Do you want to make an extra $1,000/month? Yes? Good – you’re in the right place. Stick around to hear all about how to make an extra $1,000/month with affiliate marketing.

How to Make $1,000/month with Affiliate Marketing

Want to watch a video version of this post? I’ve got you covered!

When I was working a full time job, in my teeny-tiny North Carolina town, I brought home MAYBE $1,600 a month after taxes and other deductions. SIXTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS. If someone would have told me then, that I could quit that job and make ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS a month from affiliates with very little effort I would have told them to shut their pie-hole and then I would have tried to figure out how to do it.

Don't worry, you don't have to go on a Google sabbatical to figure this out, everything you need to know is right here in this post.

WAIT, hold up. If you're sitting there thinking, “I'd love to make $1,000/month but I have NO clue what you mean by ‘affiliate'”, let me explain.

Affiliate marketing is essentially the practice of referring products or services that you trust, love, and/or use to people and making a commission based on clicks or sales of that product. For each affiliate relationship, you'll be given a link that is exclusively tied to you and when you send someone to that link to purchase whatever the product is, you will receive a percentage (or a flat fee per sale) of the sale.

To really get started with Affiliate marketing, you'll want to go through this little crash course here.

Alright, you know what affiliate marketing is, but how do you make money with it? Let's go!

Find Higher Paying Affiliate Relationship and/or on that Provides Recurring Affiliate Commissions

Pick things that give you a higher commission to get you to the $1,000 monthly goal.

For example, Amazon offers affiliate relationships, however, they pay small percentages – if you don’t have  a huge audience or aren’t promoting big ticket items, it’s going to take a lot more to get to the monthly goal. BUT, if you establish an affiliate relationship with a company that provides 50% commissions on bigger ticket items, you could get to that goal much quicker.

There are also some really great companies that will not only pay you based on the sale but will pay you EVERY MONTH someone continues to use their product or service.

For example: ConvertKit is my FAVORITE email marketing system, y'all know that by now, and they are a service that users have to pay a monthly (or yearly) fee to use. Instead of rewarding their affiliates only for the initial sale of sending someone to use them, they pay their affiliates 30% of the monthly fee for EACH USER they send each month.

Make Sure Your Affiliates are Relevant to Your Audience

FoI’m probably not going to push makeup or Swiss Army Knives as an affiliate, because my audience (heavily entrepreneurial) isn’t looking to me for those type of recommendations, but, need a link for an email marketing system or Lightroom presets? I’m your girl.

Make sure those relevant affiliates are products that you actually love because your audience will be able to feel whether your suggestion is genuine or not.

Grow Your Audience

This is really just simple math.

The bigger the audience, the more eyeballs or clicks will land on your affiliate links and the more people will buy them – hence, the more commission you will make.

If you're just starting out, going with affiliates who provide a bigger affiliate commission percentage is great because your audience doesn't have to be that big; but, as a rule of thumb, to make more from affiliate marketing, you should be growing that audience.

Put your Affiliates in front of Your Audience

If you don’t put your links in front of your audience, they’re not going to use them – #obvious! We’re humans, we forget. But if we forget, I can promise you that your audience has forgotten.

By not promoting your affiliate links, you’re only hurting yourself and your business – give it to the people!

Have an Easy way to Share Affiliate Links

If you're someone who has multiple affiliate links, it can get a little hairy to try and keep up with ALL of them all the time. A Google Doc can be your best friend in this scenario; every single time you acquire a new affiliate link, plop it in the Google Doc and it's accessible anywhere you go.

If you can create Pretty Links or bit.ly links – do it! See, these links will allow you to better commit to memory the links you have AND, more importantly, they'll be easier for your audience to remember. If your affiliate link is convertkit.com/2975/aff/tjealkdfvci nobody will EVER remember that, but if you get really go at saying, “To sign up for a free month of ConvertKit, head over to www.jessicastansberry.com/convertkit”, after a few times of hearing it, it will be committed to the memory of #allthepeople.

If you are an Amazon affiliate, you can easily pull up Amazon in your browser (you have to use the browser not the app) on your phone or computer and grab your specific link to a specific product which makes it AMAZINGLY easy to share. If you have an established following on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube, you can become an Amazon Influencer and add items to your “store” super easily for your audience to find.

Even though it may seem that way, making $1,000/month with Affiliate Marketing IS NOT HARD. You just have to break it down, follow these steps and find what works for you and your business. Regardless of what your affiliates are, being intentional with those affiliates and your audience will make this process a breeze – and you’ll have an extra $1,000/month passively in your bank account.