2 additional memberships after the free version (Premium: $49/month and Premium Plus: $99/month), I encourage you to try the free membership first, immerse yourself in the program and see if you like it and want to stick around or not.
I also want to add 2 more things for the sake of honesty/transparency:
- Yes I am promoting the program, but I don’t want you to upgrade UNLESS you absolutely love your free experience there first.
- Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme and does take time/work to build (you need to put in months for this usually), but the success stories you saw above (and there’s many more) speak for themselves.
Here’s how to get started:
- Join here (its free)
- Complete the set up process which has you create your first passion based affiliate website
- Start your training
The value of the Wealthy Affiliate (WA) speaks for itself and if you have any doubt (which is totally normal), test drive them risk free (there’s literally no credit card required).
Bonus: Get my personal help included when you join
As I said earlier I help people in this business and that’s certainly the case if you join Wealthy Affiliate through me. Once you sign up and create your first affiliate website (called a HUB), I’ll personally contact you and be there if you have any questions.
Not only will you be able to get free access (and massive value) from Wealthy Affiliate, but you’ll also get 1 on 1 access to me, one of their top success stories on top of that.
I look forward to hearing what you think of the program and answering your questions. And if there’s any you have, you can also message me below in the comments section too! Thanks for visiting this page!