I have written posts on budgeting, savings, and paying down debt but I have still to write about income or how to find additional income. Until today!
Once you have your budget together and are able to stick to it month-to-month, your next step should be to look for additional income. Additional income streams give you more flexibility with how you spend your time and of course add more cash in your pockets! This will allow you to get out of debt and reach your savings goals sooner.
There are different ways to add streams of income like investments that will give you interest and dividends as spending cash or to be reinvested further. Another way is to invest in real estate and receive rental income. In today's world there are multiple ways to make money, passively and actively!
I will post more about adding income streams in the future, but today I'm going to focus on affiliate marketing.
First, let's go over what affiliate marketing is and how it can be a source of additional income for you.
Neil Patel describes affiliate marketing as getting paid for promoting other people's company or products.
Pat Flynn describes affiliate marketing as the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.
The owner of the product will typically set up a revenue sharing agreement, for example for every referred customer you will receive a fixed amount or a percentage of the sale will be your share of the revenue. Think about it as commission for referring customers to businesses you already love.
There are different routes to go with promoting your affiliate products, my preferred way is to be transparent when I'm promoting products. If I make money from the referral links on my blog or anywhere on my website, I will be transparent about it. I also promise to never refer a product I haven't actually tried myself.
Peter Keszegh created a wonderful list of ways to spot scam affiliate programs:
Look for testimonials, other than the testimonials on their website. No one promotes their bad reviews of their products or services and all negative reviews should be taken for what they are. However if you see more bad reviews, than good, this could be a red flag!
Contact information - phone number, email, physical address. Any business that cares about their customers AND their affiliates will want you to get in touch with them if you are experiencing issues or are unhappy.
Watch out for unrealistic promises, anything that sounds too good to be true, chances are it is. There's a difference between creating passive income by helping someone promote their business and my saying you will gain financial freedom for the rest of your life (you guys already know how I feel about the term "financial freedom")!
Next week, I will show you an example of an affiliate program that I'm a member of and my preferred method of sharing affiliate links.
If you need more guidance, I'm happy to hop on a quick call with you. Here's a link to my calendar!