People with disabilities dot com

Affiliate marketing guide for people with disabilities

Woman with disability doing affiliate marketing
Women using laptop with cash around her.

Affiliate marketing is a common source of revenue for influencers and website owners. The basic idea is that you refer your audience to a product or service and get paid a commission.

In most cases they use URLs to direct people to the product/service they want to promote. URLs are just the addresses of websites and web pages.

For example if bob is an affiliate for Non Existent Store he may promote a URL like www.non-existent-store.com/affiliate/bob

When people click the URL they will be shown Non Existent Store and Bob will get a commission of the visitor's purchase.

Three popular ways to do affiliate marketing

Websites

People create websites and usually build them around a specific theme.

Many affiliate websites have pages that review a product or service. They put their affiliate links on the website so they people click it and purchase the product/service.

Many websites rely on search engines like Google for traffic.

They sometimes create "how to" guides and promote products/services that people may use.

Many websites collect email addresses and run newsletters to bring people back to the website. It's probably pointless to do this until your website has at least a thousand visitors a month.

YouTube

Some people create a channel around a theme. They do a percent of videos around products and/or services then put their affiliate links in the description of the videos.

Most people have their faces in the video since doing so establishes trust. However I've seen channels with no face attached to them.

Social Media

An easy way to do affiliate marketing is to promote your links on your social media profile. However this method has a serious flaw.

When you create a post on a social media website that promotes another website it's typically seen by fewer people. Social media platforms want to keep people on the social network's website so if your post contains a link it may not be seen by as many people.

If you can build your audience to tens/hundreds of thousands then social media promotion may be more effective.

You can create a social media page around a specific theme.

Social media pages may be difficult to grow to start.

Utilizing multiple channels

Three different channels were described above: websites, YouTube and social media.

You don't have to use just one; channels can compliment each other. You could have a website and make social media pages to keep visitors engaged with your brand.

Many websites with articles also have similar information on YouTube.

How much does it cost to do affiliate marketing?

In some instances it doesn't cost anything. You can promote on social media for no cost.

At a basic level you could use your camera phone or webcam to film videos for YouTube. In some cases you could use screen recording software to create videos.

For a website you usually need web hosting and a domain name. This is less than $100 per year in most cases.

You can optionally spend money promoting your website. The cost varies greatly. In most cases I don't pay for other websites for promotion.

Picking a theme/niche

Most people pick a topic or theme for their endeavor. In the marketing world the overall topic of a website is known as the niche.

For example if you're interested in sport you may pick sport as the niche and promote sports memorabilia.

Some niches are more profitable than others. However if a niche is very profitable this usually means competition will be fierce.

On the other hand if you pick a topic/theme that barely anybody cares about then your venture may not be successful.

Keyword research

Keywords are what you type into Google, YouTube etc. Most pages on your website should target at least one keyword. A keyword can be a phrase such as "affiliate marketing for people with disabilities".

Some keywords are highly competitive. For example "Sony TV Reviews" may have lots of web pages/videos competing for the keyword. It's always worthwhile to search for the keyword before creating a page/video about it.

Types of affiliate revenue

You can be paid for a single sale or a monthly commission.

You are usually paid one time if you're an affiliate for an online store. For example if someone buys a book you'll get a commission of the sale.

You may earn monthly commissions if you are affiliate for a membership site or an app that bills users monthly. I prefer this model.

Education

Everything that you need to know to be an affiliate marketer can be learned online. Many YouTubers cover affiliate marketing and articles exist online about it.

Many people that teach affiliate marketing have paid courses. Free information will probably be adequate.

Facebook groups and forums exists for affiliate marketers. You could use these to ask for help occasionally.

Should you just focus on one project?

At first you probably should focus on one project until a project makes at least a few hundred dollars per month. Once new projects earn a few hundred dollars per month you can move on to new ones.

Alternatively you could just operate one or two projects, it could be easier to just build one or two projects up constantly. However I'm a fan of diversification.

Potential problems

Companies that operate affiliate programs may decide not to pay you. Companies rarely do this if they've been in business for years. However if you break their rules (even unintentionally) you may be not get paid.

It could be a good idea to join multiple affiliate programs or have additional advertising on your websites if you can. This way if one source of revenue disappears you still have some revenue coming in. Be mindful that advertising networks can slow down your website and inconvenience visitors.

If you don't pick decent niches/keywords you may waste days worth of time on something that may never be profitable.

You can be at the mercy of Google, YouTube, Facebook etc. Search engines can change the websites/videos they like frequently and if they suddenly decide your websites/videos aren't good enough then your revenue may go down. However in most cases these problems can be fixed.

Social media sites can change and may show your posts to fewer people.

Can this be passive income?

The term passive income is thrown around. Affiliate marketing can be a business and many businesses can bring in income while the owner isn't working.

Websites can be fairly "hands off" if done correctly. However best results you should be expanding your venture(s) constantly.

How long does it take to earn money with affiliate marketing?

If you have a good strategy it could take anywhere from 3-12 months to start earning income. For decent money it could take 1 year or more. You could strike it lucky or have a genius strategy and start earning thousands in the first month; most people are not going to achieve this.

Accessibility obstacles

It's possible some of the affiliate programs' website could be inaccessible. Also some affiliate programs may only pay out through certain payment methods which may be inaccessible.

Support for affiliate programs are usually done by Email. If you prefer communicating via phone/text this could be a problem. Some affiliate programs might be accommodating.

Further reading

More information about creating websites

Tips about creating accessible websites

More information about YouTube and online video




This page was originally published at 09/07/2021 04:01:39 UTC

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