Looking for ways to make money online as an affiliate marketer in 2020? The idea of making money online with a PC and internet connection is shrouded with mysticism and it wouldn’t be rare for one’s curiosity to be peaked by this notion.
Who wouldn’t want to sit in the comfort of their home and earn a living from their computer?
But with all the hype and bold claims of people who make large sums of money online, it certainly does get the alarm bells ringing as to whether this notion is just a fantasy.
Can one truly make money online and if so, how does one go about pursuing a career online?
The fact is it is undoubtedly possible to earn a living online, but the area that is often not emphasized by people selling methods and “secrets” to make money on the internet is that takes hard work, knowledge, experience, and perseverance to truly reach the pinnacle of success online.
Working online is not a part-time endeavor; it is a real job that requires complete dedication.
But the possibilities and opportunities are endless once you learn the ropes, and you can earn a tremendous income once the foundation of your business is laid and solidified.
In this post, we will discuss the most common route taken by people to make money online.
This particular method is known as affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is basically selling products or services on behalf of a merchant.
When you sell a merchant’s product or service you receive a commission on each sale.
The commission you receive is a percentage of the selling price and that percentage is decided upon by the merchant.
There isn’t any standard percentage commission in the industry and the range is broad, but for the purpose of this article we will present an example to help you understand how it all works:
If you see a product online that you want to promote and the merchant offers an affiliate program, you can join that program and begin promoting the product.
If the product sells for $100.00 and the affiliate commission offered by the merchant is 25%, you will receive $25.00 ($100*25%) for every confirmed sale you generate through your marketing efforts.
Promoting affiliate products online can become an arduous task if you are not familiar with the online promotional methods at your disposal and even if you are familiar with the various methods it is still a challenge to generate sales online.
For a newbie entering the affiliate industry, the challenge is so great that many quit without making a dime.
Now don’t let that fact deter you because for most marketers who have become successful online they too had to dig deep and persevere until they finally made a sale, and once they made a sale the feeling that says “it can be done” motivated them to continue making sales online.
Once you are able to cross that first barrier it surely becomes easier.
The reason why many quits is due to lack of knowledge and not understanding the marketing approaches that work best, but on the other hand some people are just not marketers – they do not possess the ability to sell and their strengths lie elsewhere.
It is important for one to recognize one’s strengths before one decides to pursue a career online.
Requirements to Become an Affiliate Marketer
The tools that you require to begin making money online as an affiliate are firstly a computer and an internet connection – without these tools, you cannot begin an online career.
Secondly, you will need a small budget of about N50,000 a month to get started.
This amount will be invested in purchasing a domain name (N4,500/year) like ours is https://www.hynaija.com and you will also need to pay for monthly/annual hosting which costs in the region of N4,000 for a basic package.
There are free alternatives like blogger.com that will allow you to start a website for free but it is advisable to build your own website.
ALSO READ: How To Make Money Online From Blogging
The process of building a simple website is easy – do not let fear cripple you because the tools out there today have given ordinary people who have no technical abilities the opportunity to create marvelous looking websites all on their own.
Thirdly, you will need to be part of an affiliate network or program which will give you access to products which you can promote online.
There are various networks out there and we in Nigeria have a few of our own but we have analyzed the Nigerian affiliate networks and all we can say is that Nigerian affiliate programs and networks are leaps behind other global networks.
Our Nigerian affiliate programs do not understand the risk an affiliate takes to promote products online and we feel their commission structures exploit the affiliates.
As such we will not mention the names of the networks in this country.
Our hope is that Nigerian companies begin to see the value an affiliate can offer them and design their commission structures in a way that will reward affiliates.
On the global front, there are various big networks that offer you a large pool of products and companies for you to choose from. The commissions vary substantially from one product to the next.
We have seen commission payments from 1% all the way to 80%.
Some of the global affiliate networks are:
Once you have access to the internet, a website, and a product to promote you can begin your promotional activities which will help you make money online.
However, we would like to emphasize that you should first gain all the knowledge you can before you invest a cent online.
Be cautious and do not buy online money-making programs because all the information you need to begin an affiliate marketing career can be found online for free.
A good start for you if you are interested in affiliate marketing will be to join an internet marketing forum.
We suggest The Warrior Forum as it is the largest online marketing forum in the world, it is free to join and there are many successful affiliates on that forum who will help answer your questions without expecting anything in return.
My personal advice to you will be to join the forum and start reading all the popular threads that have a rating, and you should also use the search function on that forum before you begin a thread to ask questions as all the information you will ever need is in all likelihood already somewhere in the archives of the forum.
The Warrior forum is an amazing resource of knowledge for any budding internet marketer.
That brings us to the end of this post – we hope you now have a better understanding of affiliate marketing and how it can help you make money online.