Affiliate Marketing - Another Brick In The Wall

Affiliate marketing is yet another way of earning money over the internet, potentially without spending a dime.  It also seems like it could be great for people like me, who might like to sell stuff without actually, well, selling stuff.  I don't know if I've got what it takes to write an e-book or create any product for that matter - and with affiliate marketing, I don't have to.

If you're not familiar with affiliate marketing (I've also seen it referred to as affiliate selling), here's an overview of what it's about:  Say you have a blog about running.  On that blog you might talk about various things that associate with that hobby, like nutritional supplements, pedometers, windbreakers, and most of all sneakers.  Maybe you discuss the products you've tried and really liked, such as a pair of Nike sneakers.  If Nike has an affiliate program, you can sign up with them before you make your post, and link to your sneakers through a specialized link instead of just a link to their shop.  While this still takes the reader where they want to go, if they purchase the same pair of shoes based on your recommendation, you earn a commission.  Pretty simple, right?

Another consideration is that this is another free tool to use for profit.  Every affiliate program I've looked at so far has been completely free for the person doing the marketing (i.e. you or me).  The percentage of a sale you'll earn on commission varies depending on the seller, but getting commission at all seems pretty awesome.  So far I've joined 2 affiliate programs to test the waters, though I don't expect to see any commission for a good long time.  Like earning money from AdSense on my blog, this is something I kinda set up "just in case" and to see how it works.  Any commissions I receive are pure bonus, I'm absolutely not counting on getting any anytime soon.

The main affiliate program I decided to participate in on this blog is through Amazon.com, and that's for several reasons:

• I trust them.  In the 7 years or so I've been purchasing things through Amazon, every order I've made has been flawless.  My items have arrived on time if not earlier, well-packaged and undamaged.  I haven't ever had to return an item purchased on Amazon.
• They sell everything.  I've bought hair appliances, DVDs, digital cameras, jewelry, hardware, skin care products, clothing, food, and lots of other stuff over the years.  With the exceptions of certain beauty products and fresh food, they carry just about anything you could want.
• Their prices are great.  If I want to buy something online, I always comparison shop with Amazon.  I've noticed they're often cheaper than competitors, and offer better shipping options.  Most, if not all, items purchased directly through Amazon (rather than one of their "Marketplace" vendors) are eligible for free shipping on orders over $25.  I am a total sucker for free shipping.

Basically, I am a total Amazon fangirl.  Even before I found out I could make money from them on Mechanical Turk, I've always loved their site.  I've mailed gift wrapped presents to people on the other side of the country through Amazon that got there flawlessly.  I did about 80% of my Christmas shopping there this year.  Their product recommendations after seeing what I've purchased or rated as something I like have been almost eerily spot-on.  Last but not least, but something I really love about the site is their built in review interface.  Lots of online merchants have spots for reviews, but they're usually scrunched up in some out of the way box you need to click on to even see.  On Amazon, they're right there on the page, along with star ratings - every effort is made to tell the customer whether they'll like a product or not.  If you're a regular Amazon user, you've probably spotted lots of other little features throughout the site that make it more engaging and enjoyable for customers.

Since I already love Amazon so much, deciding to be an affiliate marketer for them was a very easy choice.  I assume it would be very difficult to market something you don't think is a quality product or service, and I really don't have any interest in doing that.  Despite my focus on online earning opportunities, I don't want to cheat anyone in the process.  Just in the interest of complete transparency, let me say this:  whether through Amazon or any other company I might become an affiliate with, I'll never link things just because I want you to buy them.  If I link something (and I've linked 3 things here so far - WriterGig's e-book, a Wii, and a treadmill), it's because I think it's awesome or useful in some way.  You don't have to agree, and you certainly don't have to buy it.  Yes, if you do buy something via that link it will benefit me, but I'm not here to try to sell you on anything except online entrepreneurship.  This policy doesn't extend to ads served through AdSense since I have no control over those - but if I'm linking something, don't get all uppity.

Back on topic - A last, cool feature of the Amazon affiliate program is that Blogger has a widget for it built right in.  If you're an affiliate and have it synced up with your blog, there is an Amazon box right next to where you type in your post - making it easy to look up product links if you so choose.  Not really useful for me on this particular blog, but a nice bonus feature nonetheless.  I'm pretty sure there is something similar for Twitter users, but I don't use Twitter so I don't know for sure.

Despite my gushing, there are still two potential drawbacks for interested would-be affiliates:

• If you don't have a bank account - or aren't comfortable sharing your banking information with Amazon, you can only be mailed a check after you've earned $100 - and they'll charge you $15 of that to cut the check.  Just like with their Mechanical Turk program they do NOT pay via PayPal, so be aware of that up front.
• They don't pay as high a percentage per sale as some other affiliates.  They do have a tier scale - so if you make a lot of sales in a given month, your commission percentage will be higher that month too.  This really isn't that big of a drawback when you think about it, since they don't "cap" your commission on high-ticket items.  Since they sell items that cost anywhere from less than a dollar to well over a thousand dollars, that small percentage could still equal a large commission.

What puzzles me is that more people aren't involved with affiliate marketing.  As I started reading up on the subject, almost every piece of information I came across talked about how something like 95% of people who sign up as affiliates never make a sale.  Those aren't exactly good odds.  I don't know if people sign up thinking it's something else?  Maybe they just don't want to do any legwork to increase their rate of sales?  It could also be that 95% of the people who sign up are nobodies like me, who join the program but have no readers to click through their links.  I looked around a little today at some of the blogs I read regularly that would be easy places to earn affiliate money....and none of them participated in any affiliate programs from what I could see.  I would think that if you already have a high-traffic blog focused on some aspect in the consumer culture oeuvre, affiliate links would be a natural way to earn some extra cash.  I was also surprised to see that so many businesses I like dealing with online offer affiliate programs.  If it's something lots of big companies are set up for - and that you can make money with painlessly, why aren't more people doing it?

I'm planning to start an experiment on affiliate marketing in the next few months.  I have a lot of interests that fall into potentially marketable niches.  One interest in particular I was thinking of starting a blog in eventually anyway - sort of a fluffy, fun departure from all the serious money-strategizing going on here.  So I'm thinking that once I've gotten up to $500 worth of total earnings, I'll bite the bullet and set up a site.  The articles and such I've been reading on affiliate marketing suggest that you market to your own interests anyway - those are the topics you already know about, know the uses for various products, etc..  Like with any blog the main focus is on good content - you want to build your readership based on knowing the topic and writing to that audience.  On my experimental site, I plan to use an update schedule to post on specified days - so I can manage things in advance if I need to.  I will probably also be more aggressive about getting my site in front of people who I think will want to read it.  Last but not least, I'll probably go for at least a month of regular posting before starting to link aggressively.  Hopefully by the time all this goes down I'll be able to do it in a savvy way that will actually work.

I think there are a lot of ways that affiliate marketing programs can work for different people/niches.  Like with anything else, you want to know your product and know who you're marketing to.  I'll need to experiment a bit to see if it'll wind up being profitable for me personally, but I definitely think it has potential.



Image courtesy of Flickr via Creative Commons license. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robh/ / CC BY 2.0