SEO

Here’s How Much You Can Really Make From Affiliate Marketing

Published

2 years ago

September 27, 2022

Entireweb News Bot

Here's How Much You Can Really Make From Affiliate Marketing

But how much money does the average affiliate marketer make, really? Is it actually a good business model?

Today, I answer these questions and talk about how you can get your hands on some of this affiliate money too.

Affiliate marketers make money by getting paid a commission to promote other people’s products or services.

For example, if you have an affiliate link on your blog that sends people to purchase a product from Amazon, you’ll make a percentage of every sale that happens as a result of clicks on your link. Here’s what the dashboard looks like:

However, it doesn’t have to only be physical products.

You can also earn money as an affiliate for online courses or software. You may have seen videos on YouTube that are “sponsored by Skillshare” or “sponsored by Fiverr.” These platforms also have affiliate programs.

Alternatively, you can also make money as an affiliate marketing manager of a company. I’ll touch on how much employed managers make as well.

The average salary of an affiliate marketer, according to Glassdoor, is $59,060 per year. It ranges from $58K to $158K, including “additional pay” options like cash bonus, commission, tips, or profit sharing.

However, this is for a salaried employee. What about a freelancer or business owner doing their own affiliate marketing?

According to a survey done by the Influencer Marketing Hub, here’s the breakdown:

In other words, more than half of all affiliate marketers make $10K or less per year, while only about 33% make $10K or more per year.

That’s… not great. Certainly not enough to live on in most countries. But I believe this is because the majority of respondents don’t do affiliate marketing full time.

Being in the affiliate space myself and connecting with hundreds of other affiliate marketers give me a gut feeling that the majority of full-time affiliate marketers make less than $100K per year—likely around $30K–$50K annually.

That said, this is from my own personal experience, not a survey or research study, so take that with a grain of salt.

Revenue vs. net profit

When it comes to answering how much money affiliate marketers make, you have to take into account actual net profit numbers—not just revenue.

Revenue is how much money a business makes before expenses are taken out. Net profit is how much it makes after expenses are accounted for.

So profit is your actual take-home amount that your business produced for the year.

That’s why I say most affiliate marketers make between $30K–$50K annually. This means profits after expenses.

If those numbers sound good and you’re ready to start affiliate marketing, here’s how you can get started:

Choose a niche
Decide on a content channel
Produce and promote your content

Step 1. Choose a niche

Your niche is the thing you talk about. It could be a hobby, a lifestyle, a wacky science theory, or just about anything else. So long as there are products, services, or courses to promote, you can make money from it.

To find your niche, ask yourself:

What am I good at?
What do I like doing?
What am I curious about?
What do other people tell me I’m good at?

The overlap of those four questions is often a great choice for a niche. Or at the very least, it will get your head thinking about ideas.

For example, my answers may look like this:

I’m good at video games, writing, traveling, and playing music.
I like doing all of those things, as well as journaling, hiking, and chillin’ in hammocks.
I’m curious about silversmithing, fire dancing, and motorcycles.
Other people tell me I’m a great salesman and that I give great massages.

Based on my answers, I have tons of niche options: traveling, hiking, video games, sales, entrepreneurship, and even hammocks. It’s a fun little exercise to quickly come up with ideas.

If you’re still having trouble or want to learn more, check out our guide to finding an affiliate niche here. It walks you through how to find affiliate niches while searching for things on Google in your everyday life.

As you can see in the above screenshot, Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar will display information about every keyword you search for, such as how many people search for it per month and how difficult it would be to rank for.

Step 2. Decide on a content channel

Once you’ve chosen a niche, you need to pick how you’re going to promote your affiliate links. You can create a niche website, a YouTube channel, social media accounts, or an email list.

My personal favorite method is building a website and using search engine optimization (SEO) to rank the website on Google. This lets you gain recurring, organic traffic (and sales).

Check out these Amazon affiliate websites to get an idea of what that may look like.

For example, one of my websites is monetized by Amazon affiliates, and I write review posts like the one below on camping mattresses:

If this style interests you, a niche website may be the way to go.

However, just because you build a website doesn’t mean you can’t also be on social media and YouTube. I’ve just found it helpful in my own career to focus on and master one thing at a time before moving on to the next thing.

Step 3. Produce and promote your content

Finally, you need to learn how to create amazing content and promote that content to get eyeballs on it.

Affiliate marketing is a content-focused business. Without mastering content creation, you won’t succeed. Whether that means writing blog content, creating videos, or taking pictures, you need to learn how to do it better than most.

But creating awesome content alone isn’t enough. You also need to learn how to promote your work, whether that’s to build backlinks to your articles for SEO or just to get views on your videos so the YouTube algorithm shows them to more people.

Now you know the basics of how to become an affiliate marketer. But how do you ensure you make the most possible money on that spectrum I shared earlier?

Here’s how:

Start by finding the best affiliate programs
Improve your conversion rates
Go for quick SEO wins
Negotiate for better rates

Let’s break these down.

Find the best affiliate programs

Amazon is great for beginners, but with a 1–3% commission rate, it is far from the best.

The easiest and quickest way to increase your affiliate profits is by finding better affiliate programs that give 5%, 10%, and even 50% commissions on sales.

The most common range you’re likely to find is 5–10%. These are still almost triple what Amazon pays, so don’t let that discourage you.

Improve your conversion rates

Beyond simply promoting better affiliate deals, the next quickest way to maximize profits is by focusing on conversion rate optimization.

Meaning, you should make small improvements to your website that get more of your visitors to click your links and buy your recommendations.

In general, some things you can do to help conversions include:

Using high-quality images.
Creating call to action (CTA) boxes for your recommended products.
Displaying comparison tables so your readers can quickly see differences.
Making the #1 product stand out.
Building your brand and focusing on E-A-T (expertise, authority, trust).

Example: Here’s a page that converts really well, thanks to these custom recommended product boxes:

You can have a developer make these for you or use an editor like Elementor or Thrive Architect.

As for building your brand and establishing E-A-T, Wirecutter does an excellent job of this. It displays where it’s getting its information and, thus, establishing trust. We wrote a full case study on how Wirecutter does that here.

Go for quick SEO wins

Most tasks in SEO take time to give you results, whether that’s creating great content or building links. But there are lots of low-hanging fruits in SEO that can show results much faster if you know what you’re doing.

These include:

And more.

For example, when I refreshed the content in one of my guides, my rankings shot up from position #3 to position #1 for the keyword “how to start a blog and get paid.” My overall traffic to the page increased by 35% almost immediately.

Organic keywords report, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

Check out our guide to quick SEO wins to learn how to do all of these tactics.

Negotiate for better rates

Finally, the quickest and easiest way to maximize your affiliate profits is by negotiating a better rate from your current affiliate partners.

This won’t work for generic programs like Amazon and Walmart, but it absolutely works for smaller brands. More often than not, if you’re already sending your partners a good amount of traffic, it’s a no-brainer for them to increase your commission a bit.

Phrase it in a way that shows them you will use the extra profits to reinvest and promote them even more—it’s a win-win.

This is best done over the phone, but even a well-worded email can increase your commission by a percentage or two.

Final thoughts

So now you know that most good affiliate marketers are making under $100K per year. But there are plenty making much more than that.

And you have options—you can either become an affiliate marketing business owner or an affiliate manager for another company.

Both are lucrative options. One of my favorite affiliate program partners has an affiliate manager making almost six figures per year—plus they gave him ownership in the company for profit sharing.

Either way, affiliate marketing is an amazing career. Want to learn more? Check out these other guides:

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Related Topics:affiliate Heres Marketing seo

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SEO

Google Cautions On Blocking GoogleOther Bot

Published

8 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Max

Google cautions about blocking and opting out of getting crawled by the GoogleOther crawler

Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about the non-search features that the GoogleOther crawler supports, then added a caution about the consequences of blocking GoogleOther.

What Is GoogleOther?

GoogleOther is a generic crawler created by Google for the various purposes that fall outside of those of bots that specialize for Search, Ads, Video, Images, News, Desktop and Mobile. It can be used by internal teams at Google for research and development in relation to various products.

The official description of GoogleOther is:

“GoogleOther is the generic crawler that may be used by various product teams for fetching publicly accessible content from sites. For example, it may be used for one-off crawls for internal research and development.”

Something that may be surprising is that there are actually three kinds of GoogleOther crawlers.

Three Kinds Of GoogleOther Crawlers

GoogleOther
Generic crawler for public URLs
GoogleOther-Image
Optimized to crawl public image URLs
GoogleOther-Video
Optimized to crawl public video URLs

All three GoogleOther crawlers can be used for research and development purposes. That’s just one purpose that Google publicly acknowledges that all three versions of GoogleOther could be used for.

What Non-Search Features Does GoogleOther Support?

Google doesn’t say what specific non-search features GoogleOther supports, probably because it doesn’t really “support” a specific feature. It exists for research and development crawling which could be in support of a new product or an improvement in a current product, it’s a highly open and generic purpose.

This is the question asked that Gary narrated:

“What non-search features does GoogleOther crawling support?”

Gary Illyes answered:

“This is a very topical question, and I think it is a very good question. Besides what’s in the public I don’t have more to share.

GoogleOther is the generic crawler that may be used by various product teams for fetching publicly accessible content from sites. For example, it may be used for one-off crawls for internal research and development.

Historically Googlebot was used for this, but that kind of makes things murky and less transparent, so we launched GoogleOther so you have better controls over what your site is crawled for.

That said GoogleOther is not tied to a single product, so opting out of GoogleOther crawling might affect a wide range of things across the Google universe; alas, not Search, search is only Googlebot.”

It Might Affect A Wide Range Of Things

Gary is clear that blocking GoogleOther wouldn’t have an affect on Google Search because Googlebot is the crawler used for indexing content. So if blocking any of the three versions of GoogleOther is something a site owner wants to do, then it should be okay to do that without a negative effect on search rankings.

But Gary also cautioned about the outcome that blocking GoogleOther, saying that it would have an effect on other products and services across Google. He didn’t state which other products it could affect nor did he elaborate on the pros or cons of blocking GoogleOther.

Pros And Cons Of Blocking GoogleOther

Whether or not to block GoogleOther doesn’t necessarily have a straightforward answer. There are several considerations to whether doing that makes sense.

Pros

Inclusion in research for a future Google product that’s related to search (maps, shopping, images, a new feature in search) could be useful. It might be helpful to have a site included in that kind of research because it might be used for testing something good for a site and be one of the few sites chosen to test a feature that could increase earnings for a site.

Another consideration is that blocking GoogleOther to save on server resources is not necessarily a valid reason because GoogleOther doesn’t seem to crawl so often that it makes a noticeable impact.

If blocking Google from using site content for AI is a concern then blocking GoogleOther will have no impact on that at all. GoogleOther has nothing to do with crawling for Google Gemini apps or Vertex AI, including any future products that will be used for training associated language models. The bot for that specific use case is Google-Extended.

Cons

On the other hand it might not be helpful to allow GoogleOther if it’s being used to test something related to fighting spam and there’s something the site has to hide.

It’s possible that a site owner might not want to participate if GoogleOther comes crawling for market research or for training machine learning models (for internal purposes) that are unrelated to public-facing products like Gemini and Vertex.

Allowing GoogleOther to crawl a site for unknown purposes is like giving Google a blank check to use your site data in any way they see fit outside of training public-facing LLMs or purposes related to named bots like GoogleBot.

Takeaway

Should you block GoogleOther? It’s a coin toss. There are possible potential benefits but in general there isn’t enough information to make an informed decision.

Listen to the Google SEO Office Hours podcast at the 1:30 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Cast Of Thousands

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SEO

AI Search Boosts User Satisfaction

Published

1 day ago

July 26, 2024

Max

AI chat robot on search engine bar. Artificial intelligence bot innovation technology answer question with smart solution. 3D vector created from graphic software.

A new study finds that despite concerns about AI in online services, users are more satisfied with search engines and social media platforms than before.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) conducted its annual survey of search and social media users, finding that satisfaction has either held steady or improved.

This comes at a time when major tech companies are heavily investing in AI to enhance their services.

Search Engine Satisfaction Holds Strong

Google, Bing, and other search engines have rapidly integrated AI features into their platforms over the past year. While critics have raised concerns about potential negative impacts, the ACSI study suggests users are responding positively.

Google maintains its position as the most satisfying search engine with an ACSI score of 81, up 1% from last year. Users particularly appreciate its AI-powered features.

Interestingly, Bing and Yahoo! have seen notable improvements in user satisfaction, notching 3% gains to reach scores of 77 and 76, respectively. These are their highest ACSI scores in over a decade, likely due to their AI enhancements launched in 2023.

The study hints at the potential of new AI-enabled search functionality to drive further improvements in the customer experience. Bing has seen its market share improve by small but notable margins, rising from 6.35% in the first quarter of 2023 to 7.87% in Q1 2024.

Customer Experience Improvements

The ACSI study shows improvements across nearly all benchmarks of the customer experience for search engines. Notable areas of improvement include:

Ease of navigation
Ease of using the site on different devices
Loading speed performance and reliability
Variety of services and information
Freshness of content

These improvements suggest that AI enhancements positively impact various aspects of the search experience.

Social Media Sees Modest Gains

For the third year in a row, user satisfaction with social media platforms is on the rise, increasing 1% to an ACSI score of 74.

TikTok has emerged as the new industry leader among major sites, edging past YouTube with a score of 78. This underscores the platform’s effective use of AI-driven content recommendations.

Meta’s Facebook and Instagram have also seen significant improvements in user satisfaction, showing 3-point gains. While Facebook remains near the bottom of the industry at 69, Instagram’s score of 76 puts it within striking distance of the leaders.

Challenges Remain

Despite improvements, the study highlights ongoing privacy and advertising challenges for search engines and social media platforms. Privacy ratings for search engines remain relatively low but steady at 79, while social media platforms score even lower at 73.

Advertising experiences emerge as a key differentiator between higher- and lower-satisfaction brands, particularly in social media. New ACSI benchmarks reveal user concerns about advertising content’s trustworthiness and personal relevance.

Why This Matters For SEO Professionals

This study provides an independent perspective on how users are responding to the AI push in online services. For SEO professionals, these findings suggest that:

AI-enhanced search features resonate with users, potentially changing search behavior and expectations.
The improving satisfaction with alternative search engines like Bing may lead to a more diverse search landscape.
The continued importance of factors like content freshness and site performance in user satisfaction aligns with long-standing SEO best practices.

As AI becomes more integrated into our online experiences, SEO strategies may need to adapt to changing user preferences.

Featured Image: kate3155/Shutterstock

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SEO

Google To Upgrade All Retailers To New Merchant Center By September

Published

2 days ago

July 25, 2024

Max

Google To Upgrade All Retailers To New Merchant Center By September

Google has announced plans to transition all retailers to its updated Merchant Center platform by September.

This move will affect e-commerce businesses globally and comes ahead of the holiday shopping season.

The Merchant Center is a tool for online retailers to manage how their products appear across Google’s shopping services.

Key Changes & Features

The new Merchant Center includes several significant updates.

Product Studio

An AI-powered tool for content creation. Google reports that 80% of current users view it as improving efficiency.

This feature allows retailers to generate tailored product assets, animate still images, and modify existing product images to match brand aesthetics.

It also simplifies tasks like background removal and image resolution enhancement.

Centralized Analytics

A new tab consolidating various business insights, including pricing data and competitive analysis tools.

Retailers can access pricing recommendations, competitive visibility reports, and retail-specific search trends, enabling them to make data-driven decisions and capitalize on popular product categories.

Redesigned Navigation

Google claims the new interface is more intuitive and cites increased setup success rates for new merchants.

The platform now offers simplified website verification processes and can pre-populate product information during setup.

Initial User Response

According to Google, early adopters have shown increased engagement with the platform.

The company reports a 25% increase in omnichannel merchants adding product offers in the new system. However, these figures have yet to be independently verified.

Jeff Harrell, Google’s Senior Director of Merchant Shopping, states in an announcement:

“We’ve seen a significant increase in retention and engagement among existing online merchants who have moved to the new Merchant Center.”

Potential Challenges and Support

While Google emphasizes the upgrade’s benefits, some retailers, particularly those comfortable with the current version, may face challenges adapting to the new system.

The upgrade’s mandatory nature could raise concerns among users who prefer the existing interface or have integrated workflows based on the current system.

To address these concerns, Google has stated that it will provide resources and support to help with the transition. This includes tutorial videos, detailed documentation, and access to customer support teams for troubleshooting.

Industry Context

This update comes as e-commerce platforms evolve, with major players like Amazon and Shopify enhancing their seller tools. Google’s move is part of broader efforts to maintain competitiveness in the e-commerce services sector.

The upgrade could impact consumers by improving product listings and providing more accurate information across Google’s shopping services.

For the e-commerce industry as a whole, it signals a continued push towards AI-driven tools and data-centric decision-making.