You have made up your mind that you want to be your own boss. You desire to control your income and ease yourself the stress of waiting for a salary that never satisfies and even though there are other business models such as e-commerce and cryptocurrency, you have chosen affiliate marketing as the business of choice.
That being said, let me tell you six things you need to know before you start your affiliate marketing business.
Saying the world has gone digital would be an overstatement of the truth. Welcome to a world where networking and the ability to handle your network is power. Online statistics has it that 30.9% of online businesses are fake as of 2020.
You might get septical about what are the guarantees of venturing into Affiliate marketing and if it would be a wise investment.
Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, it was made popular by Amazon through pay-per-click on products sold by affiliates.
What exactly is affiliate marketing?
First, we have to understand the very concept of Affiliating and marketing as a whole.
Marketing is exploring and providing value for target audience. This value could come in form of goods and services, tangible or digital (or intangible). In simpler words, it is providing goods or services to those who need them.
Affiliating is another word for partnership. It is coalition with a larger firm based on certain conditions. There are terms to this partnership, that is, you play your part, they play theirs too. This terms could he paying you a fixed fee or paying you on commission.
Affiliate marketing can be simplified into simples terms; that is you earn a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products.
Simply put, it is an advertising model in which a company compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services.
The affiliate ( third-party marketer) simply searches for a product they enjoy (have some knowledge about and feel comfortable marketing), then promotes that product and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make. The sales are tracked via affiliate links.
Affiliate links are unique links that distinguishes one affiliate marketer from the other. The affiliate link is unique for each product and to each marketer. This means two different marketers can market the same product with different links and have their records tracked independently.
Affiliate marketing differs from the pyramid business models and differs from e-commerce. The only thing you do as an affiliate is sell a digital product and get commissions.
Digital products are virtual products, or better put, information products. You can touch them, hence the term virtual, but these give you some actionable processes, steps and information that you could use to achieve some result. In general terms, ebooks, movies, teleseminars, video trainings are all digital products.
The digital product industry is among the fastest growing industry in Nigeria today, coupled with affiliate marketing, sales of digital products is at its highest ever and set to continue growing.
That said here are 6 things to know before starting an Affiliate marketing business.
- Your product
- Your Customers
- Your space
- Your Brand
- Profit
- Risks
Product
Simple. Digital products, goods, etc. The list is endless. As stated earlier, your duty is to advertise these goods and you are paid a commission for the sales made. These products are already having a high demand by people around you. They don’t get spoilt or damaged during delivery, no need to worry about how the customer likes the products, the company will take care of that.
There are varying products, as well as various companies running affiliate programs, such as Expertnaire, Amazon, Learnoflix. Find out the one that suits you and you are passionate about and dive into it.
In Nigeria, Expartnaire is the most popular affiliate marketing platform and best suited for the Nigerian market. The most popular affiliate product in Nigeria as of 2022 is the 72IG course, others are Canada Relocation Blueprint, Ecommerce Leverage Advantage, Facebook Ads Implementation Course, among others.
To promote a product, simply register as an affiliate on Expartnaire, select the product you wish to promote, get it’s unique affiliate link and start promoting. You can learn more about becoming a successful affiliate marketer here.
Customers
Do you bother about the people you would sell to? You might be worried about how you would get clients & customers to hear about and buy the products you’re recommending.
You have to remember that lots of people are harnessing the social media and your products have a ton of people who need them. Your job is to advertise these products and reach out to people interested in what your offer and close the sale. The company takes care of everything else.
Now, finding customers is easier said than done and here are 2 ways to get interested people to check out your offers.
– Organic Traffic method. Here you actively post in groups or other public places about your product and educate people about it. This method is time consuming but works, as well as doesn’t require spending money.
People who indicate interest are then taken to your WhatsApp or some other form of more intimate messaging where you can close the sale. This method is slow and only advisable when you’re new to affiliate marketing. For pros how ever consider method two.
– Paid Traffic Method. This method consumes a lot of money but can be used to scale your fillet marketing business superfast. What do you need to do here is create a lead magnet ( some high-value material which could be an eBook or a video describing your product and giving some other valuable information about your product) and giving it out for free.
Then you are advertising an offer to give out your lead magnet for free to anyone who exchange their contact information with you. Using this method lots of people get your lead magnet and reach out to you, wanting to buy the products through your link. This process is faster and even though it consumes a lot of money (which will be spent on advertising), the rewards are massive.
Your space
The online space is your workplace. You have different media handles as tools with different audiences who seek ways to making profit out of their stay on the online space.
However do not fall into the common trap of trying to reach everyone, everywhere. Instead focus on only 2 social media channels that give you the best reach and promote your products there. Personally I would recommend LinkedIn and Twitter. Twitter specifically, gives one of the best organic reaches of every single platform out there.
Your online space must be fully optimised to show that you are an expert in that industry in which you sell products full stop no one is going to buy from someone who doesn’t look like what he sells. Imagine trying to buy weight loss pills from a very fat man, it just shows that the weight loss pills never works. If you are going to actively attract potential buyers you must clean up your social media handles and look like the part you are trying to sell.
Your Brand
In simple terms, your brand is the entirety of things you do that represent your business. You are an Affiliate marketer, that’s good. You have got a business that can earn you money in five figures. But it’s not a sit-down-and-do-nothing-business. There is work to be done.
You have to create content, create a network, get traffic on your site. Give useful content and advice’s, build your personal brand to be about the product you’re selling. That way you help build, gain and cement trust from prospective and current clients.
So how do you go about this? Irrespective of whether you use the paid traffic method or not, you should create a content calendar where you constantly update value-laden posts on your social media handles. To do this you must be knowledgeable in your niche, this requires you reading and studying materials of the product you wish to sell.
Next, you have to master communication and closing. You must learn to be patient with questions of your potential customers and learn to respond to messages with courtesy.
Profit
You have got profit to make from the sales you make. That after all is the essence of being an affiliate marketer. Since You are basically paid per sale, when choosing a product to promote, you should consider the prophet you’ll be making from that products. This takes into account how much will be spent on accumulating customers. If little to no profit is left after spending to get a customer, then the product isn’t worth promoting.
For example, let’s examine the 72ig course, that is the most sought after product on affiliate marketing. For each sale of the 72ig product, you make 50℅ commission on it. As at the time of writing this post, the 72 IG course goes for ₦60,000. This means for every successful sale you make ₦30,000. Depending on how good you are in advertising you might be spending more or less in acquiring customers and closing sales. You must factor that into your profit and decide if that course/ product is what promoting.
The easiest formula to increase your commission, is through increased sales, the more your sales, the more your commission, the more your commission the more your profit. Simply put make more offers and get more people to see your offers. That is basically all.
You should also note that you don’t need to buy a product before you can promote it on Expartnaire.
Risk
All business are risky, but affiliate marketing could be one of the safest business ever. Why?
- One, you don’t own the products. You are not liable for it integrity this simply means if there is a problem with the product you are not to be blamed. The buyer simply takes up his grievance with the product creator.
- Two, you do not store or transfer the products. Simply put since we are dealing with digital products the buyer gets the product directly from the product creator and you as a middleman do not handle storage or delivery. Even in case of physical product you do not handle storage or delivery you simply connect buyer to seller and get your commission.
- Three, you are not liable for refunds. In case of grievances with the products, The seller is responsible for making refunds as well as keeping to guarantees.
With all these awesome advantages are there any risks? Well yes!
For one, you will need to learn how to close a potential client. This means you must work on your closing skills regularly by learning and implementing. Failure to close properly means you will have a ton of leads which you have spent money and time acquiring and no sales.
Secondly if the product you decide to promote is crappy, since people do not know the content creator, instead they know you, they are likely going to tag you as crappy. However on a platform like Expartnaire, products are vetted for sincerity and results before they are allowed to be on that platform. So you need not worry about this.
Thirdly, if you will be running paid advert you must learn how to advertise properly. Failure to properly advertise at a good rate will mean spending a lot of money without achieving complimentary results.
Away from the risks, the gains are inexhaustible, the profit margin is high, the risk is far reduced. You can make gains through affiliate marketing even when sleeping, the secret, delegate the task, create an ad and see wonders.
The Affiliate Marketing business model enables flexibility, making you your own boss. This means you are free to try out new ways that fit you and you are provided with lot of products to pick according to your niche.
Looking at all these six points so far, it’s safe to say that Affiliate Marketing is one of the safest businesses you can get into in 2022.
Click here to learn more about starting your affiliate marketing journey today.