How Much Do Affiliate Marketers Make in 2021

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Do you ever wonder how much influencers and creators are making from affiliate marketing?

Why do influencers continue to promote their discount codes and how much are they making by doing this?

Affiliate Marketing is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business. Statista estimates affiliate marketing spend will reach 8.2 billion dollars a year in 2022.

And as more and more companies are starting to realize just how beneficial affiliate marketing really is, more and more are starting to hop on the trend.

This article will cover everything you need to know about affiliate marketing and how much affiliate marketers make.

How Affiliate Marketers Make Money

Affiliate Marketers make money by promoting products and services for which they receive a small compensation.

For example, this blog, ecomphox.com, focuses on making money online and earns a large chunk of its income through promoting services such as Shopify.

Whenever someone starts a Shopify store after clicking our link, we’ll receive a compensation of $29 for the first two months that user is subscribed.

This way, I can earn a passive income through my blog by promoting products I actually use and think would be useful for my audience.

Bloggers like myself will often make the largest sum of their money through affiliate marketing.

But we’re long not the only online business that uses this model to generate revenue.

For example, Youtubers will almost always be part of the Amazon affiliate program and list their equipment in the description of their videos, for which they will earn a commission if someone decides to purchases ANYTHING from Amazon within 24 hours of clicking their link.

Twitch streamers will often utilize this very same method by linking to their setup on their about page.

Podcasts will often have urge you to use their code to opt-in for a certain service like Squarespace or Audible.

But also influencers (e.g. Instagram Influencers) will often promote products or services by urging you to click their bio link or use their personal discount code.

How Much Do Affiliate Marketers Make?

The average affiliate marketer makes between $12.5 to $75 per 1000 views.

This means a small blogger could generate up to $750 for just 10,000 page views per month.

Or a big-time influencer with a reach of 1 million could generate up to $75,000 a month from affiliate offers.

How do we come by this estimation?

Well… We know that the average affiliate marketer will convert about 5 people for every 1000 views.

We also know that comissions can range anywhere from 5% to 30% on average.

If we assume the average affiliate product costs $50, that would amount to a $2.5 to $15 commission per conversion.

Now we multiply this by 5 and we get to $12.5 to $75 as a result.

How To Become an Affiliate Marketer

Here are five steps you can follow to become an affiliate marketer.

Step 1: Pick a Platform

As I mentioned earlier, there are many ways to promote affiliate products. But unless you already are an influencer, YouTuber, twitch streamer, or own a podcast, your safest bet is probably by starting a blog.

Starting a blog is definitely the easiest and most accessible approach.

If you do own any of the following:

A podcast
A successful Youtube channel
A successful Social Media account (Instagram, TikTok,…)
A following on Twitch

Then you can immediately skip ahead to step 4: picking an affiliate program.

Step 2: Pick a niche

When it comes to blogging, you should pick a niche and stick to it.

Maybe you like sailing or know a thing or two about miter saws, there are literally millions of niches to pick and choose from.

Sticking to a niche is important as you want to become an authority on a certain subject, no one will take a second look at the products you promote if you write articles about everything under the sun.

Step 3: Create and publish content

Once you’ve picked a niche and started a blog, you’ll have to write content for your blog.

And now you may be left thinking: “what the hell do I post on a blog?”

That’s why you should develop a content strategy.

But before you do that, you should educate yourself and learn a thing or two about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

By learning the basics of SEO (that’s all you need to get started) you’ll understand what kind of keywords you should write content for, what you should pay attention to when creating content and how you can rank those articles.

Spoiler: ranking articles takes a long time. Seriously, like up to 30 weeks long.

But it’s well worth it as these articles will remain online forever and as long as they stay relevant, they will keep generating a passive income for you through affiliate marketing.

Step 4: Pick an affiliate program(s)

Once you have an audience, it’s time to monetize it by promoting affiliate products to this audience.

Of course, you want to stay within your niche. Don’t go promoting surfboards to an online marketing audience.

You should also not promote everything under the sun, just because it fits your niche.

Only promote a handful of services that you actually stand by and preferably use yourself.

For example, whenever, I talk about eCommerce on this blog, I promote Shopify in those articles.

I do this because 1 I love and use Shopify myself and 2 I believe it to be the best platform for anyone looking to start in eCommerce today.

Here are some examples of popular affiliate programs in 2021:

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I really make money with affiliate marketing?

Yes, you can make money with affiliate marketing. Anyone can really. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to come up with your own product, you can simply promote a fantastic existing product and profit from that.

All you have to do to make money with affiliate marketing is create an audience for your business, which wont happen overnight but is feasible if you’re willing to work for it.

How long will it take to make money with affiliate marketing?

If you already have an audience, you can instantly make money with affiliate marketing.

If you’re starting an affiliate marketing blog from scratch, it will take up to 30 weeks before your articles start to rank on Google and this is when you’ll first start seeing profits.

These profits will then continue to grow as you continue to rank higher and publish more and more content.

Can you still make money with affiliate marketing in 2021?

Yes, you can still make money with affiliate marketing in 2021. Blogging is far from saturated and there are hundreds of thousands of niches and marketers for you to enter.

Every year, more and more companies are starting to embrace affiliate programs and realise its a WIN-WIN situation for both creators and brands.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of money to be made from affiliate marketing. Some bloggers and influencers are generating tens of thousands of dollars per month just by promoting affiliate offers to their audience.

Affiliate marketing is perfect for generating an extra passive income by leveraging your audience.

Affiliate marketing is a true WIN-WIN situation which is why so many brands are hopping on this money-making machine as of late.

If you already have an audience and you aren’t promoting affiliate offers, you missing out on some serious dollars.