My Passive Income Doubled When I Learned How to Do This
Affiliate marketing is rarely a passive business- after all, you are essentially becoming a one-man marketing machine. Here’s how it could be.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time trying to make a side income online has heard the two words “affiliate marketing,” but how exactly do you start to generate commissions for yourself?
You could try following any number of strategies, methods, or techniques to start making income using affiliate marketing. I see so many gurus and online mentors promoting affiliate marketing as a kind of magical “passive income” stream that you can just set and forget. There are ways to make affiliate marketing a completely passive stream of income, but there are only two ways that actually work.
But first, we need to clarify what exactly it is we are looking to achieve through affiliate marketing. If you are like most people, you probably look at affiliate marketing like this: get clicks, convert visitors, get paid, and find another customer. This idea of affiliate marketing is limiting your profit potential significantly, and you are absolutely missing out on thousands if you don’t understand this: the true magic of affiliate marketing is in the passive income you can earn from subscription programs.
Passive Affiliate Profits: Skyrocket Your Income
Utilizing subscription or rebill programs as a part of your affiliate income is the best way to ensure that when your lead stays as a customer, you will get paid every single month for their loyalty. However, subscriptions usually have one main roadblock to converting well: you have to give something to get something.
When I am looking for a recurring affiliate offer, the most important thing to me is if the offer has a $1 trial or free trial period. The psychology of these “trial” deals is that the lead will be able to access the product, without paying to try it.
Let’s start our search for an affiliate offer, then I’ll show you how to promote a few of them.
Searching for A Recurring Affiliate Offer
When I set out looking for a recurring affiliate income opportunity, I stumbled across all sorts of esoteric and spiritual offers from sites like Clickbank and Digistore24, but I feel a little bit shiesty promoting these offers. I wanted to find a product that was geniuenly useful for some legitimate purpose, and could get me around $1 a month passively.
The VPN industry has been growing at a rapid rate recently, and people are starting to take their digital privacy and security into their own hands- but does that mean that it’s a good product to promote?
Not necessarily. The problem with promoting VPN offers is simple: most people who would want a VPN, most likely already have one. You’d be surprised at how many people have started to take their digital privacy seriously over the past couple years, and trying to promote a VPN offer will most likely not yield great results.
The Best Affiliate Offer for 2023
When I think of industries that have taken off since the dawn of the pandemic, the first and foremost is the e-learning space. After all, everyone was stuck at home, and needed something to do. A great program that helps people to learn new skills is Skillshare.
Skillshare’s affiliate terms are particularly appealing to me because they offer a commission- even if your lead only signs up for a free trial! So what does this mean? It means you can get people to sign up much easier, and you will have a much higher conversion rate, leading to more affiliate commissions.
How to Promote Skillshare
Once you have signed up for a Skillshare affiliate account, they will give you a custom affiliate link. Now the next step is driving traffic to your affiliate link. In my personal opinion, there are 5 great ways to drive insane amounts of traffic to any offer. They are:
- TikTok Marketing
- Pinterest Marketing
- Blog Marketing
- Medium
To avoid this article being too long, I will give a quick one-paragraph explanation of how you can utilize each of these traffic sources to drive conversions on Skillshare’s affiliate program.
Marketing SkillShare on TikTok
TikTok has absolutely taken over the world. If you still haven’t got on the TikTok train in 2023, you are missing out on some of the easiest commissions of all time. One of the easiest ways to produce content for TikTok is by making motivational content. If you take an inspirational/motivational podcast clip, for example and edit it down to a 15 second video, you can post it on an affiliate TikTok account- just make sure you credit the original creator and put your affiliate link in your bio.
Marketing SkillShare on Pinterest
Pinterest is very commonly overlooked in the world of affiliate marketing, but in my personal opinion, it is one of the biggest goldmines for affiliate marketing out there. For one, Pinterest has a different feel from pretty much any other social media. It is slowly becoming more focused on being a search engine for images, rather than an actual social media site. The best way to monetize off of this? Affiliate links.
MonsGuide on YouTube created a great Pinterest Affiliate Marketing guide, and I’ll leave it linked below if you choose to give it a shot.
Marketing SkillShare on a Personal Blog
If you are more of an independent person, you might find the idea of running a personal blog pretty appealing. The great thing about having a blog is that you never have to worry about what you post- because you can’t get shadowbanned, restricted, or kicked off of the platform. You have complete control over your audience and what you choose to show them.
If you are interested in getting started with blogging, I highly recommend you learn how to use Wordpress, Drupal, or any other content management system that you are interested in. These systems work very similar to one another, so once you learn one, you should be good to go!
Marketing SkillShare on Medium
Medium gets too much hate from the affiliate marketing community. It’s the truth- most writers on Medium shy away from using affiliate marketing as a monetization strategy, but I think if you are providing value to your audience, you should help them by recommending useful products. The key with affiliate marketing on Medium is to make sure that you are embedding the links as naturally as possible. Nobody likes to feel like they’re being sold- so do your best to make your affiliate links seem natural and non-invasive.
Marketing Skillshare on Twitter
Over the past two months, I’ve been fairly dedicated to learning the Twitter algorithm, and how to go viral on Twitter. However, I have learned a little bit more about Twitter than I ever thought I would in the process. The truth is, Twitter can be a gold mine for affiliate marketing, or you can waste a whole lot of time on the app.
Check out this video by Sean Anthony if you are interested in marketing on Twitter using only organic methods:
