Affiliate marketing has become a term that is very popular right now in Nigeria and a lot of people hear it but they have no idea what it is or how to start.
In this article, I’m going to explain step by step what affiliate marketing really is, how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria, and everything you need to know.
- What is Affiliate Marketing?
- How Affiliate Marketing Works
- Why Affiliate Marketing Is a Good Business Model
- What You Need to Know Before Starting Affiliate Marketing.
- Affiliate Networks In Nigeria.
- How to Start Affiliate Marketing In Nigeria With No Money.
- How to Start Affiliate Marketing Without Money in just 6 steps
- My Affiliate Marketing Golden Rules
- Conclusion
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is basically when you have a license to sell other people’s products through a personal link they give you. And if anyone buys from your link, you get a commission.
Depending on the price of the product, you can get anywhere from 30% to 70% commissions.
This is a massive win-win because you get to leverage someone’s effort to make money and the person gets a percentage of a sale that wouldn’t have existed if you hadn’t made it for him.
Affiliate marketing is not a skill, it is an actual business model. It’s not a get-rich-quick scheme but a reliable business model.
In a nutshell, you make money when you promote valuable products that people need and once they buy, you make money in the form of commissions.
My goal in this article is to guide you on how to start your own affiliate marketing business in 2022. Then you need to read this article to the end…
How Affiliate Marketing Works
There are many so-called Affiliate marketers out there today that would just pick affiliate products and start spamming everybody with their affiliate links to make them buy what they are promoting. They believe affiliate marketing is all about promotion to earn a commission. That’s not how affiliate marketing works.
Using big companies like Uber, Jumia, and Airbnb as case studies. These companies use what I will call the “connector business model”. How does this work?
Uber owns no cars but sells transport services to millions of people and earns a commission.
Jumia owns no products but sells millions of products to people and earns a commission.
Airbnb owns no property but sells rental services to people and earns a commission.
Let me break it down further…
Jumia owns no products, what they have created is a marketing system – a place where people who have goods to sell would come and list their products on, and people like you and I who want to buy just go to, buy and Jumia delivers to us.
For every delivery, Jumia earns a commission.
If you are starting affiliate marketing, you will start by creating a marketing system while working with product creators or companies that have amazing products and connecting those companies to people who want their products and in exchange, you will be making money.
Why Affiliate Marketing Is a Good Business Model
First, it’s a business model that is extremely cheap to start.
Secondly, you do not need to create any products or services, you don’t need to import a whole inventory of any products, you just need to begin to sell products that other people own and make money.
With affiliate marketing, you can begin to promote so many products and have multiple streams of income, and not be limited to selling just one product.
These are products you do not hold inventory, no shipping cost and you don’t necessarily need to run your business from a particular place.
It’s location independent, and that means you can run it from anywhere in the world as long as you have your smartphone or your laptop with an internet connection.
Lastly, you don’t need to provide customer service. You’re just a ‘connector’ and all you’re doing is connecting the people who own the product to the people who need them and you’re out of the way.
What You Need to Know Before Starting Affiliate Marketing.
How to find products that people want to buy?
How to find people that want to buy these products?
How to market these products?
These are legit questions you need answers to before you start affiliate marketing and if you continue reading this article, I’m going to give you detailed answers to these questions.
How to find products people want to buy
So let’s get into the first question, how do you find products that people want to buy?
The answer is simple – Affiliate Networks
Another question, what are affiliate networks? – They can be termed ‘middlemen’ and what they simply do is connect entrepreneurs and marketers to owners and creators or companies that have products and offers that they can sell or promote.
That is; a product creator simply puts his/her products on this platform, where you can go as an affiliate marketer and get access to these products and start promoting.
Affiliate Networks In Nigeria.
There are quite a number of affiliate networks but I am going to tell you about the ones I have tested.
These affiliate networks mentioned above only list high-quality products that give high commissions and it’s totally free to join.
Expertnaire, Clickbank, JVZoo are also popular affiliate networks that you might want to try out.
How to find people that want to buy these products?
This is a key element in every business, not just in affiliate marketing.
As an affiliate marketer, it is necessary to use the product you are promoting since affiliate marketing is not just a promotion for a commission but a connector model that connects customers with the product.
You cannot recommend a product you have no idea how it works. It’s your job to check the product before recommending it to people to buy.
In a case where you have used the product you are promoting, now ask yourself these questions;
What needs does the product satisfy?
Which problem does the product solve?
Once you are able to answer these questions, you can go out into the market and look for people having these problems as well.
You should know that people are not in the market looking to buy products. They are out there looking to solve whatever problems they may have.
Be a problem solver, that’s how you find people that will buy whatever you’re promoting.
How do you market to people that want to buy?
First of all, you need to generate leads. Leads are people who have shown interest in something related to that product you want to promote.
For instance, if you’re selling a product that teaches people how to lose weight, everybody in the fitness niche who’s interested in losing weight is your lead.
You can generate these leads using this 4-step marketing process that I am about to explain.
You first create something called a lead magnet for these leads. A lead magnet is an offer you give your leads for free that will make them give you their attention or contacts.
Once you have their attention, you can educate them about the product you are promoting and how the product can solve the problem that they have.
You can educate these leads using a WhatsApp group class, pdf material, or email sequence.
Now, this is where most people fail, they generate leads, and educate and they just stop there.
Oftentimes, people do not buy stuff immediately or the first time they hear about it.
You need to nurture these leads using emails, WhatsApp broadcasts, or SMS messages. You continue to provide information, and answer all objections until they finally say “I am ready to buy”.
Most marketers get the first two parts of this process right and most just fumble the entire process.
To set up a profitable affiliate marketing business, you must know how to generate leads, follow up on your leads, and nurture then close them.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing In Nigeria With No Money.
One of the problems you could face in affiliate marketing as a beginner is the upfront costs, including buying courses, tools, marketing, etc.Â
So, the question is: Can you start for free? The answer is YES.
Affiliate marketing, especially when you’re a beginner with no startup money, takes long-term thinking.
First, you need to decide on a niche. A niche is a topic you’ll become an authority on. For instance, Health, Lifestyle, Tech, etc
With platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Blogger, you can create an account on these platforms and start creating content right away.
Let’s take YouTube, for example, you can create a YouTube channel where you talk about or create content around tech products.
The channel can generate affiliate sales through links to products you put in the video description.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing Without Money in just 6 steps
- Choose your niche.
- Decide on a platform.
- Find affiliate products to promote.
- Create great content.
- Drive traffic to your content.
- Get clicks on your affiliate links.
My Affiliate Marketing Golden Rules
These are my golden rules you must follow as an affiliate marketer if you want to be profitable:
- Never promote a product directly
- You can model, but do not copy.
- Create a marketing system
- Don’t put too much pressure on yourself.
- Be consistent.
- Be patient with results.
- Simplify the process.
- Learn to fail forward
- Read books on mindset, marketing, and psychology.
- Invest in paid Ads.
- Don’t listen to every dick and harry
- Study sales and marketing daily.
- Don’t complain of no sales until you have at least 400 leads.
- Generate leads and keep giving them value
- Know your ‘why’ and stay focused.
Conclusion
I have no doubt that you could take everything you have learned in this article, go ahead, and put it into action.
I believe that with the information I have shared with you, with your own resources, effort, and time, you can get results that you previously thought were not possible.
But what if there was an option that makes me play an active role in your results and take responsibility for your success?
A chance to let me hold your hand step by step and mentor you into building a profitable affiliate marketing business in the next 30 days.
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