Can you make money with affiliate marketing? That’s one of the most asked questions online since 2020. That year, the affiliate marketing global market size grew to over $17 billion. Since then, it has become a beacon of opportunity for those looking for a side hustle or passive income source.
Many affiliate marketers claim to make four to five figures with affiliate programs. Although it seems too good to be true, affiliate marketing is a great revenue source for those willing to put in the work.
In this guide, you will find everything you must know about affiliate programs. Plus, some strategies for you to get started. In the end, you will learn more about the Cyberimpact affiliate program that can give you up to 40% commission on your referred accounts with monthly payouts.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where affiliates promote products or services in exchange for a commission. When you’re an affiliate, you don’t need to have your products or provide services. You earn money for promoting others’.
It’s a simple three-step process:
- Join affiliate or ambassador programs offered by businesses. When you join, you will receive unique tracking links to share with your following or network.
- Affiliates can use several channels such as blogs, email marketing and social media to promote the merchant’s products or services to their audience.
- Affiliates earn commissions for each sale, lead, or action taken via their referral links. Commissions may be based on a percentage of the sale amount or a fixed fee.
Affiliate programs can be recurring or one-time payout. The one-time payouts will pay you for every new purchase or subscription. The recurring model means you get paid for every month that your referrals keep using the service or platform.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
Let’s use a practical example and go into further detail on how it works:
You are the owner of a marketing agency, and your roster of clients is growing. To keep your services running, you must invest in quality software to manage your clients’ marketing strategy. At the same time, you need to keep your costs on a budget to keep a profit.
Then, you decide to join Cyberimpact’s affiliate program to manage your client list and offer you commissions of up to 40%. Now, using your referral link, you recommend Cyberimpact to all your clients as their email marketing platform.
You will earn an affiliate commission for each paying client account that signs up for Cyberimpact and has an easy-to-use email marketing platform to work on. And because the program is ongoing, you will have another source of income for your agency.
Benefits of doing affiliate marketing
- You don’t need to own stock, put up an early investment or worry about customer service or delivery.
- Several corporations offer affiliate programs, like Rakuten, HubSpot, Fiverr, and Sephora. Each one has its benefits and conditions.
- Aside from being a low-cost venture, it is also low-risk. You might invest in buying a domain and hosting if you’re building a website to promote your links, but there are also free options to get started, such as using social media and email marketing with Cyberimpact.
- Affiliate programs are a great way to generate passive income. Referral links might need to be updated when cookies expire, but other than that, you can make affiliate sales at any time of the day with little to no active effort.
- Although you are promoting another business’ products or services, you are not an employee and thus have no hours to fill out. You can build your schedule and decide how much time to invest in your affiliate strategy.
- Most of your work will be sharing your referral links. Yes, you need a strategy to grow, but it’s not rocket science. Anyone can do it.
What you must know as a beginner affiliate marketer
- The commission varies from program to program. Each of them has its perks and downsides. Companies like Amazon offer a 10% commission on sales with one-time payouts, whereas Cyberimpact has a recurring payment model with commissions starting at 25%, and going up to 40% under the right criteria. Plus, free access to the Pro account for up to 10,000 contacts.
- Be sure to read and understand all the terms and policies for each affiliate program. Keep an eye out for commission caps and cookie expiration deadlines.
- Although affiliate marketing sales account for 16% of eCommerce sales in Canada and the US, some companies are not investing in their relationship with affiliates. At Cyberimpact, we’re doing the opposite: we have a Partnership Manager available to assist all partners, plus we have an online academy with resources to help our partners earn more.
It is essential to choose the right programs that match your expectations, target audience and strategy. Make sure you learn about different programs, the payout schedule, commission rules and other policies before becoming an affiliate partner.
How to get started as an affiliate partner
1. Pick the industry or niche
Choose an industry you’re interested in. There are endless options: food, wellness, beauty, marketing, SaaS, gardening, books, arts & crafts. The more interested and knowledgeable you are about the industry, the easier it will be to promote your affiliate links and get referrals.
2. Choose the strategy and programs you’d like to sign up for
Your affiliate marketing strategy is how you will promote your links. You can focus on one or them, or try multiple channels. Here are a few examples:
- Blogs: write blog posts and articles about the industry and products you’ll be promoting. These long-form contents are great for people with some SEO knowledge and who like to write. Your blog can even be a review blog where you share your thoughts on the products you are promoting as an affiliate. After all, 9 out of 10 customers base their purchase decision on reviews and ratings.
- YouTube: create a YouTube channel and upload original content promoting the merchant’s products. You can add referral links to the video description or comments. This is a great channel for people who feel comfortable on camera and understand how to get traffic on YouTube.
- Email marketing: a quick-setup and low-cost option. With email marketing, you don’t need to buy a domain and hosting service. You can set up a free account at Cyberimpact and begin sharing your links in a few clicks. Newsletters have a high open rate and conversion rate compared to other channels as subscribers are “warmer leads” that are already interested in what you have to say.
- Social media: like YouTube, this is a great option for content creators and influencers. You can create videos, images or text to promote your referral links to your following. Community-building and engagement are the bread and butter of this approach, not the following numbers. Nano-influencers (1,000 to 10,000 followers) and micro-influencers (up to 50,000 followers) have a conversion rate of 5% and 1.7%, respectively, whereas macro-influencers (100,000 to 1M) have a conversion rate of 0.7%.
3. Apply for your preferred affiliate program
There are thousands of affiliate programs from several industries for you to choose from — Rakuten Advertising (retail), Amazon Associates (everything), Sephora Beauty Affiliate (beauty and skincare), Lowe’s (home goods & construction), SquareOne (insurance).
And the Cyberimpact Affiliate Program.
Introducing the Cyberimpact Affiliate Program
We’re a Canadian email marketing software that makes email marketing easy. We want companies to save time and get better results with email. Our affiliate program is for those interested in doing the same!
When you sign up, you get free access to our top-tier plan for up to 10,000 contacts and a dedicated account manager to assist you with onboarding. We offer a recurring payment method — which means you get monthly deposits based on how many active referrals you have on your dashboard.
If you’re a marketing agency or have clients that need an email marketing solution, switching to Cyberimpact can reduce their costs by 20% to 40% when migrating from other platforms like Mailchimp. Plus, with our Canada-based servers, contact data is secure within national borders.
Commissions for the Cyberimpact affiliate program:
- 25% for monthly payouts up to $749
- 33% for monthly payouts from $750 to $1499
- 40% for monthly payouts starting at $1500
Why you should be a Cyberimpact Partner
- Earn monthly payouts for promoting Cyberimpact’s email marketing platform to your audience.
- Benefit from personalized support and guidance from a dedicated account manager to maximize your earning potential.
- Gain easy access to affiliate tools and resources via your Cyberimpact account.
- Get assistance in onboarding referred clients to Cyberimpact, ensuring a seamless transition to the platform.
- Stay ahead of the curve with early access to upcoming features and innovations within the Cyberimpact ecosystem.
- Access the Cyberimpact Academy for affiliates to expand your knowledge about email marketing.
- Unlock a free Cyberimpact PRO account with up to 10,000 contacts, which you can leverage for your own email marketing campaigns.
You can apply to the program and learn more information on our website.
4. Start sharing your affiliate links
Once you’ve chosen your marketing channel, it’s time to start sharing your links! A pro tip is to save all of your affiliate links in an easy-to-find note to use them as needed. You can also add them to your social media profile links, video descriptions, or content blocks to your newsletter, or website/blog.
The key elements here are traffic and conversion. The higher the traffic, the bigger the chance of conversion. At the same time, having traffic is not enough because it’s the clicks and purchases that make affiliate marketing profitable.
Make sure you’re using your best copywriting skills to create interesting content that catches people’s eyes. Followed by a clear and smart call-to-action to drive clicks to your links.
5. Have a consistent routine to keep promoting your links
Finally, being an affiliate is a long game. You need a good volume of content out there with your referral links to see some results, so create a consistent plan. This can mean creating four blog posts per month, posting daily Stories on Instagram, or bi-weekly videos on YouTube.
Most importantly, you want to be smart about how you spend your time promoting your links. If you’re using email marketing to promote your links, marketing automation is a great tool for you. You can set up an automated sequence to send out emails to new subscribers with high-value content that contains some referral links.
You can use Cyberimpact to create several automation sequences based on the subscriber’s interaction with your content. You can send different and targeted content to contacts that are not clicking on your links, and special offers for those who do.
This will also help you be more productive and save time as the marketing automation sequence can run 24/7 based on its triggers.
Why Choose Email to Do Affiliate Marketing?
Email newsletters are a cornerstone in the affiliate marketing landscape. It is a low-cost, quick-to-setup option to start sharing your affiliate links. Email subscribers are more prone to engage directly with the content, leading to stronger trust and higher conversion rates.
Segmentation and personalization can have a huge impact on your affiliate marketing strategy. You can tailor newsletters to specific audience segments, delivering relevant content and offers. And, as we said, with automation, you can set up sequences to run on autopilot, save time and increase revenue.
Lastly, email marketing software can give you more detailed analytics and tracking than other platforms. On the Cyberimpact dashboard, you can see performance metrics that tell you how your audience is responding to your content.
Top Tips for Affiliate Marketing Success
Here are some extra tips to help you maximize your earnings as an affiliate marketer:
- Have multiple income streams: Don’t stick to only one affiliate program or source of income. Study different programs, and diversify your portfolio by promoting various products or services.
- Be consistent: Consistency is key to building a sustainable affiliate marketing business. Create a content calendar and publish regularly. Also, block some time to engage with your audience, and monitor your progress.
- Keep learning and adapting: Stay up-to-date with the latest trends, tools, and techniques in affiliate marketing. Try to connect with other affiliate marketers and see what works for them.
- Study your metrics: Monitor your key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and earnings per click to measure the success of your affiliate campaigns.
With dedication and perseverance, there are endless possibilities in the world of affiliate marketing.
Frequently Asked Questions about Affiliate Marketing
Do I need a website to start doing affiliate marketing?
You don’t need a website. You can use social media or email marketing to promote your referral links and earn income.
Is affiliate marketing worth it?
Yes, if you put in the work. It is a low-cost and low-risk form of marketing that can lead to great returns. However, you need a strategy to get more traffic to your links to see great results.
Can affiliate marketing make you money?
Yes, you can make money from being an affiliate. Some affiliate programs can pay up to 40% commission on products or services.
Can you start doing affiliate marketing with no money?
Yes. You don’t need an upfront investment to start doing affiliate marketing. You can use a Cyberimpact free account to set up a newsletter and start selling to your contact list.