If you already know about affiliate marketing, there’s probably nothing new for you here. We’re talking real basics today. If you’ve heard the phrase, but wonder what the Sam Hill all the fuss is about, I might be about to reveal a magic formula that could change your life.

I’m serious. I invented the ‘Honest Bob’ persona to have a bit of fun with the subject of making money online, but I’m not joking when I say affiliate marketing has the potential to make a radical difference to your income.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, and whatever you do right now.

But let’s not get carried away. The key word is potential.

Is it doable? Hell yes. Is it easy? Hell no. There are folks out there making five figures a month from affiliate marketing. Most are making 5 cents.

Whoa there a minute Honest Bob! What in dang diggity hell is affiliate marketing anyhoo?

I’m glad you asked. Step right up and I’ll reveal all.

Now folks use all kinds of fancy words and descriptions, mostly to avoid the fact that right down at the root of things, affiliate marketing amounts to selling stuff — and people get scared by the idea. Sales is difficult. Sales is naaasty.

Maybe. But truth is, until something gets sold to somebody, nobody makes any money.

The big benefit with affiliate marketing is that you don’t really have to do very much of that difficult sales stuff. Almost nothing at all.

So ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, here’s Honest Bob’s simple guide…

Let’s say you go into a store, and buy a hat. The owner of the store probably didn’t make the hat — they bought it from somewhere else, then added a few bucks as their cut. They need that profit margin to rent the store, pay staff, buy stock, pay the bills, etc. As a very rough guide, the store owner probably takes somewhere from 25% upwards.

Now a while back, hat makers realized that if they sold direct, and cut out the store owner, they could offer the same product cheaper. Maybe you wouldn’t get the same smiling face and helpful service, but buying straight from the maker saved people a good chunk of change, so a good few did that.

The trouble was, the hat maker couldn’t get to everybody. Not nearly as many people as they hoped. So they decided they’d offer a commission to anyone with a blog or website who wanted to do a bit of advertising for them, maybe sell a hat or two — and that’s how affiliate programs were born. Well kinda. It’s a pretty good analogy!

Photo by Sabine Peters on Unsplash

OK, so here’s how it works in practice:

A manufacturer or distributor wants to get their product or service in front of more people. So they offer a commission.

You sign up as their affiliate (let’s stick with the hat maker idea for now), and get a piece of code, maybe some adverts, to put on your website. They link you up to the hat maker’s online store.

When someone visits your website — or blog — then goes and buys a hat, the code tells the hat maker where the referral came from, and you get your commission. Mostly either via Paypal or straight to your bank account.

So you ‘sold’ something, without really doing any ‘selling.’ See what I mean?

Now OK, there’s more to it than that. There’s lots of strategies on how to encourage people to click the link. There’s also a good many rules about what you can and can’t do (mostly to prevent them snake oil salesmen from using deeevious tactics).

But in a nutshell, that’s how affiliate programs work. Affiliate marketing is really just you helping people make a decision that makes them happy — because they get the hat they want. Fortunately, it also makes you happy, because you get paid!

Yeah but hey Honest Bob, I don’t know nuthin about hats. In fact I don’t know nuthin about nuthin!

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash

Actually, everybody knows somethin’ about somethin’. Absolutely.

Darren Rowse, one of the world’s most successful bloggers, started out as (and still is) an affiliate for photography equipment. I have a website that is an affiliate for woodwork tools and books (its my hobby, but why shouldn’t it earn me a few bucks). A friend of mine has a quilling website (artwork made from coils of colored paper, in case you don’t know). She makes affiliate income from craft and art supplies.

That, my friends, is a pretty diverse collection of products — but there are hundreds, probably thousands more.

Look at it another way. One of the world’s most popular affiliate programs is run by Amazon. Just about everything they sell, you can make a cut off. So if you cook, garden, bring up kids, fix your car, go fishing, hike, help your friends buy clothes… you can make money from affiliate marketing.

There are also affiliate ‘networks’. Companies like Commission Junction, Shareasale, etc., who manage affiliate programs for other businesses. Completely at random I found ways to make money off smartphones and other electronics, pet merchandise, ecological kids lunches, handbags, and musical instruments.

Now you probably won’t make the 25% or more that the real-world store takes (it’s possible on some products, but not many). Amazon, for example, pays a max of 10%, and most of the time you’ll get half that. Other companies pay around 5% to 15%.

But your costs are almost zero. No store, no stock, no staff. You need web hosting (if you don’t already have it), maybe a WordPress theme that comes with good support. You’re talking twenty bucks a month, and if you’re running this as a proper business (which you should) those things are tax deductible.

Could you really make a living from affiliate marketing? No doubt about it.

Almost anything can form the basis for making money as an affiliate. You won’t get rich overnight, but there’s a real opportunity for those who stick with it to make a serious difference to their income — and that, folks, is the Honest Bob’s truth.