Affiliate marketing as a concept is simple. Doing it is another beast.

The concept of affiliate marketing is literally promoting someone else’s product and collecting commissions from sales. You just drive traffic to a custom link and hopefully end up with sales.

There are 2 types of products in affiliate marketing: Physical products and Digital Products.

Physical products include any tangible goods such as electronics, furniture, gardening tools, and even home appliances.

Digital products are products that exist in a digital format, such as eBooks, computer software, internet hosting, and e-learning courses.

Physical products commission rates are usually low and go up to 15-20% on the high spectrum. That’s because there’s a lot more work and money involved with producing them. From production costs to storage and shipping fees.

Digital products on the other hand tend to have higher commission rates of up to 80% and some product sellers may even go up to 90%. The rates are higher because digital products are created once and can be duplicated on a massive scale with little to no production time after the final product is created.

That doesn’t discount the fact that both can’t be marketed together. A good marketer utilizes both physical as well as digital products by finding goods that complement each other, such as notebooks and pens going with digital courses for consumers to take physical notes.

Now herein lies the complicated part. 

If you’re good with marketing psychology and copywriting, affiliate marketing can be a goldmine, no matter what product you’re promoting. If those skills aren’t in your belt, that’s okay because you can acquire them. It’ll just take a little longer to get a sale.

Affiliate marketing is a business in itself. As a business owner, you’ll be wearing several hats.

You’re a researcher, marketer, salesman, and accountant.
You’ll need to be able to collect data, use the data, and market a product with the data.

If you have conversions or sales, you’ll need to study how you got those conversions and sales so that you can recreate the results. You need to test your copywriting and timing to see when is the best time to reach out to your audience. Solve their pains, build trust, and find new strategies to implement into your business.

Now after getting some sales, you’ll need to balance your own books, and if you did everything right, you’ll be profiting.

“Sure, now I know what affiliate marketing is, but why should I do it?

There are many reasons why you should try it out, and one of the reasons is that it can free up your schedule in the long run.

Read more about the benefits of proper affiliate marketing here.

Affiliate marketing is such a broad term that you really have to narrow down the path that works best for you. You’ll definitely need some guidance if you’re a beginner.

I hope to see you on the other side,
Sam