Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Vlogging can be a career that brings you millions of followers and a steady revenue. See how you can start your vlog in 7 easy steps.

Want to grow your business through Instagram? Read this post to learn how to run an Instagram giveaway and what tools you’ll need to make your contests effective.

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If you’ve ever came across Tim Ferris’s iconic book on how to just work four hours per week, you’ve probably dreamed of sipping a Mojito on a beach while your money worked for you in the background. One of the main ideas he constantly talks about is the concept of passive income.
After all, having an income chart like this is the main goal of many online entrepreneurs:

For many entrepreneurs looking to build an online business or marketers looking to monetize their web traffic, affiliate marketing is often how they got started with generating income.
Affiliate marketing is one of the world’s most popular methods of generating passive income online, and it continues to grow. In fact, affiliate marketing spend is reported to increase to $8.2 billion by 2022 — up from $5.4 billion in 2017.
If you’re looking for a complete guide to affiliate marketing, read more to find out how you can promote products as an affiliate to create an additional source of income.

There are typically four parties involved in affiliate marketing:

Affiliates: The promoters of the product

Product creators: The creators of the product

Networks: The networks managing the affiliates

Consumers: The end users of the product

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You don’t always need a network to become an affiliate, but the other three parties (the affiliates, the product creators, and the consumers) form the core of an affiliate program.
Who are the affiliates?
An affiliate, also known as a publisher, can be an individual or a company. Typically, these are other bloggers or content creators operating in the industry of the product they are creating.
They help promote the product or service by creating content like blog posts, videos, or other media.
They can also promote their content to get transactions by putting up ads, capturing search traffic from SEO, or building an email list.
When one of their visitors creates a transaction, which could be a purchase or submitting a lead form, the affiliate gets a commission. How much commission is structured depends on the affiliate program terms.
Who are the merchants?
A merchant, also known as the product creator or advertiser, is typically the creator of the product or services. They offer revenue sharing and commissions to people or other companies (affiliates), which have a significant following on their brand.
The merchant can be a company like HubSpot, which offers a commission to every affiliate who’s able to get their visitors to make a purchase.
Or it can be an individual like Pat Flynn, who offers an affiliate program with his podcasts.
The merchants can be anyone from a solopreneur to a big company, as long as they are willing to pay their affiliates to help them gain a transaction.
Sometimes the merchant does not even have to be the product creator, as in the case of the Amazon Associates Program.
Who are the affiliate networks?
An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between the merchants and their affiliates. In some cases, a network is not necessary, but some companies choose to work with a network to add a layer of trust.
The network manages the relationship and provides third-party checks and balances. Third-party checks can be important because they bring down fraud rates.
Some popular networks include ClickBank and ShareASale.
Some merchants choose to work with an affiliate network because they lack the time or resources to track, report, and manage payments to the affiliates. They might also choose to work with multiple affiliates or publishers within the affiliate network.
Who are the consumers?
The consumers or customers are the ones who makes the transaction. They are the ones who purchase the product or submit the lead form in order for the affiliate to gain the commission.

Let’s say you owned a popular knitting blog that saw 100,000 hits per month, and a knitting supply company contacted you about promoting their needles and yarn on your website. As an affiliate, you’d place links to their products throughout your blog content. In this case, you’d receive affiliate income if a visitor landed on your blog and took an action — either a click, form submission, or purchase.
We’ll talk more about getting paid in the next section. In the meantime, here are some common affiliate marketing models:
Pay-Per-Click (PPC): The affiliate gets paid for all clicks that were generated, regardless of whether a lead or sale happened. This is fairly rare since all the risk is on the product creator.
Pay-Per-Lead (PPL): The affiliate gets paid for every lead they generated. This could be an online form submission, trial creation, or any pre-purchase. This is a shared risk on both the merchant and the affiliate.
Pay-Per-Sale (PPS): The affiliate gets paid for every sale they generated. This is the most common model since all the risk is on the affiliate.
Now, let’s talk about how to get started with affiliate marketing.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, most people think it’s a process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s or company’s products.
While affiliate marketing can seem straightforward — just find a product you love, promote it, and earn a piece of profit with every sale you make — there are actually a few moving parts you need to a monitor.
1. Choose a platform and niche.
To be an affiliate, you need to have influence. Establishing a website or blog that specializes in a niche is the best way to establish influence. Whether you focus on finance, personal health, business, or even cats, a niched blog or website will help you gain influence and build an audience.
Affiliate marketers build audiences through blogs (on WordPress or HubSpot),via newsletters, or even on YouTube or other social media channels.
2. Build an audience.
A large, engaged audience is a highly valuable asset for any blog or website. Having people who read, view, and engage with your content can help you make affiliate income.
The best way to build an audience is to first establish who your target audience is, and you can find your target audience by researching competitors, monitoring your traffic, and conducting first-hand research by talking to subscribers and customers.
Once you establish this group, grow and cultivate your loyal online audience through targeted content and emails. Give your audience a reason to read and engage with your content, and they’ll find a reason to purchase your recommended products, too.
3. Sign up for an affiliate program.
The best way to get started with affiliate marketing is by signing up for an affiliate program like the Amazon Associates or HubSpot Affiliate Program. After signing up, you will get an affiliate link that contains a unique ID. You can then use this link in your content.
There are typically no upfront costs when it comes to joining an affiliate program, but your variable ongoing costs will depend on how you want to promote the products. If you choose to outsource content or run ads, those are costs that will come out of your pocket.
4. Choose which products to promote.
Choosing the right product to promote, working with the right company, fostering relationships, and updating content are all core essentials of excelling at affiliate marketing.
According to Pat Flynn, one of the pioneers of creating passive income through providing value to his audience, there are two important rules when it comes to affiliate marketing:

Only recommend products as an affiliate that you’re extremely very familiar with. If you are not confident in the product and do not feel it will help people, do not promote it.
Never tell anyone to directly buy a product. Always recommend products based on your experience and in the context of what you’ve done.

When it comes to choosing the right products, David Gonzalez — founder of an affiliate management agency, suggests that you should think about these three components when choosing a product to promote:

Your audience: Will the product resonate with them and make them grateful you promoted it?

Product quality & value: Would you advocate your best friend buying it?

Profitability: Does the offer have highly competitive conversions & payouts?

After reading these recommendations, do any products come to mind?
5. Create remarkable content that promotes your affiliate products.
To see the best success with affiliate marketing, you need to create genuine and remarkable content that promotes your chosen products. Write a roundup blog post of your favorite products. Create comparison charts that discuss the merits of similar products. Interview other users and fans of the products to showcase different opinions.
Regardless of what kind of content you create, ensure it features authentic reviews and mentions of your affiliate products. Avoid discussing and promoting products you haven’t used yourself.
6. Optimize and track.
Whenever your visitor clicks on your unique affiliate link, a cookie is inserted in their browser to track actions.
When they make a transaction that is a qualified action (could be a sale or lead form submission, depending on the terms of the program), the merchant is able to record this action and attribute it to you as an affiliate so they can make a payout.
You should track your own affiliate content, too, to see what has performed well and what you can improve and promote. Understanding what content resonates best with your audience will show you what to focus on for future affiliate marketing opportunities.

7. Get paid.
There are different structures when it comes to payout, which varies based on affiliate program terms.
Commission payouts by the company are usually given on a monthly basis, but this varies depending on the affiliate program terms.
It could be a weekly payout or a monthly payment for all the leads or sales you’ve made.
You’ll want to pay attention to the payout structure when choosing an affiliate program to join, which ultimately depends on the goals you have.
You might want to understand the commission structure of the company or product creator. Are you looking for a commission per sale or commission per lead generated? Are you looking at a recurring commission or a one-off payment?
Depending on your goals, this will affect which product you choose, how you plan to promote the product as well as how much time & resources you want to invest.
For instance, if you choose to promote your content via paid ads, then that’s a cost you have to account for. You will have to compare how much you’ve spent to promote each piece of content or to generate each purchase against how much commission you’re getting for each referred sale.
Or, if you have a blog and website, then you will have to pay for hosting. In this case, this should be a flat fee spread out across all your referred sale.
Use this marketing plan generator to calculate how much you need to invest to get a basic marketing plan up and running.

How much can you make from affiliate programs?
You might be wondering, what are established affiliates earnings? (established affiliates are those working full-time.) Well, that varies. I’ve seen super affiliates earn upwards of $100,000 per month.
Making money from an affiliate program is more about the profits than the revenue you’re getting.
An affiliate making $5000/day might be worse off than another affiliate making $500/day with no cash outflow because the former might be spending most of his revenue on paid acquisition.
At the end of the day, before becoming an affiliate, you have to align your expectations to your earning potential. What kind of industry or niche you operate in, and what kind of work you do depends a lot on how much you want to make.
If you focus on ads like Adwords or Facebook to promote your affiliate products, how much money you invest is as important (if not more) as how much you make.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Too often do I hear this misconception: affiliate marketing is dead.
In today’s landscape of online marketing, people often mention that some variant of X is dead — SEO, email, mobile, etc.
The test of time is a pretty good test; if something has stayed around for a while, there’s a better chance of it sticking around for a while.
Everything evolves, and there are tactics that don’t work the exact same way as they did before. Affiliate marketing, of course, is no exception to that rule.
Affiliate marketing has evolved from a get-rich-quick scheme into something that requires you to build real trust with you audience to reap the rewards of the work that you put in.
At the end of the day, becoming a successful affiliate marketer as a beginner requires you to nail down the fundamentals of marketing. Authenticity is hard to fake, especially when it comes to building your own personal brand.
A brand that promotes products incessantly without any regard for bring real value to its audience will find affiliate marketing to be a short-lived source of income. Choosing the right products to promote, stemming from a true passion for what the product does, forms the basis of all your promotional activities.
While there are many tactics to scale your promotion, the golden rule of affiliate marketing stays the same: only promote products you love and treat your audience like humans.
Build your own brand, choose products that you love, create authentic content and you will be on your way to building a real source of passive income.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Forums provide the opportunity to build an online community that allows your audience to connect in a place where they know their interests are shared. This sense of connectedness is more important than ever in a time where more work, communication, and socialization is being done online. 
Online communities are particularly beneficial for businesses because they allow customers to interact with each other in a smaller circle than they could via social media, which increases engagement and brand affinity.
For instance, let’s say one of your customers has a very unique problem with your product or service, and posts about it on your forum. That post is much easier to find than it would be on social media, where millions of users are talking about a million different things.
Even better, maybe another forum user has faced that same problem and can answer their question before your service reps even see it.
There is an incredible amount of value in reaching and building your community using a forum. Here, we’re going to explore the best forum software to get you started.

1. WordPress (With Plugin)
Price: Free (plus the cost of hosting)
Using a multi-purpose platform like a CMS to power your online community allows you access to many different software options in the form of plugins and applications. For instance, you might use the bbPress plugin to create multisite forums, and maintain them from one dashboard within your WordPress site. This is a great option if you want to set up a regular website and forum together.
There are many options to choose from using WordPress, all of which will provide you with the basic forum features you need, plus plenty of useful extras.
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2. Joomla!

Price: Starts at $99 per year (plus development and hosting costs)
Joomla! Is a CMS software like WordPress, but requires more attention to detail and management. This is a robust CMS that will power your forum plugins like Kunena or EasyDiscuss, which are specifically created for Joomla!’s system. The price point comes from the open-source content management system, which will allow you to build powerful online applications alongside your forum software.
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3. Discourse

Price: Starts at $100 per month (plus cost of hosting)
Discourse is open-source forum software that you can in tandem with your existing website and CMS platform. Not only can community members use it on their mobile devices,  but they’ll also get dynamic notifications, badges, emoji, and more. Best of all, there’s a built-in moderation system to help you protect your community from spam and abuse.

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4. Vanilla Forums

Price: Variable based on your needs
Vanilla has an abundance of features — one of the most notable being the intuitive dashboard that lets you manage every aspect of your community forum. You can view stats, manage users, and use an advanced editor that recognizes HTML, BBCode, and Markdown using this software.
Additionally, Vanilla gives you the ability to adjust permissions of forums or members if you’re looking to control access. The software enables customers to submit, view and vote on ideas to drive innovation for your business, or use the Q&A option to connect with and help each other get more out of your products or services. Best of all, Vanilla offers an on-boarding process with useful checklists, training materials, and help from one of their support reps.
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5. Codoforum

Price: Free
Codoforum is forum software that has a fresh UI with modern design. It’s simple, clean, and easy to use. Codoforum is built with PHP using the latest coding patterns and is fully compliant with new PSR standards. This software provides a responsive layout structure for mobile and desktop, SSO and integration, as well as mention notifications for users.
Since it’s free to use, Codoforum is a good option if you’re still testing out forums or aren’t sure whether they’ll be useful for your own website and community.
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6. phpBB

Price: Free
PhpBB is a forum platform that has a typical and intuitive board set-up where users can post public or private messages. With phpBB, you can create as many internal messaging boards as you want without any additional costs.
Additionally, you can use extensions to add new options to your forum community. This makes the software very customizable, and allows you to adapt the software to the growing needs of your audience.
Among other things, phpBB lets you create password-protected forums for added security, sub-forums, the option to display active topics at the top of your forum, and the ability to add forum rules at the top of a forum to ensure your community abides by set guidelines.
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7. VBulletin

Price: vBulletin 5 Connect $249, $15/month
Over 100,000 websites are built on vBulletin — including NASA, EA, and Sony Pictures — so it’s a popular option for hosting your forum. The software includes tons of great features, including built-in SEO, security, and responsive web design. With VBulletin you can have an unlimited hierarchy of forums as well as private forums.
Best of all, VBulletin provides fun and unique features for your community members, including private messaging, a friends list, member birthdays (shown on the Forum homepage), and the ability to see who’s online.
VBulletin is not known for being the fastest forum, but its design is clean and it offers quality support for its users.

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8. Invision Community

Price: Varies for forum size/data needs, but starts at $45/month for 65 online visitors
IP Board was a very popular forum software that has since expanded to Invision Community, which includes a forum application in addition to its other offerings. According to the Invision Community website, the forums module powers thousands of message boards around the web, and Invision Community has many other community management apps to help you interact with your audience.
The software allows your users to take control over their own online communities, which you can monitor at your discretion. For instance, Invision Community lets users create and manage their own communities, called “Clubs”, which are fully integrated with your website — these clubs get designated Club Leaders, who can add new forums, calendars, or galleries to the community.

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9. Flarum

Price: Free
Flaurm has a streamlined design that is extremely easy to navigate. Forums using this software are fully responsive, and features include smooth animations and available swipe features for mobile optimization. Flarum was built by the developers of esoTalk and FluxBB, two of the fastest forum platforms, and has great performance reviews.
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10. MyBB

Price: Free
MyBB is a free and open-source forum software that powers thousands of communities. It features hundreds of plugins and themes for you to customize, and the users that exist on the forum will help you establish your own community. Users have also contributed to the translations available for the content on the software. Now, forums are available in over 30 languages to help you grow a more global community.
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11. inSided

Price: Variable based on your needs
inSided is a full-featured Community Platform aimed at Customer Success and Community professionals looking to increase engagement, advocacy, and effectively gather product feedback. 
They have a killer combination of a customer community platform, a knowledge base, and in-app support. What sets them apart from other platforms are integrations with software like Zendesk, Salesforce, Mixpanel, and Gainsight so that you can connect your community to your entire tech-stack and create a 360 degree view of your customer.
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Ways to Build Your Community Using Forum Software
People notice when brands listen to and converse with their customers, and they especially notice when brands foster their own communities. How? Through the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Customers who view themselves as valued members of your community are much more likely to talk about your brand to their friends.
Here’s how you can build a strong community using your forum software.
1. Spread the word.
Nobody will join your online community if they don’t know it exists. Spread the word about your new forum by including CTAs to join your forum in email newsletters or social posts. Ask your brand ambassadors or loyal fans to start posting about the forum, and post content on the forum so when other users join, you already have an established presence on the channel.
2. Listen to and check on your community regularly.
Reviewing your forum and responding to what your audience has to say is a crucial part of community building. Your customers are far less likely to continue to interact and engage on your forum if they feel as though they are being ignored. Responding to their feedback shows your users that you value their opinions and care about their experiences with your product.
Additionally, it’s your job to make sure everything is running smoothly on your forum. Checking on your community regularly will help you dissolve any service escalations, and give people the support they are seeking.
3. Foster a helpful discourse.
A forum should be a safe place for your customers, prospects, employees, fans, and audience to interact, ask, and answer questions. By establishing a helpful ethos early on, or creating community guidelines that prioritize patience and kindness within responses, your community will grow without the need to constantly monitor it 24/7.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Trying to decide between GetResponse and Campaign Monitor for your email marketing software? This article compares features and pricing so you can make the right choice.

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