Can you really make money without any products?
Heck yes you can! It’s called affiliate marketing.
The history of affiliate marketing dates back to 1989, when businessman William J. Tobin launched his PC Flower and Gifts store online.
He decided to take an innovative approach and created an affiliate program that generated $6 million in sales per year. Pretty impressive considering this was the late 80s!
William then went on to patent the affiliate marketing concept in 2000.
You may be thinking, well that’s cool and all, but what is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when businesses recruit individuals to promote their products or services to their own audience to receive a commission.
As an affiliate you get a commission for each purchase someone makes on the company’s website using a unique link or coupon code associated with you.
In other words, it’s a joint partnership between you (the affiliate) and a business.
In this week’s newsletter, we are going to delve into why affiliate marketing is such a powerful side hustle and the different ways in which you can engage with audiences.
What you can expect this week:
- Trends. We dissect the most popular categories affiliates are making bank in right now.
- Strategies. We unpack the various places affiliate marketers place their links, drive traffic, and make sales!
- Tool of the Week. The tool we recommend this week is Pretty Links. A tool that makes it easy to manage your affiliate links across a variety of platforms.
Trends
This week, we’ve done some research into the most popular categories for affiliate programs, along with just how much businesses are investing into affiliate programs. There’s plenty of opportunity to find some great affiliate offers to promote to your audience!
Affiliate Marketing Spend in the US
The projected expenditure for affiliate marketing in the United States alone could reach $8.2 billion in 2022, which is up from 7.4 billion in 2021. From only $2.5 billion in 2012, the spending for affiliate marketing has continued to increase year by year, which suggests that more businesses are incorporating affiliate marketing in their campaigns.
Most Popular Categories for Affiliate Marketing
It seems fashion is by far the most popular category to find affiliate programs to offer, however sports & outdoors, along with health and beauty aren’t too far behind.
Fastest Growing Affiliate Categories
That being said, when it comes to up and coming affiliate categories, Toys has seen a huge amount of growth over the last year, followed by software and home improvement.
Largest Affiliate Networks
Amazon Associates Remains the Largest Affiliate Network Despite changing its conditions in 2020.
Strategies
Businesses have realized that through affiliate marketers they can reach a far wider online audience. The larger the business affiliate network, the more opportunities they have for sales and people interacting with their product.
What this means for you as an affiliate marketer is that if there’s an online product you really like, odds are you’ll be able to get an affiliate link to sell it and make some sweet cash!
Affiliate marketing has proved time and time again that it has a wide-reaching impact, simple rewards system, and increases organic online traffic. And with affiliates wanting to promote their unique codes, they will create unique content for the business. It’s a win-win for both parties!
But is it a valid side hustle?
Absolutely! If you put the time and effort into it. It is a low-to no-cost business venture that if planned correctly, can be immensely profitable.
Becoming an affiliate is;
Easy to execute
You simply handle the digital marketing side of selling the product. The beauty of affiliate marketing is you don’t have to worry about tasks like developing, supporting or fulfilling offers.
And low risk
As there is no cost to join an affiliate program, you can start making money with an established company without any upfront investment. Affiliate marketing can also generate a relatively passive income through commissions.
So, you think you would like to try out this affiliate marketing business…
So where should you start?
The businesses you decide to partner will depend on your personal strengths, experience and what your audience is looking for. Let’s unpack a few possibilities.
SEO Affiliates
If you have experience in SEO, becoming a search affiliate could be the thing for you. In this style of program, affiliates advertise a client’s offer via search results or other forms of online advertising.
If you have experience in Facebook advertising or social media marketing, using paid advertising to get a client’s product out to audiences could be the service you offer. This can be a great opportunity for those who don’t have any kind of online following or audience.
Use your mailing list
Have you got an engaged and sizeable mailing list? This is the perfect place to sell your affiliate offers. Write some compelling sales emails and pop your affiliate link inside them. Easy sales!
Affiliate Marketing as a Blogger or Influencer
If you have an established blog, you may find that you can work with certain businesses and incorporate their products or links into your posts.
For example, if you have a cooking blog, you can work with a client that sells kitchen appliances and recommend their products throughout.
As for being an influencer via social media, be it Tiktok, Facebook or Instagram, incorporating a client’s product in stories and posts is a way to direct a new audience to your affiliate links.
How you decide to highlight their product is up to you. That is where your creativity comes into play! Consider why your audience follows you and create something based on what you think they would enjoy.
By adding links or recommending products via social media you’ll be able to drive audience and engagement to your affiliate partner websites.
Start or capitalise on a review site
If you own a review site, think about offering your services to clients and creating honest reviews on their products, providing readers with an affiliate link throughout. As highlighted previously, customers appreciate honesty and valuable content that has critiques as well as positive comments.
TikTok Affiliate Marketing
TikTok.
There’s no escaping it.
Not only is it entertaining but TikTok creators are using the platform to integrate affiliate product placements naturally and engagingly.
If you are already an affiliate and looking at ways to incorporate your link or discount code, consider creating a TikTok account.
When content goes viral, it can provide an excellent opportunity to reach a larger audience for yourself, which inevitably is highlighting your own business as well as the business you are associated with.
If Gen Z is your target audience (anyone born from the years 1981 to 1996), TikTok is proving to be a valid advertising platform, with creators reaping the benefits of aligning with brands.
One of the beautiful things about TikTok, as it operates right now, is it doesn’t seem to restrict how much user traffic creators receive.
Unlike Facebook and Instagram algorithms, TikTok, for the most part, is very lenient with the reach it allows users and how many eyes, organically, are directed to see other’s content, regardless of followers.
It seems TikTok is happy to put your content in front of thousands of eyeballs, with no strings attached. So why not make the most of it!
There are a variety of ways to highlight your affiliate codes if you are wishing to use TikTok as a platform. Here are some below;
- Promote coupon codes or URL’s in your videos
- Add an affiliate URL to your content description
- Redirect traffic to another social profile
- Promoting coupon codes
Here is a short and sharp video on how to include links to your TikTok account.
It’s no secret that placing the correct product in front of the right audience can translate to fantastic return on investments for companies, so they are generally very happy to provide TikTok affiliate marketers with discounts or coupon codes.
Creating content on TikTok can be very simple, or very intricate, depending on how much work you want to make for yourself, but incorporating coupon codes is easy and seamless!
Is affiliate marketing right for you?
If you think any of these affiliate marketing styles could work well with your skills and the platforms you own, why not check out this link on the best affiliate programs currently circulating. The list includes brands such as Amazon Affiliate, Momondo, Wix, eBay Partner Network and Shopify.
It’s always nice to know how businesses will be strategizing working with affiliates. This article goes into the pros of working with affiliate marketers and how it can help increase revenue for companies.
If you’re still a little stuck, we recommend watching this video by Santrel Media. They go into detail on how to get your affiliate business up and running, how to research which business will work best for you, finding products, free vs paid traffic and how to make an affiliate website if required.
Resources we recommend…
If you’re on the fence about whether to become an affiliate, this article from Upgrad breaks down some great reasons why you should delve into the affiliate world.
Learn more about affiliate marketing via TikTok and get a great understanding of how it compares to other social media platforms, its user base, how organic reach works and how to utilize paid advertising.
Tool of the Week
If you decide to become an affiliate marketer, Pretty Links can help you manage your affiliate links easily.
In the past, third-party services have been used to shrink, roll out PHP scripts, or use Apache directives to put together URL redirects. Doing this can have serious drawbacks, it can hurt your credibility as an affiliate, there’s no guarantee the links will work AND it can be very time-consuming as well as difficult to manage and track.
Through Pretty Links, however, you can manage social links, URL redirects, and QR codes much easier. It can shorten, cloak, track and make it far easier to share your links over a variety of platforms, just upload and activate and you can create links instantly!