How To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing, offline and online (I)

Affiliate marketing is probably the most advertised ‘easy’ way of making money online. Or so Pro affiliate marketers want us to believe. We are told that you don’t need money to start an affiliate marketing business, only select a company and sign-up for its affiliate program, and instantly you begin to make money. Or log into to Clickbank, register and select a list of ‘lucrative products’ in any niche, promote them and the money will start rolling in. But is it that easy?

I will try to make these posts on affiliate marketing as simple as possible so that even a 6-year old can sign up for, and start making money from affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is simply promoting or giving information about/recommending a product or service in exchange for a commission on each sale you facilitate. Though similar to referral marketing as both use third parties to drive sales to the retailer, affiliate marketing relies solely on the financial motivation while referral marketing on trust and personal relationship.

Affiliate marketing as a marketing model was patented by Amazon.com in 1997 (granted in 2000) though they weren’t the first company to incorporate an affiliate marketing program. And you can get paid up to 20% commission on sales depending on the product or niche.


It is truly one of the easiest ways of making money online, especially if you want a means of making money online that will require little or no start-up capital from you -unlike online trading. But it oftentimes requires you testing the products or services yourself. It requires time and effort building trust and relationships, or simply leveraging on the ones you already have on your blog, in a forum community or offline to achieve reasonable success at it.

Compensation plans include the following:

· Revenue sharing or Pay per sale (PPS): you get paid a (fixed or percent) commission every time someone makes a purchase with the advertiser because of your content; good for focused, high-quality content,

· Cost per action (CPA): or cost-per-lead: you get paid a bit more every time someone signs up or fills a form with the advertiser thanks to your content,

· Cost per click (CPC): you get paid a very small amount every time someone clicks from your content onto the advertiser’s site; good for high-traffic content,

· Cost per mile (CPM): you get paid per 1000 views.

My outline will be:

• How to join a top online affiliate marketing network or program 
• How to make money in affiliate marketing offline
• How to start an affiliate business and make money without owning a blog or website
• General tips for success as an affiliate marketer (from the gurus)
• Prominent successful affiliate marketers in Nigeria
• Other resources you will find useful

How to join a top online affiliate marketing network or program

Like I said earlier, Amazon has the patent on affiliate marketing, and together with Clickbank, Google and a host of others, these companies provide affiliate marketers with robust affiliate marketing programs wit which they can make money. 

Popular affiliate marketing networks include Amazon, Google Affiliate network/adsense, Linkshare, Commission Junction, Clickbank, Clixgalore and Shareasale. In Nigeria, popular affiliate programs include Jumia, Dealdey, Konga.

[The first konga affiliate to make N1 million is Mr Pascal Okafor of NaijaTech Guide website.]

Clickbank is one of the first web companies to offer numerous products and services in a wide range of niches for affiliate marketers, and you can scarcely talk about affiliate marketing without mentioning clickbank.

Check out this great post by top affiliate marketer John Chow on how he makes money with clickbank.

 Check out this video on how to use clickbank to make money as an affiliate marketer.

If you are in a country not recognized by clickbank such as Nigeria, and you want to receive money earned from using clickbank, click the link to read the post, or this similar one but by a Nigerian.

Log onto any of the sites above and register for their affiliate program. But you will need a website where you can place their banners to really be successful. The most successful affiliate marketers are those who narrow down on a given niche, for example mobile phones, and then promote products of mobile phone makers as an affiliate. Being an 'expert' is the most effective way of making money as an affiliate marketer.

Popular forums where you can easily find deals, get information on how you can be a successful affiliate marketer include Warrior forum, Digitalpoint, and Wickedfire.

I will continue from here in the next post.