Do you want to know about affiliate marketing and how you can earn money through affiliate marketing? Anyone can start generating an income online by working with affiliate marketing in India (or anywhere else).
In this article, we will learn how to earn money online through affiliate marketing as an Indian. How to succeed with affiliate marketing as an Indian blogger or website? Though the article will be focussed on Indians, it can be used as a guide to affiliate marketing by everyone alike.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing, or recommending products and services for a commission/fee, is one of the important sources of revenue for many professional bloggers. Most popular blogs earn a huge share of their income through affiliate marketing alone.
If you have a blog, website or a forum where you can share and recommend products/services to prospective buyers, you can start earning through affiliate marketing income. In order to earn a commission for customer referrals, you must enable a sale.
Most companies offering services and products online also offer affiliate programmes for people. You can join the affiliate marketing programmes of products that you think will be useful to your website visitors.
Even Indian ecommerce giants such as Amazon India & Flipkart have affiliate programmes where you can earn a share of the customer purchase referred by you.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing requires three things: 1) good blog/website, 2) significant number of visitors, and 3) quality products that your audience would be inclined to buy.
1) Create a great website
One of the prerequisites for affiliate marketing is to have a blog or website to promote the product. Before starting out as an affiliate marketeer, you will have to build a website with a substantial number of monthly visitors. You can succeed with affiliate marketing only when you can reach out and promote the products to a significant number of people.
When your recommendation is seen by a large number of people, some of them will actually use your affiliate referral link to visit the product website or online store. A small portion of your visitors will eventually make a purchase, and you will earn a commission.
If you have a newsletter with a decent number of subscribers, or run a group or have large following on any social platform, you can also use them for affiliate marketing. You can send out your product referrals along with your newsletter emails and also publish your referral links on social media & internet groups. You can also use your blog or website to build a newsletter with lost of active subscribers, forums, and social groups along with growing the website.
2) Grow your website reach
Affiliate marketing is not a child’s play. You need a huge number of visitors to actually earn a substantial income through affiliate marketing. Mind it, not more than 1% of the total visitors reading the link will actually make a purchase in general. The percentage of actual purchase will also depend on the niche of your website and the cost of the product you are promoting.
3) Promote the right products
Adding referral links to random products is not going to make you a successful affiliate marketing guy. You need to select the right products based on your website and the target audience.
Choose the products to promote as an affiliate that is relevant to your website. You should also ensure that the products are good value for your readers. Select the products based on the niche/segment of your website.
Also, consider the location of your primary audience. If your maximum number of website visitors are based in India, do not promote products crafted for foreign buyers.
If you have a web hosting coupon website, you have a higher chance of people using your referral link to make a purchase. Your website visitors have already made the decision to purchase and they just need the coupon.
Similarly, if you are promoting a wellness product through a wellness/self-help website, you chances will be better at making a sale. In contrast, if you are promoting books or gadgets through a random website, the chances of making a sale will be lower.
What to Promote for Affiliate Marketing in India?
Now that you know the basics of affiliate marketing, what sort of products can you promote as an Indian affiliate marketing guy? The general answer would be to promote products that are targeted and suited to your audience. If your primary website audience are Indians, you must promote local products that your visitors will find useful.
As a website or newsletter with a majority of Indian users, I would like to promote products that are sold by reputed local companies and online stores. Go local in promoting products via affiliate marketing.
If you are into online marketing and technology space, you can promote Indian web hosting such as Hostgator India, Bluehost India, and others.
For gadgets and gizmos, you can join referral programmes of Amazon India & Flipkart, which are domestic companies selling the right products that can be easily and confidently purchased by Indians.
If you promote Amazon US products on an Indian website, you will not only lose chance to earn referral income. Also, most companies such as Amazon redirect visitors from to their global sites to the country-specific websites. It can also result in you losing any referral credit.
Things to keep in mind when adding referral links:
- Don’t bug your audience with random referral links.
- Recommend products and services that are relevant to the article/audience.
- Don’t link directly to the product website that you are promoting.
- Use a link cloaking tool (such as Pretty Links plugin for WordPress) to create custom referral links based on your own website domain; eg: www.earnmoneyonlineindia.com/webhosting
- Using custom links via link cloaking also allows you to redirect to another product/company when required. For instance, the company discontinued a product, or you were barred as an affiliate (if you do not play by the rules of the company).
- If possible, use generic custom links that can be used for any product that you happen to promote at that time. For instance, if you are promoting a soap brand A1Soap, use a link such as www.earnmoneyonlineindia.com/best-soap. When you want to stop promoting A1Soap and promote another brand, you just have to change the target URL for the cloaked URL link.
- Keep your referral links organized.
Affiliate Marketing is Recurring Income
Once you have built a great website or blog with lots of traffic each month, you will start earning money through affiliate referral links. The road to success in affiliate marketing is long (many, many months long), but it’s a steady source of income once you make it. You don’t have to keep working hard for each sale.
A good, evergreen article or guide will remain useful for years to come. You will keep increasing your customer catchment with each new guide or article on your website. Occasionally, update your articles and guides so that your users do not find them to be outdated. Create an awesome blog with extraordinary article and you will get rewarded for years.
That’s all that you really need to get started to start earing with affiliate marketing in India. You get your own platform for sharing your referrals & recommendations on your website, find the right products based on your audience preferences, and start making money.
Got queries or need some help? Feel free to drop me an email. I would be happy to assist. If you have your own story of affiliate marketing, do share that as well. Happy to hear from you!
One response to “Affiliate Marketing: How to Earn Money Promoting Products Online in India?”
Wonderful article! Really loved the informative content. Thanks a tonne!