If you are interested in the topic of "making money on the Internet", you will inevitably stumble upon affiliate marketing at some point.
For many, the goal is to get rich quickly on the Internet. If that doesn't work, one is inclined to say that making money on the Internet doesn't work and doesn't make sense.
But even that, fortunately, is not true. Once you get away from the "get rich fast" principle and are willing to invest time and effort, you will realize that making money on the Internet works with affiliate marketing as well as with any other form of online marketing.
But unlike so many people who advertise, this does not work quickly and getting rich is relative. You can build a lucrative online business. But this does not work in the shortest time, nor can you get rich with it.
Affiliate marketing - a business without great risk
So if you spare neither time nor effort, you can earn your money on the Internet with affiliate marketing. You don't need to make large investments either. Of course, it does not work completely without money. In any case you need website and therefore also domain and hosting. All free variants like WordPress.com or similar solutions are not an alternative. Firstly, you do not have your own domain, your site is located on a subdomain of the provider (e.g. your site .wordpress.com) and secondly, you do not own your own content. Furthermore no customer becomes a Shop that no reputable website offers.
In the meantime, with a little training you can install your website yourself directly from your provider.
And then we can start! Because a successful website does not need the most beautiful design at first - but good content.
What exactly is affiliate marketing?
However, affiliate marketing is much more than creating your own website. The same applies to affiliate marketing: a website without content is just an empty framework with an accumulation of code. Here in Germany, affiliate marketing is better known as recommendation marketing.
And we encounter this recommendation marketing actually everywhere. For example, insurance brokers recommend insurance companies and receive a commission, and owners of travel agencies recommend travel - and there are many more examples. So this kind of marketing is not an invention of the Internet. Nevertheless, the platform is new.
This way you will not get in contact with your potential customers via your website in the first place. Instead, you have to convince them with your writing, but without the obligation to be present and yet 24/7.
They recommend on your website in the form of an article, videos, podcasts, even pictures a product. Either you use this product yourself or you compile from various sources for whom this product is suitable. At the end you give a recommendation and refer with a link to a provider. Here you embed your affiliate link. If the customer, who is convinced of your statements, now clicks on the link, he is forwarded to the provider. If he now buys the product, you will receive a commission.
Depending on the product, this commission can vary. For example, at Amazon you can get up to 10% (here it depends on the category) on all items that the customer has in the shopping cart. If you advertise a digital camera and the customer buys a memory card and other accessories together with the camera, you will receive a commission on all items. The nice thing is that your customer has no disadvantage whatsoever from your recommendation. He does not pay more for the product you link to. So you are really only acting as a middleman who hands a customer to Amazon, for example. So the customer gets the information you provide for him completely free of charge.
Affiliate marketing or recommendation marketing sounds very simple at first. A customer comes, clicks, buys and you receive money. Basically it is also so simple. Nevertheless, once you do the math, you quickly realize that you have to generate a lot of revenue to make enough money.
The good thing is: You can become an affiliate for almost any product. And of course it's much easier to make a good income if you sell a flight to the Caribbean than if you recommend DVDs. After all, 10% of 1000 Euro is a much higher sum than 10% of 10 Euro.
Many business founders do not make this consideration in advance and are therefore quickly disillusioned and come to the conclusion that recommendation marketing does not work.
That's not the truth. Referral marketing already works, but every new entrepreneur should first make the necessary calculations to be sure that he can earn enough money for his livelihood.
If you know exactly what products you want to sell and you know that these products will make you enough money to live on, you will also be successful as an Affiliate Marketer.
So before you start your own business, the following applies: Calculate.
Of course you can also sell suitable products. So it makes sense to sell digital cameras, memory cards, batteries, photo bags and DVDs via the respective country in addition to travel. On the other hand, someone who decides to put a page about the latest films on the Internet needs a lot of patience. Because, as already mentioned, DVDs or even films as downloads cost only a few euros. It is also possible to earn a good income. The only question is how long it takes.
Also in affiliate marketing it is a good idea to sell digital products. Because for the manufacturer, the sale of digital products no longer causes production costs. Once created, he can sell them forever. Often he is happy to pass this on to his affiliate partners and pays a commission of 50% and sometimes even more.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing can be a lucrative business. It is only important that the founder knows in advance how much money he can earn with his business and when. Then everybody has to ask himself the question whether he has such a long breath. Because you can also earn a lot of money by selling DVDs - provided you get a lot of people to your website. The more traffic you generate, the more potential customers you will attract.
