Affiliate Marketing: Your Simple Path to Building a Passive Income

Imagine what it would be like to have a system that earns you income even while you sleep. It sounds like a dream, but you can make it a reality by building passive income streams. With a bit of hard work and time upfront, anybody can do it. 
How do people build passive income streams? Many of them get started with one of the most popular methods, affiliate marketing. 


What is Affiliate Marketing? 
Affiliate marketing is an online business model where you earn income through a commission by promoting other people’s products or services.  

You start by joining an affiliate network and searching there for products or services in your niche. Choose something your audience could use, or you’d love to use yourself.  

Through your content, you promote this vendor’s product and receive a commission on sales by telling your audience about it. 


How Much Can You Earn with Affiliate Marketing? 
There is no upper limit to how much you can earn using this business model. It depends on how much work you want to put into it. Affiliate marketing commissions are high and, as many products are digital, there is no overhead such as warehousing and shipping. 

For example, you might promote an eBook priced at $37. If you have a 50% commission, just selling 20 will get you $370. As you can see, there is great earning potential. You have to create a great deal of content and build your audience, but much of the process can be outsourced or automated. This allows you to multiply the amount you can earn with little extra effort. 


Know Your Audience and Know Your Product 
The key to success in affiliate marketing is to choose products and services that are right for your audience. You really need to know your audience’s tastes, values, and behaviors well so you can choose things they would love and purchase.  

Your niche should be something you’re passionate about. Your passion will be contagious and inspire your audience to check out the offerings you’re promoting. This will also make your marketing authentic, which will build strong relationships with members of your audience.  


Leverage Metrics to Streamline Your Strategy 
Since affiliate marketing is done online, there are numerous tools you can use to monitor the results of your efforts. You can track sales data, website visitor behavior, trends in the market, and the activity of your competitors.  

Monitoring helps you to understand what’s working and what’s not. For example, you might find that one particular blog post converts at a higher rate than the others. This post may be longer and more in-depth. This tells you that your audience responds best to long-form content, and then produce more. 


Add Your Next Revenue Stream 
Once you get your first affiliate marketing campaign up and running, it’s time to launch your next. You can create multiple streams of income using this business model and earn a passive income. 
 

About The Author

Pat Simes  is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.