Affiliate marketing is huge and is one of the primary ways to make money online. But how exactly do South African affiliate marketers make money? We try to dive deep into the answer below. Affiliate marketing is big business but a lot of South Africans are not getting it right and are not seeing much success from it.
Affiliate marketers in South Africa make money by promoting products or services that are sold by other brands. In return they get a commission if someone buys as a result of their marketing efforts. This commission is usually anywhere between 5% and 20%.
State of affiliate marketing in South Africa
South Africa is a bit behind when it comes to the adoption of affiliate marketing. A lot of South African companies don’t offer affiliate marketing programs and the ones that do don’t offer a high percentage commission. However, you can still be an affiliate of overseas companies, nothing limits you to be an affiliate of South African companies.
How does it work?
The idea behind affiliate marketing is that you recommend products or services and if people buy from your marketing efforts; you get paid. You have to choose an affiliate program of your choice, you may have a huge Instagram following, instead of just being an influencer, you can be an affiliate marketer.
This means that you would likely promote skin care, beauty products or fashion to your audience. Your audience uses a link that contains a tracking code and if they buy, you get a percentage.
How to find success in affiliate marketing
To find success as an affiliate marketer in South Africa or anywhere in the world you would first need an audience. You need a huge audience that you can influence, it won’t help to join an affiliate program only to advertise brand products to your WhatsApp friends.
You build an audience by building a following, either on social media, YouTube or through a website. A blog and a YouTube channel are the best ways to make money through affiliate marketing. The only social platform that works a little is Instagram but you are better off being an influencer than an affiliate marketer on Instagram. Don’t even think about Facebook or Twitter, you can use Pinterest.
A YouTube channel that gets over 50 000 views per month can earn a lot from affiliate marketing. Out of 50 000 people watching your videos there are some that will definitely buy the products you recommend; we can set this at 1%. Which means at least 500 people would buy the products you promote, you can make a lot of money, especially if you make at least R100 per product bought.
The percentage will increase if you are running a YouTube channel that is very focused on a particular niche, if you run a YouTube channel that reviews certain stuff and you recommend certain products then people are going to trust your opinion. A blog makes money through affiliate marketing the same way. But it is much more subtle with a blog, because you rarely notice that you are part of the affiliate marketing chain.
How does it compare to ads?
The money from Affiliate marketing is known to rival that of ads, sometimes affiliate marketing money is a lot more than ad revenue, especially if the marketer gets a lot from one product sold. Some marketers get R1 000 per product sold, which means you only need 50 people to make more than R50 000 in a month.
You need a huge audience to make a significant amount of money from ad revenue. See also: can you really make money with blogging in South Africa?
Conclusion
This is how affiliate marketers make money in South Africa. Do you have any thoughts or questions? Comment below
