Hello friends! Today, in my article I will tell you what an affiliate program is and how you can make money from affiliate programs on the Internet! There are many opinions about how to make money with affiliate programs. Some say that you definitely need your own website and your own subscription base, others say that none of this is needed and there are many such methods. Well, accordingly, I will tell you about these methods here.
Sit back comfortably, read carefully, and at this time I will share with you my accumulated knowledge on the topic of affiliate programs, and also tell you about my experience and give you a few tricks and life hacks on how to make money on affiliate programs without your own website and your own database.
What is an affiliate program
Affiliate programs are one of the most popular types of earning money on the Internet. The most important advantage of making money on affiliate programs is that you can earn money without having your own business, store, or website.
An affiliate program is a collaboration between a seller and an affiliate (participant in the affiliate program). That is, you become a partner of a company or store owner and sell their products for a percentage. Typically, the payout percentage ranges from 20 to 100%, depending on the type of product or service. Earning money from affiliate programs means earning money from other businesses.
Earning money from affiliate programs is perhaps the simplest and most effective way available to every person: whether you are a student, a student, a pensioner, a mother on maternity leave, or even a disabled person who is unable to go to work. You can make money on affiliate programs without leaving your home, and even under a palm tree in Bali.
The essence of making money on affiliate programs
The essence of making money on affiliate programs is that by participating in an affiliate program, you receive a percentage (commission) for the fact that you advertised an affiliate product and the person who purchased it clicked on your link.
EXAMPLE : Let's say a person who has his own phone store. He, accordingly, wants his goods to be sold, but he himself either does not know how to promote them or does not want to. To do this, he registers his product in the affiliate program catalog. There are a lot of such sites on the Internet.
He reports that his product can be advertised and promoted by anyone and the store owner will pay a 30% commission for each product sold in his store. For example, a phone costs 7,000 rubles, and the sales commission will be 2,100 rubles. That is, you get 2100 rubles in your pocket. And both sides win.
You or anyone can become a partner of this store and receive your interest. To do this, you register in the affiliate program catalog and select any product you are interested in and connect to the affiliate program of this store.
Then you receive your unique affiliate referral link and begin advertising this product on all possible Internet platforms: social networks, newsletters, websites, blogs, etc. Further, when a person follows your referral link and buys this product, the program automatically gives you a commission of 20-50% from the sale of the product. This is what the step-by-step action plan for promoting an affiliate program looks like:
Let's say you don't know how to sell online yet. In this case, you can also earn money offline, i.e. in real life. For example, you have a friend who has his own store or business and is looking for clients, you can offer him to find him a client for the store and agree on a percentage of the sale. I think he won’t refuse, unless, of course, he needs clients.
Just think about it, you most likely often recommend to your acquaintances and friends some things or products that are sold in stores in order to protect them from bad things. But don’t you think that on the Internet and even in real life you can get good money for this just for the fact that you simply recommended a good product to a person and gave the store address.
Well, how do you like this way of earning money?
This way you can easily earn money without sitting in a stuffy office, puffing away at the computer and fulfilling the whims of your superiors.
Step-by-step instructions for beginners
To make good money on affiliate programs and reach at least 40,000 rubles, I recommend strictly following the step-by-step guide for beginners described below.
Finding a partner
There are many affiliate networks that have their own characteristics and nuances. When choosing a program, consider the size of the commission and how it is paid, read reviews from other people if you are not completely sure of the reliability of the affiliate program.
It is important to check the affiliate program for adequacy. To do this, contact the support service, ask a few questions and analyze how long it takes for them to answer you. Evaluate the quality of the consultants' work. If they answer you quickly and clearly, then this company values its partners.
Brand is considered an important factor. Promoting products from well-known companies is much more profitable than projects from little-known authors. The demand for the product also plays a significant role. If the affiliate product is in good demand, you will earn more commissions.
Copy the link
The referral link contains a unique identifier of the user who posted it. It helps to attract more traffic to the site.
For posting an affiliate link, you receive a profit if you click on it, register, buy a product, or perform other actions. You can find the referral link in your personal account after registering on the advertiser’s website.
Promoting the link
You can effectively promote your chosen affiliate program in the following ways:
- on a personal website or blog;
- on YouTube, Instagram, VKontakte;
- in communities and forums;
- contextual advertising;
- mobile app;
- on the landing page.
If you want to accumulate targeted traffic and attract only interested users, I recommend choosing promotion using a landing page.
YouTube is considered an equally effective tool for distributing an affiliate program. You can create a channel on which you will post interesting videos, gain an audience and advertise affiliate programs.
If you don't have time to create high-quality and unique content, you can buy advertising from famous bloggers. At the beginning or end of their videos, they will insert your ad for 10-30 seconds, and the referral link will be placed in the description under the video.
To promote affiliate programs, you can create an application for Google Play or the App Store. For example, an application for searching for airline tickets or purchasing goods on Aliexpress. You can also create various applications and earn money from advertising from Google Adsense.
We receive a reward
If a person registers using your referral link, you receive income for being able to attract a new client. After just 7-10 days, you can analyze the first statistics, which will display the number of total visitors and how many of them performed any active actions.
We withdraw money
You can withdraw money earned from affiliate programs through payment systems such as Yandex.Money, Qiwi, Webmoney, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller and others. Then you can transfer them to a bank card, cash them and use them at your discretion.
How I started making money on affiliate programs
I have been involved in affiliate programs since 2014. My work on affiliate programs began with one program, which I actively promoted on YouTube, I recorded my videos with my voice, told in detail how the program works and how you can make money from it.
At first there were no clients, I tried to promote in different ways, at that time I had already created my landing page, my email newsletter, in 2 months I collected my first 100 subscribers, I was very happy about it. Sales began, requests from YouTube began to fall to me, little by little, everything grew.
Every day my base grows, the number of sales increases, the desire and motivation appear to do more and better! When I received my first check, I was as happy as a child, I remember it was a check for 630 rubles!
You will also have such emotions when you earn your first money. Moreover, the joy will not be from the fact that money fell into your hands, but more from the fact that it finally worked for you! And this is an indescribable feeling. I really wish you to feel these emotions. But for this you will have to work, try, and most importantly - don’t give up! I dug up a letter where it says that I have received my first commissions:
How to promote affiliate links: bad advice
We need traffic, a lot of traffic! We need as many people as possible to see our affiliate link and follow it to our offer. So let's spam. We will write millions of emails, hundreds of messages and comments on other people’s blogs and forums, on social networks and instant messengers. Let's not be shy, the more the better, and arrogance is the second happiness!
Well, you get the idea. This approach to making money on affiliate programs will not lead to anything good. Do not use spam under any circumstances, it is not only unethical, but also ineffective. You will only waste time and be disappointed. There will be no income, and if there is any, it will be temporary and unstable.
Okay, let’s ignore spam and try contextual advertising. This white method will definitely make a profit! Probably it will... or not?
If you have a little (or a lot) of money that you are ready to use as an advertising budget, you can run ads in Yandex Direct or YAN, Google Ads or in any other contextual advertising or teaser network. It is even possible that there will be a positive result if you have knowledge and experience in this field. And if not, don’t rush, because losing your budget is an unpleasant event, and if you use contextual advertising ineptly, it cannot be avoided.
But even if you have experience and knowledge in the field of contextual advertising, you should think carefully and weigh the pros and cons before deciding to take this step. You must understand that you will be working surrounded by strong competitors with large budgets, that the cost of a click is growing all the time, and in order to earn a percentage of sales in an affiliate program, you need to try very hard.
Of course, if you undergo high-quality training and become a virtuoso director, you can make very good money not only by advertising affiliate programs, but also by setting up advertising campaigns for other people’s businesses (they pay well for this).
It’s clear that contextual advertising is difficult and risky... But there is another way. Order an advertising issue in someone else's newsletter! There are already subscribers there, they subscribed to that newsletter, which means they will subscribe to mine. You can select a targeted newsletter, pay the author and voila! Is it that simple?
Yes, of course, there is such a method, but there are a lot of subtleties and pitfalls. Authors who run really high-quality newsletters most likely will not place any first paid advertisement that comes their way, and finding such an author will not be easy.
This direction has already been turned into an independent business, there are even services - email exchanges. Many authors create newsletters for the sole purpose of squeezing as much profit as possible from them, and subscribers in such databases are inactive. In general, getting targeted subscribers in this way is very problematic; there is a big risk of wasting money. But, if you learn to find the “right” mailing lists for advertising, this method can be very profitable.
How affiliate programs work
You're probably asking: how do I know that a client came from me? Of course, you are wondering how you get a percentage when a person buys a product through your link. There are several tools that help remember the process of purchasing a product through your link. When registering in the affiliate program, you are assigned a login (your personal ID), which will be used to track all sales. That is, each of your affiliate links will contain your login, which will track all sales.
Here is an example of a referral link:
When purchasing a product using your link, a person’s browser stores this information (in a file called a “cookie”), and, accordingly, based on this, the commission is accrued specifically to your ID. And all this data is combined into one of your referral links. You will probably ask: could there be deception? No, there can be no deception.
There is a special CRM system, a separate special website that allows the affiliate program to function, everything happens automatically. Neither people nor companies do this, it’s all done by special robots.
How to choose a good affiliate program
There are a huge number of affiliate programs on the Internet. I do not recommend choosing affiliate programs blindly or at random. Choose a topic that is more familiar to you and that you have some knowledge of. Before choosing an affiliate program, I advise you to first figure out which audience you would be more comfortable working with and communicating with. For example, you prefer to communicate with women, or maybe with men. If you are more comfortable communicating with women, then you need to promote the topic of weight loss or needlework. If with men, then the topic is business or sports.
You can find an affiliate program on many sites. But the most common option is sites such as Glopart.ru, Justclick.ru. I myself work with these sites, and they are very convenient and reliable for working with affiliates. I recommend going to these sites, registering and starting to study and promote the affiliate programs that interest you.
AD-X system is an excellent option for earning your first money . ru . This is a system where you are paid commissions not for selling a product, but for signing up. For example, for bringing one subscriber to an advertising landing page, you are paid 70 rubles per subscriber.
Accordingly, if you brought 10 subscribers to the landing page, you already receive 700 rubles. I recommend that you familiarize yourself with this very interesting system. It was here that I started receiving my first good commissions.
I recorded a video instruction on how to use the AD-X service. You can watch it below:
How to promote affiliate links: useful tips
Start creating your own “touch points” with potential clients if you don’t already have one.
Own website
Yes, you must have a basis for building an audience. This audience must be targeted. Therefore, first of all, you need a website. Create your website on the topic you want to promote as part of the partnership. Fill your site with high-quality thematic content, and the highest quality, loyal and interested users will come to you, who themselves are looking for answers to the questions you will write about.
Would you say that a website is difficult and time-consuming? Well, okay, then stay where you are. In fact, “the devil is not as terrible as he is painted.” We live in an amazing time when you can quickly learn any skills you need, you just need to be able to choose quality training and understand why you need it. Put the time and effort into it, and then reap the rewards.
Social media
Everyone is on social networks, and so are your potential clients. All you have to do is grab their attention and make them an offer they can’t refuse.
Start gathering a VKontakte target audience around you, for example, create a group and newsletter, share useful content and recommend affiliate products.
Gradually connect other social networks and YouTube. Video content is very popular, the number of YouTube users is constantly growing. Traffic from YouTube is very targeted. Many people use YouTube as a search engine, looking for what interests them here, in addition, the YouTube algorithm shows users videos based on their interests. If you want to promote affiliate programs, you can make video reviews of affiliate products and create other topical videos.
If you love and know how to shoot videos, be sure to create your own YouTube channel, and if you don’t know how, it is advisable to learn, because YouTube is one of the most promising places from which you can receive high-quality traffic on any topic. But that is another story.
Advertising on other people's resources
At the beginning, it was promised to talk about a quick start in making money on affiliate programs from scratch. All the methods described above, of course, require some time. Although, with the right approach, you can get the first results relatively quickly.
There is also a method of advertising that can give instant results. This is advertising on other people's resources. While you are promoting your website and social networks, you should remember that there are already other people who have promoted thematic sites or groups. You can buy advertising from them. It may be just a banner, but it is much more effective to order an article with a recommendation.
The best free practical online affiliate marketing training
Selecting an affiliate product
You choose the affiliate program topic that resonates most with you. For example, you sell weight loss products or simply have knowledge in the topic of weight loss. This means that a weight loss affiliate program is quite suitable for you (there are many of them). For example, the affiliate program of the famous author Galina Grossmann. Moreover, now this topic is very popular. You can analyze which topics are now more popular and in demand and build on that. Use Yandex Wordstat or Google Adwords for this. Be very careful when choosing an affiliate program.
The product being promoted must have positive reviews, a good selling website, promotional materials and letters for mailing, if something is missing, contact the author and ask. You can also contact people who have already purchased this product and ask their opinion about the product. The product must first solve the customer's problem. I advise you to choose several affiliate programs with different topics, 2 or 3, perhaps some topic will work better for you.
Where to start for a beginner
Let's look at the 4 main steps you need to start receiving affiliate rewards.
Step 1: To receive affiliate payments, you need to have a Yandex Money, WebMoney and Qiwi e-wallet. At first, one wallet will be enough for you (which one you can find out from the terms of the affiliate program).
Step 2: Decide which category or niche interests you. Maybe you want to make money in the sports or construction niche. Think about what interests you and what you would like to develop in. If you don’t know, then you can from more than 350 affiliate programs in various niches from making money on the Internet to travel. Or you can take a closer look at the free list of proven affiliate programs with detailed video tutorials for them.
I recommend: Affiliate program aggregator cpa network Admitad
Step 3: Register in the affiliate program, read the rules and receive your referral link. It is best to advertise free products, as this increases the credibility of the author of the product. Then the author himself will pressure the buyer to purchase a paid product.
If there are promotional materials (email texts, advertising banners, texts for social networks, subscription pages, etc.), then download them to your PC.
I think we all buy something online, so I can recommend the Epn cashback service. Bring your friends to it or simply give them a link to any product and receive a reward from their purchase.
Step 4: Choose a promotion method that suits you and start advertising your product or service. It would be better if you yourself have used this product, because you will be able to give a more detailed description of it and answer questions from interested buyers.
First, I recommend taking one of the free methods and learning to promote using it. Once you have learned all the details, move on to the next method. With this approach, you won't have a mess in your head.
At first glance, there is nothing complicated about this. But for some reason, newbies stop working after receiving the referral link. Because they don’t know how to attract traffic, or they will post the link 1-2 times in a group on social networks or on a forum and wait for orders. I want to say right away that the result will be zero.
- Firstly, because no one knows you and there is no trust in you (I mean through personal recommendations);
- Secondly, you need to constantly drive traffic to the affiliate product. Approximate statistics: out of 100 clicks on a link, only 30% will be interested, and no more than 5 - 10% will purchase the product. And this is in the best case scenario, when the authors of these products are more or less known.
There is no need to give up, you need to act and act. It is better, of course, to start your first steps under mentorship (training with practice), as this is very motivating and does not allow you to give up.
Types of affiliate programs
There are quite a few types of affiliate programs. I will highlight only the most basic ones, from which you can make very good money.
1. Info affiliate programs are various information products - courses, trainings, books, etc. That is, everything related to education
2. Product affiliate programs are various offers from online stores. People are willing to buy goods thanks to the development of online payments. There are product affiliate programs for clothing, shoes, and electronics. These are services that host a large number of advertisers (online stores, online services). One example is the large website m1-shop.ru .
3. Affiliate programs of services - you can advertise various services and receive a reward for it. For example, Justclick, Glopart service.
4. Reselling is the resale of a finished product. You acquire the rights to the product and become its full owner. I have a detailed article about this type of earnings, read this article.
5. CPA of affiliates - a list of affiliates that pay for actions. The CPA network contains a large number of affiliate programs for online stores, online games, banking services and offers on other topics. you earn money when someone who clicks on your link takes a certain action. This could be purchasing a product, registering, etc. They are also called aggregator sites or a network of affiliate programs.
Example of CPA services: AD-X, SALID.
Affiliate programs for making money without your own website - classification by topic
The affiliate programs listed in this paragraph will allow you to earn money without investment. Use the free sources of targeted traffic that were mentioned at the beginning of the article.
IMPORTANT. Don’t forget about such a simple way to earn money as recommending a product to your friends and acquaintances.
Binary options affiliate programs
Basically, they pay interest on the amount of income of attracted traders. Less often – for the fact of registering a new user. Examples of sites:
- Kingfin – 50-60% of the earnings of attracted users;
- Binpartner – up to 70% of the system’s profit from transactions of attracted traders;
- Cleveraff – 50-70% of the system’s profit from transactions of attracted traders.
Binary options affiliate programs will bring high income to owners of websites about finance, stock markets and making money on cryptocurrency.
Affiliate programs of information products
By participating in them, you will promote intellectual products: books, webinars, training videos. Examples of catalogs and projects for earning money:
- Qwertypay;
- Glopart;
- Affiliate program of photoshop artist Zinaida Lukyanova;
- Affiliate program of the Yulia Volkodav copywriting school;
- Project by Vitaly Timofeev (topic: making money on the Internet).
Affiliates for information products are some of the most generous. You can receive 30, 50, 70 and even 100% of sales.
Affiliates for monetizing product traffic
In simple terms, these are affiliate programs that offer webmasters income from selling ordinary things: clothes, shoes, accessories, electronics. Offers are placed by online stores.
Here are examples of reliable sites:
- Mixmarket;
- Traffic Light;
- Leadbit;
- Nutriprofits.
By the way, you can even make money on Avito by placing your affiliate links there. As a rule, the affiliate percentage of sales is 6-8%. For some categories of goods, a remuneration of 10-20% is established and very rarely - 30-40%.
Forex affiliates
Your task in such programs is to motivate people to register on brokerage platforms and become traders and investors. Examples of sites for making money:
- Traders-Union – pays 10% of the income of each attracted client and 5% of the income of a 2nd level referral;
- InstaForex – offers a one-time reward (from 1 to 2000 $), the size of which depends on how much money the attracted user deposits on the site.
Sometimes arbitrage traders earn higher earnings on brokers’ affiliate programs than professional traders. That's why there are so many Forex advertisements on the Internet.
Educational affiliates
Very profitable affiliate programs that pay 20-70% of the cost of ordered coursework and dissertations, training courses, and tutoring services. The following sites offer good conditions for cooperation:
- education;
- Edugram;
- Edu-Money.
The main advantage of educational affiliate programs is that the average attracted user remains on the project for another 1-2 years after registration. This means it brings you passive income.
Financial affiliates
These are CPA affiliates with payment of a fixed amount for actions: applying for a bank card, receiving a loan, microloan. Example networks:
- Leadgid is the largest financial affiliate in the Russian Federation;
- Letmeads – for draining Ukrainian traffic;
- Alfa-Bank affiliate program.
The disadvantage of financial affiliates is that their offers are difficult to promote. So far in Russia and other CIS countries there are not very many people willing to apply for a credit card or get a loan online.
Video affiliates
The webmaster is paid money for draining traffic to online movie theater sites or for each user viewing a paid video. Examples of affiliate programs:
- Dreamcash;
- Beseed;
- Seedmotion.
To make good money on video affiliates, it is advisable to have an entertainment-themed website with high traffic. Many projects put forward a strict requirement for cooperation: at least 1000 unique items per day.
File hosting services
They were very popular before the spread of torrents on the Internet. The scheme for making money on file hosting services is as follows:
- Upload a file to the service (for example, an interesting book).
- You receive a link.
- Distribute it across channels where the target traffic is located.
- You receive profit when users download a file.
Examples of good affiliate programs: Golden-Link, Costaction, Dfiles. The first one also pays 100% of your referrals’ earnings.
This is interesting. People willingly download abstracts, term papers and dissertations, and short lectures on file hosting sites to prepare for university exams.
Travel affiliates
They work in CPA and CPS formats. Here you will sell sea tours, excursions, air tickets, advertise hotels and popular restaurants. Examples of affiliate programs:
- Partner.buruki;
- adster;
- Hotelscombined;
- Travelpayouts.
How the Travelpayouts affiliate program works
Travel affiliate programs are generous with promotional materials. Maximum conversion occurs, as a rule, in late spring and summer.
Dating affiliates
These are affiliate programs for making money on dating sites. Examples of profitable cooperation offers:
- 3snet;
- Justcash;
- Paysale.
In dating affiliates, money is paid for registering new users and filling out questionnaires. Sometimes deductions are provided in the form of a % of the amount spent by the referral for using paid services of the site.
Affiliate programs of bookmakers (betting)
Bookmaker sites allow you to earn money by betting on sports. They also transfer 40-60% of their profits from the operations of attracted participants. Examples of betting affiliates:
- GGBet;
- Melbet-Partners;
- Mostpartner.
The scheme for making money on affiliate programs of bookmakers is similar to promoting the services of Forex brokers and binary options.
Mobile CPA affiliates
They are called that because they are designed for monetization of mobile traffic. Most often, money is paid for users to download and install games and use paid online services. But there are also product offers. Examples of CPA affiliates for mobile earnings:
- Trafficshark;
- Inads;
- Mobytize.
Although 12 types of affiliate programs were indicated above, in reality there are many more topics. So you can promote absolutely any offer that will potentially interest a large number of people.
How much can you earn from affiliate programs?
Of course, this is the most important and popular question for you. But, unfortunately, you won’t hear a definite answer anywhere, since everyone earns differently. Why? Because everyone has their own work pattern, their own pace and motivation for action. Some earn millions, others barely have enough to live on. For example, my first earnings from affiliate programs in the first month amounted to 4,260 rubles. Here is the history of withdrawing my commissions to my wallet for the first month of working with affiliate programs:
In the second month it’s already more and so on increasing. Someone earns about 70,000 rubles in the first month. For example, there are such examples from the finalists of coaching Igor Krestinin, who became famous throughout the Internet for creating coaching - the only one in Russia and the CIS countries with a double guarantee of results, that is, he promises that each coaching participant will earn from 50,000 rubles in 45 days , and if in the end it doesn’t work, he returns double the cost of coaching. If you are interested in learning about this coaching, you can find it here.
I want you to understand one important thing, this applies to beginners who decide to get into affiliate marketing. The most important thing in working with affiliate programs is traffic, and everything is based only on it, just one product is not enough, you need someone to buy this product. And the more they buy from you, the more you earn. Therefore, before plunging into this topic, first study the simplest options for attracting traffic.
Basic ways to promote affiliate programs
How to make money as quickly as possible on affiliate programs
Let's face it, making money on affiliate programs solely without investing in advertising is not the best option.
Yes, it works, but don't expect very fast results. You will have to work hard for 1-3 months to lay a foundation that will begin to bring you profit.
Roughly speaking, when you have dozens of videos and articles on the Internet optimized for search queries, plus you gain authority on several resources and people start contacting you via PM, then you will start earning money.
It is unlikely that you will have massive sales from the first days.
So my advice: use free affiliate link promotion methods in tandem with paid advertising.
Paid advertising will provide you with quick returns, and your materials on your blog and YouTube will bring you many more sales in the future.
Be sure to use the list of affiliate programs and services that we discussed with you at the beginning of the article.
If you have any questions about the topic of affiliate programs for earning money without investments, write them in the comments. Good luck and see you again
