Unconventional Career Idea 💡 Try the *New* Affiliate Marketing

A fun and easy way to monetize your content

In the internet world, there are two words that have gotten a bad rap:

Affiliate.
Marketing.

BUT HANG ON, I HAVE THINGS TO SAY. (And, it’s good!)

First, a primer on how the internet works:

1. We look things up.

2. We read recommendations.

3. We buy stuff based on those recommendations.

Right?

That’s *the internet*, right there. It’s how we use it every single day. Think about the last time you went on vacation (and needed to know where to stay). Think about the last time you bought a garden hose (and needed to know which brand). Think about the last time you wanted Thai (and needed to pick a restaurant).

The internet is one big directory of information. ( ✅ Good.)

But because there is so much information out there, it’s really hard to determine what’s quality information. (❌ Bad.)

So, what do we all do to combat this???

We turn to the people and brands we like and trust and follow obsessively to tell us WHAT THE HELL TO BUY.

You have a brand like that, right? Like, I read every email The Spruce sends. Everything they publish seems to be exactly what I need to know right in that very minute, like which freaking garden hose to buy. Bought the Zero G they recommended & used it to pressure wash the house the other day like a total creep and it worked like a dream.

That’s because that’s all they do: home & garden product testing. They are doing the work of sorting through the mess, so when I need a new garden hose, I don’t have to wonder if that $199 olive-colored garden hose from Pottery Barn would actually…work.

You know what I mean? It’s way too overwhelming, and way too time-consuming, to personally sort through everything out there and try to make an informed decision (particularly when one article says this, but another one says the exact opposite).

We need filters.

Filters make our lives better.

This is the job of curation: and, it’s a modern career.

You know what it actually reminds me of? The publishing industry. Big five publishers don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts from random writers off the streets; first, you’ve got to get signed by a literary agent to represent you. Once you do that, the literary agent can approach publishers with your book.

Literary agents are filters.

They exist to curate books. Because publishers know that if an author has gotten past them as gatekeeper, the manuscript is worth reading.

There is tangible commercial value in curation.

Which means something very important:

If you can become “the literary agent” of your industry, so to speak, and if you can curate the best of the best in your industry—just like a literary agent would—then people around the world will start to look to you for your opinion.

You become their filter.

You save them time, money, energy, bad experiences, bad purchases, trial and error.

They trust your recommendations, because you are THE go-to source on EVERYTHING X.

And this, by the way, isn’t just an affiliate marketing lesson: it’s also a lesson in how to become known as an expert in your field: you do the labor and report on it.

Okay, with me so far?

Great. Grand. Magnificent!

So now, what happens when you become a go-to source in your field on EVERYTHING X???

You have attention.

The people who are the biggest die hard fans of EVERYTHING X are following you. Watching you. Reading you. Listening to you.

In this way, you’re simultaneously curating an audience.

And, you know what an audience is???

A product in and of itself.

Because you know who pays for access to that audience?

Brands who need to reach that audience.

Imagine if you started a cool new paint company, and you needed customers who love paint. You’d immediately start figuring out who already has access to those customers.

Where are the customers hanging out?
Who are they reading?
Who are they listening to?
Who are they following?

And then, you’d do a deal with that person or brand in order to help you advertise your product.

Right???

This isn’t anything novel; it’s how the commercial world works, and always has worked.

In the past, we did this with television: brands would pay networks to insert ads into their programming. Children’s products would get ads on cartoon networks; adult products would get ads on prime time TV; sports-related products would get ads on sports channels—and so on.

But then, something happened: the internet changed everything.

It democratized attention.

Now, you don’t have to be a big multimillion-dollar television station in order to command attention and attract an audience; you can be a dude in your bedroom.

And, brands want to work with the dude in the bedroom because the dude in the bedroom is who people are actually listening to.

Especially when it comes to EVERYTHING X.

Which means this:

If you can become the dude in the bedroom that everyone’s paying attention to?

Brands will give you money to get in on a piece of the pie.

There are two ways this happens:

1. Sponsorships, where a brand pays a flat fee to advertise in your publication.

2. Affiliate partnerships, where a brand gives you a tracking link to their product, and you make a commission for every sale made through your link.

We’re not talking about sponsorships today—though we will in the future! Today, we’re talking specifically about affiliate partnerships. Because the two are not the same. :)

Affiliate partnerships are actually awesome: a brand only pays if you sell their product. And on the same token, the more you sell, the more you get paid.

Contrast that with a flat fee for an ad in your newsletter, for example, where you might sell $100,000 worth of product and only get compensated $500.

On the other hand, if you have an affiliate tracking link from the company, and you move $100,000 of product?

You might make a $50,000 commission.

HUGE DIFFERENCE. 🧨

That’s based on a 50% commission structure, which isn’t unusual at all—depending on which kind of affiliate link you have. (More on this in the advanced deep dive below.)

Another popular commission structure is 30% and 20%, which still puts you at a sweet $30,000 or $20,000 earned, just for helping to sell a product you already love.

The percentage offered is at the discretion of the company, of course, but typically the more profit margin they have, the bigger the commission they can afford to offer.

Usually, this is a one-time commission, but in some cases there are also recurring commissions, where you get paid a percentage for every month that customer pays them. This is usually the case for SaaS companies (software as a service) where customers pay monthly.

So, why the bad rap?

Because it can seem disingenuous if it’s not done right.

Picture an influencer you follow, suddenly hawking some sort of weird product. I chose the word “hawking” deliberately, because that’s what it can feel like…when the person doing the selling either (a) isn’t good at selling, or (b) isn’t doing so ethically. There’s this sense that you, as an audience member, are just being used to sell products to. And, that feels icky.

But, the problem isn’t that affiliate marketing is bad; it’s that there are bad affiliates.

Affiliate marketing, on its face, is a great advertising & sales strategy—especially if there’s a real product/market fit, and you’re doing the labor to curate for your audience.

Back to The Spruce.

They’re a review site for home & garden products, right? They curate the best of the best, for this particular audience.

Well, lovely as it would be to do that completely pro bono, as a team of good samaritans, that’s not how the world works.

Instead, here’s what they say under their commerce page:

Ta da!

So, as you can see:

• They curate products

• For a specific audience

• And then when that audience buys something they’ve recommended

• They earn a commission

The way they do that is with affiliate tracking links, that can track purchases made through their site.

And, what a lovely + fun business model!

They’re providing a service (curation), and in return, they get compensated for helping the right people find the right products.

You could do this with *anything*:

• A review site for EVERYTHING CATS.

• A review site for EVERYTHING BASEBALL.

• A review site for EVERYTHING JEWELRY.

Do you know how hard it is to find fun baubles anymore?! That aren’t cheaply made? But don’t cost $3,000 a necklace?

Finding them is a modern career.

That is the art of curation.

Of course, however, there’s a right way to do affiliate marketing, and a wrong way.

Do it the right way, and it’s more than possible to make a full-time income of $100K+. (I bring at least this in every year as an affiliate, and so do my colleagues.)

Do it the wrong way, however, and you’re going to find yourself in THE AMAZON LAND OF DOOM—or what I refer to it when people first learn about affiliate marketing and automatically sign up to partner with Amazon with 2% commission rates and then never drive any traffic or make any money and throw their hands up in despair.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

You can create an awesome new career as an affiliate partner—so long as you know how.

Next Up: The Contemporary Affiliate Marketing Deep Dive