How To Make Crazy Passive Income With Affiliate Websites

Right, so you’re here because you want to know how to make money with affiliate websites? 

Well, you’re in the right place. I’m about to walk you through the exact steps on how to make money with affiliate marketing. 

Let’s go through what we’ll cover in this guide: 

• How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? 
• Who Is Your Target Market? 
• How Much Money Can You Make From Affiliate Websites? 
• A Step-By-Step Guide To Setting Up Your Website

You can dedicate your life to affiliate websites or simply work on one in your spare time – both are lucrative and enjoyable avenues to explore!

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? 

Affiliate marketing is the system of promoting a product or service for another business.  

So where do I find offers? There are loads of affiliate marketplaces to find products and services for you to promote, but the main ones to look out for: 

• Amazon Associates 
• Awin 
• Gumroad 

Once you have decided on a product to promote, the next step would be to create an affiliate link through one of the marketplaces listed above. 

You can share these newly created affiliate links on your website or social media. Or, if you’re familiar with PPC, you can run Ads (as long as your conversion cost is lower than your commission value!). 

When one of your readers clicks on this affiliate link it installs a cookie. This is used to track the user’s activity. 

Cookies are essentially a web tracking technology and are pretty much used by every website to monitor their users. 

This means if the user closes down the site and comes back later to buy the product, you’ll be automatically awarded your commission. 

Tip: Make sure to always look at the cookie duration length. For instance, Amazon Associates only has a 24hr cookie duration, whereas Eve Sleep has a 30-day cookie duration length. 

So what’s the trick to making a lot of money? Place the right product recommendations in front of an audience looking to buy. 

If you do this through a website then that’s how you can build your passive income. 

Keep reading to be shown the steps to doing exactly that. 

Who Is Your Target Market?

So you like the idea of making money through recommending and reviewing other brand’s products. 

But who are you going to be recommending the products to? 

If you put your recommendation in front of the wrong audience, then no one will click and you’ll be sitting there wondering what’s the next step. 

How do you get your recommendations in front of the right audience? 

I would recommend starting a WordPress blog and writing your content based on a specific niche. 

So let’s say you love gaming, perhaps you’ll want to cover all the gaming hardware and accessories? Here’s a great example of the best gaming keyboard. 

The Truth

This doesn’t happen overnight. 

Affiliate websites are not a get-rich scheme. But if you’re willing to work hard then it can be extremely rewarding. 

The best factor is that it gives you a great passive income. Once your review is live then all you need to do is SEO! And SEO is a wonderful, lucrative skill to learn. 

How Much Money Can You Make From Affiliate Websites? 

There is no “exact” amount I can give you as it differs per affiliate category and network. 

Amazon pays anywhere from 1-10% dependent on the category of the product. But some courses on Gumroad pay up to an amazing 50% in commission. 

Tip: Commission is a really important topic when it comes to learning affiliate marketing.

Now that Gumroad commission seems appealing, doesn’t it? 

The catch? It’s comparatively harder to get a user to purchase a digital course than a product from Amazon. 

Amazon certainly doesn’t have the best commission rates or cookie length, but the purchasing power of their users is huge. 

The best feature of Amazon affiliate programs is the referral fee you get for everything a user buys on Amazon. Yes, even if it’s a completely different product. 

The Real Figures

Let’s take a veteran in the industry who set up a useful case study to see how much you could be earning from Affiliate marketing. 

The key takeaways: 

• Averaging $4,000 per month 
• $48,897 annual revenue 
• Roughly $1500 per month in costs

If you want to read more then click here. 

This is on the relatively low end of the spectrum as you have some bigger sites such as GoodHousekeepingInstitute which earn millions of dollars in commission. 

A Step-By-Step Guide To Setting Up Your Own Website

Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative if you’re willing to put the time and effort in. Just check the link above for some real monthly numbers. 

The easiest way? Build an affiliate blog around a single topic and niche. 

Tip: Make sure to keep your expenses under control. 

This is an overview guide on how to get started. Make sure to do more research on each point: 

Step 1) Choose A Niche That Is Popular And Not A Fad

Follow the money! What do I mean by this? 

We all know that going to the gym is not a “trend” or “fad”, people will still go to the gym for years to come. And it’s a hot sector worth nearly $100 billion.

That means recommending and reviewing products within the gym niche is a solid option as you know some people are ready to buy. 

What’s better is that there is a large range of high-quality products on sale, so you won’t be recommending bad products. 

An example of a bad niche, or ‘fad’, would be a product like hoverboards. Now whilst they spiked in popularity, it also dropped off just as quick. 

Step 2) Build Your Affiliate Website 

Luckily this is easy. If you have zero design or coding skills you’ll still be able to set one up. 

Firstly, head over to a hosting company and purchase a “.com” domain. Siteground is a great first option as it sets up your WordPress for you. 

Once you have purchased your domain the next step is to buy a WordPress theme. I recommend a theme that is compatible with Elementor Pro. Here are 3 themes I recommend: 

1. Astra WP
2. Ocean WP
3. Kadence WP 

Take time to read the documentation when it comes to installing the theme on your WordPress, there’s also plenty of YouTube videos for theme installations.  

Voila! You now have a working website. 

Tip: Interested in coding? Here’s how to make money coding from home.  

Step 3) Sign Up To Affiliate Networks 

Once you’ve chosen your product you’ll want to find good affiliate networks to sign up to. 

Common affiliate networks include: 

• Amazon Associates 
• ShareASale
• Awin
• CJ Affiliate 
• Clickbank 
• Gumroad

They’re free and really easy to sign up to.

Tip: Always read the disclaimers when signing up to the affiliate networks. 

Step 4) Publish Content Recommending Products 

The main aim is to convince the reader that the product you’re recommending is worthwhile. 

You should aim to be as honest as possible when it comes to promoting affiliate products. 

By guiding them through the product, its pros and cons, who it’s recommended for and much more you build trust with the reader. 

This is when you can show your affiliate link for them to click through to purchase the product. 

Here are some content formats you can follow: 

Comparison Posts — Pitching one product against another “Vs.” style 

Roundup Posts — A list of the best products for that topic (example: best mattress for side sleepers) 

Product Reviews — A thorough product review focussing on a single product 

Step 5) Start Search Engine Optimisation To Help Promote Your Website 

The next step after publishing the content is to start SEO. The three main types of SEO: 

1. On-page SEO 
2. Off-page SEO 
3. Technical SEO 

I would suggest building backlinks to your site as this is what will move the needle the most. Some powerful backlink techniques include: 

• Resource page link building
• Broken link building 
• Shotgun skyscraper link building 

This will help you rank high up on Google for searchers to find you.  

The Formula That Makes You Win

Well done for making it to the end of this guide! Here’s the real juicy information that will help you beat your competitor’s. 

Hard work. That’s it! 

When it comes to affiliate marketing you’ve got to be willing to put in the hours, but I assure you it’s worth it. Who doesn’t want to earn an extra $40,000 a year for a few extra hours per week?