If you are unsure precisely what affiliate marketing is and how it works, here is a quick breakdown from my perspective.
Affiliate marketing is when someone like me sells another company’s products. In other words, I do not create, design, or manufacture any products.
Think about a grocery store. Many grocery stores sell food products made by other companies. For example, a local farm grows crops like apples and oranges sold in the store, or a large manufacturing company makes cereal, pasta, frozen foods, and other products.
The value of not having my own products is that I can research and select the best products to offer customers. I am not restricted to any particular product, which allows me to promote one or many products from different ‘manufacturers.’
Since I am building an online business, my focus is finding great digital products to offer. These usually come in e-books, training videos, training programs, etc., which can be emailed to customers and accessed via an email or website link. Sometimes, I might have physical products like an actual book, but for the most part, they will be digital products.
Once I have selected the digital products, I will promote them. Since I have an online business, I want to use online/internet-based platforms like social media apps, blogs, etc., to share valuable educational content with people that will help them. When appropriate, I offer products to my audience.
People interested in purchasing a product can click a link, which takes them to a checkout page. They buy the product and then receive the digital product in an email I send them. All the links to the checkout pages are connected to me as an affiliate, and the company that makes the product pays me part of the profit from the sale.
While I do not have a product, I am still building my own business because I am building an audience of people who find me online, like my content, and want to stay engaged and up-to-date with what I am doing.
While affiliate marketing might take many forms and have many other nuisances, this is my general interpretation of it and how I am using it to build a new passive income online business from scratch.