Selling products for commission has always been a popular way to make money online.
Selling other people’s products this way is known as affiliate marketing. This is because to make money you have to sign up as an affiliate and earn money through marketing their products.
Affiliate marketing can be something you do just to earn some extra money through your website, or as a way to earn all your online income.
There are affiliate marketers working online who are known as super affiliates. The best known of these is Rosalyn Gardner who earns around $500k/year as an affiliate marketer.
How to Market Affiliate Products.
The best way to be able to market a product is by owning it. That way when you’re writing about it, you know exactly what you’re talking about.
But it’s not always possible to own every product you promote. For instance, if you have a diet and fitness site and you want to promote a treadmill that costs thousands $$$, it’s not practical to buy it first. Yet these items can earn you hundreds $$$ with just one sale.
Instead you can read online reviews, sales pages and visit forums where they’re talking honestly about the product. This will give you a clear understanding of the product and what it can do, how it can benefit customers and what its limitations are.
When you’re researching a product, it’s best to make a copious amount of notes and condense them down to the information you need, rather than not make enough notes and not be able to write enough about the product.
When you’re marketing a product, you need to be promoting the benefits of owning the product, rather than describing what the product can do.
For instance, years ago, when MP3 players first became popular, every company was promoting the “features” of their players rather than the benefits of owning it. They talked about sound quality and how many megabytes of storage their devices had. But none of this meant a great deal to their customers.
Then along came Apple with their first MP3 player and marketed it by describing the benefit of owning it by simply saying, “a thousand songs in your pocket”
Bam!
Their iPod outsold all the other MP3 players.
Self-help guru Tony Robbins says that sometimes we’re more inclined to run away from pain rather than run towards pleasure.
So when marketing a product you can also start by describing the “pain” the reader might be feeling because they don’t own the product before going on to talk about how their problems (pains) will be reduced/solved once they own the product.
But all this begins with understanding what your customers want.
What does someone want if they’re thinking about buying a treadmill?
- Not having to walk outside in bad weather?
- Easier than walking on uneven ground outside?
- Don’t have to drive to the gym?
Naturally anyone buying a treadmill wants to get fit. But if that’s all they wanted, they’d simply put on a pair of running shoes and head off out the door or they’d drive to the gym.
But there’s something that compels them to buy their own running machine and it has to be more than the desire to run, because running is free, yet treadmills cost thousands.
Understanding how your customers think is paramount if you want to make money with affiliate marketing.
So begin by looking for products/companies that offer an affiliate program. Or join an affiliate network that offers hundreds and thousands of products you can promote for hundreds of different companies, all through one account.
