Many people start with affiliate marketing because of the passive income
opportunities. But is it real, can you make passive income with affiliate
marketing?
In the last
few years, I’ve made multiple websites that are making me passive income to
this day, and the main monetization method: affiliate marketing. So, YES you
can make passive income as an affiliate marketer, but how?
There are
actually multiple ways you can automate your affiliate
marketing business. Some factors are more important than others, but you
still need to implement the right strategies. To make passive income with
affiliate marketing you need to set up the right system. Here’s what you need
to focus on:
1.
Grow Your
Organic Traffic
2.
Earn
Recurring Commissions
3.
Two Tier
Affiliate Marketing
4.
Use an
Affiliate Marketing Bridge Funnel
5.
Grow Your
Email List
In this
article, I’m going to show you how to actually automate your business and
affiliate income with actionable steps. Without further due, let’s jump right
into it…
Disclaimer: This article may contain affiliate
links where I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you
decide to purchase a paid plan. For more information read my Disclosure.
How To Make Passive Income With Affiliate
Marketing
If you want
to completely automate your affiliate marketing business, you need to set up
the right system, but what does that mean?
This means
you need to generate traffic and sales on autopilot! Most affiliate marketers
spam their affiliate links in Facebook groups and forums, that’s not the way to
do it…
If you really
want to succeed as an affiliate marketer you need to think long term. Affiliate
marketing is a marathon, not a sprint! Remember that.
The
successful affiliates you see all over the internet have been doing this for
years. Success didn’t come overnight, and it won’t come for you either. You
need to work smart and be patient because most affiliates quit too soon because
they don’t see results right away. So what are the secrets to making passive
income with affiliate marketing?
The first
thing you need to take care of, is the traffic:
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Also Like: How To Make A
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1. Grow Your
Organic Traffic
Every single person you see making
passive income with affiliate marketing has some sort of organic
traffic involved in their success. Why is traffic so important?
Because that’s one of your main tasks as an affiliate marketer! The reason it’s
called affiliate marketing is that you’re marketing other companies’ products.
it’s simply digital marketing. Your job is to generate traffic.
So, if that’s
your main job, what would it look like if you were generating free organic
traffic on autopilot?
If you want
to make affiliate marketing a passive income source, you need to start growing
your organic traffic! If you manage to do this, you’re basically 80% done.
How much time
and energy do you use to generate traffic at this point? My guess is that it’s
a lot, right? Imagine you’re able to generate 10,00 visitors each month, or
more, organically. What would that mean?
To start
with, that is several hundred dollars in Facebook advertising. If you can
generate organic traffic, you save both time, energy, and money. But how do you
do this?
You might
already know this, but the best way to generate organic and passive traffic is
with SEO (blogging) and YouTube. You might not be a fan of writing articles or
making YouTube videos, but that’s the best way of generating traffic,
that’s a fact. Your visitors will be free, organic, passive, and targeted,
which makes them much more likely to buy your affiliate product.
It’s fine to
think that you don’t want to create your own blog or YouTube channel, but how
badly do you want to succeed with affiliate marketing. It’s about doing what it
takes, not what you like.
I’m going to
be honest, writing articles all day long isn’t what I enjoy the most, but it
pays the bills and that’s what matters.
To start
growing your organic traffic you NEED to start a blog or YouTube channel. If
you want guidance to start blogging and ranking content on Google, then you
should check out Income School’s Project 24. That’s the course I learned
blogging and search engine optimization. I highly recommend you check it out!
You could
also check out other blogs and YouTube channels in your niche to get ideas on
how to do it.
2. Earn Recurring
Commissions
The next step to earning passive
income as an affiliate marketer is to promote products or services that
pay out recurring commissions. If you do this you get paid month
after month for just one sale. Often the people you referred to stay as paying
customers for years, meaning you’ll receive a monthly payment for years.
This point is
an important one because you want to automate your affiliate business as much
as possible.
Think about
this: If you’re promoting products that payout 10% commission every time it’s
sold, you would need to sell hundreds of them just to make a full-time living.
What if you sold a product that had a recurring payment plan? Then you would
get paid every single month from that first initial sale. Every month your
income rises instead of starting at zero.
So where do
you find products that pay out recurring commissions? In my experience,
software does a very good job on this.
Most of them
have a recurring payment plan where the customer needs to pay each month to use
the service. If you promote a product like this, you’ll get a commission each
time they pay, which is once a month.
A software
I’ve been promoting lately is Clickfunnels. it’s a funnel-building
software that lets entrepreneurs and business owners sell their products online.
Clickfunnels
costs $97/month and pays up to 40% in monthly commissions. This means I earn
$38.80/month for every member I refer. Do you see the power of this?
By referring
a customer once, I earn $38.80 month after month in passive income. When I’ve referred
100 customers to Clickfunnels I’ll earn around $3,880 each month, completely
passive income. At this point, I could stop doing affiliate marketing and still
earn a decent amount of money on a monthly basis.
If I wanted
to make this kind of money with a $100 product that pays out 10% commission for
every sale, I would have to sell 388 units every month just to make the same as
with the software.
I hope you
see the power of promoting products with recurring commissions.
That’s the way ”affiliate gurus” makes most of their money.
3. Two Tier
Affiliate Marketing
What is two-tier affiliate marketing?
Basically, you sign up new affiliates to the affiliate program you’re in.
Inside the
dashboard of your affiliate program, you can find a unique affiliate link to
refer new affiliates. When people sign up through this link they become 1st
tier affiliates for the company and you’ll become their 2nd tier affiliate.
The people
you’ve referred to the affiliate program are called sub-affiliates.
When your
sub-affiliates (1st tier) promote products they earn a normal commission for
the sale (which can range from 1%-50%). As a 2nd tier affiliate you normally
earn 5%-10% of that sale.
Example: Your sub-affiliate sells a $100
product with 40% commission rate and receive $40. Then you’ll get 10% of that
sale which is $10.
The customer
does not need to pay anything more and the 1st tier affiliate don’t lose any of
it’s commission rate. You only take 5%-10% extra for the sale, which means a
bit less money for the company.
This is a
great way of automating your affiliate income, but remember this: If you and
your sub-affiliates only care about referring others, nobody is going to make a
dollar.
The only way
to make money with affiliate marketing is when a sale happens!
To make sure
the people you referred into the affiliate program becomes great affiliate
marketer, it’s smart to give them some sort of training.
For example, Clickfunnels has a two tier
affiliate program, meaning you can sign up for new affiliates. To make things
as smooth as possible, Clickfunnels has made something called
the Affiliate Bootcamp which teaches new affiliates how to promote
the software. This is a great feature because you becomes their 2nd tier
affiliate and they learn how to promote the product.
Note, not all
affiliate programs has a two-tier referral program. You’ll need to check if
your affiliate program has one.
Related post: What Is A Two Tier Affiliate
Program? (With Examples)
4. Use an
Affiliate Marketing Bridge Funnel
Above, under the 1st sub heading I said
that 80% of being an affiliate marketer is about generating traffic. When you
master that part, you’ll become great at affiliate marketing, but there’s still
20% left. What’s that all about?
The final 20%
is the selling. If you’re not able to sell the products you’re promoting, how
do you expect to make any commissions?
By using an
affiliate marketing bridge funnel you’ve taken care of this part. It’s an
automated sales machine that will drive you referral commissions all day long
if you do it the right way…
So what is an
affiliate marketing bridge page? Here’s Russell Brunson explaining.
This is also known as an opt-in page.
The squeeze page works as the landing page and it’s the first step in the
bridge funnel. Your only goal for this page is to collect email addresses.
There is no need to be selling or promoting your affiliate product here. The
only thing you should focus on is to create something valuable you can give
away for free in exchange for their email addresses.
2) Bridge Page
After your visitor has given you their
email at the squeeze page, they’ll be sent to the bridge page. Here you’re
going to warm up and pre-sell you current leads so they’re more likely to
purchase the product your promoting. If you want to this effectivey I recommend
you make a video where you talk about their problems and pain points, then
represent your affiliate product as the solution. (Make sure to add a Call To
Action button).
3) Sales Page
After the bridge page, your leads will
be taken to your affiliate offer. If you follow the steps above they’re much
more likely to buy the product because they’ve been educated about it. This is
where you make your money.
I’ve used
this method myself and it has worked perfectly fine. When you build a bridge
funnel you also create an automated sales machine, that can make you affiliate
commissions 24/7. This way you both increase your conversion rate and automate
your business.
If you want
to give it a try I highly recommend you use Clickfunnels to build the
bridge funnel. It’s super easy to use and perfect for affiliate marketers.
Clickfunnels also have pre-made bridge funnel templates, so you can just pick
one and everything is done for you. It is as simple as it gets.
Start Here: Click here to create your free
account on Clickfunnels.
5. Build Your
Email List
Why do affiliate marketers use email
marketing in their business? To not miss out on potential sales!
If you don’t
use email marketing and have someone go to your affiliate offer and don’t buy,
you’re not able to reach them again! If you want them to see your product's
sales page again, then you would need to spend money on ads, etc.
Email
marketing is a MUST HAVE as an affiliate marketer. Since we don’t control the sales
page, we can’t change it or put retargeting ads on people who ”almost bought”.
We would miss out on a ton of sales!
On the other
hand, when you do collect email addresses you get multiple chances to sell people
your affiliate product, without the need to spend money on retargeting ads.
You can
simply create an autoresponder that sends out promotional
emails all day long. It’s an excellent way to automate your affiliate
marketing business, and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to pull this
off.
If you use
the bridge funnel method shown above, all of this gets even easier. While
you’re collecting emails on the opt-in page, your leads go through the funnel
and some become paying customers. The ones that don’t will be retargeted by
your automated email sequence. It really is as simple as it sounds.
But, if you
need someone to show you how to set all of this up, then I highly recommend you
check out the Partner With Anthony program. In that course, you’ll learn
how to build a bridge funnel, create an email list and autoresponder, and how
to generate traffic to that funnel. You’ll learn how the most successful
affiliates make their money. Click the link above to check it out.
What Is Passive Income?
Passive income is the art of making
money while you don’t work. That doesn’t mean making money without any work.
In fact, in
most cases, you’ll need to put in a large amount of hours upfront (normally
unpaid) to get the reward later.
Passive
income is an amazing way of making money, but you don’t always see results as
fast as you desire. Many people don’t see results at all, which leads to them
quitting. They will never earn a dollar in passive income in their life.
You need to
work through the times where you don’t see results. If you stay consistent over
a longer period of time, you will eventually see results, and get paid for the
work you’ve put down. And that money will taste better than anything else.
Final Words
There are plenty of ways you can make
passive income with affiliate marketing. The strategies listed above are
foolproof because I’ve done them myself. You can make it real if you want it
enough!
Hope you got some value from this article, if you did feel free to read more of my content, and/or share the post with a friend. Keep hustling!
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