Affiliate Marketing Business: Complete Guide on How to Start and Make Money from It

How to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria has become easier now that some Nigerian online shops provide affiliate-marketing programs, and you can withdraw commission from your local bank without opening a domiciliary account.

The internet has presented people with many ways to earn a living online. However, like any other system of making money out there, you must learn the process, start the business, and work hard before you can make any money in affiliate marketing.

In this article, you will get secrets for making money as an affiliate marketer, learn how to receive your money in Nigeria and withdraw it, discover opportunities in Nigeria and abroad, find out how to promote the business and make your customers buy from you.

By the end of the article, you would become better prepared to make money online as an affiliate marketer, and learn different ways for selling to prospective customers on the web.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the sale of other peoples’ products or services to interested customers.

The publisher or company will give you an affiliate link, which is a code, used for tracking all the sales you will make. It is from this sale price, that you will receive a percentage of fixed commission when you make any sale.

International Companies That Require Affiliate Marketers

Many companies overseas require marketers to sell their products on commission. Some of them are Clickbank, Commission Junction now CJ Affiliate, Amazon, Site Build It, and Payoneer to mention but a few.

Good companies are scattered all over the internet, just look carefully before you join any of them that require affiliate marketers.

How to Pick Good Affiliate Program to Join

1. First, examine their products and confirm their claims to see whether they are true. You may test this by using the product so that you may be able to make authentic review later and sell with good conscience.
2. Second, speak to the company owners if you can and ask for copies of independent reviews done on the product or service. Watch out for undue delay of response and any signs of insincerity as you relate with them.
3. Third, check their compensation plan. Many of these online shops have different compensation plans and percentages they pay affiliate marketers ranging from 3% to 50% or more.

Affiliate Earnings Payment 

Affiliate marketing programs have different minimum amounts you must earn in your account before they can pay you. Also, the time for payment of commissions vary.

For example in Amazon, the lowest payout is US$10 and US$100 if by bank check. Therefore, if you earn a commission of US$100 in January you will receive payment in April.

Do not be carried away by packages that come with amazing websites and videos, well-written sales letters and affiliate links. Irrespective of how great the offer may appear, carefully read the contract terms and conditions before signing up for any affiliate program.

Qualities of a Good Affiliate Marketing Program

Apart from above considerations, you should look out for the following qualities before joining any affiliate-marketing program.

• good track record of the company and how long the affiliate program has been in the market
• affiliate marketers unbiased assessment of publishers products and services
• reliability of their products or service in the market
• solid customer care with the ability to process complaints and the return of products
• ability to process refunds if there are any
• capacity to pay fair commissions to their marketers on a consistent basis.
• well managed company with satisfied staff, customers and affiliate marketers

Read Also: 11 Ways to Make Money Blogging

How to Open Account with a Company That Require Affiliate Marketers

You have done your research and wish to start with an affiliate marketing company, so the next thing you should do is visit selected companies websites and register after studying the product and compensation package and the terms and conditions of the offer.

How to Receive Affiliate Commission in Nigeria and Withdraw Money

Some companies abroad do not welcome Nigerians into their e-commerce payment platforms, or allow them make payments for online shopping or transfer earnings for online jobs.

Recently, Pay Pal one of the foremost online payment merchants now allow Nigerians to pay for products through them but do not allow withdrawal or transfer of money to Nigeria on their platform.

Payoneer is a financial services company in the United States of America that provide online e-commerce payments and money transfer services. Through Payoneer, Nigerians can now withdraw earnings for jobs done online and pay for goods too.

You can easily open account with them by registering through their website, and they will issue and deliver a debit master card to your postal address in Nigeria, between fifteen to thirty days.

With Payoneer debit master card, you can withdraw your commissions and any money you earn from any job online from any local bank’s Automatic Tell Machines (ATM) that accept master card.

Read Also: Steps to Grow Your Blog into Billion Dollar Business the right way

Affiliate Marketing Business Secrets: How to Get Visitors to Buy From Your Affiliate Links

There will be no point in knowing how to start affiliate marketing program in Nigeria if you cannot sell. However, in case you do not know how to sell, just follow the methods below and you will see results if you put in enough hard work.

1. Have a Plan

Please note that selling is tough and so you must be ready for lots of rejections. Nevertheless, you will do better if you have a plan for your affiliate marketing business.

Stay focused on the company and products or services you wish to promote. Know the products completely. Be a passionate ambassador of the company. Let your passion show in the marketing campaign.

Genuinely love the product and its users. This is the best way to win customers who will buy from you.

Furthermore, how to start affiliate marketing program in Nigeria that will thrive, involve first, being able to sell yourself to gain the acceptance of prospective customers, and next is selling the companies you represent and their products or services.

The major skill you need to sell is relationship management and sincere love for the customer, plus the ability to operate a website or blog to show case the benefits of what you are selling.

2. Treat Affiliate Program as a Business

To run a profitable affiliate-marketing program and succeed, you must treat it as a real business and put in the necessary work to build your business. You have to treat it like your day job and invest enough hours every day by promoting the program.

3. Collect Email List

Get an auto-responder service for your email-marketing program. You should build an email list of likely customers you can sell to repeatedly.

Do not refer buyers directly to the publisher or Affiliate Company’s website. Open a website to collect emails. We call this a squeeze page.

Use the marketing copy given to you by the affiliate company and request potential customers to put in their names and email addresses.

Give the prospective customers a gift. For example, give a well-researched whitepaper on the problem you hope to solve with the affiliate product, as an incentive to make them part with their emails.

4. Give it Enough Time

Have a long-term view of the payback time for the business. It may take six to eighteen months before the great benefits you desire start rolling in.

As they say, “Rome was not built in a day”. Be patient, stay focused, and keep promoting the product and the companies you have carefully selected.

5. Online Advertising

You can use Pay Per Click to advertise the program. Budget some money and if you believe the payoff is good enough, use PPC to promote the affiliate products.

In Pay Per Click, you place adverts in websites your target customers visit often and pay if a visitor clicks it. If enough people buy through the advertisement and it covers the cost with a little left over, you are in profit.

6. Build Blog

If you wish to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria the way professionals do, build your own blog for promoting affiliate products and services.

Write contents that promote the affiliate programs. If you drive sufficient traffic to your blog and have enough credibility, some visitors will click on the affiliate links in those articles and buy through you.

Building a theme-based blog is a definite winner and a goldmine for pulling in traffic to check out what you are offering. Continue to provide helpful articles and the search engines will make sure visitors find your blog.

7. Write Reviews

You must be a good copywriter to succeed in affiliate marketing business. Write unbiased reviews of the product to reveal all aspects of the product. Tell readers how people used the products and what it did for them.

Do not lie, tell readers whether the product or service is reliable and does what it claims and provide your affiliate links in the reviews, and publish them in your blog and website provided by the affiliate company.

Remember reviews help customers make up their minds whether to buy or not. Make sure your reviews include valuable features that distinguish one product from another, what people will derive by using it, where to buy it to save money, show in a picture or video how the product works and your fair rating of product (i.e. one star to five stars).

Affiliate marketing, like any other business where you sell to people, is a game of numbers. If more people see the reviews, many will likely buy the products or services.

8. Write Articles

How to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria without spending so much money for advertisement, is by writing quality articles with the theme of whatever you are selling and sending them to article Directories.

Some good directories include Ezine articles and Goarticles. Send them articles and embed your affiliate links in the content. This is a cost saving far-reaching effort capable of promoting your affiliate links to help you make sales.

9. Niche Forum  

In researching how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria and reach targeted audience, using forums is an effective method and one of the quickest ways to get sales.

Do research to discover forums set up by people seeking for solutions for certain problems they are facing.

When you discover these forums, join, and become active in the niche forum that handle the topic of your affiliate-marketing program. Give insightful posts and become a leader in the topic.

Suggest intelligent solutions for problems people have in the forum and put a link to your website in your posts.

When they visit your blog or website, they will get more quality posts and read reviews of the exact problems they are facing and see links to affiliate products promising the solutions.

If your posts in the forums and your articles in your website were helpful and not subtly seeking for their wallets, they would accept your recommendations to buy through your affiliate links.

10. YouTube Videos

Make videos of users of the product if you can and show how their lives became better by using the product you are selling.

Get recommendations and approvals from influencers in the market and then advertise videos using You Tube channels. Do not forget to insert a link to your website or the sales page provided by the company or publisher of the Affiliate program in those videos.

11. Social Network Sites

Promote your affiliate links in Social Networking sites. Write posts and engage your followers in your website’s Facebook page. Tell followers things they should know and use pictures and videos to create a buzz about the products.

Put the products before them and be very helpful to people.

Advertise in Facebook and target particular groups of people you perceive need the products. Remember to be consistent across all the social media platforms.

Read Also: 6 Tips to grow your business using social media

12. E-books

Write helpful e-books to target the segment of the market you are promoting affiliate products in, and give them away.

Put links in your website and then upload to e-book Directories to create a flood of traffic to your target affiliate product. To create a viral effect, give readers permission to share and give the books to friends, family and others.

13. Resources Page

How to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria that will generate the wide reach you require naturally, is simple. Create valuable content in your website or blog, put some of them in a page, and label that page “Resources”.

Next, drive visitors to the resource page to get more information about the areas they love, and put affiliate links in the contents inside that page. Make videos, pictures and write articles to promote the affiliate products or services there.

Be ethical; let all visitors know that you are an affiliate of those companies or publishers you are promoting in the resources page.

See: Example of an affiliate blog in Nigeria.

Top Affiliate Programs in Nigeria 

Which Companies Require Affiliate Marketers in Nigeria?

Few online Nigerian shops require affiliate marketers currently. Some good ones are Konga, Jumia and Deal-dey. Their commissions range from five to ten percent and the periods for payment of affiliate commissions vary.

Carefully study their terms and conditions for becoming their affiliate before you register with any of them.

To get additional information visit their websites and register if they meet your expectations and join millions of Nigerians who start affiliate marketing in Nigeria and are earning good income online.

Remember

Track what is working and pulling in sales, and keep improving them. On the other hand, change what has failed.

Conclusion

We have examined how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria and now throw the challenge to you.

Read Also: Start blogging Business in Nigeria and make money online

Building an affiliate marketing business is a good way to start earning money from the internet. It involves careful planning, beginning a theme-based website or blog, picking winning products, and above all developing marketing skills to sell yourself, the affiliate company, and its products, and be able to withdraw the commission you earn easily in Nigeria.

You have all the information you need to launch that affiliate marketing business and succeed, so take the next step and register for a program today.

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