Affiliate marketing has been one of the easiest and fastest ways to make money online. Many webmasters feels that their earning potential has been going with pay per click programs and the revenue generated according to the traffic they generate is nowhere near satisfaction. Hence, they are switching to affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a way of making money by promoting other’s products or services and earning commissions whenever there is a sale. You do not need to go into the details of buying and selling and neither have to set up a website selling a product. You just promote or rather compel your readers into buying a product or service, and you make money whenever a sale is made. Affiliate marketing works on a commission based referral system where you sign up in an affiliate program and earn through the sales.

Before I tell you how you can be a successful Affiliate, I should mention that just like any other professions of 9 to 5, you will have to work hard and a huge investment of time and efforts will be needed.

Why Affiliate when you have Adsense?

This question is the main reason of webmasters not going for affiliate programs. They have AdSense and they are receiving a check per month. They are earning somewhere between 0.5 – 1.5$ per thousand visitors and its fine for them (at least). But have you noticed the large drop in the Cost per clicks of these programs? The revenue is going down and you hardly see any clicks generated because of people’s banner blindness?

Moreover, you will always have a risk of getting your account banned – if at first place they approve you. One of my friends is having a well-maintained blog with more that 2k visitors per day mostly from search engines and Google denied his participation in AdSense program.

So, if you are banned, not earning much from CPC programs or you believe you should earn more revenue and not satisfied with current situation, may be Affiliate marketing is for you.

How To Become A Successful Affiliate?

1# Niche
Niche is the most important factor that will contribute in your success. Concentrating on one particular niche will be more profitable rather that selling everything. Target a particular audience and stick to specific products.

2# Marketing
Just like other advertising services, you need traffic. You need to show your presence on social media and in search engines. You need to get targeted traffic and buying traffic won’t help you much. Search Engine traffic is considered highly targeted and you will have to go through search engine practices and optimization practices and market your blog. If your blog is discovered in search engine, that will itself prove that your blog is related to the search query.

3# Research your audience
Providing wrong products for your audience will ultimately lead to your failure in affiliate marketing. You need to know your audience. You should know which category the readers of your blog belong to. This is why selecting a particular niche helps. Someone searching information about XBOX games will have more interest in buying games rather than books and novels.

4# Choose the right affiliate
Webmasters have contrasting opinions about sticking to one particular affiliates. There are several affiliate services available like ShareaSale, Commission Junction, Amazon Associates etc. Amazon is so vast that it has almost everything that can be bought.

The point is all these affiliates will work almost the same. Some have a better percentage commission as compared to others. You have to market research before getting into any affiliate program and decide which one is best for you.

5# It will take time
Don’t lose hope. It will take time in earning money from affiliate marketing. Did you have thousand visitors on the day you opened your blog? Certainly no. You will have to market yourself, build an audience, generate traffic and wait for the better results. There are people making five figure income from affiliate marketing. You can also be one.

My opinion:
If you are AdSense publisher and you don’t really want to switch to affiliate marketing, you may give it a try in addition to AdSense. Monitor your statistics and improvise accordingly.

These are some of my affiliate marketing tips for beginners. Don’t sit relax after reading this article. Try yourself and do experiments. Sooner you’ll become a successful affiliate marketer. Good luck!