Introduction
Sometimes you do something as part of your normal business and you realize later that one thing has brought you a benefit you didn’t foresee.
You weren’t even focused on it and couldn’t see it coming but suddenly you’re making money in a way you didn’t intend.
That is what Easy Side Money is all about but you’re going to get to follow this strategy intentionally and armed with the tools you need to make it work for you.
Several years ago I was going through my own ShareASale affiliate dashboard and realized I was making money from someone else’s work.
Someplace along the way I’d shared my affiliate link for ShareASale with other affiliate marketers, some of them signed up to work with ShareASale, and I was earning a commission for every sale those other affiliate marketers were making.
Turns out ShareASale will pay YOU a commission for every sale made by ANOTHER affiliate marketer if that other affiliate signed up with ShareASale through your own ShareASale affiliate link!
It’s called a Two Tier Commission.
I didn’t have to create the content, I didn’t have to choose the products, I didn’t have to pay those other affiliate marketers, and I didn’t have to monitor their activity.
People were out there earning me money and they didn’t even know it!
All I had done was to share information on how people could make money with ShareASale and the rest just fell into place.
While the amounts per transaction are small, they add up fast!
I’m sure you’ve seen those movies where they talk about some hacker skimming a few cents at a time from millions of bank accounts and coming out wealthy?
That’s kind of how this process works.
Look at how quickly money can come in:
In less than 30 minutes I’d earned $0.58 which doesn’t sound like a lot but if you do the math that’s $1.16 per hour, $27.84 per day, or $835.20 per month.
All day long, from start to finish and every day of the week, money is going into my ShareASale affiliate account that I didn’t create the content to earn.
Easy Side Money is going to show you how to do the same thing but with most of the work is already done for you!
Maybe you like: 16 Legit Ways To Make Money Fast in 2021 and Beyond!
Join ShareASale
The first thing you need to do is get an affiliate link FOR ShareASale.
Getting a ShareASale account is not difficult but you do need to have a website URL to put in your application and ShareASale may review your website in advance.
While I’ve seen plenty of applications approved when there was no content on the site, there have also been occasions when an applicant has been denied.
If that’s the case, there are two things to try:
1. Call ShareASale and ask them to reconsider. Explain that you are new but that you’re following a very sound content strategy. Sometimes a phone call alone will get ShareASale to change their decision.
2. Add 5 posts to your site that don’t have any affiliate links in them and then reapply (or call ShareASale). The 5 posts could be about anything helpful related to your niche. You could write a Welcome post for your site, write a post about why you’re interested in the niche, write two posts explaining how to do something related to your niche, and write a post about recent news related to your niche if you need ideas for these 5 posts.
Whether you already have a ShareASale account yet or not, you should read through their agreement here before going any further: https://www.shareasale.com/agreement.cfm
Don’t Yet Have a ShareASale Account?
If you don’t yet have a ShareASale account follow the steps below to create one.
1. Create an email address for your site (your ShareASale account may be processed more quickly if you use an email associated with your website instead of using Gmail, Yahoo or another kind of free email address):
a. Log into your hosting account (I use Bluehost) so the examples below show Bluehost but you would have a similar option in any other hosting company you might use.
b. Find and click on the “Email” tab or icon in your hosting company dashboard (not every hosting account dashboard looks the same so yours might be at the top or you might need to scroll down to find this option):
c. Follow the steps on your screen to create an email account for your chosen website.
d. Somewhere on that screen should be a link to help you “configure email” or “configure email client” or “configure client”. Click that link and you should see information about ports and servers that you need in order to configure your email client (the application you use to receive and send email – Gmail, Windows Live, Outlook, etc.) so that you can send and receive email to and from your new email address. You may need to Google instructions for configuring your particular email client to add that new email address.
e. Test out your new email address by sending an email FROM that new address to one of your other email addresses to make sure outgoing email is working.
f. Test sending an email from another of your email addresses TO your new email address to make sure incoming mail is working.
2. Go to ShareASale here!
3. Click the Affiliate Sign Up link:
4. Choose a user name, choose a password, confirm your password and use the drop down box to select your country of residence:
5. Click the link to “MOVE ON TO STEP 2”
6. Enter your website URL:
7. Be truthful in answering the questions on the bottom of this screen but the following are most likely to get you approved (ShareASale’s agreement actually says your website should be in English and if you don’t know what the other questions are asking then you are probably not doing those things anyway so it’s safe to say “no”):
8. Click the link to “MOVE ON TO STEP 3”
9. Check the button to use an email tied to your website domain so you’ll be approved more quickly:
10. Enter your email address:
11. Click the link to “MOVE ON TO STEP 4”
12. Complete the personal information on the next screen – where it asks for a description of your site write something like (modify it to fit YOUR niche and website):
a. I use content and social media marketing to share unique, quality information to consumers in the [niche]
13. Complete your application and make sure to click a confirmation link in the email ShareASale sends you to confirm your sign-up.
Already Have a ShareASale Account?
If you already had a ShareASale account before reading this book, log into that account and go through your profile settings to make sure things are up to date.
1. Log into ShareASale
2. Click the Account option in the navigation menu and then click Account Settings:
3. Go through each tab in the secondary navigation menu on your account page and update any information that is out-of-date (your main website URL, any other websites you own and plan to use with ShareASale, your personal contact information, etc.,):
Get Your ShareASale Affiliate Link
Once you have your ShareASale account set up you need to get the affiliate link FOR ShareASale.
1. Log into your ShareASale account
2. Hover over Merchants and choose the Search for Merchants option:
3. Type the word ShareASale in the search box and click the Go button:
4. Join the ShareASale affiliate program:
5. Make sure you read and understand the FULL terms of service that ShareASale (the merchant) has outlined for affiliates:
6. Once you’ve been approved, click on the Get Links option for ShareASale:
7. You’ll see a number of affiliate link options but you want the one called “affiliates” (the others are links you would promote to businesses who want to sign up with ShareASale to have them manage their affiliate program) – click the Get HTML Code link:
8. Click the Select URL Only option:
9. Copy the URL – that is your affiliate link for ShareASale and includes your unique tracking ID:
That’s it! Save that link as it is the link you want to use in the next step.
Modify the PLR
You have to get your affiliate link in front of other people who are or want to be affiliate marketers and get them to sign up with ShareASale through your link.
Of course, you also want them to be successful as quickly as possible so that you make money.
The best way to do this is to show people who are interested in affiliate marketing how to be successful with ShareASale in as easy a method as possible.
I’ve created the training tool you can use to get that done so you don’t have to do this work yourself.
You will need to edit the training document I provided so that you include YOUR ShareASale affiliate link in that document.
1. Open the document called “Affiliate Training Document” here (if there’s not a format you can work with on your computer feel free to upload it to Google Docs and edit it there)
2. Do a search in the document for “YOUR AFFILIATE LINK HERE” and replace that field with YOUR ShareASale affiliate link.
3. Read through the document and make any other changes you’d like (you could include affiliate links to any other related products or tools or links to your own related products)
4. You can save the file with the name I’ve given it or change it to something unique that you’d think would appeal to interested affiliate marketers (you could even save multiple copies with different names to test which name gets the most attention to your document)
5. If you’d like, use the free tools at Canva.com to create a book cover (do a search for “book cover” on the main dashboard of Canva – they have lots of free book cover templates)
6. Convert your document to a PDF (go here if you can’t do that on your computer: https://smallpdf.com/pdf-converter)
Your document is ready to be shared!
Spread it Around
Finally, you need to get your document in front of people who would be interested in the training document.
Your target audience is people who are interested in affiliate marketing whether they have experience yet or not.
Just because someone has experience with affiliate marketing doesn’t mean they have yet signed up with ShareASale which means they could sign up with ShareASale through your link now that you’ve shown them a way to be successful with ShareASale.
Many of these people may already be Amazon Associate, for example, but only focus on Amazon and haven’t spread their wings yet.
There are many ways to share your document for free – just make sure you’re following ShareASale’s merchant terms.
At this time, ShareASale says you can put your affiliate link in emails, newsletters, the content of your website, or within other web-related content.
You can’t, though, put the affiliate link on newsgroups, chat rooms, message boards, banner networks, counters, or guestbooks.
This means you can’t stick your affiliate link in those places but you CAN link to your free document in those places (depending on the rules of the various sites).
Here are the multiple ways you can share the document:
1. Upload your PDF to your website (through Media Library if you’re using WordPress)
2. Do one or both of the following:
a. Build a small landing page on your website where you advertise the document and provide the download link (the link in your Media Library for the file you uploaded if using WordPress)
b. Write a post about the training document on your website and include the download link.
3. Create a great Pinterest graphic for your page or post using the free tools at Canva.com
a. Log into Canva.com
b. Do a search for Pinterest Graphic and click on the Pinterest Graphic search result:
c. Scroll through the templates and click on a Free one that matches your post topic (hover over the photos to see which are marked FREE):
d. Change all the text on the image to say something intriguing that will get people to click the image if they see it on Pinterest:
e. Download the image:
4. Embed the image in your page or post
5. Pin the page or post to your Pinterest profile using the image you created as the image for the pin.
Facebook Profile or Facebook Group
1. Upload your PDF to your website (through Media Library if you’re using WordPress)
2. Write a post on Facebook that mentions your free guide for learning how to be a successful affiliate marketer and include the download link to the PDF on your website (the link in your Media Library for the file you uploaded if using WordPress)
3. You could also create an image on Canva.com for Facebook and attach an image to the post so it stands out more.
Email Friends
If you have friends you know are interested in affiliate marketing but don’t know how to get started you could email them your PDF.
Forum Signature
Many internet marketing forums don’t allow you to put affiliate links in your profile signature or in forum posts but you may be able to link to a page of your own website that features a link to your free training.
1. Upload your PDF to your website (through Media Library if you’re using WordPress)
2. Do one or both of the following:
a. Build a small landing page on your website where you advertise the document and provide the download link (the link in your Media Library for the file you uploaded if using WordPress)
b. Write a post about the training document on your website and include the download link.
3. Include the link to your page or post in your forum signature:
4. Actively participate in discussions on the forum so that your signature will be seen by your target audience (just don’t call attention to your signature as that is usually bad forum behavior)
Product Bonus
Do you sell your own ebooks, digital products, or services? You could include this PDF as a free bonus for your customers.
Your Email List
If you have an email list of internet marketers you could upload the PDF to your own site and email your list the link so they can download the file. You can also break the training material into smaller chunks and distribute a chunk to your list every few days to keep them interested.
Through an Email Marketer
Other internet marketers who promote products to their email list will sometimes take a bonus from someone else.
Summary
Any income stream that keeps on working for you while you’re tired, at a full-time job, or on vacation is a plus!
Easy Side Money is a way to get a number of people working for you for free.
Put it to good use and soon you’ll have an extra side income dumping right into your own wallet.
Owner of AffiliateSayHi! – Make money with affiliate from 2016 // Strength: Inbound marketing, UI & SEO // Interests: Read articles on Quora & surf Reddit. Enjoy sharing about MMO, affiliate marketing & digital product reviews.
[…] Maybe you like: How To Make Easy Side Money In 2022 (Complete Guide) […]