Are you struggling to make money with your website? Or are you simply wondering if its really possible to earn an affiliate income online?

Either way, you’ve come to the right place. In this post I’ll go through my personal method of how I make money online with affiliate marketing. I’m going to assume you already know the basics of how affiliate marketing works. If not, you should check out this free affiliate marketing course.

First, I’ll go over the basics of how to earn an affiliate income, and then I’ll look at how to find the affiliate marketing opportunity that’s right for you. Finally, I’ll tell you the single, most important marketing secret you need to learn in order to be successful with affiliate marketing.

So, let’s dive in…

How To Earn an Affiliate Income Online

First, let’s look at how to earn an affiliate income online. At this point in the post, I should probably note that there are actually many different types of affiliate marketing, but the basics of how they earn money are relatively similar.

Put simply: affiliates earn money when they complete an action for a brand. By far the most common action is to refer a new customer to make a brand purchase, but there are also lead-based, or cost-per-action programs available to affiliates as well.

Not A Get Rich Quick Scheme

I know what you’re thinking. If affiliate marketing really were that simple, everyone would be doing it, right?

Well, not quite. Perhaps the biggest reason why many new bloggers fail to earn money with their websites is because they give up to quickly. The reality is that most people who are looking to earn money online are trying to figure out how to earn a gazillion dollars overnight.

That’s just not a realistic perspective. Affiliate marketing isn’t a get rich quick scheme. It’s a legit, long term business, but you have to treat it as such. The truth is you’re unlikely to make any real income within your first few months. I personally didn’t have my first $100+ dollar day until month 4.

People who quit put in the time for the first few months, then realize they’ve made pennies an hour. They give up just before the passive income element comes into play.

How Passive Affiliate Income Grows Over Time

One of the reasons that I’m such a firm advocate for affiliate marketing is because of the way the income potential of your business will grow over time.

Whether you’re working with one website, or a portfolio of sites, affiliate income is one of the best examples of passive income. Every unit of work you do today, whether it’s starting a new site, building your email list, or simply writing a new article, will work towards the long term growth of your income.

It’s one of those rare instances where you can take a series of small steps and know that they will product positive returns in the long run.

Let’s look at a quick example:

Imagine, for example, that every post you publish to your site is, on average, worth 100 visitors a month. Let’s also assume that you’re promoting an affiliate product with a $50 commission. If you convert just 1% of your website users to buy the product, then each post is worth $50 a month!

That means:

  • If you write 10 new posts a month, you increase your monthly income by $500 a month
  • After a year, you’ll be earning $6,000 a month in passive affiliate income!!!

Of course, getting to that point won’t happen overnight, but it is definitely possible using the techniques I outline here.

So, let’s turn to finding your affiliate marketing opportunity that will help you meet your income goals.

Finding Affiliate Marketing Opportunities

When new affiliates ask me about my online income, I always reiterate that perhaps the most important factor in determining your success is going to be finding the right opportunity for you.

This is an industry where you can make money with just about any topic. So, don’t hesitate to pick something you’re passionate about, even if you’re not sure it’s worth a lot of money. As long as your niche has relevant products that people buy online, it has a good chance of giving you a consistent monthly income.

Ultimately, your interest in the subject is going to be what will make or break your business. Building a real online income from affiliate marketing is requires a long term outlook, so pick something you’re willing to stick with in the long haul. Then you can turn to hitting your first revenue goals.

If that sounds totally confusing, I recommend you choose an affiliate course like Wealthy Affiliate or Affilorama to start out with. Click here to learn about Wealthy Affiliate success stories.

How To Make $100 a Day Online

Your first goal should be to figure out how to make $100 a day online. If you’re completely new to internet marketing and have never worked online before, this probably sounds like an ambitious goal. If that’s the case, you may even want to think smaller to start, and focus on getting a site to the point of earning $1 or $10 a day first.

As I mentioned above, the trick is simply to find something that you’re passionate about, and to pick a topic area where people are routinely buying things online.

When brainstorming your business opportunity, you should always take the time to do some quick “napkin math.” What products might you promote on your website, and what is your average commission per product?

If your goal is to make $100 a day, and you promote a product at $10 a sale, you’ll probably need 1,000 visitors a day to hit that goal. If you have a $100 commission, on the other hand, you might only need 100-200 visitors per day to hit your target.

How To Make $1000 a Day Online

To a lot of people who are just starting out, trying to make $1,000 a day online seems like a pipe dream. But believe it or not, the difference between earning $100 a day with affiliate marketing and $1,000 a day isn’t that great.

Remember the passive income idea we talked about earlier? This is where it comes into play…and really turns the game in your favor.

That’s because once you’ve setup your website (or portfolio of websites) to the point where it makes $100 a day, you will keep earning that money regardless of whether or not you keep working. Sure, you’ll need to put in a minimal amount of maintenance, but the bulk of the work has already been done.

That means that scaling to $1,000 a day is just the act of doing whatever you did 10 more times. That could mean building another website, or it could mean expanding your website to target a second, related niche in addition to the first.

Either way, scaling is the easy part! As long as you know one thing…

The Key To Affiliate Income: Learn this Marketing Secret

In order to be truly successful online and build a sustainable affiliate income, all you need to do is learn this single marketing secret.

It’s not a gimmick or an SEO-trick, it’s something far more simple, and far more valuable:

Every action you take when building your website should be focused on providing long term value.

In my view, way too many internet marketers get caught up in trying to figure out how to game the system. For years, I was one of them. Finally, I realized that the single best thing I could do was to try to provide as much value as possible to my readers, even to the point of ignoring (at times) how I would make money.

It sounds crazy, but it really is that simple: If you give first, you’ll reap the rewards later.

To learn more about how to get started building your affiliate income online, sign up for my free affiliate marketing course.