How to Start Affiliate Marketing and Make Money in Nigeria

Do you want to learn how to make money online from affiliate marketing?

There is a popular saying: money doesn’t on the tree. Actually, if you look at it through the conventional lens, the saying is right. 

But, looking at it in this era, money does grow on the tree if you plant the right seed. What is the seed, you may ask? The seed is affiliate marketing. Your money grows every time like the leaves on the tree.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn income nonstop on the Internet. There are people in Nigeria and other parts of the world whose streams of income are from affiliate marketing. 

Earning through this hustle begins to have popularity among Nigerians now. Still, many don’t want to dive into the pool of making money online in Nigeria. And I wonder why.

There are bloggers who monetize their blogs solely with affiliate marketing. Some bloggers make more than $2, 000 every month! I’m not kidding! This is a serious business and it has been around for a long time!

Affiliate marketing began in 1989 with a man named William Tobin who was an Internet marketer. As other businesses and business owners were seeing the results they decided to adopt the model for their benefit. 

In 1996, Amazon introduced Amazon Associates, their own affiliate program,  and ever since then it has been made available to the general public. 

Amazon was the first major company to widely use affiliate marketing as one of its marketing platforms. Today, there are full-time affiliate marketers around the globe. 

Globally, the affiliate marketing market size is estimated to be worth $12billion. See how big the market is. And it keeps growing every time. If you are looking for a lucrative online business to start in Nigeria or anywhere you are on the earth, you can consider affiliate marketing.

As the topic of the blog post reads, I will be presenting to you the right information on how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria and other parts of the world and make money. Let’s go!

What is Affiliate Marketing? 

Affiliate marketing involves promoting companies’ and individuals’ products and services and earning commissions. The products can be physical, and intangible like online courses, software, hosting plans, ebook, etc. 

You get paid based on the number of sales or traffic you drive to the companies’ sales pages and websites. You earn a commission when someone buys a product or service through your affiliate link. 

A tracking link is a unique link only given to you by the company or individual you are promoting its products/services. This unique tracking link is used to keep track of all the traffic you are sending and sales you are making via your websites or other promotion means. 

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing is word-of-mouth advertising on the Internet. Years ago, there were salesman that went ‘house to house’. They would have a product and go around neighbourhoods selling their goods. 

They didn’t produce the product. No upfront payment. If a products cost N10, 000 and they got a 30% commission on every sale made–this means their commission is N3, 000. If they sold 100 pieces in a day, that’s N300, 000 thousand. 

They were not the employees of the company. They were independent contractors. They set their hours, and work at their own schedule. They made money when they made sales. They were not tied to a company–they can market as many products as they want.

The marketing and method of earning income are still the same. Just tools that have changed. Thanks to the internet. You can now reach more audience than them–this means you can make more money as you are not geographically limited like they were.

What are the basic terms to understand?

There are some basic terms you need to understand and get yourself familiar with to be an affiliate marketer. You will be hearing and reading these words as you are in the marketplace.

1 Affiliate/affiliate marketer: This is you promoting the products or services of a company.

2 Affiliate program: This is the kind of affiliate program you are participating in. Maybe it’s an Amazon associate, Konga affiliate, Udemy affiliate and any other one you sign up for. The companies usually give a name to their programs. 

3 Affiliate link: This is a unique given to you to promote products. And it’s also used to track all the sales you are making.

4 Affiliate marketplace: This is an online marketplace where you can find many companies offering affiliate programs for their products or services. 

5 Commission: This is what you earn per sale made through your affiliate link. The commission is usually in percentage. Mostly from 30%  up to 100%. 

6 Payment mode: This is the method companies use to pay their affiliate marketer. Companies use different payments. It can be PayPal, Payoneer, or wire transfer. It depends on what they want but you too have to ensure that you don’t have a problem with it–and it works perfectly in your country so that you don’t work without earning anything.

7 Affiliate ID: Almost like an affiliate link that is unique to track sales. Some affiliate programs offer affiliate ID which affiliate marketers can add to any page of the product site.

8 Customer: The person who visits the affiliate’s website clicks on a link or banner and purchases the promoted product.

These are some of the basic terms you need to learn about in affiliate marketing. You will be coming across them in your journey. 

Step by step guide on how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria and other parts of the world

Step 1: Learn about affiliate marketing

The first step to starting affiliate marketing is to learn about it. You need to seek good knowledge and act with what you learn. You have already started learning about it by 

being on this blog post.

 At least, if you knew nothing about affiliate marketing before landing on this blog post, now you have some idea about it. 

You cannot do what you know nothing about. You must have some knowledge about what you are doing to record success. 

The Internet has made learning about anything to be so easy. There are numerous courses created by the best teachers about affiliate marketing, and you can pick anyone and learn at your own pace.

The 0 to $2k Affiliate Marketing Blueprint by Bruno Nwogu is a good resource for anyone who needs a clear roadmap on how to make their $2, 000 in affiliate marketing anywhere in the world. 

Bruno Nwogwu is a successful affiliate marketer in Nigeria. He is one of the people whose affiliate marketing has turned into a millionaire in Naira. 

The ebook is filled with resources, built on his own personal experience in the marketplace. 

You can’t learn how to be rich from a poor person. It’s only rich people that are qualified to do that. Same with Bruno, he’s into affiliate marketing, and he’s qualified to teach you the hustle. 

However, there are numerous online resources you can use to learn.  Internet is a free university for all. There are videos available on YouTube you can watch and learn from to get started. There are also good blogs that are 

dedicated to affiliate marketing alone. Google them out and you will see results.

 There are many Youtube videos that teach affiliate marketing. The problem with most of them is: that they are not suitable for Nigerians and Africans. 

This is why I recommend you to drink from the ocean of experience of Bruno.

Furthermore, another resource that I can recommend is Tamilore Adewuyi’s course, First Affiliate Sale

Tamilore Adewuyi is a millionaire affiliate marketer in Nigeria. He created the course to help people become a successful affiliate marketers. 

The course has about 42 comprehensive videos. It’s packed with information that is beginner friendly–a newbie can become a superstar in no time. 

Learning from experts in the field help you to prevent painful mistakes that can be avoided. 

Once you have still a frame of understanding and knowledge about affiliate marketing, now it’s time to move on to the next step.

Step 2: Choose your niche 

A niche is a product or service you promote based on your field. The second step is choosing the niche, and you have to choose the right one. The topic you’re choosing has to be the one you are motivated about so that you won’t drop it later. There are many affiliate niches available. You have to also look for the profitable one to work on.

Lifestyle, health, wellness, technology, personal finance, beauty, investment, fashion, and gadgets are among the most profitable niches in the affiliate space. 

Take for instance, as you know that affiliate marketing means recommending products/services to people who need them, and you get a commission on every sale.

Naijatechguide is one of the leading technology blogs in Nigeria. The publisher of the blog monetizes it with gadgets and technology products. He participates in Konga, Jumia Affiliate programs. 

He does gadgets and accessories reviews and recommends the best products to buy on Konga and Jumia. This is how niche works. 

Gadget’s niche is profitable. Sure. But are you passionate about it? Can you keep creating content for it nonstop? Can you withstand the competition? Providing the right answers to these questions will put you on a path to success in affiliate marketing.

Step 3: Find out what is selling

Like in other businesses, if you want to succeed, you must first find out what is selling before diving in. You need to sell products and services with huge customers. 

In affiliate marketing, you have to find out the top-selling products/services in your chosen niche. 

The technology niche is profitable. The wellness niche is profitable. But it doesn’t imply that all the products in these niches are selling. You have to find out what is selling and what is not.

You have the most powerful tool, Google, already. It can be used to search for the best selling products. Once you have determined the best selling ones in your niche, then write down like six of them. The next step after this is to research them.

Step 4: Research the products and vendors

Now, you are in the research phase. You’ve discovered the products that are selling. Good. You will now need to find out how quality the products you are marketing are. 

Your reputation is on the line and it’s very important you have a good one.

You must market good products to your audience. You can only sell crap to people once. They will never buy from you again, and some may go to the extent of telling other prospects not to buy from you. 

However, if you regularly recommend good products, your audience will trust you, and they will buy what market again and again. 

If possible, you can buy the product yourself and use it. You can as well read about it—the reviews, how it works, the problems it is solving. 

What you are looking for are bad complaints from the customers or users of the product. And you need to check the response of the company/vendor to their reviews. 

You can’t stop your research till you uncover truths about the vendor too. You need to read what other affiliate marketers are saying about the vendor. 

Their reviews are mostly honest because they are in the game. And they are always ready to assist newcomers with information when the need arises. 

You need to also check for the payment method the vendor is using is available in your country and how they pay —monthly, weekly, and quarterly. Research and go for the best available ones. 

Another thing to take note of is “commission leaks”. Some Vendors program their platform to decrease your commission rate by hijacking your commission link. 

This will ultimately decrease your earnings and future earnings.

Step 5: Join affiliate programs

You know about affiliate marketing, you have chosen a niche, and you have discovered a top-selling product to market, now, it’s time to join affiliate programs. 

It’s easy to join affiliate programs. You just need to sign up and read and agree with the terms and conditions of your chosen programs. Once your application is approved, you’ve become an affiliate marketer who participates in the program. 

Some affiliate programs are free to join; while some are paid and you renew the subscription annually or monthly. Note this: the quality of the program is not determined by what you pay to join. 

There are so many good programs that you pay nothing—no subscriptions. Look for the ones that match your niche. 

When you join programs, you get affiliate links—these are the links you will give your prospects when you promote the products to get commissions for the sale. It’s very straightforward to get your affiliate links. When you click on the promote button. 

Step 6: Promote your affiliate products

This step will determine how successful you will be in affiliate marketing, and how much you can make. Promotion of your products has to be done correctly. 

You need the traffic to make sales. There are several strategies you can employ to drive traffic to your affiliate marketing product site/sales page. I will be listing some of them here 

• Blog 

To promote affiliate products effectively online, you need to create your own blog–no matter how small it is. You need to have the audience you share information with. With a blog, this is easy. 

You will be creating content that relates to the affiliate products you are promoting. You have to be very honest with your information so that you won’t be perceived as a scam. 

When you already have a loyal fan base, promoting profit and making sales won’t be a thing of worry for you. 

It requires technical knowledge to set up a functional blog. But if you don’t know how to do this, I can help you. Please, reach out to me. 

• Email marketing

Email marketing strategy works for affiliate marketing products promotion except if you are doing the wrong way. How do you know that you are doing it the wring way? When you are spamming your subscribers and pushing content to theme all the time. 

To do email marketing, you must frist build your email list to a sizeable number of subscribers. It is easy to do this if you have a blog running. 

You will sign up on an email marketing platform freely, create a pop form to request for people’s email addresses in order not to miss updates from your blog. Willingly, they will subscribe to your list. Before you know it, you are growing. 

When you have a good number of subscriber on your list, you can create newsletters to inform people about benefits of a product, and how it can solve problem for them if they us it. 

Not every time you will be sending this. It will be after you have already been sending useful infortaion to them. 

• Social media marketing

There are huge number of active users of social media networks on the Internet. A day will hardly go without us checking for updates, reading updates from family and friends.

You can reach millions of people by promoting your affiliate products on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You just need to create your target audience and have a budget for how much you want to spend on ad. 

Step 7: Track your affiliate sales 

After you have taken all the required steps, you can now start tracking your sales by checking if the commission are dropping or not. 

You need to keep your eyes on the running ads to see if it’s bringing sales on not. 

You need to constantly tracking your email marketing results to see if your subscriber are opening the newsletter or not.

How about your blog posts about affiliate marketing? Are your viewers taking decision and making purchase? Tracking your results regularly will help you a lot to become a successful affiliate marketer anywhere you are in the world.

Wrapping things up

Affiliate marketing is good hustle for anyone to start anywhere in the world. Wether fulltime or on the side. You can join thousands, if not millions of people making a living online through affiliate marketing. 

If you are ready to take actions with this information, in no time, you will be become a super affiliate and earn decent income online!

What do you think? 

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