Affiliate Marketing the Easiest Way to Earn Passive Income

In the past, we’ve covered the multiple ways people can earn passive income in their lives. In this post, we’re going to cover just one in particular: affiliate marketing.
About a year ago, I started on my own quest to create passive income streams in my life. The typical avenues like real estate investing or investing heavily into the stock market seemed out of reach for me, so I decided to start focusing my efforts on affiliate marketing.
While all my bills aren’t covered by passive income yet, I have gone from earning just a few dollars each month in passive income to now earning hundreds of dollars per month. That basically covers my groceries. The more I learn about effective affiliate marketing strategies, the more I will earn.

In short, affiliate marketing is when you make a commission from selling a service or product someone else created. In the online space – which is where I happen to reside –  that looks like a blogger recommending a product or service on their website. If someone purchases said product or service through the blogger’s affiliate link, then the blogger makes a commission.

In my opinion, the biggest advantage of affiliate marketing is how easily accessible it is. Speaking as someone who is on the path of creating passive income for herself, affiliate marketing made the most sense for this stage of my life.

There’s no need to save for a downpayment on a property and you don’t need to save half your income (and subsequently, sacrifice your life) for ten years in order to earn enough dividends from the stock market. Neither of these sounded like a good time to me. And, as much as I love finance and respect people who do these things, they didn’t really fit into the lifestyle I wanted to have for myself in the present moment.

You know what did fit into my lifestyle? Affiliate marketing. I already had a blog and a name for myself so I could easily add this as a passive income stream. Additionally, even if I didn’t have those things, the startup costs are extremely low. Paying $80 a year in web hosting is nothing when compared to having to save 20 percent for a downpayment on a property. Bottom line is if you have a WiFi connection, you can start earning money passively for less than $100.

The logical question people ask is whether or not they can really make money with affiliate marketing. After all, real estate and stock market dividends already have a proven track record.
In short, the answer is yes and lots of it. One success story is that of Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of the popular blog Making Sense of Cents. Michelle is not just a colleague of mine, but also one of my teachers for affiliate marketing.
Michelle’s claim to fame is that she earned nearly seven figures from her blog last year – and the bulk of that was through affiliate marketing. This year, her blog is on track to earn $1.5 million from affiliate marketing.

The best part about Michelle’s story is that she’s done this in a few short years. She started her blog back in 2011 the way many people do – with zero readers and no name recognition. Fast forward six years and she’s making seven figures passively.

To my knowledge, no other passive income stream can make you that much money that quickly. Even in my own case, to go from a few dollars in passive income to a few hundred each month within a year is quite the ROI. I’ve never gotten that from investing in index funds – eight years of faithfully investing and I’m not even earning $1,000 in dividends.

There are different strategies you can implement to get results from affiliate marketing. These strategies include email marketing, social and blogging. When you’re first getting started, you’ll want to try different things to see what works for you and what doesn’t. To learn more, please check this basic Affiliate Marketing guide.

Based on my own experimenting in the last 12 months, here are the strategies I have personally found to be extremely effective in earning money with affiliate marketing.

• Email marketing. Most of my affiliate marketing sales come from my email list. This makes sense because these people have already opted in to hearing more from me. They already trust me, so if I recommend a service or product they are more likely to buy it.
• Extensive reviews with video or audio tutorials. I have a review on how to start a blog for $4. In it, I have a video walkthrough and screenshots which show people how to do it step by step if they purchase hosting from one of my affiliate partners. This is one of my highest grossing affiliate products.
• Recommending things to current clients. In addition to content marketing, I’ve been growing the consulting side of my business. This year, I launched my first group coaching program where I teach students how to build a simple sales funnel. I also recommend the products I use in the video lessons. As a result, I’ve made a affiliate income from recommending products and services to consulting clients.
• Showing results on social media. One of my highest grossing affiliate products is a course that teaches people about affiliate marketing. After taking the course and implementing the strategies, I started sharing the results I was getting. Consequently, people buy that course through my affiliate link because they are able to see that it does actually work.

In the coming months, I’ll work on increasing traffic to my website, but for now I’m focusing on what has proven to show me the best results with the least amount of effort.

Affiliate marketing has proven to be a successful way for me to earn passive income. Thanks to Its low barrier to entry and the power of the internet, my groceries are paid for with money I earn passively each month.

Not only that, but on more than one occasion, those affiliate sales have helped me pay my bills when I was unable to work. In both 2016 and 2017, I lost some work due to hurricanes. In 2017 especially, I was without power or internet for about a week and a half.

Because I was earning money passively with affiliate marketing, I was still able to meet my financial obligations even though I could not actually work. That alone makes putting the effort into earning passive income totally worth it.