One of the first ways I began to make money was through affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, when someone purchases a product that you promote, you receive a commission. The benefit is that all you have to do is drive traffic. You do not have to create a product or provide support for the product.
Drive Traffic —> Person Purchases —> You Earn a Commission
How to Find Products to Promote
You can find products in whatever niche you are interested in. Whether it be health, hobbies, making money from home, golfing, etc., there are product creators who offer affiliate commissions. The easiest way to find these products is to go to your favorite search engine and search for niche + affiliate program. It is certain that you will find many vendors looking for affiliates.
What Affiliate Products Should You Promote?
Many marketers will promote whatever is hot, trending and promises a large commission. I feel that it is important to promote with integrity. I urge my students to promote only products of value and the only way to know for sure is to buy the product or ask for a review copy. Until you have seen the product yourself, you have no idea if it is quality or not.
I also only promote products that make sense to my audience. I know what it is like to create a business on a shoestring budget. Every product I promote must pass the shoestring marketer test. Is it quality? Does the value far exceed the price? Will it help my followers move closer to their goals? If the product does not pass this test, I will not promote it.
Affiliate Marketing Commissions
Depending on the product and the vendor, the affiliate marketer can earn anywhere from 4% (typical affiliate commission for an Amazon product) up to 100%.
Why would a product creator give an affiliate marketer 100% of the purchase price? Many product creators realize that having an email list of people who have bought a product is worth far more than an email list of people who were simply seeking a free gift. Second, a product creator might give 100% commissions on the front end product, but then make the lion’s share of money in the backend, or upsell to the product, all the while attracting affiliate marketers with the 100% commission on the front end.
As a shoestring marketer, I love affiliate marketing because it can be done on the cheap. Marketers can promote products through free means such as Facebook pages and groups and YouTube videos. The biggest downside of affiliate marketing is that 1) it can be difficult to start if you do not know what you are doing and 2) you are not able to get the email addresses of the people who buy the product. This means that everyday you are starting from scratch. You get a commission, but the product owner gets the buyer on his email list.
Until now….
Learn From The Best
Whether you are learning a new sport, or skill, the fastest way to become good is to hire a coach or study the experts in the field.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, two of my favorite affiliate marketers are Mike Thomas (mikefrommaine.com) and Brett Rutecky (brettrutecky.com). They promote internet marketing products through video reviews. Mike interviews product owners and Brett reviews the product directly. Both marketers are thorough and ethical; they provide the information necessary to make an informed decision without the hype.
Both Mike and Brett are also product creators. Brett is a software developer and his software products are always top notch. I have purchased them all. Both Mike and Brett are tremendously invested in helping other marketers. Their products, in addition to being useful in their own right, also have an extra element to help internet marketers even further.
How cool is that?
Affiliate Trax – The Complete Affiliate Marketing System
Their newest product, Affiliate Trax, is a complete money making system. Yes, really. It provides the purchaser 1) software to track affiliate commissions. With this software you can see who has bought, how often each person refunds (are they a serial refunder?), which products sell the best, the refund rate of the product (does the vendor produce good products?) and more. With this type of intel, you can zero in quickly to what types of products your list is interested in, and which product vendors produce the best quality products.
Affiliate Trax also provides 2) full affiliate marketing training for those who are new to this aspect of making money online. Even seasoned marketers will find information that will increase sales and profits. Brett and Mike both currently make 30K per month with affiliate marketing.
Think maybe they have something to teach?
Affiliate Trax also allows the purchaser to 3) sell 25 copies of this product as their own. This means that in addition to learning how to become an affiliate marketer from two of the best in the business, they will also give you the opportunity to be a product owner without having to create a product or provide support for that product. Awesome!
To me, however, the best part of Affiliate Trax is that 4) the software captures the buyer’s software for the affiliate marketer! Sweet! You promote a product, the person buys and you get BOTH the commission and the email address. You automatically begin to build up a buyer’s list!
This is shoestring marketing at its finest! So the best beginners guide to affiliate marketing PLUS the best tracking software for affiliate marketing, PLUS the best and perhaps only software to capture the email addresses of those you promote to — can be found in this one, outstanding product: Affiliate Trax by Mike and Brett.
Below is my video review of Affiliate Trax:
Since I purchase every product that I promote, if you buy Affiliate Trax and have questions about the best way to go about using it, feel free to contact me!
A note about the reviews on this site: I am an affiliate for every product I review. Most of the time, I have purchased the product that I have reviewed. Sometimes vendors of these products give me them without charge in order for me to test them. However, all of my reviews are done as honestly as possible. No promises are made to the vendor regarding my review. If you click a link on this site that takes you to a paid product, the link will be an affiliate link, which means that I will be paid a percentage of the sales price, if you decide to purchase that product.