Side hustles are more popular now than before due to the need for people to make some extra cash or additional money to cover some expenses. Others just simply try to find a new source of income that doesn’t make them work over 8 hours a day or go outside of their homes.
Of course, for the latter, that wouldn’t be that much of a ‘side’ hustle, but it makes sense when you consider that no one unless it is mostly safe, leaves a job for another option.
Now, out of all the side hustles out there, which would should you consider if you are one of those people? Sell some products? Open a small store?
If you are open to recommendations, we would recommend focusing on online side hustles the most so you can get the best out of your new income source.
Among the options available, affiliate marketing has been growing in relevance over the last decade. Despite the competitors you will find in this niche, you have plenty of space to make your own money.
Thus, we decided to cover this common yet profitable side hustle. We’re confident you will want to consider making money and forgetting about working extra hours or going for another traditional job.
Easier Than You Think – What Is Affiliate Marketing?
We are confident you’ve heard and read about affiliate marketing before, but you either didn’t understand much about it or haven’t put too much attention and effort into trying to figure it out.
Whatever it is, that’s completely fine since we will start with the simple.
First, we know you think that nothing online is that simple. Instead, people tend to make it difficult.
But what if we tell you this idea and concept is quite wrong? We will use affiliate marketing and the explanation as to the best example.
Affiliate marketing tends to be complicated because people make it feel like that when it is truly easy to get started, grow, and earn more than some extra cash as a side hustle in the future.
To start with the simple, affiliate marketing refers to the practice of allowing an affiliate (you) to earn a commission by marketing products for another person or company.
An affiliate simply finds a product or service they like, promotes it, and gets a share of every sale or specific action their followers take according to the deal with the brand they’re promoting.
This system is tracked and works with affiliate links link that direct from one website to the other to track sales and interactions so you can get paid for each user.
Basically, you are trying to offer a product for your fans, followers, customer, or any person you have as your target audience.
Inside Affiliate Marketing: How It Works
You must know about this side hustle because affiliate marketing is a method to spread the task of marketing the products and services among different parties, so a wider audience is reached.
This means you have a lot of influence when promoting a product or service, and you will need to work around the number of people who follow you as an influencer or any role you have as a third party of the brand.
Now, to understand how it works in specific, we will breakdown the main elements of the side hustle:
- The seller or product/service creator.
Although it isn’t the most important one, it is the first that makes the option of affiliate marketing possible. After all, without a seller, what will you offer?
A seller is an entrepreneur who can be solo or large, who sells a product or service.
The product or service can be aimed and focused on any niche, so you can get affiliate deals from any seller that has a program open for it.
The seller is not required to actively participate in marketing.
The seller could, for example, be an eCommerce merchant who has started a dropshipping company and is looking to reach new audiences by paying affiliate websites to promote its products.
The seller could be a SaaS company that uses affiliates to sell its marketing software.
There are hundreds of examples, and choosing the best one will depend on what you’re looking for.
- The affiliate.
The affiliate, which is the role you will take in all this process, is who markets the seller’s product or service to potential clients.
The affiliate will always have the task of promoting the product to convince consumers it is valuable and beneficial while receiving a commission of any action if the consumer purchases the product or decides to hire the service, signs up for a website, and depends on the type of affiliate program the brand follows and offers.
Affiliates may have a specific audience they market to and often adhere to their audience’s interests. This helps them attract the most potential customers to their promotion.
- The consumer.
The consumer drives affiliate marketing, and if you ask us, they are definitely the most important part of the cycle since this side hustle can’t work without them.
The affiliate and the seller will share the profits when the client hires a service or purchases the product promoted.
However, the usual benefit for the consumer is that they will pay less for the product they purchase through this strategy, even when they are clicking an affiliate link.
The affiliate’s share is included in the retail price, so it is usually more beneficial to bet for the links.
Consumers will proceed with the purchase and receive the product as usual, so there isn’t usually a problem for people to rely on this marketing strategy to buy some products or hire services.
How to Make Money (& How Much You Earn)
All right, if you ask us about the money you will earn with this side hustle, it can get a bit complicated in terms of how you will earn it, but following the same principle.
First, you will need to build a presence online in a chosen platform.
The entire concept of offering services and products to an audience is after you’ve built it as well. This can be done either on social media or using other platforms and options like blogging, as a YouTuber, and the usual methods you know from nowadays.
Once you get this, you can start working around the affiliate links previously mentioned and the money you get from them.
Now, remember what we were saying about making money with the customer buying but not all the time? This is the part where affiliate marketing can get a bit complicated.
Why? Because affiliates may be paid in many ways.
- Get paid per sale.
This is the common structure you know, and we have mentioned (mainly) so far.
The structure allows the affiliate to get paid a percentage or commission of the sales based on the price of the product or service after the customer purchases the product because of the affiliate’s marketing strategies.
This means that the affiliate has to convince consumers to buy the product before they receive compensation.
It is common, but this can be a bit tricky due to how difficult it is to make people hire or purchase a service and product.
But this option is the one that allows you to make the most money.
- Getting paid per lead.
Not many people understand what a lead is, so this option to make money with affiliate marketing isn’t that common.
To make it simple, pay-per-lead affiliate programs offer a more complicated system.
The affiliate is compensated based on conversions. In other words, you, as the affiliate, must convince the consumer to visit your website and take the desired action, whether that’s signing up for a free trial, filling out a contact sheet, downloading software, or subscribing to a newsletter.
Anything but selling a product since this would fall in the past category.
- A bit easier: Pay per click.
This program focuses on encouraging affiliates to refer consumers from their platforms to the seller’s site.
This means the affiliate must engage consumers to the point where they will go to the seller’s website to purchase a product or service.
Affiliates are paid according to the amount of web traffic they generate for the brand.
It is very similar to the concept of paying for your Google ads every time someone clicks on them, but you’re getting the one paid here.
Now, what about the money you can earn?
Everything varies depending on the leads, sales, and clicks, which is why it can be difficult to estimate an average.
However, here’s what we can tell you.
An average earning for marketers in this field make about $65.000 annually. However, this can go lower to $40.000 for most beginners or starters.
Top earners with some experience can make about $160k annually, and some people make much more in the long run.
If you ask us, it is quite easy to make some extra cash. After all, you can earn about $100-200 monthly without much effort and after a couple of months.
But, How Much Does It Cost to Start?
This is what worries most people, and we get why.
However, we have good news for you: It isn’t expensive.
Depending on how you decide to build your audience, the method can get either cheaper or a bit more than a few bucks every month.
Working with hosting, domains, and developing the site will be expensive for bloggers or website builders, but only about $30 to $50 every month.
For influencers on social media, the expenses will lie in the ads you use or how you generate your followers.
It is up to you, and you can adjust to your budget.
The difficult part lies in time and learning how to work with the online resources and tools.
But if you just take a couple of hours every week and take it slow, you can start generating money in a few weeks or months.
It can be a bit slow, but it will pay off your time and effort in the end, and if you need some reasons to get started, we have them.
Why Choose Affiliate Marketing
As we were mentioning before, we can give you a few reasons to choose it, and we are confident you will love each one of them:
- You generate passive income.
Although it takes hard work in the beginning, the affiliate links will generate you money without any effort later on.
This means you don’t have to constantly work around them but just keep focusing on posting new content, and the money will come alone from old posts or content most of the time.
This will save you lots of time in the long run and allow you to have freedom in terms of how many hours you work and how you choose to live your life.
- You can work from home and anywhere.
You only need a computer and Internet connection to get started and maintain your side hustle running.
This means you can work from home easily, and whenever you decide to go for a trip or move to a new place, you can simply take your laptop, find a connection, and continue where you left it.
- It is very cost-effective.
Based on your monthly expenses, which can be easily maintained for years, you definitely earn much more than what you will invest.
Affiliate marketing is, in fact, one of the favorites for side hustles and main jobs for this reason in particular.
- You don’t need talent.
You can learn everything involved with affiliate marketing since it isn’t something only a professional with a college degree can do.
Anyone who invests enough time can learn how to make money with this side hustle and with free materials or very affordable courses and training programs.
Ready to Make Money?
Affiliate marketing is a great side hustle idea for people who are looking to make money in their spare time.
If you’re interested in it, you just need to make the decision today and create a plan so you don’t get lost and can save as much time and money as you can.
Also, aim for it as a long-term job that can bring you independence.
We have been making money with it for years now, and it continues to be one of our top revenue sources despite our other investments and businesses.
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