Why Affiliate Marketing Is Perfect For Retirement
- RetireOn
- Updated: March 12, 2024
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Are you looking to boost your retirement income?
Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to generate extra retirement income. Once it is set up, it will keep producing money with no involvement on your part.
That’s the beauty of it, it’s passive! What better way is there to bring in money than by doing it passively?Â
In this post and video, I will tell you what it is, why it is useful for retirement, how much you can earn, and how to get started.
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If you prefer reading this post to watching the video, please continue reading on below.
What Is Affiliate Marketing? A Simple Example
In short, it is a way of making money when people buy something you’re promoting. Here is an example to illustrate the concept better.
Suppose that you belong to an online community (eg., a Facebook group) where the members trust you. You now recommend a product or service to your audience in the community. As the community members trust you, they consider buying the product you recommend.
In affiliate marketing, you can obtain a link for a product that is specific to you. If the community members (or whoever) click the link and buy the product, it is counted as a sale of the product by you. You, as an affiliate, will receive a commission from the seller. The diagram below shows an example of this process.
Why Is It So Popular? Â
From a customer’s point of view, there is no surcharge in price. They pay the same as if they would have gone straight to the merchant’s store. They may even get a better price through your affiliate link, as merchants sometimes offer discount coupons to affiliates.
From the merchant’s point of view, marketing through affiliates has a significant advantage. They pay commissions to the affiliates only when there is an actual sale, so there is no (marketing) cost involved before such a purchase. Due to this advantage, some merchants don’t use traditional marketing methods but only affiliate marketing.
This win(you)-win(customer)-win(merchant) mechanism has made affiliate marketing widely adopted in a variety of industries.
How Much Can You Earn?
Let me first give you an idea about how huge affiliate marketing is. Take look at some of these statistics (source from 99firms.com):Â
- Awin (well-known affiliate network) has more than 100,000 affiliates and 13,000 merchants. The affiliates earned over $700 million last year.
- Affiliate programs generate 15%–30% of all sales for advertisers.
- 15% of the total digital media advertising revenue is attributed to affiliate marketing.
- Jason Stone made $7 million in affiliate marketing revenue in a single year.
According to Ink Well Editorial, approximately 35% of the affiliates earn more than USD $20,000 per year; 12% of them earn even over $75,000! Â
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Yes, affiliate marketing is a real thing that people can actually retire on.
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Why You Should Consider Affiliate Marketing for Retirement
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make extra retirement income. The reasons are as follows.
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First, it has the potential of generating a non-trivial amount of income in retirement. It is not uncommon to find affiliates who earn 6 figures.
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Second, the cost of setting up an affiliate marketing business is nearly $0 or very low. You don’t need to build a product to sell, and you don’t need customer support staff to handle customer inquiries. What you need is to know how to do that. I will discuss one practical bur straightforward way of implementing affiliate marketing in the later sections of this post.
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Third, you can work only when you want. In other words, you may create affiliate links at any time when you are available or feel like working.Â
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Fourth, it is passive income – ideal in retirement. The sales process of affiliate marketing is mostly online, and it keeps running without your involvement. At any time, even while you sleep, sales on your affiliate links may be made.Â
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Besides these reasons, it can also bring a meaningful and purposeful life in your retirement, apart from the financial potential.
How To Become An Affiliate?
First of all, you need to register at an affiliate network where you can find merchants who offer affiliate programs to promote their products or services. You would be surprised how many affiliate programs there are!Â
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The best-known ones include eBay and Amazon. Yes, you can sell most of the products being sold at eBay and Amazon! They offer 1-10% commission rates approximately. There are a lot more affiliate networks you may have not heard of, such as Clickbank, ShareAsale or AWIN, to just mention a few of the big ones.Â
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Through the networks, you can promote (and make money) pretty much every type of product existing online or offline, such as books, toys, beauty products, fashion items, tech devices, and so on.   Â
Where To Get Started?
There are several ways to implement affiliate marketing. One of the most popular ways is to run a blog, where you can write about valuable information in blog posts that people want to know. The visitors to the blog may then click and follow your affiliate links.Â
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I have written another post/video that guides you on how to start a blog for affiliate marketing – Blogging for Retirement Income: A Step-By-Step Guide. Â
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I hope this post has helped you learn what affiliate marketing is and how to start it. You may also want to check our guides on other ideas that help you enrich your retirement.
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