How To Sell Products For Companies And Get Paid

There are many ways to make money on the Internet today. One of the best and most lucrative of these is when you sell products for companies and get paid. Just imagine that for a moment. You get to earn money whenever you recommend a product to someone. It doesn’t matter whether it’s shoes, furniture, a travel destination, or even an app.

 

Companies will happily pay you to sell their products for them. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? This business model is called affiliate marketing, and today, it is one of the best ways to make money online. If you are interested in learning how to do it, this article has been written just for you. Here is how to sell products for companies and get paid with affiliate marketing.

 

Affiliate marketing is a unique business model because it involves very few risks. You get to be your own boss, pick your own hours, amount of work you intend to put in, and your own routine.

 

The best part of it is that you handle no product yourself. This eliminates most of the risk that is usually part of many business ventures because all you have to do is point your clients to a product and they will buy it from the company itself. When they purchase, you get paid a commission.

 

You handle no sales calls, no customer support, and no back end administration tasks. All this makes affiliate marketing very appealing and inexpensive to get into, requiring very little or no initial investment capital to get started.

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A QUICK INTRO TO AFFILIATE MARKETING

 

 

So, what exactly is affiliate marketing? How does it work? What makes it so great?

 

Put simply, affiliate marketing involves promoting and selling someone else’s products or services and getting paid a certain commission from your sales figures. Remember the traditional salespeople or door to door salesmen? They used to get paid a certain commission for every item they sold. Affiliate marketing is almost exactly the same thing, except this time you are promoting your products online to a much wider audience, with your “shop”, which is your website, being active sround the clock, and with the whole internet as your potential customer base.

 

In your everyday life, there are products that you absolutely love and use almost daily. Or perhaps there are hobbies you are interested in, or a specialized skill you possess, or even a job that you love.

 

If you are interested in being an affiliate marketer, a good look at your likes, interests, skills, job or hobbies is a good place to start as you go about finding a niche to specialize in. Chances are there are lots of other people out there that are interested in the same things you are interested in, and it is these people that you want to target with your recommendations.

 

A niche is a particular portion of the population that you intend to primarily market your product to. Getting a niche you are interested in and one that you enjoy creating content for is very important because if you want to get into affiliate marketing, you are going to be doing it for the long haul.

 

You do not want to get bored and lose interest halfway in, then give up entirely along the way. This is one of the greatest keys to affiliate marketing success. You need to focus on a niche that you love. Promote products that you own or have used before and are passionate about.

 

Once you have a good understanding of what affiliate marketing is and know the niche that you want to specialize in, the next step would be to sign up for an affiliate program. There is an affiliate program for almost every product you can imagine.

 

When you sign up, you get an affiliate link that is connected to your account. Your job is to educate your readers on your chosen niche (or topic) and to suggest products that will help them solve their problems. If they purchase your suggested product using your affiliate link, you will get a commission. Essentially, you will be paid a commission for every successfully completed purchase that they make. This is because the affiliate link tracks their activity and attributes sales to you.

 

So basically, that is the long and short of it. It really is super simple, and anyone can do it. It is not uncommon for successful affiliate marketers to rake in over five-figure incomes every month by simply recommending products to their audience. So how can you achieve this level of success yourself? Here is a detailed step by step process of how you can go about it.

 

Check out this article I wrote on how to get started in affiliate marketing

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YOU NEED A NICHE

 

 

This is the first and most important step. As stated earlier, pick something you love and you will enjoy working on it even when times get hard. There are a few ways you can go about picking a niche:

 

• Pick something you are interested in or passionate about. What do you like doing? What are you good at? What can you talk about non-stop for hours because you know so much about the subject?

 

• Pick something you do every day, like your job. If you love your job, the fact that you wake up and go to it daily makes you an expert at it. People would love to learn from you, and you can promote a few choice products that you use at work as you share your knowledge.

 

• Pick something you have researched about lately. If you had a particular problem you were trying to solve, chances are there is someone out there in almost exactly the same situation as you were in. If you did some extensive research on the topic, wouldn’t it be nice to compile all that information in an easily accessible format for the next person? If you are the go-to source of information on a particular subject online, you can profit from the amount of traffic you will be getting by monetizing it with affiliate marketing.

 

Create a list of about 10 or more potential niches. Narrow down to a few of them by researching your competition and trying to determine what the most profitable niche of them all is. The sweet spot is a highly profitable low competition niche, and if you can find that you are ready to roll! Just remember, the more focused and targeted your niche is, the better.

 

Here is a comprehensive article that I wrote on how to pick a niche

 

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YOU NEED TO FIND THE RIGHT AFFILIATE PROGRAM

 

 

This is the next important step. Once you have a niche and a good idea of what you intend to promote, you need to find a program that offers those products. You can partner with affiliate companies in two ways:

 

• By joining an affiliate network. Affiliate networks are platforms where companies or merchants come to list their affiliate programs. With an affiliate network, all you have to do is to sign up with the network itself, then pick from a list of programs what you believe you will work for you.

 

• By joining individual affiliate programs. Some companies choose not to join affiliate networks. Instead, they have individual affiliate programs that you can sign up for on their website. Joining a program directly has the advantage of getting to deal with the merchant that offers that product directly.

 

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that it does not limit you to what you can and cannot do. You are your own boss, so if you feel like it, you can sign up for multiple affiliate programs. You can join several affiliate networks and join several individual programs at the same time. In fact, it is actually advisable to spread your eggs across many baskets like this, so that when a merchant delays your pay, for instance, you still have several contingent sources of income.

 

To find the best affiliate program for you, simply do your own research. Google is a great tool because all you have to do is search “Your niche” +” affiliate program”. For example, “hair loss affiliate program”. You can also search for specific product affiliate programs in the same way.

 

When signing up for most of these affiliate programs, the process is usually pretty straightforward. However, some affiliate programs require that you provide some added information, for example, the relevance of your audience, how much traffic you have, blogging frequency and the quality of content you produce. Keep that in mind when applying. This brings us to the next point.

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YOU NEED A WEBSITE

 

 

In your research online, you may have seen a few articles that promise you’ll be able to make money with affiliate marketing without a website. Pay no attention to them. While it is possible to become an affiliate marketer without owning a website, there is a glass ceiling to how much you can make when you go about it this way. Notice how everyone of those gurus that tell you that you don’t need a website, have a website!

 

If you want to have uncapped earning potential, you absolutely need to have a website. A website is essential because it is the only way you’ll get to build a brand and amass an audience that trusts you and your recommendations. You will then be able to recommend products over and over to your audience on your own platform, where you have total control over what you promote. You will have a platform to provide your readers with extremely helpful and top of the line content.

 

Here is a good article on creating a website for affiliate marketing

 

When you have a website or blog, you will also be able to gain a deeper understanding of your audience and your product through the interaction and feedback you get from your readers. This will help you consistently improve your product choice, your presentation, and your content, paving the way for increasingly higher incomes.

 

Once your website is up and running, populate it with pages of amazingly helpful content, while promoting products you like and know will help your readers. Use the affiliate links you got from joining the affiliate programs in the previous step. This way, your audience will be redirected using your link and their purchases will earn you a commission.

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PROMOTING AFFILIATE PRODUCTS

 

 

There is a thin line between being a good seller and being a sleazy spammy seller. You do not want to be that marketer that keeps shoving products in the faces of their audience. As an affiliate marketer, your job is not primarily to sell. Instead, aim to add value to the lives of your readers. Promote relevant products that they will need, only after you have created valuable content for them.

 

It is easy to get carried away by the money, especially once the cash starts flowing in. It is easy to forget what your main goal is and to start populating your site with affiliate links at every turn. This not only lowers the quality of your content but also drives your readers away. No one wants to feel like a cash cow. Do not treat them like that.

 

Your main goal is to amass a huge amount of high-quality traffic, especially if you are just starting out. The only way to do this is by carefully building trust with your audience. They will only trust you if you give them value. So how can you do this? How can you provide value and promote helpful, high quality products at the same time? Here are a few ways:

 

1. Product Reviews:

 

70% of online buyers read reviews before making purchases. If the reviews are positive, they are more inclined to make a purchase. This makes reviews a powerful tool that you can use to promote helpful products.

 

There is a catch here, though. You should review products that you have used and can give honest feedback on. If you have not used the product, it is imperative that you do thorough research before making recommendations. If you lie or only promote certain products for the money, you risk losing the trust of your audience.

 

2. Product Comparisons:

 

 

Comparisons are similar to reviews, but they feature two or more products that are quite similar. You are trying to help your audience make a decision because it can be hard to choose sometimes when you have too many options. Limiting the choices and highlighting the pros and cons of each option makes things easier.

 

The same rules apply here too. You need to be honest. Do not favor one option because it pays you a higher commission. You want your audience to come to a decision themselves, so lay everything out and let them decide.

 

3. Tutorials and How-To articles:

 

 

How-To articles are a little tougher to prepare when compared to reviews and comparisons, but they offer great value to your audience. They are also subtler in their product placement, are almost timeless.

 

Tutorials can be step by step posts or videos, showing how to do something, how to use a specific product, or a product demo of any kind. You can place your affiliate links at the beginning, within the content, and at the end of the tutorial. If you have a video, you can also list out all the products you have used and their affiliate links at the end or in the description.

 

4. Resource pages:

 

 

Having a dedicated resource page can give a huge boost to your affiliate marketing sales. This is a page where you list out all the resources you use in your content, with links to where your readers can get them. You can even categorize them to make things more efficient.

 

For example, for a website dedicated to Bass Fishing, a resource page may have categories like ‘Equipment’, which would list out recommended fishing rods, lines, etc. Another category could be ‘Popular Fishing Grounds’, which lists out places people can go fishing for crappie, with affiliate links to booking sites. Another good category can also be ‘Books to Read’, where a list of books and additional resources can be found, all with affiliate links, of course.

 

This way, if someone comes to the site, they do not have to look over every individual post to find what they need. Each post could have a link to the ‘Resources’ page at the end, leading readers to where they can look at everything promoted on the site.

 

5. Embedding Affiliate Links in Posts:

 

 

The way this method works is that you do not talk about the product itself. You just create another normal post and embed your affiliate link wherever you mention a particular keyword in passing, as long as it relates to a product you are an affiliate marketer of.

 

It is the subtlest method of promoting your products. You can also achieve the same results by adding a ‘Related Products’ section at the bottom of your post.

 

Whenever you use affiliate links in your content, be sure to have a disclaimer on your website to let people know that you are an affiliate. Again, no one wants to be tricked into giving you money. Be open about everything and your readers will appreciate you for it.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

 

So, what did we learn so far? Here is a quick summary:

 

1.Affiliate marketing lets you promote other people’s products and get paid a percentage commission for every sale you make.

 

2. How can you sell products for companies and get paid through affiliate marketing?

 

-You need a niche

-You need a good affiliate program

-You need a website

 

3. How do you promote these products on your website?

 

-Using product reviews

-Using product comparisons

-Using How-To posts

-Using resource pages

-By embedding affiliate links in normal posts

 

If done right, affiliate marketing is a sure path to financial freedom. Being able to work on your own terms is something very few people actually ever get to achieve.

 

While Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative way of earning income, it can be challenging at the beginning. It is certainly not a get-rich-quick scheme. It requires work and dedication. It is not hard! but it requires some basic knowledge in order to be successful.

 

If you are just starting out, or if you have been trying to launch your affiliate marketing business with little success, I would like to help you out.

 

I belong to an affiliate marketing community that offers the best training available. Best of all, you can try it for free! When I say free, I mean it! There is no need for credit card info or any other payment information. Take a look, at your own pace, and decide whether you think it will help you. I did and I couldn’t be happier I did!

 

CLICK HERE FOR MY 2019 REVIEW OF THE TOP AFFILIATE MARKETING TRAINING PROGRAM

 

I hope you found this post helpful! Please leave me your comments below and I will get back to you ASAP.

 

To your Affiliate success!

Mike