The 10 Most Frequent Affiliate Marketing Questions with answers

1 What is affiliate marketing, and how does it work?

There are people who are making a full-time income over the internet. Among the many ways to make money online, from selling on Amazon, eBay, and Etsy to creating an online store, affiliate marketing is a powerful way to create a passive income online. Affiliate marketing is a business model that lets people (affiliates) earn the right to promote somebody else products and services. when the sale is made, the affiliate gets a commission.

Affiliate marketing is an online sales tactic that lets a product owner increase sales by allowing others to target the same audience in exchange for a commission by recommending the product to others. At the same time, it makes it possible for affiliates to earn money on product sales without creating their own products.

Affiliate marketing is very powerful and lucrative. Most of the big companies, such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Best Buy, etc., are leveraging the power of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a win-win situation. affiliates could promote products and earn commissions without worrying about creating their own products, and companies could focus more on production operations without worrying about getting new customers.

It is easy to get started with affiliate marketing. No fancy college degree is required, and the best part is that you can start with zero investment.

In this article, I am going to answer the top 10 questions about affiliate marketing and provide the best resources to start an affiliate business today.

2-Can you consider affiliate marketing as a career?

This is a very interesting question, and the answer is yes because there are many successful affiliate marketers who are making thousands of hundreds of dollars online. There are many full-time bloggers and affiliate marketers that I know who are making hundreds, even millions of dollars online. But it depends on your goals and your monetary needs. Creating sustainable success and passing income with affiliate marketing requires some time, and there is also a learning curve.

It depends on your situation and your understanding to know how fast it can happen, but most importantly, there are several rather easy ways to get started. I am going to be very honest with you right now. The statistics show that only 10% of people succeed as full-time online affiliate marketers. Sure, there are many affiliate marketers making huge incomes online, but there are even more who tried, failed, and gave up within 3 months (or even sooner)

I don’t want to scare you with this information. It is possible to make a great living online as long as you do it smartly. You need to learn the right way to do it and have the right tools and skills.

I think it is easy to get started with affiliate marketing because you don’t even need a fancy college degree, but my advice for you is to specialize in at least one domain. Doing so will help you create a more niche-based affiliate business. It will help you create more valuable content and authority in your chosen niche.

3-Is affiliate marketing legal and legit?

Technically, affiliate marketing is 100% legal and legitimate. It is nothing more than an agreement between a business and a marketer that awards the marketer money for referring customers or potential customers. As I mentioned before, most big companies have affiliate marketing programs.

It is a profitable sales tactic that companies use to generate more customers without spending any money on generating leads. They let marketers take responsibility for generating new leads so they can focus on product operations. It’s a system that has been around for a very long time, and there are many, many people making an absolute killing with affiliate marketing.

One rule of thumb is that when choosing a product or program to affiliate with, you must ensure the product or the program is good, provides value, and, most importantly, meets the client’s needs and solves their problems.

You need to be aware that some courses have been flagged as scams. They are selling get-rich-quick programs. People actually buy the program, but they don’t make any money. As an affiliate, you need to try the product or program for yourself to ensure it is good and provides the value it was made for.

In other words, affiliate marketing is absolutely not something that will get you rich quickly. You’ll have to work for it. You will have to learn new skills. You will likely fail quite a bit. And, as is true with any business venture, there’s always a risk that you won’t make any money at all. This is true for basically everybody who has ever tried affiliate marketing, even me. But you will succeed if you do it the right way with the right training and tools.

4-Where to start affiliate marketing?

There are several ways to start an affiliate business. It depends on how serious you are about it, how much success you want to accomplish, and how much time you are willing to put in order to learn this business. Some people use YouTube, social media, blogs, podcasts,s and more to do affiliate marketing. In my personal opinion and experience, each is one component or piece of the puzzle to create successful affiliate marketing.

If you are serious about creating a successful affiliate marketing business, there are a few steps you will need to complete. You will need to learn how to do them correctly or at least pay someone to do it for you. Here are the steps you will have to follow:

1-Learn. The first step is learning about affiliate marketing. You need several skills to succeed in the affiliate marketing business. There are good teaching websites where you can buy good digital marketing courses, such as Udemy.com. You need to leverage the power of YouTube.

YouTube is the number one search engine video-based out there. There is a lot of information available on YouTube, so maybe you can just do a simple search on Google. You can also buy books if you are able. The most important thing to remember here is you need to start learning.

2-Choose a Niche. Before you even begin building your first site, you’ll need to decide which niche you’re going to target. You need to choose a niche that you are passionate about, and you can easily target people. Remember that most of your time will be spent creating valuable site content.

If you don’t know anything about the niche and are not passionate about it, this task will be painful for you. Obviously, if you don’t know what your site is about or who you will target with it, you can’t build a site around it.

3. Research Affiliate Programs. Once you learn some new skills and you have your niche figured out, now it is time to research some good affiliate products and programs that fit your niche. While doing this task, you must ensure you put the users first. You need to research good products and programs that provide value to the users.

You need to use the product and the programs first to ensure they work and produce good results. If you put the users first, all the rest will come alone. Choosing an affiliate program will take some work, but don’t be afraid to invest a significant amount of time into it because this is where your income will come from. Choosing the right program will make it well worth your while.

4-Build a Web Site. Now that you have chosen your niche and developed a business name that matches it, it is time to buy your business’ name domain and start building your website. You can easily do that from one of the most popular vendors, such as Host Gator, Go Daddy, Blue Host, etc.

If you’re a newbie to building websites, using WordPress is the easiest way to set up a site. The WordPress CMS is very easy to use. While coding skills can come in handy, for the most part, you will not require any tech knowledge to set up your site.

5-Create Excellent Content for your website. After your site is set up completely, now it is time to start what people call the most time-consuming in building your affiliate business but it is at the same time the most rewarding part of your affiliate business because it is where you will take care of your users or your audience.

Remember to put your audience first. You need to learn about their needs and concerns, and you will create valuable content to address their need and concerns. You will need to bring good information to your users to create fidelity and loyalty to your website. By focusing on helping your users, you will end up helping yourself and your business.

6-Build an Audience. This is another important step in building your affiliate business. From day one, you need to focus on building an audience. Building an audience for your site will, in some ways, follow naturally once you start producing excellent content. An interested audience will not only bring you consistent traffic but also result in consistent sales for your business.

You can build this audience by leveraging the power of YouTube and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Most importantly, you need to build an email list. When you have a pretty good email list, it is like your ATM machine. You can continue to make sales in the back end.

7-Promoting Affiliate Offers. Finally, the part we’ve all been waiting for! This, my friends, is where things really kick into high gear. Most immature affiliates will jump right to this step and completely bypass steps 1–5. That is why most of them fail (90%). Getting the first 5 steps right in the beginning will set you apart for success.

Once you’ve shown that you can offer something of value in your niche, it’s time to continue adding value by promoting products that will be useful and helpful to your audience. You can promote your offers in a number of ways. It will depend on the type of site you’ve built and also what you’re selling. Learn about other different ways to monetize your website.

5-Can you do affiliate marketing without investment?

Well, this is an interesting question. You will find a lot of people on the internet promoting programs or courses to teach other people how to make money with affiliate marketing without investment. They might not be wrong because it is somehow possible. This is why many people have tried affiliate marketing, but 90% of them fail.

They brought a get-rich-quick scam program, did a few things, and believed they would start making money quickly. It does not work that way! Let’s get serious here.

We are talking about creating a serious business and making real money. Any business requires some seed money to invest. It is true there are many free software and platforms that you can use to create a business. But the problem with that is you will not have the result you need to succeed.

You do not actually own 100% of the business, and you will not be able to scale it up. In the worst-case scenario, you could end up paying more fees in the long run.

If you are very serious about getting results, you must buy your business domain name and get your own hosting. You can use WordPress to build your website. It is free, very popular, and powerful. WordPress powers more than 30% of the world’s websites. You will also need to buy a premium theme and some premium plugins. It will help your website rank higher in search engines and produce more free traffic to your site.

6-What are the best blogging platforms and software for affiliate marketing?

One of the most important tools for affiliate marketing is having a website or a blog. It’s a tough choice because several different blogging platforms exist. How do you find out which one is right for you? If you are looking to start your own website or blog but can’t figure out how to choose the best blogging platform, I put together a list of the most popular platforms out there.

If you want to learn more about each of them, consider reading this article written by WPBeginner. Find here the best automation tools to increase your website performance.

7-How does affiliate marketing work with Amazon?

Amazon’s affiliate program, called Amazon Associate, is like any other affiliate marketing program out there. It is free for marketers to sign up and earn the right to promote Amazon products on their websites. For every product sold, Amazon will pay a commission. Actually, Amazon Associates is one of the first online affiliate marketing programs, and it was launched in 1996. The Amazon Associates program has a more than 15-year track record of developing solutions to help website owners, Web developers, and Amazon sellers make money by advertising millions of new and used products from Amazon.com and its subsidiaries.

Here are the steps to become an Amazon Affiliate and promote Amazon products

Create your website and have it ready and live.
Sign Up to Become an Amazon Affiliate
Learn about Amazon’s Affiliate commission structure
Learn How to Use Amazon Affiliate Links
Create Content That Converts Readers to Buyers
Measure your performance with an analytics tool and scale up

8-Can you do affiliate marketing without an email list?

The answer is yes. You can definitely run an affiliate business without an email list. Some people make a decent amount of money from affiliate marketing without an email list. Based on experience, if you are running affiliate marketing without an email list, it is a huge mistake, and you are leaving a lot of money on the table. An email list is one of the most important tools for affiliates to make money.

So many people think that email marketing is old-fashioned, but the truth is you can use it to build trust with your target clients. When you do this over time, you will convert visitors into active clients and first-time clients into repeat customers.

It also plays a critical role in helping you keep your clients informed about such things as promotions, new sales, and offers/discounts. In the US alone, over 28% of buyers subscribe to products and stores via email so that they can stay updated on products they care about

9-Affiliate marketing vs dropshipping: What is the best way to make money online?

Dropshipping is a way to run an online store where you don’t have to store inventory or ship products to customers. You just set up the storefront to sell and collect money just like a regular store. But in the back end, instead of having to pack and ship the product once you receive an order, you place an identical order with the distributor at a wholesale price, and the distributor takes care of shipping the product to the end customer for you.

Yes, there are higher prices per product, and your margins can be a little low, but the truth is that you can start an online store with just a little investment.

On the other hand, affiliate marketing is having the right to promote somebody else’s product, refer customers to another business, and take a commission if the customer makes a purchase. This is simple as it is. You don’t directly collect any money from customers. Once a sale has been made, the affiliate business is responsible for paying you your commission which usually occurs on a monthly basis.

The advantage of affiliate marketing is that the merchant does the entire process. Your only job as an affiliate is to refer the product to customers, and you are done. You just wait to collect your commission if the sale is made. You don’t have to worry about customer support or product fulfillment.

With a dropshipping store, the customer actually makes the purchase from your website. You are responsible if the customer does not get the product on time or if the product is broken or defective. You will have to deal with all the customer support. In addition to that, for dropshipping, you will have to set up a complete storefront that accepts credit cards and other forms of payment instead of affiliate marketing, where all you have to do is throw up an informational site or blog.

10-which niches work best for affiliate marketing?

People have been asking this question a lot, especially when they are newbies. My honest response is simple. You can make money from any niche you might choose if you have enough people to target because many products can fit your niche very easily. However, marketers have been arguing over time that health, wealth, fitness, and dating are the best niches in which to start an affiliate marketing business.

Here are two articles to read if you are interested in learning more. “11 Most Profitable Niches For Affiliate Marketing” was written by Jeff Ramlee on his website Lead Dyno, and the second one is “What Are The Most Profitable Niches For Affiliate Marketing?” by nichehacks.com. If you want to learn more about how to use affiliate marketing as a programmer, Click here