How do you make money with affiliate marketing? You keep hearing about this and you’re wondering how it works? Plus, there’s so much information out there that you’re not sure who to trust. In this article, I’m going to show you how you get paid and also how to set it up.

A lot of people will tell you to join Amazon as an affiliate because there are so many products to promote. While that may be true, you’re not likely to make a lot of money. It’s a great place to start and a lot of influencers use Amazon as an extra stream of income.

In fact, I use Amazon affiliate links on my YouTube channel to promote the different types of equipment that I use. The neat thing about Amazon is that if someone visits their website from your link and they choose to buy something other than what you’re promoting, you’ll still receive a commission.

This is especially great around Christmas time when everyone’s doing their gift shopping on Amazon.

What you really want to focus on though, is higher commission products and even recurring commissions. That’s what we’ll be looking at today.

Finding High Commission Products

I’m going to use an example of a product I just started promoting called Deadline Funnels. It’s actually a countdown timer that is placed on a landing page and creates a sense of urgency to encourage visitors to buy. It uses the FOMO principle – “fear of missing out”.

Let’s say, I just discovered this tool and really like it and want to share it with my subscribers. So, how would I go about trying to find out if they have an affiliate program?

The first thing I would do is go to Google and type into the search bar “does deadline funnels have an affiliate program?”. This should bring up some results and if the product does have an affiliate program, you’ll be able to find the link to it.

Then it’s simply a case of clicking on the link and signing up for their program as an affiliate. Once you’re set up in their system, they’ll send you an affiliate link so that you can start promoting their product.

Once you start making sales, you can track your progress on their affiliate dashboard. Plus, if the product is subscription based, you’ll get a commission on every sales on a recurring basis. This means you’ll continue to receive commissions for every customer you’ve referred for as long as they remain a customer.

A lot of companies who offer recurring commission products will pay a decent commission to their affiliates. This could range anywhere from 15% to as high as 30%.

Let’s Do The Math

Using the Deadline Funnels example, their subscription is $37 per month. Therefore, if you manage to refer 100 customers, they would spend $3,700 in total every month. The affiliate commission rate is 20%. So, let’s see how much you can earn.

$3,700 x 20% = $740 per month

And, you’ll keep earning that every month as long as your referred customers keep paying their monthly subscription. But, you don’t want to stop there. Any subscription-based product will have a certain attrition rate. This relates to the customers that decide that they no longer want or need the product.

Therefore, you want to ensure that you’re continuously promoting this product to refer more customers to make up for the ones that drop off and to increase your monthly commissions.

Promote Products That You Find Useful

Most importantly, you want to promote products that you like and find useful. Personally, I don’t like promoting products just because I can make money from them. Unfortunately, that’s what a lot of people do when they start affiliate marketing.

This means that when you promote a product just for the money, you won’t sound sincere in your articles or videos. On the other hand, if you promote something that you love using yourself, you can talk about it with complete sincerity all day long.

How Do You Get Paid?

Depending on their rules, many affiliate programs will wait until you’ve made $50 – $100 in commission before sending you a payout. Some companies will prefer to send you a check while others are happy to pay into your PayPal account.

How Do You Keep Track Of Your Affiliate Links?

It’s important to keep track of all your affiliate links, especially if you’re promoting a number of different products. Some people will use Google docs, a spreadsheet or even OneNote. It’s entirely up to you which method you prefer and like working with.

Personally, I have an entire notebook for all my affiliate information. I include all my login information and, of course, my affiliate links. Then, I’ll also start creating different links using Pretty Links. This way I can keep track of which links are actually producing the best results.

You’ll also want to keep a record of any links the companies have on affiliate training as these training sessions can be very useful.

How Do You Promote The Products?

My preferred promotional method is creating videos on YouTube but you can use a website and create posts about the products as well.

You could do a review article of the product. Then, you could show people how to use the product via free screen sharing software such as Loom or take screenshots of you using the different features with your SnipIt tool.

Remember, to always add your affiliate links. If the program you’re promoting has a free trial, you could say something like – “Click the link below to check it out and get a free trial”.

You can also promote your product on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram with links back to the video you created or the articles that you wrote.

So that’s how it works in a nutshell. Believe me, it does work, and you do want to have more than one product. However, you don’t want to have 20 or 30 products. I recommend that you start by promoting products that you’re actually using.

Maybe start with 4 or 5 different products until you have a lot of content on those and you start bringing in some revenue. Then, you can move on to add more products and even consider some high ticket items.

Hopefully this has been helpful for you. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

You’ve Got This!