Online money-making continues to become prominent. Most people across the world seek to explore opportunities through which they can earn a living or a side hustle online. Thanks to creativity and innovation, opportunities to make money via the internet and from home have increased.
In countries such as the USA, there are 4.8 million online businesses. This means that the number of people working from home, self-employed, and making a significant living has grown in the country. Kenya is similarly taking a similar projection. Based on a report named the “National study on Digital and Digitally Enabled Work in Kenya”, there are more than 1.2 millions adult Kenyans that are digital workers. The study further projects that, the trend is likely to grow at a rate more than 5% in the next 5-10 years.
There are so many opportunities that are emerging from the online spaces. While most people have focused on article writing and transcription as the main online jobs, there is also the rising the digital marketing gigs that are equally lucrative. In this article, we explore how affiliate marketing can be one of the ways you earn online.
What is affiliate marketing?
You probably have heard about affiliate marketing but do not understand it. Affiliate marketing is simply promoting products or services on social media or a blog for a company.
The way that affiliate marketing works is that, a company will use you (and in this case, You are referred to as the third party) to market and actively convince consumers to buy their products/services. You as the third party are going to market the said products/services via a blog/ website and or social media. Your work will be to engage and have a conversation with consumers on why they should buy products or services from a company you work with.
You may do this by highlighting the benefits of the products/services over those of the competitors, the strengths or the competitive advantages, or just use other creative marketing strategies. Remember, as an affiliate marketer you are not an employee of the company, but you are more of a partner. The company gives you a link or code through which consumers follow to make purchases. Based on the number of referrals from the link, you get a commission. To be a successful affiliate marketer, you must learn skills to generate traffic on your social media pages or blogs. This is where you must know a few creative marketing skills that will attract many consumers.
Is affiliate marketing in Kenya?
Affiliate Marketing in Kenya is one of the ways in which you can earn online and can make an average of Ksh 60,000 Per Month.
Affiliate marketing is very much present in Kenya. It has been present for a while a now. There are some people who are already making a living using this form of marketing. However, it is mainly done by the social media influencers. For example, you must have noted an influencer promoting products on their social media pages and asking you to follow a certain link to make the purchase. That is an indication that affiliate marketing is present in Kenya.
Affiliate marketing in Kenya is still at the infancy stage as most companies are seeking to work with the social media influencers that already have high number of followers as it is easy to drive sales. One of the easiest ways to become an affiliate marketer in Kenya is through getting an big following on social media. Without the high numbers of followers on social media, companies may have a difficult time trusting you as their affiliate marketer.
From this observation, it is evident that affiliate marketing needs one to have excellent social media marketing strategies or blogging abilities to drive traffic. Develop content that is engaging and that will make consumers to stay on your page, website or blog. The aim is to ensure that as an affiliate marketer you are can draw as many people as possible can drive up sales and consequently your commission. However, ensure not to lie to the consumers. If consumers find out about the lies sold by the affiliate marketers they can quickly bring down the sales as the online word of mouth spreads really fast.
To maintain loyalty and even increase referrals, sell quality and remain honest with your consumers. One thing about online marketing is that it is highly generative. This means that if you do effective honest marketing, you get to attract a huge crowd, the crowd is likely to produce its own referrals. The same way, it is likely to lead to loss of consumers if you lie or mislead the consumers. To emerge success in this section do not be a hurry to make millions with a snap of fingers but take your time to develop.
How do I become an affiliate marketer(How to do affiliate marketing?
Now that we understand what affiliate marketing is, the following part is a guide on how one becomes an affiliate marketer. One thing that you must note is that for you to become successful in affiliate marketer, you must have authority in your area of marketing for the consumers to trust you.
The following are few steps that you should follow to become a successful affiliate marketer.
- Choose a Niche
The first step in affiliate marketing is finding a niche. You need to identify an area that you would want to venture and make sales. It is wise to avoid taking too many areas as this may make it hard to market. It may also be exhausting. Concentration is key.
How then do you find your area of focus? One of the best ways to get a niche is identify an area that you are passionate about. It could be in sports, nutrition, consumer moving goods fashion, etc. The good thing about choosing an area you are interested in is that, you can easily attain consistency since you enjoy the chosen area. One of the biggest challenge that many affiliate markets face is lack of consistency. Selecting an area you already love helps in the consistency issue.
Even though it is more easy to market products or service that you are passionate about, there are other factors that one must consider as well. For example, frequency of the search of the chosen niche. How often do people search? What is the demand of your niche? You may be passionate about certain niche but the area is not so popular among the consumer which may make it hard to make a sales. There is a need to conduct a research on the niche that is likely to bring in more sales. Try to combine a niche you like and the popularity among the consumers.
Below are some of the points that you must consider when selecting a niche
- Frequency of search
- Demand of the niche
- Competition in the niche
2. Identify your platform
After you have chosen the area that you need to focus on the next step needs you to choose the platform that you will use to market. Most people who do affiliate marketing do it on social media or on blogs. The social media is especially good because it is easy to attract a big crowd or followers. While using the social media it is essential to learn how to engage with your followers and make them buy using your link or code. Here, one must be highly creative to ensure that they are able to get the concentration and the trust of the consumers.
If you choose to do it on blogs, then you would have create a very interactive blog. The aim here is to ensure that you create content that will make the consumers come to your blog often. Again creativity is key to the success of a blog and website just as it is with the social media.
3. Join affiliate programs
Once you have identified the niche and have identified the platform to use the next step is to join affiliate marketing programs that are available online. Such affiliate online program that you can join must have the advantage of impressive numbers of clients. This allows you to learn how to contact a high number of consumers as fast as possible.
In addition, ensure the program that you choose to join has a wide variety of the products that you intend to market. Before I lose you at this point, affiliate program are sites that act as broker between the product/ service and the affiliates. For example, Jumia is a broker between you, the affiliate marketer, and the company that makes the products or services that you have chosen to sell. You realise that Jumia does not make the products but they have platform that sells the products.
Now your work is to bring in buyers to make sales from Jumia. The role of the programs is to bring together the affiliates and the company making the products or the services. Now how do you select the best of the affiliate programs. Consider a few factors as seen below:
- The commission: You are here to make money so go for platforms that have the best commission.
- The brands they represent: If the program has brands that have negative perception among the consumers then you may attract negativity to yourself and the opposite is also true.
- Support offered by the program: Some program give tips to affiliate markets on how to make more sales while others just let their marketers swim in the unknown. Choose ease.
- The kind of products and services that they sell.
Here is a list of some of the best affiliate programs in Kenya and the services they offer as well as the commissions offered:
Affiliate program | Products/service | Commission |
Jumia | FMCG, Clothes and electronics | 11% sales |
iPay Africa | Payment services | 10% of charged fee |
Kilimall | FMCG | 8% sales |
DomainRacer Web hosting Affiliate | Webhosting services | 70% referrals |
Accuweb Hosting | Webhosting | $2-$250 per sign up |
Hubspot from | Webhosting | $250 per conversion |
SEMrush | SEO services | $200 per successful referral |
Fiverr | Virtual services | $150 per referral |
Coursera | Online learning | $45% on over 400 courses |
Teachable | Online learning | $30 for successful referral |
Udemy | Online learning | $15% sale |
Shopify | e-commerce services | $58 per new user referral |
Bluehost | Web hosting | $ 65 per successful referral |
Green Geeks | Webhosting | $ 100 per successful referral |
4. Marketing
The next step that you now need to take is to embark on marketing strategies. Find creative ways to convenience and trigger interest of your audience. To attain this you must understand your audience. This way you know the things that make your audience stay connected to you. Slowly by slowly you are going to build your audience. Remember to remain as highly creative as possible as this ensures that your people stay with you.
How much am I likely to make from affiliate marketing in Kenya?
Just like any other business, it is never assured that affiliate marketing will bring instant riches at the snap of fingers. Every business takes time to grow and similarly, affiliate marketing might take time to get you some money at the first few months as you settle in and as you seek to attract an audience. However, based on the research that I have conducted, affiliate marketing can earn you a minimum of Ksh 60,000. The maximum is not limited as it is determined by the number of sales that you make. The higher the number of sales the higher the amount of money that you make.
Take away points
- Affiliate can be done on social media. You do not need to have a website
- Creativity is very essential in affiliate marketing
- You can make as much as you aim if you master the skill of attracting a big audience
- Practice makes perfect, with time you will be one fine affiliate marketing only if you start now
Disclaimer: The figures provided in this article are a guidance based on our personal research and experience.