Affiliate Marketing Income Potential

Affiliate Marketing Income Potential – The Streams of Income

 

In today’s environment, there are millions and millions of people across the globe that are living and breathing the internet. Having an online business will require a small investment.

There is almost an endless number of people who are ready to purchase your products and services.  Therefore, you will need to create multiple streams of income.  In this article, I will show you the areas where affiliate marketing income potential exist.

Affiliate marketing provides many methods of marketing products, services, and information to other people who are interested in buying them. However, diversity in your stream of income is essential to avoid the ups and downs of money-making and commerce cycles. This is why you need multiple streams of income.

To improve the monetary risks that may exist when you depend on only one source of income, I suggest that marketers create at least a second stream of income to generate income, but several additional streams would be recommended.

You could create additional streams of income that is either active or passive. As an affiliate marketer passive income is recommended. Therefore, I will concentrate on showing you how to earn multiple streams of income in this article. The thing to remember is to make sure that the streams of income you choose relate to each other.

If you use multiple streams of income using different affiliate networks and individual affiliate programs you will be able to guard against big financial losses during the slow periods in one income stream and the up periods in another income stream.

Affiliate Program or Affiliate Network?

 

Marketers should not just willy, nilly start signing up for many affiliate programs and networks. It is best to understand the difference between the two.

Affiliate Program: (a/k/a individual affiliate program) — Individual affiliate programs allow you to deal directly with the advertiser (merchant). When you become an affiliate marketer with an affiliate program, the advertiser will generally provide you with an affiliate ID (to track sales made based on your promoting efforts).

The merchant will also provide you with affiliate links and banners that you will place on your own website.  After that, you are left pretty much on your own to make the conversions.

It is much easier to obtain individual affiliate program information such as how the program works, is it pay per click (PPC), pay per lead (PPL) or pay per sale (PPS) and about commissions.

Affiliate Networks: An Affiliate Network is a liaison between thousands of individual merchants (affiliate programs) under one umbrella. You may sign up for as many merchants that are relevant.

But you will have to sign up for each merchant individually from the affiliate network site. There can be an affiliate manager available to help you find the best merchants for your website. Choose wisely because some of the advertisements you can choose may be of poor quality and might be even outright SPAM.

Using affiliate networks can be considered one-stop shopping since you can find many different advertisers under one roof. If you find that a particular product is not profitable you can drop it and find another one without having to join another affiliate network. That would not be the case with an individual affiliate program.

Individual Streams

eBooks: Offer an informational product such as an ebook. You can create it yourself and even get one already written from the public domain and make it your own. As an affiliate marketer, your book should relate to affiliate marketing or a specific affiliate marketing niche.

You could create one or several to market. Depending how much value you create in the book, one could average anywhere from $500 to $3,000 each month in sales.

Video Courses: Creating courses for your niche has the power to brand you as an expert in your niche. There is power in using videos.

Newsletter Subscriptions: Create a newsletter by re-purposing work you have already written and added in some new content. You can start up an email club for the newsletter and charge a monthly subscription fee.

A particular copywriter charges about $100 a month for his newsletter. That is not an average cost. A beginner will not be able to charge such a high rate. Just keep in mind that the value of the product must be worthy of the fee charged.

I should note that most marketers create newsletters to give to customers free of charge.  Most do this to build their email list.

Individual Affiliate Programs

 

Wealthy Affiliate.com: This is an affiliate marketing training platform where you join and can learn everything you need to know to create an online affiliate marketing business of your own. This is where I got my start.

You can join the affiliate marketing program and earn a passive income every time someone joins under your affiliate program link. There are different commission rates depending on if you are a Starter member or a Premium member. You can also earn income from promoting products related to a specific niche you are interested in.

This is not an MLM scam. It is a legitimate online business with a legitimate affiliate marketing program. See my article Wealthy Affiliate University Review of this company.

Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool:  Jaaxy is a top-notch keyword research tool to help you with on-page SEO for your website and articles. Jaaxy also has an individual affiliate program that can be used to generate yet another stream of income for your business if you promote others to join.

NameCheap: NameCheap is an ICANN accredited domain registrar and a web hosting company. It manages over three million domain names. It is noted for being one of the most popular domain name registrars.

They are primarily known for their domain registrar and they are affordable. Transfer from the NameCheap Domain Name Server to a hosting service of your choice is easy to accomplish. The cost is only about $10-$12 per year for your domain name.

As a NameCheap affiliate, you receive 15% commission each time a new customer makes their purchase via your affiliate link. NameCheap offers regular payouts within 30 days after a purchase.

Commissions can be received via PayPal or NameCheap Funds. NameCheap Fund is an account where you can transfer your commissions to be used to make your own new purchases or pay your domain name renewal fees.

Affiliate Networks

Before I get into the affiliate network information, I want to make sure you have a clear understanding of the types of networks you will choose to partner with.

I want to explain the differences between Cost Per Action (CPA) and a Cost Per Sale  (CPS) affiliate networks.

Cost Per Action: In this type of network commission is paid after an individual completes whatever the desired action is that is determined and required by the merchant. The actions could be things such as filling out a form, signing up for a membership, accepting a free trial of a product or service, to name a few examples.

Cost Per Sale: This type of network is pretty clear-cut. A commission will be paid when an individual purchases a product or service that the affiliate marketer has promoted from their website using the affiliate ID.

Joining a Network

Cost Per Action: To get approved as a partner with a CPA network you must meet certain conditions. You must have your own website that has the content built out. You will be required to furnish your website address, tell the amount of traffic your site receives on an average each month.

The more traffic your site gets will enhance your chances of getting approved. It can take up to 3 or more days to receive information of approval or disapproval. The decision is usually sent via email.

Cost Per Sale: Joining a CPS network is a lot easier to get approved. Generally, you only have to join. For example, if you join Click Bank as an affiliate you will be able to start promoting their products immediately.

Commission Percentages

First, let’s understand that these commission averages are not etched in stone. There are many variables that come into play and thousands and thousands of merchants that make their own criteria and decision regarding what their commission pay rates will be. The quotes I am providing as just averages so that you get an idea of what kinds of commissions you can earn.

Normally, you can’t get a firm commission rate from an affiliate network because there are so many merchants involved and each one has their own set of criteria regarding commission rate. It would be very difficult for a network to have to attempt to provide information for all the thousands of merchants under the network umbrella.

I recommend that if you want to know the specific commission rates for a particular merchant, you should apply to that specific merchant to get exact commission rates. So, remember that these are averages and may not be the exact commission rate for any specific merchant.

Cost Per Action: Commissions in this type of network depends on what action is called for. The more action that is required of the potential customer, the higher the commission.

• Filling out a form that requires only a zip code or an email address, the commission may be $.20 to $3.00.

• Filling out a form or signing up for a free membership, which has about 5 to 7 fields, the commission can be between $3.00 to $8.00.

• If a potential customer accepts a free trial offer and provides their credit card information to pay for shipping, the commission can be $20.00 to $50.00 for each person who signs up.

Cost Per Sale: If the affiliate marketer is promoting physical products, the commission average can range from 1% to 10% of each sale. But, if you are promoting digital products the commission range can be from 50% to 75%, and in some cases as high as 80%.

The reason why the commission average for promoting digital products is so much higher is that digital products can be downloaded immediately. The savings from not having shipping cost is shifted to the affiliate marketer resulting in higher commissions.

Using Traffic Generation Technique

Cost Per Action: In this type of network, merchants may have restrictions regarding the methods the affiliate marketer uses to drive traffic. It is important that marketers understand the terms and conditions agreed upon to know what is permitted and what isn’t before promoting CPA products on their website.

Generally, CPA networks allow marketers to use just a few traffic generation strategies to promote offers. If you do not adhere to the requirements it could result in the reversal of commissions or be banned from the network. If you have any doubt, make sure you discuss your strategies with your affiliate manager before you proceed.

Cost Per Sale: With most CPS networks you generally will have no restrictions on using traffic generation strategies. You are pretty much left to your own decisions about the traffic strategies you want to use as long as they are ethical.

Refunds

Cost Per Action: There is no such thing as a refund with CPA. However, if a merchant discovers that the marketer is participating in affiliate fraud and turning in fraudulent leads or the leads came with fraudulent credit card information, the merchant will do a commission reversal

Cost Per Sale: Refunds are available with CPS networks. Generally, customers are allowed 60 days to try a product or service that was purchased. During the 60-day period if the customer is not satisfied the can ask for a refund and return the product. If the customer requests a refund, which is paid, the merchant will effect a commission reversal.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of these two types of affiliate networks and realize that there are differences between the two when you make your choice of affiliate networks to partner with.

List of CPA and CPS Networks

Revenue Performance provides an excellent list of the top 20 CPA and CPS Affiliate Networks you may want to consider. Just click on the appropriate list on the menu tabs. Keep in mind that there of many, many affiliate networks to choose from, but they are not all equal. Make sure you conduct your due diligence before you make a decision to partner with a specific network.

Additional Network Information

The chart below provides some additional features for some affiliate networks that may be of help.

Wrapping Up

I’ve shown you several streams of income potential that can be earned with affiliate marketing, but there are even more income streams out there.  Affiliate marketing income potential is almost an endless stream of passive income.  You only have to look for them.

I would love to hear about your personal experience with using different streams of income potential.

Please feel free to contact me if you need help with anything. Just make a comment below or you can always get in touch with me through wealthyaffiliate.com (here is a link to my profile).

 

Verna Mason
Founder of Mom’s Trusted Affiliate

momstrustedaffiliate.com
email: verna@momstrustedaffiliate.com