Update: BeLive’s Live Sales feature just made selling your products while you’re live even easier! Now, every time you show your product onscreen, you can automatically send a link to the item in the comments section. You don’t have to send the link manually or use bots to share it with your viewers anymore!
This new feature makes live selling so much easier for you to do and helps you focus more on your broadcast. It also offers a more enjoyable shopping experience for your viewers!
When the lockdowns started in our country, many of my friends and family members lost their jobs. As a Marketing Manager at BeLive, I’m working remotely and having more work than ever. People were turning to live streaming to bring their businesses online and continue to engage with their customers.
I realized how important it is to have multiple sources of income, especially passive income.
One of the best ways I know to earn passive income is through affiliate marketing. If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing for beginners, let me share my experience with you.
What Is Affiliate Marketing and How Do You Earn Money?
Affiliate marketing is selling other people’s products and getting a small percentage as a commission every time people buy from your link.
It is considered a passive income because you only need to invest time in the beginning to create a piece of content, such as a blog post or a YouTube video. As long as people keep buying from your links in this piece of content, you will continue to earn a commission even if you’re no longer updating it or actively putting hours working on that content.
The best example is our very own affiliate program, Partners Program. BeLive users who are our partners have a unique link. Whenever they share this link–let’s say on their latest Facebook Live or YouTube video–people can sign up and eventually become paying subscribers.
Our partner earns a 20% commission every time a customer pays for a monthly or yearly subscription. Some of our top partners earn around $300 each month just by recommending BeLive, a tool that they already use and love!
From Idea to Results in Less Than Two Weeks
When I started my blog a few years ago, I had been playing around with the idea of earning passive income from affiliate marketing. But I never really took any action.
One day though, I bought a really cheap smartwatch–around $10. I went live for a few minutes and talked about how awesome it is for such a cheap price.
After going live, I immediately had four people asking me where to buy it. I sent them the link and two people ended up buying it.
And I said, wait a minute, I could have gotten commission from those sales!
As a marketer, I knew there was something there and I had to experiment. I immediately thought of Patt Flynn’s affiliate marketing for beginners’ guide, so I can get started right away.
The Start of the Live Sales Experiment
My question: What if I use live video to recommend products and earn a commission from affiliate sales?
I knew that it was already the perfect time to do this:
- I have the tools and the experience to use live video.
- People are stuck at home and e-commerce sales are at an all-time high.
- I can make it easy for people who are new to online shopping to make sure they buy the best products from trusted sellers.
I planned the next steps:
- Signed up for an affiliate account.
- Identified products that I know are needed.
- I went live using BeLive’s Live Sales feature to showcase the products.
Results of the Experiment
My Expectation:
When I started this experiment, my only goal was to set up a process for creating content around affiliate marketing. I did not expect a lot of clicks on my link, sales, and actual commission. I set a goal of six months to start getting commissions.
Reality:
In my first two weeks, I ended up with more than $500+ in sales and a $10 commission by doing three live videos. I spent less than two hours in achieving these results.
Ten dollars might not seem like a big deal, especially if you live in the United States, but let’s put it in the context for someone living in the Philippines.
- The minimum wage in the Philippines is $10 per day.
- If you are a starting virtual assistant, you will be earning around $2 to $3 per hour.
More importantly, affiliate marketing is passive income, so even when I’m not actively posting my links today and someone else finds my video on YouTube and decides to buy, I will keep earning a commission on that.
How to Be an Affiliate
Apply for an Affiliate Account
The most popular affiliate program for online products is Amazon Affiliate. Anyone can apply for this program. Once you sign up, you will have an affiliate account and can start promoting the products with your affiliate links right away.
If you’re an influencer, you may want to apply for the Amazon Influencer Program as well. The catch is that you must make a sale within 180 days. If you don’t make a sale within this period, they will remove you from the program.
I have applied for the program, and I have my links. But since my main audience is in the Philippines, I had to apply to the most popular eCommerce sites in the Philippines: Shopee and Lazada.
A few things to keep in mind when applying for any affiliate program in general:
- You’re already ordering online from the e-commerce platform where you are applying the program form.
- One of the most important things, when you want to succeed in affiliate marketing, is people need to trust your recommendations. The best way for people to trust you is if you’re recommending products based on your experience.
Check the Requirements of the Affiliate Program You’re Applying for
Each program will have different requirements. You need to increase your chances of getting approved by setting the requirements in place. The main thing that you have to prove is that you have the ability and the platform to promote the products.
1. Blog
It is ideal to have a blog because this means that you have a digital asset that you can promote the products. It’s okay if it doesn’t have a lot of traffic. Just make sure that your blog is updated with content for the past 60 days.
ItsIreneChan.com was a blog I started three years ago to host my new blog posts about my life as a digital nomad. I don’t update it regularly though, and it gets less than 500 views per month.
I have to note that before this blog, I had a successful tech blog with around 50,000 unique views per month. But it’s not active anymore.
Anyway, the reason why I’m mentioning this is to prove that you don’t need huge traffic to become an affiliate.
Also, everything can be learned!
I learned how to build my own site and how to research SEO keywords. You don’t need to be a YouTube star or a popular blogger to start this. You just need the time and dedication to build something that supports your financial goals.
2. Social Media Accounts
Make sure that all of your social media accounts are up to date.
I’ve had my Instagram and Twitter accounts for a long time now. I don’t update them regularly as well.
Breakdown of my followers:
- Twitter: 574
- Instagram: 598
- Facebook Page: 195
- Facebook Personal Profile: 992
- LinkedIn: 1180
So, that’s not a lot. If you’re like me and have these accounts for a few years without promoting it, you will most likely have a few hundreds of followers.
If your accounts are not updated, make sure to post something and update your profile.
Promoting Links
Now, this is where it gets more fun and interesting! Once you have the links, you can now start promoting it. You can promote the links in many ways:
- Share in on your social media with a photo.
- Write a blog post about the products that you love.
- Do a live sales show!
In this post, I will only cover the third one. This is the strategy that has worked for me, and it’s something that not a lot of people are doing. Live selling is basically going live and people buy the items that you are selling.
Why Live Selling/Shopping Works:
- Live creates more trust. When people see a product live, they know that it is authentic and unedited.
- Live shortens the sales cycle. When people shop online, they usually read a ton of reviews on YouTube and other sites. But when you see something live, you exactly know what you’re getting and you are more likely to buy now.
- It creates a similar experience for when you’re shopping in-store. Due to the pandemic, people can’t go out. Live selling is the closest thing that they can get to an in-store experience.
Why Affiliate Marketing and Live Sales are the Best Combinations
- You don’t have to buy inventory and you don’t need an actual online store.
- You don’t have to take care of shipping the items.
- You don’t need capital to get started, which means that the risk is very low.
- You are already buying and recommending stuff that you buy online. You might as well get paid for it.
How to Go Live and Promote the Affiliate Products
Set up Your Home Studio
Nothing fancy required. You just need:
- Neat Background
- Good Webcam
- Microphone
- Stable Internet Connection
This is my current work-at-home setup. I have a ring light and a Logitech C922 camera.
Choose the Format of Your Live Sales
Here are the most popular formats that you can get started with.
- Reviews – The easiest type of live to do and perfect to viewers who are more ready to buy.
- Example: Live Unboxing of a Vertical Mouse
- Educational – Host a live Q and A or live training that your audience needs help with.
- Example: What’s the best home office setup for productivity?
- Listicles – Showcase your favorite products and how you use it live! Promote the affiliate links after showcasing them.
- Example: Top 10 Gadgets for Your Home Office to Boost Productivity
Schedule the Show and Start Promoting
After choosing where you want to go live and which topic you will cover on your first livestream, use tools like BeLive to schedule your stream complete with a show card, so you can promote it ahead of time.
Showcase the Products Live
Most marketers use live streams as part of their lead generation strategy. You go live, provide free content, and ask people to sign up for your newsletter.
For live video sales, however, you are actually selling the items live QVC style while providing free and valuable content.
You can use features like BeLive’s Live Sales to showcase the product, its price, and description while you’re live and ask viewers to buy it right away.
Check out my live stream featuring the Shoppee products I endorsed.
Figure Out the Best Way to Lead Your Viewers to Buy the Product
You can use the description or the comment section to list each item, so people can click and buy. It’s the easiest way to do it!
But if you want to get leads after the live sales, you can use bots, such as ManyChat to deliver the links to their Messenger Inbox.
For example, you can ask people to type “mouse” while you’re live and they will get the link in their inbox. The best part is, they get subscribed to Messenger! You can link ManyChat with your email software, so you can keep nurturing them and invite them for future live sales.
Have you tried earning commissions from the products you’ve recommended? Have tried doing that during a live stream?
You can definitely try doing this yourself! Start by signing up with BeLive, you can go live right away!
You can also join our online community to get more tips about live selling and other monetization options from other live streaming enthusiasts, business owners, and content creators!
Irene Chan is the Marketing Manager at BeLive. She has been working in the digital marketing industry for over eight years and loves the creativity that comes with video production. She has a degree in Broadcast Communication and is always imaginging about new live videos to produce.
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