What Is An Affiliate?

You go to either the vendor directly who will have a link like "join our affiliate program". Or you can go to places like Amazon, Clickbank, ShareASale, Rakuten Advertising and join one of those companies. These companies deal with all the affiliate mechanics for vendors. So you will find some top brands wanting a third party to do all the "back end" work

The best ones are the ones that you know. Not the ones that are in fad or what people are telling you to promote. The best niche! What you will find is that affiliate marketing or selling is the process of finding a product that people need and then trying your best to get tell them that you have a solution. The only way that this can be done is forcefully- through advertisement or through passive interaction- promoting yourself and what you have to offer. Both are good. But if you are starting out then try to figure out what products you have around and how they have helped you. Once you do that then the process of creating "sales content" will practically write itself. The videos or pictures that you create will be genuine. People can see that. This then creates trust and that trust is what gets people to buy. Check out what is affiliate marketer to go deep within this- giving you a good stable ground to affiliate sell.

Also called Amazon Associates. The start up advice can be found here. It will discuss the pros and cons of Amazon affiliate selling. And how to find your first product.

You shouldn't have to buy anything to set up to be an affiliate. 

Clickbank has a decent tutorial on how to become an affiliate on their platform, if you can find it. They mainly want you to sign up for their newsletter which is full of info and quite helpful. Ultimately what you need to do it get an affiliate link:

1. sign up for a free Clickbank account
2. find a product that you want to promote
3. click on "promote it"
4. it populates the affiliate link with your ID
5. you promote the product
   

Yes. It has been done for ages through time in some way shape or form. Affiliate sales is mainly an online thing, but offline? It is called commission sales. What sometimes isn't legit is the following:

• Some iffy companies that will get the sales from you but might not pay on time/ in the manner which you signed up for. That is why it is good to go with the brands that have been around for a while
• How you sell has been really iffy. Some people try to scam people into buying through their links. Or promised X,Y and Z- get the sale but get tons of refunds.
  
• Poor product. The main iffiness with affiliate selling is the promoting of products that people have not used and have no clue what they are talking about. Unfortunately this is not a minimal amount of affiliate. When people see higher commissions on some products, the price is their driving factor, not the helping of the customer.
  

That is a really hard answer. If you want to find a good affiliate product then check out this free resource on picking one. For me it would be a product:

• that gets low refunds
• that helps the customer
• that has a nice commission (you want to be paid for your effort)
• that converts well
• can have an upsell that is beneficial to the customer and not intrusive
• the customer is not going to get blasted with promotion emails after the sale
• the sales page does not feel scammy
• the after sales has a good customer service
  
• Has a good reputation
  

Have you noticed we haven't talked about a certain product or brand? And by the way, this list is not exhaustive. You will find on many websites that price and commission percentage will always come into play. Sure, it is helpful but it shouldn't be your primary focus.

Why?

OK. How about if you find that your product pays 50% on $100 and you get 100% conversion? Pure awesome right? But how about:

• if they constantly blasted you with daily emails to get you to buy other stuff
• some bug comes in and messes with the product but there is no after sales who cares
• the product actually doesn't do what it says, in fact, it makes things worse- or is something we have all seen and heard of before, but just looks different.

This has happened to us when we bought through someones link. Now. What happens to the customer?

• they ask for a refund
• their trust in your judgment reduces
• unsubscribing occurs
  
• your sites gets poor reviews, maybe even reduced traffic

That one simple $50 sale has cost you $50 (due to refund), now you are back to zero with a poor reputation and much reduced conversion rates.

And it is true. For us, we have not used that sales person again and we don't watch their Youtube channel. 

Here's some affiliate fails that are still happening.

Again, with this it depends. If you are selling 10 products at $5 commission, then that's great. If you decide to sell a much higher priced product that only gives you $40 commission then you are down $10.

But how about if you sell them both?

The concept of what is an affiliate is more to do with what you can offer and how to help right? 

Sure, sell a high priced product (there are tons around) but the amount of effort might not be worth it, especially if you can not sell too many of them. What the vast majority of pro affiliate sellers do is to sell multiple products and throw in ones that have some sort of recurring revenue (pays monthly or so while the person is subscribed).

Those products are all interlinked and compliment one another. They are also on different price ranges.

You will find many people will buy at the lower end of the product price range. Some will buy in the middle and some will buy on the higher end. But. You need to offer those products in some sort of fashion that makes sense rather just selling because they are at a higher price.

Selling multiple products will also:

• Increase your over all profit
• Will target different people who might not just buy one that you are offering
  
• It offers a choice to all buyers

Check out the basics of an affiliate marketer to find multiple products from one idea

The idea behind this is that you have a "funnel" and you pile in traffic. Through that funnel people are directed to a specific target- usually your "sales" page. The theory goes that the more "qualified" or people who have interest in your product are going to like the end of the funnel more. If they like it then they will buy.

Funnels can be everywhere, and they should. But affiliate funnels are also incomplete because they tend to forget the people who didn't want the product the first time. And it is true. How many times have you visited a site and then bought something?

We have gone into affiliate funnels, how to adjust them and their new version in this article here.