When it comes to advertising online, you have a few different ways you can turn your social networking skills into a money-making career. The traditional kind of ad is pay-per-click or pay-per-view, but online users have been learning how to use spot these ads even when they’re disguised as clickbait articles or as links to other parts of the website. And even that’s assuming they don’t have an add-on that gets rid of ads in the first place. It’s no wonder, then, that ad revenue has been steadily dropping over the years.
However, PPC ads aren’t the only way to make money by selling products online. You can also join an affiliate program, where the biggest difference comes from the fact that affiliates (that’s you) are only paid when someone buys a product using the link you provide. These commissions can range from slightly to significantly bigger than what you’d get from hosting a PPC ad, making up for the fact that people generate fewer sales than they do clicks, but to make real money as an affiliate you’ll need to join a few top affiliate programs and learn the art of the soft sale.
The Affiliate Advantage
Affiliate marketing isn’t any sort of marketing scheme where you have to pay to get in and then pay even more to get out, or else force others to pay in order to get any sort of profit. You can pay money to become an affiliate, but that money lets you access more resources and you don’t have to pay a single cent to become an affiliate marketer unless you want to.
On top of that, since you only get paid on commission, your affiliate status means that you have no obligation to put in any amount of effort selling products unless you want to. After all, if you don’t do anything, no one will pay you for anything, which means you get to decide your level of commitment. You can join all the top affiliate programs you like, but none of that will matter unless you gather an audience and starts spreading your links.
The Nature Of The Soft Sell
In the world of marketing, sales techniques are divided into two categories: the hard sell and the soft sell. Hard selling is the aggressive, direct approach you’d expect from a salesperson, and it involves techniques like emphasizing limited sales windows, listing off all the reasons why the product is better than the competition, and persisting to at least some extent even when the customer doesn’t act very interested.
On the other hand, soft sell techniques are much more subtle. They include providing information about a product only when a customer asks, encouraging customers to compare the product to the competition on their own, and even pointing out a product’s flaws and what makes it suited or unsuited for a given customer. This approach may seem like it can’t be as effective as a hard sell, but the friendliness and the confidence it projects can make it even more effective to certain kinds of customers.
As opposed to the high-pressure hard sell of multi-level marketing, affiliate marketing is much more of a soft sell, an opportunity to explain why the top affiliate programs you partnered with are worth someone else’s time and money without demanding that other people spend their money here and now. And since you probably got a website or two through the program as a place to put your ads, affiliate marketing also gives you a different kind of opportunity.
An Opportunity To Monetize Your Hobbies
When you create a website, either directly through the affiliate marketing program or on your own, you can make it about whatever you want. So while you could review the products you advertise as honestly as you like, you can also make the site about your favorite hobby, like model building or history, and then choose the top affiliate programs to advertise that are related to your chosen topic.
Still, something else to remember is that affiliate marketing isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme: it’s a job. Not only that, but it’s a job that can demand a lot of time and effort up front, long before you start to reap any rewards. Fortunately, Affiliate Marketer Training has articles and advice that will get you started on the right track. We can’t do any of the hard work for you, but we can help you figure out what you need to do and steer you to the top affiliate programs that are the right fit for you.