What is affiliate marketing?
Many online vendors have so-called affiliate programs. Anyone can create an affiliate account there and start promoting their products online. The promoter (you) gets a commission for referring paying customers to the vendor.
Check the menu on the right. There is a link to a PDF beginner’s tutorial on how to get started with an affiliating business, from scratch and with minimal investment.
How do you get paid?
Once signed up with the affiliate program, you can download so-called tracking links and/or banners with “tracked links” on the affiliate website. These can be embedded on your website, and when a visitor clicks the link, the seller knows which affiliate referred the customer based on the ID number in the link.
There are two basic models for your cooperation with the affiliate program:
CPA (Cost per Acquisition), in which the affiliate receives a fixed amount when a new client meets a defined sales threshold.
Revenue Share (also often referred to as MGR), in which the affiliate is paid a percentage of the sales revenue. Depending on the terms and conditions, you will be paid a commission percentage on all future sales, or only for a specific period.
How do you promote those vendors?
What you need most to start with affiliate marketing is a website that drives traffic. See the paragraph “Make a plan” below! Getting “traffic” for your website is the most important thing.
That website can either be a website related to a specific product (the product you want to promote) or just a website on any topic, as long as it generates enough traffic. Example: You build a website on a topic you know well, such as diving. You write great content, and people visit your site. Then, you start promoting an online sales site specializing in diving equipment. Every time a visitor goes from your website to the seller’s site and buys something, you get a commission.
Social Media Marketing
If you have an audience on social media, you may not even need a website. You can use the same tracked affiliate links to start promoting the vendor’s products. And if your audience is global, so much the better. Many countries have lotteries with low payouts, or no lotteries at all. Residents of those countries are the ideal audience for our lottery service.
There are primarily two scenarios:
If you had a website with a wide range of article topics, and that website had thousands of visitors every day, you could more or less sell any product you wanted. The sheer number of visitors would generate significant revenue. And our affiliate program is an excellent fit for any website because, after all, everybody loves the lottery, right?
If you had, for example, a lottery-related website, you would probably have fewer visitors. Still, the traffic is more “targeted”, i.E., your visitors are more likely to buy the lottery tickets you are promoting. Even if you had only 10 visitors per day, you would still see some revenue. And there is one thing about playing the lottery: people tend to keep playing for a long, long time. Once you have referred a certain number of clients to our affiliate program, you will see a relatively steady revenue stream.
How to get visitors to your website?
To attract visitors, you will need high-quality articles on your website that provide helpful information to readers. You must also learn the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This is important because there are specific “rules” you need to know to make sure that the pages on your website will rank high on Google for search “keywords” which can bring you visitors. Affiliates call that “driving traffic” to your site.
SEO is not rocket science. Just Google “SEO basics” and do some reading to learn the most important rules for creating your articles and improving your skills later.
The power of having an email list
Always set up your website so visitors have a reason to sign up or leave their email addresses. Build a list and use it to send emails promoting special events, sales, and more. If you already have a list, then you may not even need a website to be an affiliate. But do not buy lists from spammy email address sales sites – they are not worth it.
How much does it cost to get started in affiliate marketing?
Simple answer: nothing or almost nothing!
All you need is a domain name and a hosting plan for webspace. As a beginner, you do not need your own server; basic web hosting, available from € 2 per month, is sufficient to get started.
Select a reliable hosting provider and choose an available domain name. Please put some thought into the name of your domain before you order it. Then, choose a basic hosting plan. Register and pay for the account. Then, log in to your client account and take a look around. One tip: Look for an additional function called “Domain Privacy” – this is something to consider if, for some reason, you do not want anyone to know that you own and run this website and the affiliate business connected to it.
We recommend starting by installing a WordPress site using a free template (a layout). WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that automatically builds your website and lets you manage it. Webspace providers have straightforward functions that you can use to set up a WordPress site in seconds. No programming skills are needed at all!
Read the introductory tutorial to learn the most essential functions of WordPress. You need only a few hours to acquire the basic skills required to manage a simple website. There is detailed documentation on the WordPress website, and a forum where you can ask more experienced users for help.
How much money can you earn as an affiliate?
That depends very much on how committed you are and how good you are. Some affiliates earn millions, others earn very little, but many earn several hundred Euros per month. Do not expect to earn money right away. It takes time for your website to attract visitors. If you invest the necessary work, you will be able to live on it in the long run.
Should/can one do this full-time or part-time?
Everyone has to decide that for themselves. But 90 percent of affiliates join the business part-time. A large percentage of affiliates transition to full-time roles after achieving sufficient success and industry experience.
Is this legal?
Absolutely, unless you are promoting products that are illegal in your country of residence; if that is the case, you need to take measures to protect yourself from potential issues. See “Domain Privacy” above, among other things. Be sure not to choose a domain registrar and/or hosting service in such a country where your website would be illegal!
Most importantly: Make a plan!
Before you can earn money through an affiliate program, you need to develop a sound plan and gather the essential information. You may have seen the Kevin Costner movie “Field of Dreams,” in which a voice from the sky says, “Build it, and they will come.” If you think you can cobble together a website on any topic and expect money to roll in soon, you will end up frustrated.
But if you approach the matter with a plan, you can earn good money, and advertising for an affiliate program is tremendous fun. It’s ideal to start in a part-time role, and if it goes well, you can easily transition to full-time.
Your plan must contain the following things:
Choose a topic that you are passionate about and for which you can provide valuable information to your readers. If you are new to this, always choose a “niche” topic – if there are tons of other websites about that topic, you will have a hard time competing with them. Also, it will be challenging to rank for any keywords. Of course, you need to choose a topic that fits a product that can be bought online and has an affiliate program.
Make a list of keyword combinations that potential visitors might be searching for on Google. Be mindful that achieving high rankings for obvious keywords like “lotto online” is nearly impossible. Go for more specific phrases. An extreme example would be “Can people participate in Powerball if they do not live in the US?”
Then decide which keyword combination you will target on your website’s home page. Write a home page article for that keyword combination. Next, develop a plan for your website’s structure. Write a few more articles for other keyword combinations that you can come up with.
From then on, your focus must be on two things:
Build links pointing to your website. Links are like positive votes for your site; high-quality links can improve your search engine rankings. Ask friends with websites for links, contact other webmasters, and offer to write an article in exchange for links, etc. The best links, though, will come naturally when people read your articles and link out to your page because they liked what you wrote!
Create more content (articles) with good SEO. Use your imagination and write new articles regularly. Consider adding 2-3 articles per week to begin with.
While you complete the above, you will become increasingly skilled, and the first visitors will arrive on your website. Use a (free) service like www.clicky.com or Google Analytics to monitor your visitor numbers and their behavior. Check your affiliate program account periodically to see whether you are generating revenue.
Use an SEO service to help you find more keywords related to your primary keyword. Create SEO-optimized content that targets those keywords. More content drives more traffic to your website and increases your commissions.
Over time, as you put in the work, you will almost certainly see a positive effect on your visitor numbers and revenue.
On a personal note: the people behind RedFoxLotto and the affiliate program started as affiliates more than 15 years ago. They have been quite successful ever since. And if you ask them what they like about this business, they would tell you this:
- Limitless and global earning potential
- You can start your affiliate marketing business with almost no investment
- It can give you financial independence
- You can work online, from anywhere you want
