We’ve all heard of making money in your sleep, haven’t we? Well, successful affiliate marketers can not only make money in their sleep but also never stop making money even after their death.
Forgive me for pushing it to the extreme.
The key thing is that your affiliate link is there 24/7/365. No matter what time of day or night someone places an order through your affiliate link or which time zone they are in, you can earn a commission; whether you are eating breakfast, working, eating dinner, going out with friends, or sleeping in bed, you can earn a commission.
The trick is to learn how to get your affiliate link in front of as many people as possible.
One of the ways I did it myself was joining Exabytes’ Affiliate Programme. Every successful signup for Exabytes’ digital solutions brings me great rewards.
My commission payout from Exabytes’ Affiliate Programme last month was S$3,307. (maybe is small money for you, but it’s high enough for me)
Of course, I am not participating in the Exabytes programme only. I also participate in other programmes related to digital solutions, such as ManyChat and SEMrush.
These 2 are my favourite affiliate programmes. (Click on the names to check out their programmes and commission rates.)
If you are new to affiliate marketing and not sure what it is, that’s okay, that’s alright.
In this article, I will guide you on how to generate a passive income through successful affiliate marketing and make money while you sleep!
*Note: I’m not an expert in affiliate marketing, I just share my experience with the beginners.
1. Get a Blog or Website
First things first. You definitely need a platform before participating in any affiliate programmes.
If you were to start a company, you would need an office and to register a legal company. The concept is the same for affiliate marketing.
If you do not have a blog or website yet, click here to register a domain name and buy a hosting plan.
2. Quality content is the key to affiliate marketing
No matter what era we’re in, content will always be king when it comes to digital marketing.
Some affiliate programmes require you to have rich content, a certain volume of website traffic, and monthly page views before you can become one of their affiliates.
So, if you are a newbie just starting in affiliate marketing, you should prioritize content creation to drive and retain traffic on your site.
How much content do you need to get started?
Well, you should have at least 10 pieces of high-quality content at the start. You can create various types of content for your site, whether blogs or videos or both.
One golden rule for choosing an affiliate programme is picking one that relates to your niche. Choose a programme that related to your post content or vice versa.
Example: I love helping micro and small businesses to take their business online.
So, when choosing an affiliate programme, I will consider a programme related to digital solutions.
And when creating content, I often put myself in my target audience’s shoes to understand how they think.
I’ll ask myself, why should I read this content? What problem am I trying to solve in terms of growing business online?
Then I will do a lot of research to validate the “Answers” that come into my mind.
Example 1: If I want to go the DIY route for building a website, and I’m not a professional web designer, I might want to know which website builder is easy and free to use.
Example 2: I want to know the difference between .com, .com.sg, .sg domain extensions. I might want to know which domain extension is best-suited for my small business and which one is affordable.
Example 3: I want to buy hosting for my website, but I only have a very small budget. I might want to know which hosting plan is the cheapest and best-suited for my website.
Once you understand your audiences, you can tailor your content and topic to meet their needs — “cheapest” solutions.
Why the cheapest? I mentioned earlier that I target micro to small businesses, remember? This group of businesses will most likely be searching for the lowest-cost solutions.
Hence, my content plan will be something like this:
- 5 ways to create SEO backlinks for free…..
- 5 cheapest domains & hosting in….
- 5 tips to create a WordPress website yourself….
Basically, your job is to help your target audience discover the right product suited for their needs.
Through your content, you can help them decide and then navigate them to the affiliate product website to complete the purchase.
Another golden rule is always to do your keyword research. This allows you to keep track of the hot topics in your niche.
With this, you can understand your target audience’s current needs and gain insight into the next content to create.
3. Include Affiliate Products in the Content
Now that you’ve done your keyword research, you need to know the solutions your target audience is looking for and develop the content that solves that need.
Then you can place your affiliate link within the content.
The goal is to place your affiliate link as strategically as possible within the content so that users can see it as the solution they’re searching for.
When creating content, place your affiliate links where they get the most exposure. A good rule of thumb is to promote your affiliate products as early as possible in your content.
For blogs, this means within the first 20% of the post. For video, it is usually within the first minute of recording.
Why? Free golden tips to you again!
According to Nielsen eye-tracking studies, users typically don’t read very much, and scanning through text is typical behaviour for higher literacy users.
On average web pages, users have an average time to scan up to 28% of words per visit.
This is a fact! Therefore, ensure that you place the affiliate link within the first 20% of the post.
By putting your affiliate links in front, you can increase the chances of clicks by users and a higher chance of making the payment.
Again, you want to promote your affiliate links powerfully, appropriately, and naturally.
4. Boost your affiliate revenue
One of the biggest mistakes every new affiliate marketer makes is that if they want to increase affiliate profits by X10, they need to increase traffic by X10 on their website. Actually, that does not always work.
You don’t necessarily need to increase traffic to your site. You can just set up a conversion optimization campaign that can boost up your affiliate revenue.
To increase your affiliate revenue, you will need to constantly find which content brings you more revenue and prioritize that. This can help you save time and increase affiliate revenue efficiently as well.
There are a few effective campaigns you can do, such as:
- Popup Campaign
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Coupons
- Email Marketing
- Reviews
5. Monitor your progress from time to time
Yes, I did say that this is a passive income you can earn while sleeping, but you will need to monitor your progress. It’s a business, after all.
You can use many tools for monitoring your performance. Then, you will know which affiliate products are having the highest click/ conversion, which affiliate products are suitable for your visitors, and which affiliate products you need to discard.
The insights you gain from monitoring will also enable you to produce better content.
You know which area you should focus on (look at your profitable content, as I mentioned earlier).
Remember, your success will depend on how much your visitors and customers trust you. Only in this way can you count on their loyalty and repeated business. In return, you can earn money while you sleep.
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