You’ve heard of affiliate marketing and you will like to know how you can start affiliate marketing in Nigeria as a brand new beginner, right?
Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. In this article, I will share everything you need to get started with affiliate marketing in Nigeria. Even if you are a brand new beginner.
And I will continue to update this blog post with some more tips and tricks that will greatly benefit you on your journey of becoming an affiliate marketer in Nigeria.
I will cover all the basics you need to know, and I’ll also share exactly how you can start making money with it even here in Nigeria.
What is affiliate marketing?
As an affiliate marketer, affiliate marketing has to do with promoting products for other people for a commission. In this case, you get paid when you make a sale.
For product owners, it is a way to get more sales without paying for ads. When they allow people to promote their product, they only have to pay when affiliate marketers make a sale for them.
But the greater benefits are for affiliate marketers like me and you (not the product owners)
Here’s why: You don’t have to create a product, you don’t have to deal with delivering any product to anyone. All you focus on is the marketing side of things.
If you can get people to buy a product through your personal affiliate link, you will make money. The next thing I want to explain to you is the different types of affiliate products.
What are affiliate products and what are the different types?
When I say affiliate products, I mean products that you promote for other people. When you sign up for an affiliate program, the products that are available for promotion are called affiliate products. There are two types of affiliate products based on when the affiliate marketer gets paid.
Read on to find out
When people promote products online, there are two ways to get paid. There are affiliate programs that pay you per lead, and there are others that pay you only when you make a sale.
Affiliate products that pay per action
This type of affiliate program pays you when you can get someone to take any action on their website.
For instance, you might get paid when someone answers a survey, sign up for their email list or even click on your affiliate link.
Affiliate products that pay per sale
These types of affiliate programs will only pay you when you make a sale. They won’t pay you just for signup.
What mindset should every affiliate marketer have?
As an affiliate marketer, you have to become an adviser. People will buy from you because they trust your recommendations.
If you recommend bad products to your audience. You might make some sales but in the long run, your business will fail.
Strive to only recommend products that you truly believe in. Now it’s time to sign up for affiliate programs that you will be promoting
How to find and signup for affiliate products that you will promote
There are many ways to find affiliate programs that you will promote. The first and easiest way to find an affiliate program is by searching on google.
If you have a product that you are currently using and you’ll like to see if it has an affiliate program. Just type this into google.
“Product name + affiliate program”
You won’t find many affiliate programs that way. So let me introduce you to other ways of looking for affiliate programs.
There are websites called “affiliate marketplaces”
Inside these websites, you will find millions of different products to promote. But before I talk about these affiliate marketplaces. Let us look into some in-house affiliate programs (these companies host their own affiliate programs)
In-house affiliate programs
Here are some of the in-house affiliate programs that you can join today. These companies host their own affiliate programs. As an affiliate marketer, once you join these programs. You will be dealing directly with the company.
Fiverr affiliate program
Fiverr is a marketplace filled with freelancers. If you have a skill, you can go to Fiverr and create a gig and start selling your skill online.
But, Fiverr has an affiliate program that is very lucrative. If you join their affiliate program, you can make $100 for every new buyer you send to Fiverr.
Getresponse affiliate program
Getresponse affiliate program is really wonderful. They have a program where you earn $100 per sale. And another one where you will earn $33 recurringly per sale. You can sign up for getresponse affiliate program here.
Bluehost affiliate program
Bluehost affiliate program pays you $100 per sale, so promoting Bluehost will be a good decision.
I have a fully detailed article talking about the best affiliate programs to promote as a beginner
Affiliate marketplaces
Inside of these affiliate marketplaces, you can find thousands (if not) millions of affiliate programs to join.
I’m going to share some of the best affiliate marketplaces with you and some of the requirements to join.
Shareasale
Shareasale was founded by Brian Littleton in the year 2000. It is filled with both physical and digital products.
To sign up, you need to have a website with your own domain name. Not a free website. They will allow you even if your website doesn’t have much traffic.
But to promote products, you have to apply to the products individually.
Jvzoo
Jvzoo is a marketplace for affiliate products. Most of their products are digital products. I like jvzoo because it is free to join and you can easily get approved to promote a product even in Nigeria.
If you want to make a lot of money promoting products on jvzoo, you should start building an email list today.
Warriorplus
Warriorplus is just like jvzoo. It is free to join and also easy to get approval when you want to promote products. Also, you just start building an email list to promote warriorplus products.
Once you join these affiliate marketplaces and get approval to promote products. It’s now time to learn how you can promote these affiliate products. Let’s see
Here are some of the best ways to promote affiliate products. These methods are really legit and if you understand how to use them effectively it will be very awesome.
Promote affiliate products by Blogging
Blogging is one of the very first ways of promoting affiliate products. If you want to learn exactly how you can start blogging you can learn from these websites. Shoutmeloud.com by Harsh Agrawal, Neilpatel.com by Neil Patel and many others
Pros of promoting affiliate products with your blog
- Easy to start
- Little amount to maintain
- Make money from your writing
- Get free traffic from google
Cons of promoting affiliate products with your blog
- You need to write constantly
- You have to hustle for quality backlinks to rank
- Needs maintenance
Promote affiliate products on YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine. You can easily get traffic from YouTube by creating a video.
If you want to promote affiliate programs, you can create a video talking about the product. And add your affiliate links in the description of your video.
Once people watch your YouTube videos, you can start making sales from those views using YouTube.
Pros of promoting affiliate products with your YouTube channel
- You can easily rank a video on YouTube
- You can make money from affiliate marketing on YouTube and get fans along the way.
- There are other ways to make money from YouTube
- You can build your brand using YouTube.
Cons of promoting affiliate products with your YouTube channel
- It takes time to create YouTube videos
- You need to optimize your YouTube videos before they start ranking
- You might not get sales on YouTube if your videos don’t get views
Promote affiliate products with Email marketing
They say for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can get up to $36 back. If you don’t know, email marketing is one of the best ways to promote affiliate programs.
Here are some of the pros and cons of email marketing.
Pros of promoting affiliate products with email marketing
- Email marketing helps you to build your audience
- You can promote affiliate products fast using email marketing
- With email marketing, you can build a strong relationship with your audience.
Cons of promoting affiliate products with email marketing
- Requires some investment to use email auto responders
- Some email lists get low open and click through rates
- People can easily opt out of your email list.
Use Facebook groups for affiliate marketing
Facebook has over 2.9 billion active monthly users as of the fourth quarter of 2021 So, creating your own Facebook group will help you a lot. Especially now, Facebook wants people to create groups and they are really promoting groups. So you can promote products using Facebook groups.
Pros of using Facebook groups for affiliate marketing
- Facebook want you to create groups
- With a Facebook group, you can pin any post you want and even add links inside your Facebook group.
Cons of using Facebook groups for affiliate marketing
- Building a Facebook group takes time
- It also needs much attention to keep your group lively
Why blogging is really nice for promoting affiliate products
If you chose to use a blog for affiliate marketing, you made a very good decision. Promoting affiliate products with a blog is a really good way to do affiliate marketing.
But you need to create the blog first, so let me show you exactly what you need to do to set up your blog for affiliate marketing in Nigeria.
If you want to create a blog for affiliate marketing in Nigeria, you have two choices. Some people want to create a free blog without any money. It’s possible but I don’t advise you to create a free blog.
The second option is to create “your own blog”. This is the best option, since, you will have full rights and no one can delete your account.
But they all have their own pros and cons. Here are some.
Pros of free blogging platforms
- No money needed to start
- You get a free theme
- You can make money with affiliate marketing using your free blog
Cons of free blogging platforms
- Your account can be shut down at any minute
- Once your account is down, all your effort will be gone for good.
Pros of paid blogging platforms
- You get full control of your website
- Your website or blog cannot get shut down easily
- Adding a banner or affiliate link can be done easily inside your own website.
Cons of paid blogging platforms
- Investment is needed to create a paid blog. You need to buy a domain name and hosting.
- Maintenance is needed to keep your blog lively and updated.
Let’s now see how you can create your own affiliate marketing website that you will use to promote affiliate products.
To create your own affiliate marketing website, you need to have money for a domain name and web hosting.
Domain name
You can get a domain name easily from Namecheap or Godaddy.
Hosting
You can get web hosting from Bluehost. Or if you want, you can get both your domain name and hosting from Bluehost.
It makes it easier for you to create a website. If it’s your first-time use Bluehost to create your website because they have a lot of tutorials that will aid you with your website creation and you don’t need to hire anyone to do it for you.
Blogging tools for affiliate marketing
After you create your website, there are some vital tools you need to have. These tools will help you as an affiliate marketer.
Here are just some of the most important tools for affiliate marketing
Yoast
This plugin will help you rank for keywords. It will show you some things you can do to optimize your blog posts to rank on google.
Auto affiliate links
With this plugin, you can link to your affiliate links automatically. Instead of manually adding your affiliate links, you can focus on writing a great article and your affiliate links will be added by this plugin for you.
Advanced Ads
If you like promoting products using banner ads, you can run banner ads and rotate them in such a way that whenever someone refreshes a page on your website. A different banner will be displayed.
Here are five strategies that will help you promote affiliate products like a pro.
How to get traffic to your website
To get traffic to your blog post you have to start ranking for some keywords on your website.
And to rank, you need to optimize your blog post and get some backlinks. But not all backlinks are going to help you rank.
Use social media
Social media is a gold mine for free traffic. You can easily get traffic to your blog post using social media.
Both organically and using paid methods. If you’ll like to learn the secret ways to get traffic, read this book called traffic secrets. It’s filled with germs that will bring you a lot of traffic.
Optimize your website for SEO
Remember when I told you about the Yoast plugin. Always make sure you get a green colour from the Yoast plugin for your page SEO.
Also, use small-sized images, and increase your site speed. All these factors will help you to optimize your website for SEO and rank on google.
Read Traffic Secrets Book
This book will teach you a lot about getting traffic. It will show you how to get traffic on different platforms. Russell Brunson started by telling us about the history and the goal of all the platforms (google included)
If you read the book you will get more insights on getting traffic online. When I read the book, I loved it. And I recommend that you read it too.
Why YouTube is very good to promote affiliate products
Youtube is a very wonderful place to promote affiliate products because it is the largest search engine for video content.
When you upload a video on youtube, it can continue to get views for a very long time. Once the video takes off, it will continue getting views.
Now, if you are promoting affiliate products in that video, it will help you to make sales on autopilot which is very wonderful.
How to set up your YouTube channel
It’s very easy to set up (create) your youtube channel. Read this article for the full step by step guide and other awesome tips that will help you on youtube.
How to create YouTube videos
There are different ways to create youtube videos. You can:
- Use your smartphone and video yourself
- Record your screen, teach people and upload the video
- You can use also use invideo or doodly to create videos and upload them on youtube.
How to optimize your YouTube videos to get more views
If you want to get more views on your YouTube channel, you can use tubebuddy. It will help you optimize your YouTube videos with the right keywords.
How to edit your thumbnail and blog banner for free
You’ve created your video or your blog post. The next thing is to create the thumbnail or banner. Personally what I use is canva and you can use it too for free.
I love canva so much because it makes it very easy to create the banner or thumbnail without having to contact a graphic designer. Although it might look nicer if you contact a graphic designer. But, it also saves you the extra cost.
Recommended reading: How to promote affiliate products with email marketing
FAQ
Is affiliate marketing hard?
No, affiliate marketing is not hard. But it requires work. You have to be ready to work before you will start seeing results.
Affiliate marketing will not bring in fast results. Especially when you are starting without any money and with free traffic.
What is a cookie?
A cookie is a small piece of code that is added to your affiliate link, this helps the product owner track where the sale is coming from. Also, a cookie is used to know whether an affiliate commission should be given to an affiliate marketer or not.
So when you hear about cookie duration, it means the length of time that the cookie will still be effective.
For example, if the cookie duration for the affiliate program you are promoting is 30 days. It means that if someone clicks on your affiliate links and later purchases the product after 29 days, you will still be given the commission because the cookie has been stored in the persons’ browser that you referred.
What is an affiliate link?
An affiliate link is your own personal link that you will use to promote a particular product. Once you are given an affiliate link, you will only promote that link and not the company’s main website link.
The reason why affiliate links are very important is that it helps you and the product owner know where the sale is coming from.
Can I promote my affiliate links on Facebook?
Yes, you can. But Facebook hates affiliate links. So if you want to promote an affiliate link on Facebook, make sure you shorten or cloak the URL.
Can I do affiliate marketing even if I don’t have a website?
Yes, you can do affiliate marketing even if you don’t have a website. If you don’t have a website you can create a free one on getresponse. Also, you can create a free blog on systeme.io.
There are many more platforms where you can create a free website or blog. So don’t worry, even if you don’t have money to create a paid website, you can always create a free one.
I don’t like writing can I still become an affiliate marketer?
Oh yes, you can still promote affiliate products if you don’t like to write. I told you about YouTube earlier. You can create YouTube videos talking about the products you are promoting and add your link in the description of your videos.
Read: How to make money with affiliate marketing on YouTube
Can I hire someone from Fiverr or Upwork to write a blog post that will promote my affiliate links?
Yes, you can. You can go to Fiverr or Upwork and find people who are good at what they do. Hire them and tell them about the product you are trying to promote. Once they finish writing the post for you. You can use a plagiarism checker to see if the job was done the right way and
How long before I make my first affiliate commissions?
I can’t tell you that you will make your first affiliate commission in a day. I know that some YouTubers might be promoting the idea that you can make money with affiliate marketing in 1 day without investing a dime.
Understand that it requires hard work if you are starting without any investments, and if you don’t want to work, you have to be willing to invest the money.
Can I create a free website to promote affiliate products in Nigeria?
Yes, you can. Just go to systeme.io, getresponse, blogger, wordpress.com or medium and you can create a free website that will be used for affiliate marketing.
Conclusion
We’ve covered a lot. I’ve shared a lot of wonderful tips that will show you how to start an affiliate marketing business in Nigeria even if you are a beginner that has never done this before.
I don’t want you to stop here. Take action immediately, work hard consistently. Focus on your goals. Stick to this for at least 12 months.
If you are able to work hard for 12 months and after that period you start making some money consistently, would it be worth it? Even if it’s just $100 every month without additional work. That’s about N50k in Nigeria, wouldn’t it be worth it? So dear reader, don’t just stop here, start today and work towards your financial freedom
I know you got value from this article and hopefully, after reading, you’ll be able to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria, kindly drop a comment telling me about yourself and why you’ll like to make money with affiliate marketing. Also, join my free digital marketing () forum if you are not yet a member.