Starting an Affiliate Business
Last Modified: March 14, 2023

Starting a
business within the Affiliate realm is not something easily done. To think of the Affiliate business as a place
to make money is the wrong way to look at it anyways. Think of the Affiliate Marketing effort as a Partnership
effort, in getting your business attached to brands and companies that align
well with you!
So, what
is Affiliate Marketing?
History
shows that Affiliate Marketing has been around since the commerce world has
started. Sure, it’s entirely different
today, but the gist of it remains.
Let’s say
Caveman A brings a Tasty Treat to his tribe and Caveman B is impressed by the
quality of the treat. If Caveman B goes
and successfully hunts for the Tasty Treat, Caveman A should have been rewarded
for finding the Treat, to begin with.
Of course,
Cavemen didn’t always share, but if there were a reward behind it, that would
necessarily be a commission or compensation for showing the way to get to the
Tasty Treat. Affiliate Marketing works
very similarly.
Successful
Affiliate Marketers have a solid plan and business model that attracts users
and visitors to recommended products and services.
Did
you know: massive websites like Nerdwallet, The Penny Hoarder, Krazy Coupon
Lady, and CNN.com all use Affiliate links?
What are Affiliate
Commissions?
There have
been many breakthroughs in the affiliate world, but one major thing
remains. Using your approved Affiliate
links are the guts of what you need to make money. When you are accepted by an Affiliate
Program, you’ll be able to extract these Links (aka Tracking Affiliate Links).
When you
share these links with your readers, and they end up clicking them, Cookies
will then show the clicker’s ID so that everyone knows who’s coming into the
site. Should a reader buy through the
link, you’ll be rewarded with a commission.
What does
this mean? You need to share affiliate
links with your readers to make money.
Bloggers do this strategically through:
• Creative Content
• Social Media (Pinterest is approved
for it)
• Messaging
• Hundreds of other creative ways!!
Speaking
of Affiliate Technology and Referring Products
As a
society, we’ve always been referring people to goods and services for as
recorded history began. Whether it’s
trendy clothing, food, or cleaning services that act of compensating the person
that can connect the dots is what is somewhat new. And now, because the internet is all about
connecting through links and social media, we can measure affiliate marketing
and referrals down to the T. Thus the
growth of the Affiliate Marketing world.
Affiliate
tracking itself has been around for nearly 20+ years now by utilizing powerful
networks, to standalone software. Things
haven’t changed much though so the guts remain the same since Affiliate
Marketing’s inception.
Here’s how
things work in general…
1. The Affiliate Program has the
technology capable of tracking commission
2. Blogger / Influencer gets approved for
Affiliate Program links (like the ones we have!)
3. When a potential customer clicks these
sorts of links, a tracking cookie is dropped
4. Should the reader end up buying –
Blogger / Influencer gets a commission
About
cookies: Nothing other than the IP
address is typically tracked, so no need to worry about personal information
like Credit Cards and such.
There are
about 5 major Affiliate Networks that provide tracking technology within the
USA and dozens more internationally. So
one of the major pain points of becoming an Affiliate Marketer is finding the
right programs that fit your following because there are so many darn networks!
• ShareASale
• CJ
• Refersion
• Rakuten Advertising
• Impact
• TradeDoubler
• AWIN
• Avantlink
• TUNE
• Cake
• Everflow
• many more, but the best ones are
listed here
Affiliate
Business Models:
Here are
just a few Affiliate based models that have worked in the past that may be of
interest to you:
Cashback
websites
We’ve showed
how you can start a cashback site within our other post, but essentially what
this means is you’ll be promoting and tracking multiple offers on your website
and if a user ends up purchasing through your site, you give back a portion of
the commission to your user.
Blog/Influencer
Probably the
most saturated model is the content maker concept. You’ll find endless amounts of blogs that
want to take over content or Affiliate traction within a specific niche, i.e.
Fishing. Just do a simple search on
“best fishing rods” and you’ll find a bunch of Amazon links, and then a few
blogs that promote several rods, all of which are likely linking out to
Affiliate offers.
Blogging is
more about SEO than anything else, but with the way ChatGPT is changing things,
I just find blogging to be a harder play if you want success, but that’s not
undermining how incredible blogging can be for your business either.
Influencing
is pretty much the same thing as blogging, probably a bit more modern though as
the influencer has geared their video/imagery/other content towards a specific
group of people.
Paid
Search
Some have had
success here, but what this means is you’ll be paying for ads to attract people
to your business model, including Affiliate links within them. Probably the least sustainable model, and I
say this because only a few have done this correctly and the chances of someone
new, like you, working this model to success is extremely small. Those that have had success utilize search
and display networks to post highly engaging work, so that when a user does click
or proceed within an article, they are very likely to buy something. This is a tough model for sure.
Sub
Networks
I think of
sub networks as a similar comparison to cashback websites, in that these
business models promote Affiliate offers and instead of giving a cut of
commission back to the end user, the commission goes to another blogger or
Affiliate website…adding an additional layer of commission.
For example:
1. - Sub Network promotes Macy’s
2. - Affiliate within Sub Network promotes
the Macy’s offer (found within the subnetwork)
3. - Affiliate gets a sale
4.- Subnetwork gets money, as does
Affiliate (end user does not get commission)
The major
downfall of a subnetwork is of course, not actually owning the offer, as that
belongs to the Affiliate Program/Network, so there’s possibility the Affiliate
catches on and wants to promote directly through the program.
Just get started
By getting
hosting you’ll have your
own Email Address, Website Domain Name, and a way to store your website. This is the clear first step!
A domain is essentially
your brand name. For example:
• JoesCrabLegs.com
• MyKidsDriveMeNuts.com
• DisneyPrincessDiaries.com
You’ll find
that there are many hosting solutions that are essentially the same. Just pick the one that gets you started the
quickest and with the best available speed so that your users see the business
as fast as possible (nobody wants to see a slow website!)
So, there’s
no real way to determine cost unless you budget out properly and have a clear
model you want to move forward with.
This is absolutely the key in getting a successful Affiliate business!
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