How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing in 2023
How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing in 2023
One of our clients eagerly awaited for an affiliate marketing program to be launched. On his YouTube channel, he has a wide audience that he could promote our product to and earn some cash. How much? It depends on many factors, but if we assume that 1% of his subscribers buy the cheapest subscription, he will make almost $20,000. Truth be told, some affiliate marketers earn $150K per year with just affiliate marketing!
The mechanism is pretty straightforward, but it requires sustainable efforts from you. In this article, we’ll explain what you need and how you can make money with affiliate marketing as a passive income and beyond.
Table of Contents hide
How to make money with affiliate marketing programs – the formula
Who can and cannot make money with affiliate marketing?
Ways to make money with affiliate marketing
Idle affiliate marketing
Efficient affiliate marketing
How to make money with affiliate marketing from scratch
Step 1. Choose a niche
Step 2. Choose a platform for your content
Step 3. Traffic increases – time to search for affiliate programs
Step 4. Join one or several affiliate marketing programs
Step 5. Spread the word about the products
Best practices to make money with affiliate marketing
Traffic before sales
Follow Google’s guidelines for affiliate marketing
Develop social media networks
Track your affiliate marketing performance on a dashboard
How much money you can make with affiliate marketing?
How to make money online with affiliate marketing with less effort
How to make money with affiliate marketing programs – the formula
You’ll be surprised how simple the formula for earning money with affiliate marketing is. Here are the two variables you need:
An audience with a shared interest or idea. For example, the readers of a financial management blog.
An affiliate program of a product or service that will be useful for the audience to solve their specific problems. For example, a tool or solution that allows you to automate reporting.
You promote this product/service to your audience => they buy the product/service => you get your commission.
A reasonable question arises: If the money-making formula is so obvious, why does everyone not shovel in money? Let’s try to answer this below.
Who can and cannot make money with affiliate marketing?
You can make money with affiliate marketing if:
You run a blog where you regularly publish helpful content for your audience.
You develop a YouTube channel and regularly publish helpful videos for your audience.
You use another platform to develop an audience that shares some common ideas, interests, problems, etc.
You are an influencer in a specific niche.
You are a consultant who can refer your clients to specific products/services.
You provide other advisory services by which you can refer your clients to specific products/services.
You cannot make money with affiliate marketing if you are not willing to invest your time and effort in expanding your audience and promoting a product or service.
Ways to make money with affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a win-win cooperation between a product owner and an affiliate marketer. The former gets leads, and the latter gets paid for bringing in these leads. You can earn some money with affiliate marketing if you only spread the word among your Facebook friends, but it won’t guarantee a stable and high income even if you have plenty of followers. The reason is that it’s difficult to achieve the product-audience match within your FB social network.
On the other hand, if your approach includes proper ways to expand your audience and promote the right products to them, you can make a cottage industry out of affiliate marketing.
With this in mind, we tend to define two methods for success: idle and efficient.
Idle affiliate marketing
By ‘idle’, we mean that you do not make any additional efforts to expand your audience for promoting products. If you are a financial consultant, accountant, or practicing advisor, you already have a pool of contacts or clients. You just need to find an affiliate program for a product from your niche and promote it.
The idle strategy is short-term, since it may result in an instant inflow of cash, but it won’t make any further progress. However, this is the easiest way to make money with affiliate marketing.
Efficient affiliate marketing
Efficient affiliate marketing means that you constantly develop and expand your audience by publishing useful content on your blog, video channel, or other platforms. So, basically, you generate traffic that, in turn, brings new people to whom you can promote products and services.
This is a long-term monetization strategy, and a way to increase your passive income. Or, you may even opt for affiliate marketing as your main source of income. We’re going to talk more about this strategy below.
How to make money with affiliate marketing from scratch
Let’s assume that you want to start making money with affiliate marketing right out of the gate. You have neither a blog, nor a YouTube channel, nor a community to spread the word to. The following step-by-step guide will explain how to achieve your goal.
Step 1. Choose a niche
A niche in affiliate marketing is a segment of the market with a narrow group of affiliate products that you can promote through customers. These customers share specific needs and requirements associated with this market segment. For example, the SEO niche covers tools and solutions around search engine optimization tasks, including hosting services, CMS, webmaster tools, etc.
You need to choose the niche where you feel you would best perform. If there is a subject you don’t like, such as fashion and beauty, then it’s better to skip it. Other criteria to consider are high demand and low-to-medium competition. You’ll have to do solid research to choose the best niche for affiliate marketing that you would like to join and develop your audience.
Step 2. Choose a platform for your content
Once you know the audience of your niche, you need to provide relevant and useful content for them. You can launch a blog to publish articles, start a YouTube channel to record videos, make posts with valuable information via social media platforms, and so on. Choose the most appropriate platform for your content that will also be in line with your target audience.
The type of content also matters. Specific topics look better in the text, while others will better convey their message in video format. For example, explaining how to create a real-time sync between your bank and credit card accounts with Excel is better done as a video tutorial rather than a blog post.
Step 3. Traffic increases – time to search for affiliate programs
When the publications on your blog, channel, or profile start generating traffic, you can dip a toe in the water of affiliate marketing. Check out whether the products you use provide affiliate marketing programs. Visit affiliate marketplaces – here you can find hundreds of merchants. But wait on signing up for them right away! First, learn how they work and decide whether this is what you need.
As a rule, affiliate marketing programs are based on a one-tier model – you get paid once a sale is made via your affiliate link. However, you may also encounter two-tier programs or multilevel marketing. In this case, you need first to refer other affiliates, and once they start making sales, you will get paid. A special case is an affiliate program with a growing (or climbing) tier. The idea is the more sales are made via your affiliate link, the higher commission you’ll get.
It’s also worth making some calculations to predict your income. For example, the Coupler.io affiliate program offers 50% commission for the first subscription payment and 20% for every renewal later. There is no limit to the number of customers you can refer.
Assume that you expect to convert every 10 users out of 1000 visits to your blog. If these 10 customers subscribe to the cheapest monthly paid plan, which costs $49, you’ll get a $245 commission. For every renewal of their subscription, you will get an additional $98 per month. They say:
On average, you should receive from $300 up to $950 per customer within a period of their stay with Coupler.io.
This is a shallow analysis, of course, but it will give you an understanding of whether this or that affiliate program is a good fit.
10 Best Niches for Affiliate Marketing 2023
How to Choose the Right Affiliate Program
Step 4. Join one or several affiliate marketing programs
It’s difficult to imagine that the entire content on your blog or channel will be about the same product. Therefore, it makes sense to differentiate your promotion efforts by spreading the word about different tools and solutions. With this in mind, it’s better to sign up for multiple affiliate programs.
Step 5. Spread the word about the products
What do we already have before this step? You have published some traffic-generating content and signed up for a few top SaaS affiliate programs. This means you are ready to promote some products in your publications. You can do this in different ways:
Add your affiliate links to the existing articles in a natural and logical way.
Create new content, keeping in mind the promotion of affiliate products.
Create content dedicated to the promotion of affiliate products. For example, you may describe how you improved your workflow using a particular tool.
Collaborate with other content creators by exchanging links or making guest posts.
Promote your content on social media.
Making money with affiliate marketing is an ongoing process. You can’t just add affiliate links to your articles or videos and enjoy the sound of rustling cash :D. Well, you can add links and even earn some money, but the inflow of cash will cease if you do nothing else.
So, the more valuable content you produce => the more traffic you bring => the more users click on your affiliate link => the more money you make.
Best practices to make money with affiliate marketing
Traffic before sales
Focus on generating traffic rather than making money. Your blog or channel should already have several traffic-generating publications before you can start promoting products with affiliate links. If you start pushing sales from the outset, there is a risk that your content will turn away readers or viewers due to its commercialization.
So first, you need to build your blog or channel, then you can redirect efforts to monetization of your traffic.
Follow Google’s guidelines for affiliate marketing
Google provides Webmaster Guidelines for sites that participate in affiliate programs. The main idea is that content that features mostly information about affiliate products does not provide enough valuable information to the reader. As a result, such content can suffer in Google’s search rankings, bringing little to no traffic. To avoid this, most of your content should be relevant and aimed at building a loyal readership, and a minor share of all your publications can be associated with affiliate programs.
Develop social media networks
In your content, you promote affiliate products. But your content also requires promotion, and social media like Facebook or Twitter are the best place for this. You can create or be involved in Facebook Groups, recommend your content on Quora, and use other benefits of social media promotion.
Track your affiliate marketing performance on a dashboard
The only way to understand whether your investment in affiliate marketing succeeds is to analyze the results. We advise you to build a dashboard where you can track different stats about traffic, published affiliate links, income received, conversion rate, and other metrics. You can do this in a spreadsheet such as Google Sheets.
You’ll have to enter some data manually, while the rest of the data flow can be automated. For example, if your blog is on WordPress, you can easily automate exports of different WordPress data to Google Sheets using the WordPress integration by Coupler.io. For example, here is what your dashboard on blog performance may look like:
How much money you can make with affiliate marketing?
The total funds that you can see in your wallet depend on multiple factors:
Niche
Type of content
Quality of content
SEO for your blog/channel and content
Frequency of publication
Affiliate programs promoted
Conversion rate
There are many other factors as well
We can’t say that if you launch a blog about health and fitness, you’ll start earning $100 per month in a few weeks. Some affiliates can spend a year to reach their first $1,000. Others can boast $1,000 monthly over the same period.
However, the main idea is that you can make money with affiliate marketing, and even $100,000 per year is quite a realistic figure.
How to make money online with affiliate marketing with less effort
As we mentioned above, you have two approaches to making money with affiliate marketing: idle and efficient. If for some reason, you don’t want or can’t invest your efforts in creating content and developing your audience, you can always choose the idle method. This means that you can promote a particular product using the contacts you already have. This may bring some good results from a short-term perspective, but you won’t be able to keep this pace or increase it. This is all you can expect without effort. It’s up to you which way best suits your needs. Good luck!
A content manager at Coupler.io whose key responsibility is to ensure that the readers love our content on the blog. With 5 years of experience as a wordsmith in SaaS, I know how to make texts resonate with readers' queries
Categories:
Affiliate marketing
Tags: affiliate
The most effective method to Bring in Cash With Member Promoting in 2023
One of our clients enthusiastically anticipated for a member promoting project to be sent off. On his YouTube channel, he has a wide crowd that he could elevate our item to and bring in some money. How much? It relies upon many elements, however assuming we expect that 1% of his supporters purchase the least expensive membership, he will make nearly $20,000. In all honesty, some partner advertisers acquire $150K each year with simply offshoot showcasing!
The instrument is really direct, yet it requires economical endeavors from you. In this article, we'll make sense of what you really want and how you can bring in cash with subsidiary promoting as an automated revenue and then some.
List of chapters stow away
Step by step instructions to bring in cash with offshoot showcasing programs - the recipe
Who can and can't bring in cash with member advertising?
Ways of bringing in cash with associate showcasing
Inactive associate showcasing
Effective offshoot advertising
The most effective method to bring in cash with offshoot advertising without any preparation
Stage 1. Pick a specialty
Stage 2. Pick a stage for your substance
Stage 3. Traffic increments - time to look for associate projects
Stage 4. Go along with one or a few member promoting programs
Stage 5. Spread the news about the items
Best practices to bring in cash with offshoot showcasing
Traffic before deals
Observe Google's rules for associate advertising
Foster virtual entertainment organizations
Track your partner showcasing execution on a dashboard
How much cash you can make with partner showcasing?
Instructions to bring in cash online with partner advertising with less exertion
Step by step instructions to bring in cash with offshoot advertising programs - the recipe
You'll be astounded how straightforward the recipe for bringing in cash with associate advertising is. Here are the two factors you really want:
A group of people with a common interest or thought. For instance, the perusers of a monetary administration blog.
A member program of an item or administration that will be helpful for the crowd to tackle their particular issues. For instance, an instrument or arrangement that permits you to computerize detailing.
You advance this item/administration to your crowd => they purchase the item/administration => you get your bonus.
A sensible inquiry emerges: If the lucrative recipe is so self-evident, for what reason does everybody not scoop in cash? How about we attempt to respond to this beneath.
Who can and can't bring in cash with offshoot showcasing?
You can bring in cash with member advertising if:
You run a blog where you routinely distribute supportive substance for your crowd.
You foster a YouTube channel and consistently distribute supportive recordings for your crowd.
You utilize one more stage to foster a group of people that shares a few normal thoughts, interests, issues, and so on.
You are a powerhouse in a particular specialty.
You are an expert who can allude your clients to explicit items/administrations.
You offer other warning types of assistance by which you can allude your clients to explicit items/administrations.
You can't bring in cash with member showcasing on the off chance that you are not ready to put your time and exertion in extending your crowd and advancing an item or administration.
Ways of bringing in cash with partner advertising
Partner showcasing is a mutually beneficial collaboration between an item proprietor and a subsidiary advertiser. The previous gets leads, and the last option gets compensated for acquiring these leads. You can bring in some cash with partner showcasing on the off chance that you just spread the news among your Facebook companions, however it won't ensure a steady and big league salary regardless of whether you have a lot of supporters. The explanation is that it's challenging to accomplish the item crowd match inside your FB informal organization.
Then again, on the off chance that your methodology incorporates legitimate ways of growing your crowd and elevate the right items to them, you can make a bungalow industry out of member promoting.
Considering this, we will generally characterize two techniques for progress: inactive and proficient.
Inactive offshoot advertising
By 'inactive', we imply that you put forth no extra attempts to extend your crowd for advancing items. In the event that you are a monetary specialist, bookkeeper, or rehearsing counselor, you as of now have a pool of contacts or clients. You simply have to find an offshoot program for an item from your specialty and advance it.
The inactive methodology is present moment, since it might bring about a moment inflow of money, however it won't gain any further headway. Notwithstanding, this is the most straightforward method for bringing in cash with partner promoting.
Proficient subsidiary promoting
Proficient subsidiary promoting implies that you continually create and extend your crowd by distributing helpful substance on your blog, video channel, or different stages. Thus, fundamentally, you create traffic that, thusly, carries new individuals to whom you can advance items and administrations.
This is a drawn out adaptation methodology, and a method for expanding your recurring, automated revenue. Or then again, you might try and select partner advertising as your fundamental type of revenue. We will discuss this technique beneath.
Instructions to bring in cash with subsidiary showcasing without any preparation
We should expect that you need to begin bringing in cash with partner promoting right out of the door. You have neither a blog, nor a YouTube channel, nor a local area to get the news out to. The accompanying bit by bit guide will make sense of how for accomplish your objective.
Stage 1. Pick a specialty
A specialty in subsidiary showcasing is a portion of the market with a tight gathering of partner items that you can advance through clients. These clients share explicit necessities and prerequisites related with this market section. For instance, the Website design enhancement specialty covers apparatuses and arrangements around site improvement assignments, including facilitating administrations, CMS, website admin devices, and so on.
You really want to pick the specialty where you believe you would best perform. In the event that there is a subject you could do without, for example, style and magnificence, then, at that point, skipping it is better. Different measures to consider are appeal and low-to-medium contest. You'll need to do strong examination to pick the best specialty for subsidiary promoting that you might want to join and foster your crowd.
Stage 2. Pick a stage for your substance
When you know the crowd of your specialty, you really want to give important and valuable substance to them. You can send off a blog to distribute articles, begin a YouTube channel to record recordings, make posts with significant data through web-based entertainment stages, etc. Pick the most suitable stage for your substance that will likewise be in accordance with your interest group.
The kind of satisfied likewise matters. Explicit points look better in the message, while others will better pass on their message in video design. For instance, clearing up how for make a constant sync between your bank and Mastercard accounts with Succeed is better finished as a video instructional exercise as opposed to a blog entry.
Stage 3. Traffic increments - time to look for associate projects
At the point when the distributions on your blog, channel, or profile begin producing traffic, you can try things out of associate showcasing. Look at whether the items you use give member promoting programs. Visit subsidiary commercial centers - here you can track down many vendors. In any case, look out for pursuing them immediately! To begin with, figure out how they work and conclude whether this is what you want.
When in doubt, member showcasing programs depend on a one-level model - you get compensated once a deal is made through your subsidiary connection. Nonetheless, you may likewise experience two-level projects or staggered advertising. For this situation, you really want first to allude different subsidiaries, and when they begin making deals, you will get compensated. An extraordinary case is a member program with a developing (or climbing) level. The thought is the more deals are made by means of your member interface, the higher commission you'll get.
It's additionally worth making a few estimations to foresee your pay. For instance, the Coupler.io member program offers half commission for the principal membership installment and 20% for each restoration later. There is no restriction to the quantity of clients you can allude.
Accept that you hope to change over each 10 clients out of 1000 visits to your blog. In the event that these 10 clients buy into the least expensive month to month paid plan, which costs $49, you'll get a $245 commission. For each recharging of their membership, you will get an extra $98 each month. They say:
Overall, you ought to get from $300 up to $950 per client inside a time of their visit with Coupler.io.
This is a shallow examination, obviously, however it will provide you with a comprehension of whether either member program is a solid match.
10 Best Specialties for Associate Showcasing 2023
Step by step instructions to Pick the Right Partner Program
Stage 4. Go along with one or a few subsidiary promoting programs
It's challenging to envision that the whole satisfied on your blog or channel will be about a similar item. Consequently, it's a good idea to separate your advancement endeavors by getting the news out about various instruments and arrangements. In view of this, it's smarter to pursue numerous partner programs.
Stage 5. Spread the news about the items
What do we as of now have before this step? You have distributed some traffic-creating content and pursued a couple of top SaaS member programs. This implies you are prepared to advance a few items in your distributions. You can do this in various ways:
Add your partner connects to the current articles in a characteristic and consistent manner.
Make new satisfied, remembering the advancement of member items.
Make content committed to the advancement of member items. For instance, you might depict how you further developed your work process utilizing a specific instrument.
Work together with other substance makers by trading connections or making visitor posts.
Advance your substance via web-based entertainment.
Bringing in cash with offshoot promoting is a continuous cycle. You can't simply add member connects to your articles or recordings and partake in the sound of stirring money :D. All things considered, you can add connections and even procure s
Hello,
YouTube, then make corrections.
Upload a custom thumbnail (1280px by 720px) that gets people clicking the video.
Always respond to comments, and embed the video on your blog if you have one.
Incorporate your video in your blog, email, social media, other marketing channels.
How To Rank WordPress Blogs:
Use Rank Math Pro and learn how to use it for schema.
Use SSL from the start, most hosts have free Let’s Encrypt SSL.
Choose a fast host + WordPress themes (I like Rocket.net + GeneratePress).
Use post name permalink structure in WordPress under Settings > Permalinks.
Create content around keywords from tools like Google Autocomplete.
Learn about image optimization, internal links, lightweight plugins, OG images.
Add publish dates to blog articles to make content look fresh and increase CTRs.
Use multimedia – whether it be videos, infographics, or audio clips – people love them.
Set up Google Search Console and use it to track rankings, CTR, impressions, etc.
Make your WordPress site load fast (FlyingPress + Perfmatters are both solid plugins).
11. Create The Perfect Pitch
Mine looks something like this:
In 2019, I moved from SiteGround to Cloudways Vultr HF and posted my results. In 2022, I moved to Rocket.net with Cloudflare Enterprise which landed me a <100ms global TTFB in KeyCDN. They’re the fastest host I’ve used in 12 years and are blowing up in Facebook groups.
If you have a poor TTFB, you need to rethink your host/CDN since those are the 2 main TTFB factors (which is also 40% of LCP). After writing bad reviews of SiteGround, Hostinger, Kinsta, and EIG, I think we can agree most hosting reviews are garbage. A good place to get unbiased feedback is the WP Speed Matters Group (run by Gijo from FlyingPress). Rocket.net doesn’t do aggressive marketing so not as many people know about them, but results are all I care about.
My KeyCDN report (you can also check my GTmetrix / PSI report or click through my site)
Good hosting plans:
FastComet FastCloud ExtraNameHero Turbo CloudCloudways Vultr HF (2GB)Servebolt ProRocket.net StarterTypeSharedSharedCloudCloudCloudServerLiteSpeedLiteSpeedApache + NginxApache + NginxApache + NginxCores/RAM6 cores/3GB3 cores/3GB1 core/2GBUnmetered32 cores/128GBStorage35GB / SATAUnlimited NVMe64GB / NVMe4GB / NVMe10GB / NVMeCDNQUIC.cloudQUIC.cloudCloudflare Enterprise ($5/mo)Cloudflare Enterprise ($299/mo)Cloudflare Enterprise (free)CDN PoPs8080285285285Full page caching✓✓✓✓✓CDN image optimizationvia QUICvia QUICMirage/PolishMirage/PolishMirage/PolishDNSUse QUICUse QUICDNS Made Easy ($5/mo)xCloudflareCache pluginLiteSpeed CacheLiteSpeed CachexServebolt pluginxObject cacheMemcachedRedisRedis ProxRedisPHP processorLiteSpeedLiteSpeedFPMApache 2 ITK MPMLiteSpeedDatabaseMySQLMariaDBMariaDBMariaDBMariaDBBandwidth or monthly visits92GB + 100k (est.)50k (est.)2TB1M dynamic requests50GB + 250k visits/moControl panelcPanelcPanelCustomCustomCustomEmail hosting✓✓xxxMajor incidents2022 DDoS attack2011 2-day node outageNoneNoneNoneMigrations3 free1 free1 free + $25/siteUnlimited freeUnlimited freeTrustPilot rating4.9/54.6/54.5/54.5/54.9/5Monthly price$5.49 (1-3 years)$9.98 (3 years)$30$99$25 (1 year)
Shared LiteSpeed Hosting – FastCloud Extra, Turbo Cloud, and ChemiCloud’s WordPress Turbo plan are all shared LiteSpeed hosting with cPanel and good alternatives to SiteGround & Hostinger. NameHero and ChemiCloud have less cores/RAM but use NVMe (faster than SATA), Redis (faster than Memcached), and MariaDB (faster than MySQL). NameHero’s data centers are only in US & EU, and NameHero/ChemiCloud make you sign up for 3 years to get their cheapest intro price (FastComet is 1-3 years). With either of these, you’ll use the free LiteSpeed Cache plugin and QUIC.cloud’s CDN (great setup). For cloud VPS, Scala is a solid host and doesn’t charge for the LiteSpeed license separately like other VPS hosts. Imunify360 is used as a security suite on FastComet, NameHero, and Rocket.net.
Cloudways Vultr HF – good starting point for cloud hosting with more storage + bandwidth than Rocket.net, but their Cloudflare Enterprise needs APO and serves too many challenge pages. They were acquired by DigitalOcean who raised prices, and support could be better. Still very fast between Vultr HF, NVMe, Redis Object Cache Pro, and MariaDB. Even without APO, Cloudflare Enterprise is a powerhouse for reducing TTFB with Argo Smart Routing and prioritizing routing. Mirage/Polish optimize images better than most plugins and doesn’t tax your server. Cloudflare Enterprise can also mean 3 less plugins between image, CDN, and security plugins.
Servebolt – incredibly fast servers, but Cloudflare Enterprise costs $299/mo via accelerated domains, so you’ll probably just add APO using the Cloudflare plugin. However, this is a disadvantage (specifically for WooCommerce sites) because you don’t get Argo Smart Routing, and Redis is only available on the Business plan and up (Rocket.net includes both). This and low storage are the main cons but they’re much faster than Kinsta + WP Engine. They also have a Servebolt Optimizer plugin.
Rocket.net – only host I know that averages a <100ms global TTFB. Both their hosting and Cloudflare Enterprise have better specs. For hosting, you get more CPU cores/RAM, LiteSpeed’s PHP, NVMe, Redis, and MariaDB. For their Cloudflare Enterprise, it’s free with APO, Argo, prioritized routing, Mirage/Polish, Brotli, early hints, and Enterprise WAF. Support is also A+ (talk to Ben Gabler and his team) or watch the interview I did with him. Unlike Kinsta and WP Engine, they don’t limit PHP workers, have a 1GB memory limit, and use Redis Object Cache Pro on their business plan and up with 10x more monthly visits and unlimited free migrations. The main con is only 50GB bandwidth on the Starter plan with 10GB NVMe storage. Search their TrustPilot reviews for “TTFB” or search Facebook Groups for feedback about them. You can get $1 your first month when you checkout using code OMM1
Cloudflare Enterprise significantly reduces TTFB
Bad hosting plans (and bad hosts in general):
SiteGround GrowBigHostinger Business WPBluehost Choice PlusWP Engine StartupKinsta StarterTypeSharedSharedSharedCloudCloudServerApache + NginxLiteSpeedApache + NginxApache + NginxApache + NginxCores/RAMNot listed2 cores/1.5GBNot listedNot listed12 cores/8GBStorage20GB / SATA200GB / SATA40GB / SATA10GB / SATA10GB / SATACDNGoogle CloudQUIC.cloudCloudflare freeCloudflare free + PolishCloudflare APO + firewall rulesCDN PoPs17680285285285Full page cachingvia CDNvia QUICxx✓CDN image optimizationVery limitedvia QUICxPolish onlyxDNSBlocked by Google for 4 daysUse QUICInternalInternalAmazon Route 53Cache pluginSG OptimizerLSCxxxObject cacheMemcachedMemcachedxMemcachedRedis ($100/mo)PHP processorFastCGILiteSpeedFastCGINot listedFastCGIDatabaseMySQLMySQLMySQLNot listedMySQLResource limitsCPU limits are commonLow resourcesLow resourcesLow PHP workers + 25k visits/mo2 PHP workers + 25k visits/moInodes400k600k50kUnlimitedUnlimitedControl panelSite ToolshPanelcPanelUser PortalMyKinstaEmail storage10GB1GBAdjustablexxMajor incidentsDenies issues with TTFB, DNS, CPU, othersScam reports, fake reviews, 2019 breachClaims of hosting terrorist sites2015 breachNoneMigrations$30/siteUnlimited (but screws it up)Free on qualified accounts onlyPaid (quoted)Free on select hosts + 1 freeTrustPilot rating4.6/54.6/5 (fake)3.7/54.5/54.2/5Monthly price$3.99 (1 year)$3.99 (2 years)$5.45 (1 year)$20 (1 year)$29 (1 year)Renewals$24.99/mo$14.99/mo$19.99/mo$25/mo$29/mo
SiteGround – $25/mo for a shared GrowBig plan is a ripoff. Top it off with a poor cache plugin, inferior CDN than Cloudflare APO, CPU limits, and a support team that constantly lies about their issues… means you’re getting ripped off. If your LCP is high, I bet you use SiteGround Optimizer which does a poor job with web vitals, plus they’ve have TTFB issues. Their CDN requires you to use SiteGround’s DNS which was blocked by Google for 4 days. To cover up their mess, they deny everything and use Facebook group admins (who run several groups) to promote SiteGround on their behalf and act like support agents. They have “good reviews” only because of affiliates and legal threats. Check this thread about Hristo’s AMA.
Hostinger – only cheap because they lack resources like cores, RAM, and email storage. Everyone gets drawn to their cheap prices and LiteSpeed, but have you read their scam reports and fake reviews? I would never trust them with my site. Support is horrendous and will screw up migrations, suspend your account, and pretty sure they outsource it to an ice cream truck in Lithuania. The CEO admitted to fake reviews, they’re banned from Facebook groups for voting for themselves in polls, and hired brand ambassadors who pretend to be customers. Check this poll.
Bluehost – another host that grew from “how to start a blog” affiliates and pays WordPress to be “officially” recommended. Use a shared LiteSpeed host instead.
WPX – no redundancy system which already lead to a global outage they blamed on a dead CEO. Ticking time bomb, overpriced shared hosting, and not the fastest WordPress host like Matthew said (but now he lists Kinsta #1)? Marketing gimmick.
WP Engine – I reached out to them about their specs, but they don’t give them out. When a host doesn’t list basic things like cores/RAM, I assume it’s not good. From my experience, they’re similar to Kinsta but even worse with pricey overages.
Kinsta – great option if you want to go bankrupt with paid add-ons that should be free. Compared to Rocket.net, you get 16x less RAM, 10x less monthly visits, brutal PHP worker limits, and a very low memory limit of 256MB. What are you paying so much for? Slower SATA SSDs, a premium DNS that’s slower than Cloudflare’s, and staging sites that get 1 CPU core? Madness! No wonder their TrustPilot rating sunk.
I agree:
NameHero for shared LiteSpeed, Cloudways Vultr HF for cloud, Rocket.net outperforms both
…something like that!
And by the way, Rocket.net pays $150/sale through their affiliate program without having to climb tiers. Ben is also great to work with.
12. Get Involved In Facebook Groups
My conversion rate went from 2.5% to 8% just by including Facebook polls where Cloudways was rated #1, along with a few Twitter screenshots of migration results and conversations from Facebook Groups. Whether it’s Amazon reviews or Facebook polls, you NEED to include unbiased reviews. That’s why I don’t like collecting reviews on my website – they look biased.
People want evidence, not opinions.
There’s a Facebook Group for everything. For me, I mainly use the WordPress Hosting, WP Speed Matters, and WP Speed Up Facebook Groups to keep track of the web hosting industry.
13. Bookmark Affiliate Statistics In Your Browser
Go to your affiliate dashboard(s) and bookmark the “statistic” page so it saves to your browser. This saves time especially if you’re someone who likes to constantly check sales/performance.
14. Set Up Email Alerts When A Sale Is Made
This only works if the affiliate sends you an email when a sale is generated. Any time I make a hosting sale, I get a custom notification on my phone. It is very ENCOURAGING to get these.
Create custom alerts on your phone for affiliate sales – if you use Gmail, go to your settings and create a filter so all emails with “SiteGround Affiliate Sale Generated” in the subject line go into their own folder (tweak the subject line to match whatever email notification your affiliate sends you). Then set up a custom alert on your phone using the Gmail app so whenever you generate a sale, you get a custom alert (here’s a tutorial for Android and here’s one for Apple). I have different notifications for Rocket.net, Cloudways, others. It makes your day a little better :)
15. Build Your Community
Respond To Comments – some of my articles have 400+ comments. It’s hard to keep up sometimes but this is a key part of building a community and allowing readers to ask you questions and leave their feedback. You should especially respond to YouTube comments because they are a ranking factor and encourage even more people to leave more comments.
Build That Newsletter – I use Mailchimp and can’t stress how important it is to build your email list from the start (it’s free until you reach 2,000 subscribers). Once you create an account, add an email sidebar on your blog or create a dedicated newsletter page where people can sign up.
Be Open, Not Salesy – I hold back zero information on my blog, don’t recommend anything I don’t truly believe will help my readers, and try my best not to recommend hosting on every single post I write (only where it makes sense). Valuable information first, affiliate sales after.
16. Avoid Google Penalties
Follow Google’s guidelines for affiliate marketing.
Avoid short, thin pages that offer little value to readers.
Don’t always list affiliate products first – Google knows!
Don’t overuse affiliate links in your posts, drop them where it counts.
Avoid too many “list posts” where you just list a bunch of affiliate products.
Write an affiliate disclaimer (you’ll see mine at the very bottom of my blog).
Consider writing a review of your affiliate’s product/service and linking to that post (instead of using an affiliate link) to reduce the amount of affiliate links on your site.
17. Monitor Conversion Rates
The way you endorse a product or service and the social proof behind it (Facebook polls or maybe reviews from other customers) are the main reason I was able to go from 2% to 8%+. If you don’t see these in your affiliate dashboard, use Thirsty Affiliate’s pro version to see them.
This is from 2017 when I started hitting it hard. Look at that CR (conversation rate) increase!
18. Use An Affiliate Disclaimer
Here’s mine:
19. Mistakes I Made
In my Google Analytics graph you’ll see a sudden drop in traffic followed by a long flatline in 2015/2016. These were pretty tough years for me and I hope I can save you from making a few bad mistakes I made, which resulted in years of financial hardship. Here are a few simple tips.
Don’t hire a sketchy link builder to boost rankings.
Get links from great content or hire someone who knows what they’re doing.
Don’t skimp on a free WordPress theme, cheap hosting, or use bloated plugins.
Don’t set a goal to write 3 blog posts a day… set a goal to write 1 blog post a week and make that post super helpful, long, and filled with information that is so valuable you will say “yeah, people will link to that.” 90% of my traffic/affiliate income comes from just 20 tutorials, many of which are 5 years old, but I constantly update content to make it better.
Do this and you should see consistent “small spikes” in your Google Analytics.
20. Donate To Charity
Once you’re financially stable, I hope you start giving back. It feels good and people like the idea of supporting a good cause (they will be more likely to click your affiliate link). This also means you don’t have to use as many links in your content. In total, I have given $6,000 to GoFundMe campaigns and $6,000 to my parents who let me live in their house while I worked on my blog.
Feels good to give back :)
21. Share Your Story
This is now the #1 visited post on my blog! I knew I could outrank all the fakes.
22. Promote Black Friday Deals
Many companies have Black Friday + Cyber Monday deals (usually for about 2 weeks) and you can easily make 3x your normal sales during this time if you promote it right. I’ve made $2,000 in a single day during Black Friday season. You can make a “Deals” page but what I like to do is use the Better Search Replace plugin to bulk update all pricing screenshots to a screenshot of each company’s new Black Friday prices. Then when Black Friday is done, I just run another search/replace to change the screenshots back. Doesn’t take much time, but it’s very effective.
23. 2021 PayPal Report
Most affiliates pay through PayPal but some of them pay directly through your bank (ShareASale, Impact, many affiliate networks). Nonetheless, I added these for the skeptics.
A few months
I made almost $400,000 with SiteGround before I stopped promoting them.
Got affiliate of the month back in July, 2017 :)
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when you refer people to products or services from a merchant who agrees to give you a commission when a sale is made through your unique affiliate link.
How do I make money with affiliate marketing?
The most common ways are to set up a blog or YouTube channel, grow your audience, then sign up for affiliate programs that make sense to refer your viewers to.
How fast can you make money with affiliate marketing?
It can take anywhere from a couple months to several years to make consistent money with affiliate marketing. It depends on your ability to drive traffic, build trust, and successfully promote your affiliates.
What are the highest paying affiliate programs?
Web hosting programs like Rocket.net, Cloudways, WP Engine, and Bluehost typically pay $150/sale once you start making a lot of sales. That's why the space is so competitive.
Is affiliate marketing passive income?
Affiliate marketing income is not 100% passive income. You still need to create content, keep content current, and adapt to your industry while monitoring sales and conversions.
How much money can you make with affiliate marketing?
Some affiliates make a couple hundred dollars per month while other super affiliates make $10,000+ per month. You will get there quicker if you make it your full-time job and create awesome content on a consistent basis.
How do you get paid in affiliate marketing?
Most affiliates get paid through PayPal or directly to their bank account. Typical affiliate programs make payouts each month or once you reach a specific amount in commissions.
How can beginners make money with affiliate marketing?
If you're a beginner, you can make money with affiliate marketing by setting up a YouTube channel and teaching people how to start a blog while referring your audience to hosting. This is the most popular way beginners start making money.
What are the best affiliate programs to make money?
Amazon and hosting companies are two of the best affiliate programs to make money. Amazon is the most popular online retailer, and hosting affiliate programs offer some of the highest commissions. Bluehost, SiteGround, and HostGator are a few examples.
How do I make money with affiliate marketing without a website?
Setting up a YouTube channel is the easiest way to make money with affiliate marketing without a website. It's free, easy, and you can start creating videos instantly. Once you grow your audience, sign up for affiliate programs and promote products on your channel.
Is affiliate marketing worth it?
Yes, affiliate marketing can be well worth your time. But you need to have a plan on where you will promote products, which companies and products you will promote, and a strategy for getting traffic. Traffic is where most affiliate marketers fail.
How do YouTubers make money with affiliate marketing?
Most YouTubers add affiliate links in the video description or mention promo codes in their video which credit them the sale.
Final Thought: It’s A Long-Term Investment
This is the 1st car I have EVER purchased myself at age 29 (I was broke until then and leased from my parents). But the time committed to affiliate marketing and creating great tutorials and YouTube videos was worth it… I work for myself, there is virtually no limit on how much I can make, my schedule is flexible, and I collect enough passive income to live the life I want.
It’s no lambo, but I did buy a c300 Mercedes with my affiliate incomeMe and the cats (Valencio on the left, Sonic on the right)Spending 4 weeks in Thailand without worrying about money was awesome
If you have any questions or need help getting started, I am more than happy to help with whatever I can. Just leave a comment below and I promise to respond as soon as I can! Best of luck in your affiliate marketing journey and I genuinely hope this tutorial was super helpful :)
Cheers,
Tom
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Great article very detailed…I am comfused about the time when did you started blogging… I want to go for it but I will need to see results making some money so base on your expirience how long may take to see some income ? Please advise and thank you Ps: Also I may write in Spanish instead of English
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