How much do affiliate marketers make? Many people thinking about switching to a more passive income stream are curious about how affiliate marketing income compares to other means of making money from home.
The good news is that you can earn affiliate revenue that could easily replace your full-time salary – if you know how to stick with it. Affiliate marketing may not be a get-rich-quick scheme, but it can cover your expenses as it compounds and you grow your profits over time.
When you're ready to build an affiliate network for your audience and scale your income even higher, here is what you need to know about how much you can expect to bring home each year with a robust site.
How Much Do Affiliate Marketers Make?
If you're thinking of making a career shift into affiliate marketing, you need to first make sure that it can cover your living expenses.
As an affiliate marketer, you have the potential to earn the big bucks, but it typically only comes once you've built your site and established yourself as an authority in the industry.
That being said, how much do affiliate marketers make?
According to sources like Glassdoor, the average salary for an affiliate marketer is $77,587 annually. This includes the median income of $55,962 and additional pay that could include commissions, bonuses, and tips or profit sharing.
However, this may not paint the clearest picture of what to expect from your affiliate marketing income.
This is a tough field to break into, which means many people in the affiliate marketing space may not be as successful as these figures lead you to believe.
Influencer Marketing Hub has a more detailed breakdown of what you can expect to earn:
- Below $10K: 57.55% of affiliate marketers
- $10K to $50K: 16.21% of affiliate marketers
- $50K to $100K: 5.15% of affiliate marketers
- $100K to $150K: 7.94% of affiliate marketers
- $150K+: 3.78% of affiliate marketers
Of course, many don't disclose their affiliate marketing income, making these numbers a bit less accurate.
How to Make Money as an Affiliate Marketer
Are you interested in earning a generous salary from the comfort of your own home? The good news is that multiple entry points into this field make it easy for you to up your affiliate marketing income.
You can earn an affiliate commission by promoting products or services you already know and love.
Once someone purchases or engages in an action (such as signing up for a newsletter), you get paid a small sum in exchange for your services as a marketer.
Most people make their affiliate income via an authority site or a blog. You will first choose a niche and then find products or services to promote that can assist your audience.
If it sounds overwhelming to establish yourself as an authority in your field, it doesn't have to be.
Enter The Authority Site System.
This training provides a proven blueprint to build your authority site and make money via affiliate commissions. You'll earn access to 192 video lessons that allow you to follow along and keep working forward on making money via affiliate marketing.
Plus, you get benefits like:
- Access to a Facebook group for support and questions
- Updates for life so that you never miss important changes
- Case studies
- Templates
For more information on The Authority Site System, see our detailed review here.
Of course, you can also make money as an affiliate marketer via social media.
Influencers are growing in popularity, and many brands are eager to cash in on how much time people spend browsing on popular apps like Facebook and Instagram.
Don't rule out social media as an effective affiliate marketing option if you can take the time to grow a large following in your niche.
Earnings Forecast for Affiliate Marketers
If you're thinking of making affiliate marketing into a side hustle or a full-time income, you likely want to know if there's a shot that you can make it successful.
Fortunately, affiliate marketing worth in the industry is on the rise. Looking at an earnings forecast for affiliate income will shed some light on what you can expect.
Some sources claim that affiliate marketing has about a 10 percent growth rate annually.
That being said, there is also growing competition for this coveted affiliate marketing income. Amazon affiliate is one of the most popular programs, and the number of advertisers here has grown 150 percent.
A good marketer knows there is money to be found in partnering with site owners and influencers on social media to boost their overall income.
This is why 80 percent of advertisers have run an affiliate marketing campaign, according to Rakuten Advertising.
Earning an affiliate commission is a lucrative way to make money, and the industry doesn't seem to show any signs of stalling in the near future. With a 10 percent growth rate, you can start to earn your piece of the pie right now.
Factoring in Expenses for an Accurate Bottom Line
Just because you sell an affiliate product doesn't necessarily mean that what you earn is pure profit.
The figures that we talked about earlier from Glassdoor and Influencer Marketing Hub are the revenue that an affiliate marketing business might bring in. However, it doesn't account for your expenses.
Profit = Revenue – Expenses
Don't forget about what you spend in order to bring in that affiliate commission. Common expenses can include:
- Website hosting and plugins
- Purchase of a domain name (or use a free domain name)
- Website design
- Advertising to get your site in front of more people
- Equipment to film videos or take high-quality pictures
Make sure to subtract these expenses from your overall income to get an accurate bottom line that can help you to better grow your business and know what to expect financially.
Quick and Easy Ways to Boost Affiliate Income
Are you ready to start earning top dollar with your affiliate marketing income? These three tips will help you to land in front of more people, effectively increasing your odds of making money.
Find High Value Affiliate Programs in Your Niche
In order to establish yourself as an authority, you need to define your niche. From here, you can drill down into which affiliate product may be the right fit for your brand.
As a marketer, it's crucial that you find brands and offers that earn you the highest value.
While Amazon Associate might be easy to join and give you access to many products that could capture the attention of your audience, it might not be the highest value.
If you have yet to choose a niche for your authority site, then you may want to consider choosing one with lots of high ticket affiliate marketing income opportunities. These can include categories like:
- Business and marketing
- Web hosting
- Self-improvement
- Personal finance
For more examples of the highest-paying affiliate program opportunities to explore, here are a few ideas to get you started on the right path.
Double Down on SEO for More Traffic
You only earn money from an affiliate link if people actually see it, click on it, and make a purchase or sign up for an offer. That means that your affiliate commission depends directly on how many eyes you get to your site or social media account.
To this end, search engine optimization (SEO) is likely to be your new best friend.
Digital marketing can get a bit expensive when you're paying for clicks to your site, especially in certain niches that have high search volume.
You can use Google Analytics to see where you're traffic is coming from. If not much of it is coming directly from the SERPs, then it might be time to up your strategy.
SEO involves using keywords that your audience is searching for in order to boost your organic rankings.
It's not something that you can master and see improvements in overnight, but it's a great long-term strategy to get people onto your site and to make an affiliate sale.
There's a lot of information out there to help you improve your SEO rankings, and Niche Pursuits has covered many of these topics. Here are some articles to get you thinking about how you can improve your SEO and your digital marketing:
- 10 Best SEO Audit Tools to Help Take Your Website to the Next Level
- 7 Best Search Engine Positioning Tools to Help You Rank Higher
- White Label SEO (How It Can Help Your Business and 5 Best Services You Can Use)
- Niche Keyword Research (How to Find Low Competition Keywords and Win in the SERPs)
Provide Excellent Content and Experiment
The best way to ensure you build a solid affiliate network is to keep people coming back to your site or social media page often.
In other words, you need to do one thing: create excellent content.
The more content you create that matches the interests of your niche audience, the more likely they are to return, click on your affiliate links, and eventually trust you enough to make a recommended purchase.
While you're busy becoming an excellent content creator, it's also a good idea to experiment with formats.
You might want to make videos, post blogs, create reels for Instagram, go live on Facebook, or post high-quality images of a product you want your audience to buy.
If you can meet your market where they're at with your affiliate marketing program, then you have a greater likelihood of making the sale, improving your income, and building your brand.
A Final Word: Affiliate Marketing Income
Are you ready to start skyrocketing your affiliate revenue? There are tons of meaningful ways you can share products and services that you love with your audience – and you can earn a generous salary for doing it!
Keep these tips in mind when building your affiliate marketing business, and you can make the switch from a side hustle to full-time income.
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