Let’s leave Facebook monetization for now and learn how content creators can earn money with much smaller audience through affiliate marketing.
There are many ways you can earn an income as a content creator, it’s not just through ads revenue. With ads revenue you’ll need a set amount of followers and many other criteria required by the platform. It is sometimes difficult to reach those requirements.
The requirements for followers are much smaller in affiliate marketing than with AdSense. It is much better for beginner content creators to start with affiliate marketing as a source of income and gradually grow to be eligible for ads or other monetization tools.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when a creator creates content for his audience promoting a product or a service where he gets a unique link for those products or services. He then gets a commission for every purchase of those products or services.
Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest type of digital marketing created. It’s been used by many companies. With the rise of the content creators, they became a primary source of partners for the promotion of these affiliate programs.
It’s a form of passive income for content creators in the sense that you don’t need to exert a lot of effort to earn from affiliate marketing.
You just need to set up and post your content initially, include your link, and you can earn even if you are asleep. Unlike videos for in stream ads, you constantly have to make videos to earn more.
How affiliate marketing works?
- Apply to an affiliate program.
It is better to choose one or two programs initially to get a hang of how affiliate marketing works.
In choosing products or services, I would suggest you look at what products or services you are currently using or have experienced using. You can better promote products and services that you have already used and have some perspective of.
You will be given either a dashboard where you can generate unique links or unique links from the company, once your application is approved.
- The content creator post content highlighting the product or service of the company with his unique link.
It’s now time to create content that will highlight the product or service that you are promoting.
This can be a shoutout on your page, a video using the product, or a picture or the product with a description and link. An effective content is one that can solve the problems of your viewers or answer their questions.
- Someone clicks his link and buys the product.
When someone clicks your link and buy something from that link, then that’s how you earn some money through affiliate.
There are certain conditions that has to be met in order for a click to be eligible for a commission. You’ll have to read the company’s affiliate guidelines regarding that. Every company is different.
- The creator gets a commission.
This is the ultimate goal and reason why you do affiliate marketing. You’ll get a certain amount of commission on every person that clicks and buy the product that you are promoting.
There are two types of commission that you might earn from an affiliate marketing.
- Recurring commission. It means you are paid a commission every time your referral makes a purchase. You’ll earn money as long as your referral remains a paying customer. This is usually the case for subscription-based products or services.
- One-time commission. It’s commission that you can get from a one-time purchase by your referrals.
Check the affiliate program’s documentation to know which kind of commission it gives.
- The company pays the commission.
Some companies have a minimum withdrawal limit. It means you’ll have to reach a certain amount of earnings before you can withdraw them.
You’ll have to check with the platform or the company if they have a minumum withdrawal limit.
How to qualify for an affiliate program?
Grow your social media page or your website with significant amount of traffic. It doesn’t require much but it should be enough to be considered by companies to join their affiliate program.
You’ll also have to be consistent in posting your affiliate content. It doesn’t have to be every day, but regular posting is required.
Some affiliate programs will terminate you if you don’t get certain amount of earnings in a given period of time.
How do you find affiliate partners?
There are two ways that you find affiliate partners to collaborate with.
- You can check the companies website if they have an affiliate program.
Most software companies will have some kind of affiliate program. If these are the kinds of products or services you want to promote, you can check out their websites and look for an affiliate page.
- Check different affiliate platforms for businesses that offers affiliate programs. Some known affiliate platforms are:
Some Examples Of Affiliate Partnerships I have
Canva affiliate
Namecheap affiliate
Amazon Influencer
I hope you’ve learned something about affiliate marketing and how you can benefit from it as a content creator.
Don’t forget to share this article to people that you think will benefit from it.
