It's hard to believe, but affiliate marketing now represents a multi billion dollar industry, and that's in the United States alone! Forrester research expects the market to reach almost $4.5 billion by 2016, and that's less than a year away.
$4,500,000,000 market share is staggering, to say the least. And, while much of that is from 4% sales and $20-at-at-time leads, the real money lies in high ticket sales.
Indeed, the Forrester study indicates that much of the industry growth stems from income generated from sales to customers who spend more than your average shopper who purchases things online.
High Ticket Affiliate Programs 2015
Niches & High-Ticket Sales are Where It's At…
Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time now. It's seen major sea changes in the way it's run, delivered, and handled by both publishers and advertisers.
For starters, it's all about niches now. Find your small corner of the blogging world, set up an informative useful site that delivers value to your readers, and establish yourself as an authority on something you know a lot about.
Then and only then will you have a shot at producing any real income from an affiliate program. While researching your niche, keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to have some high-ticket sales.
In other words, if you're serious about earning an income, you don't want to be messing around with $1 sales that return a 4% profit…you want products which sell big, cost a lot, and sell often!
What Was That About Not Needing a Website?
Want to skip the whole website thing? Consider learning about Pay Per Click advertising (PPC). Here, you can still work with the same affiliate programs but instead of promoting them on your own website, you simply buy ads for them and get people to click and buy.
You're familiar with Google AdWords? That's PPC, but don't think you can direct link to a site that's not yours with AdWords. Instead, try Yahoo Search Marketing or Bing Ads, both of which allow affiliate links that go directly to the merchant's website rather than your own. This is called Direct Linking.
How to Bring in the Bucks With Affiliate Program$ (without a website)
Pros & Cons of Affiliate Marketing by PPC
Pros:
- no time spent building a website
- no cost for building a website
- if you do have a website, there's no need to clutter it up with affiliate links- use PPC instead
- direct linking takes the customer directly to the product site, eliminating the step of hitting your site first…this often means more conversions
Cons:
- PPC is not easy to learn.
- You will lose money at first while you're still figuring out how it works
- PPC companies limit the number of ads that go to the same URL, so if the market is saturated, you're SOL.
- Lots of keyword research involved.
- Some affiliate programs don't even allow direct linking to their sites!
Affiliate Marketing: Your Next Sales Job
Whether you go the PPC route or not, consider affiliate marketing your next sales job…it sure beats going to an actual job in retail!
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