Imagine this…

You wake up in the morning, check your phone and find out you mad money overnight while you were sleeping?

Passive Income is a glorious thing. You have the ability to make money in your sleep. Literally. 

The best way for beginners to start making passive income is through affiliate marketing. 

What is it you might ask? Affiliate marketing is when you promote other’s products or services. And in return, you receive a commission on each sale. 

This post contains affiliate links, for more information visit my disclaimer page.

Affiliate Marketing…What is it?

On Smart Passive Income, Pat Flynn describes affiliate marketing as “the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.”

In short, you recommend products and services to your audience and make a commission if someone makes a purchase.  So for example, if you have a blog and recommend products that can be purchased on Amazon (which you have signed up as an affiliate through). Now every time someone purchases those items you mentioned in your post you receive a small commission. How cool is that?

 

How to integrate

The easiest way to start affiliate marketing is with a blog. As I mentioned above, linking your recommended affiliate products and services in that post will help get more eyes on your links. But you don’t have to have a blog to be an affiliate marketer. There are plenty of successful affiliate marketers that do not have a blog. 

Social media is a great way to include affiliate links. Ever scroll through Instagram stories and see the swipe up icon at the bottom of the screen. A lot of times those are linking to an affiliate link. If you don’t have the swipe up feature on your account ( you need like 10K+ followers) you can add the link on your Instagram. 

Instagram, not your thing? Any social media platform will work on Facebook and Pinterest are my two favorite ways to market my affiliate products.  Want to learn to make money as an affiliate marketer on Pinterest check out this great course that Elise from House of Brazen put together. 

Lastly, Youtube is also a great platform to share affiliates. If it is something you already use and can easily incorporate into your blog, social media or Youtube channel then its a no brainer to add them. Might as well make a few extra dollars. Right?

 

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

There are three main benefits I find with affiliate marketing. Passive income, low cost, work from home.

Passive

Dave Ramsey defines passive income as “money you earn in a way that requires little to no daily effort to maintain. Some passive income ideas—like renting out a property or building a blog—may take some work to get up and running, but they could eventually earn you money while you sleep.”  

There is nothing more exciting than waking up to emails showing the commission you earned the previous night just because you shared products you love with your audience. 

Low Cost

If you plan to go the blog route, which I suggest, you can easily start a blog through Siteground web hosting for as little as $3.95 per month. And blogs are so easy to set up and maintain. 

But if you chose to forgo the blog, social media is a great option and those are free to start. 

Work from home

No getting up early, commuting for hours and sitting in an office all day. You can do affiliate marketing from really anywhere. This gives you the freedom to work from home, the coffee shop or on the beach. 

 

Getting Started

In just a few simple steps you can get started on your affiliate marketing journey. 

Find products in your niche

If you have your niche already identified, you can find products in your niche to promote. Chances are a product or service you have already used has an affiliate program. 

For example, I talk a lot about planners. You can Google “Planner + Affiliate program” and find a plethora of companies that allow affiliates. So look into products you already use and recommend. If you have taken any online courses or eBooks see if they have an affiliate program as well. 

I highly suggest only recommend products you have used and liked. 

Set up Social Media or Website

Once you get your website or social media up and running you gotta get an email list going. Your followers are those who will most likely purchase from you. Or maybe they will share it with a friend. Email is one of the best marketing strategies so do not forget to leverage this as well. 

 

While affiliate marketing is easy to start, I highly suggest investing in good quality education to help you make the most of affiliate marketing. There are a ton of affiliate marketing courses out there it’s hard to identify the good ones. Well, I have taken quite a few courses and have found one course that absolutely stands out from the rest. Want to learn more about the course that has helped me take my affiliate marketing business to the next level check out this powerful web class.