Beginners Guide To Affiliate Marketing In South Africa

Affiliate Marketing In South Africa in 2022 

Affiliate Marketing in South Africa is somewhat new, but it also has been around for a while for those that have gotten in early. With unemployment at an all time high for South Africans, it is one of the best opportunities to get into right now, and there is a tremendous opportunity to make a decent amount of money. More and more businesses are embracing online shopping, and with that comes great business opportunities for ordinary South Africans.

While more and more South Africans look for ways to make money online, there aren’t a lot of people doing affiliate marketing successully, and with this article, I hope to inspire you and hopefully make you see the possibilities with it. While the US and Europe have been crushing it for decades, we are at an advantage, because it’s not as saturated as it is for them.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is where you promote another company’s product or service for a commission on the sales that you generate or that you have referred. In basic terms, you promote someone else’s product or a service, and you make money everytime that someone buys that product or subscribes to the service.

Typically, the commissions that you make will be a percentage of the price or the product/service, and it can be a once-off commission or recurring commission, depending on what you are promoting.

In basic term, you are the middle man!

Why Do Affiliate Marketing?

Here are 3 reasons why affiliate marketing is something you should consider.

Low Risk, Low Cost

Making money requires money, so in order to start any kind of business, that will require you to have money  upfront, and it is pretty risky because it might not work out, not to mention how expensive it can be. With affiliate marketing, you can get started for free. With the boom in social media, it has become easier to get started for free, or with a very small investment, so if you don’t succeed, you will only lose a bit of money and your time.

Many Products

Affiliate marketing allows you to test out many products, there is no limit to the number of products that you can sell. So, you can choose to promote many different products from different companies, which is great.

No Inventory, No shipping, no admin

Affiliate marketing allows you to basically start an online business without inventory. You don’t have to deal with packaging, shipping or handling the product. You don’t even have to deal with shipping or any kind of admin pertaining to the product. The only thing that you have to do is drive traffic to the offer, and make commissions, and this is one of the many reasons why it’s attractive to a lot of people.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Once you decide on the affiliate program that you are looking to sign up for, on signing up, the merchant will give you  a unique link so they can track who was responsible for a sale. The link will usually look something like this  :

www.thewebsite.com/product/?ref=12rd564

When you drive traffic to that link, and someone makes a purchase, you make a commission. It is a very important link for the affiliate marketer, as it will help get the sale assigned to the right person.

Affiliate Marketing in South Africa

As I mentioned earlier, affiliate marketing is still small in South Africa, compared to other parts of the world. Some of the great products and services that we have do not have affiliate programs, which can leave affiliate marketers a little frustrated.

Take Pic n Pay for example . . . just imagine the amount of commissions one would make if they had an affiliate program. Or a brand like Woolworths – affiliate marketers would make a killing.

Unfortunately, they don’t have an affiliate program, however not all is lost. There are South African online platforms that have affiliate programs, like Faithful to Nature, Zando, USN and more that you can promote as an affiliate and make money.

Does Affiliate Marketing Work in South Africa?

YES, absolutely affiliate marketing works in South Africa. I know this because I have done it in the past and made money with it, and I am doing it now.

You just have to choose the best affiliate program for you, something that you can relate to, something that you enjoy because in order to promote it, you will need to create content around it. It would suck having to promote something that you don’t like, because creating content for it would be grinding teeth for you.

Also, your success will depend on the work that you put in. Like everything else in life, you have to work to make those commissions, and you have to learn what you need to succeed. This can put you ahead of the rest.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing in South Africa?

Follow these steps to get started with affiliate marketing in South Africa:

1. Decide on a platform

You can start affiliate marketing for free, by using social media to promote your links. However, through experience, it is better to have a blog. One of the best things to do is to build an audience, and then create content that answers some of the questions that the audience has. This also will be based on the niche (topic) that you choose  for your blog or the platform that you choose.

A blog only costs a few Rands a month, so you don’t need a lot of money to get started. All you need is a domain name and hosting, and you are good to go.

2. Choose a Niche

A niche is extremely important, because you are looking to build a community of like minded people. Also, a more focused topic will help you when it comes to ranking your website and generating traffic to it.

When starting out, most people don’t have a budget to hire a content writer, so they end up having to write their own content. If that’s the situation with you, make sure that you choose a topic that you enjoy. Otherwise, it will be hard to write content on something that you don’t like.

Consistency is huge when it comes to affiliate marketing, especially in the beginning, so you want to make sure that you can keep that content going, even when things are tough.

3. Find an Affiliate Program to Join

Given the fact that there are a lot of affiliate programs to promote, there are a few things that can help you choose a good affiliate program. Here are some factors to consider when choosing an affiliate program to join:

The commission – an affiliate program like the one at Amazon pays little commission, but that’s because it is a huge and trusted brand, and the focus for this type of affiliate program would be volumes. Affiliate commisions can vary from 5% all the way to 80%, it all depends on the type of program.

Typically, physical products tend to offer less commissions as compared to digital products, just because digital products spend much less on fullfilment and zero inventory.

Price – the price of the product will impact your commision. While a lower price will get you less commissions per sale, there is a high chance that more people will buy the product. However, it almost takes the same amount of effort to make a sale, so you might decide on something more high end.

4. Create Great Content

Your blog will need content to succeed, great content. This means helpful articles (blog posts) that help your audience and answer their most pressing issues about a topic.

As an affiliate, some people lean towards a review site, as opposed to an information site, which requires them to write certain reviews about certain products. With this, you want the website to be genuine, so in the beginning you would have to review the products you have, buy them or figure out how to get them for free.

With the content, you would then recommend great products and link out to them.

5.Drive traffic

Driving traffic to your affiliate site is probably one of the most challenging part of the process. You may have great content, but for you to make commissions you would need people to see it and click on the links.

With traffic, there is paid traffic (which can get super expensive) and SEO (search engine optimization) traffic, which can take months. Both traffic methods require some level of skill for you to learn.

Affiliate Marketing Companies In South Africa

There are a few affiliate marketing companies in South Africa that you can sign up for, to get started in affiliate marketing, namely Offerforge, Affiliate and Admarula.

Sign up is free, and these affiliate marketing companies will give you access to not just one, but many companies to promote. This means that for example Offerforge may have a 100 companies that you can have access to promote, and you can have these services/products under one platform, without the need to sign up for every one of those individual products/services. This will save you a ton of time, and makes it easy to test promote different products.

Offerforge

Offerforge is one of the most popular affiliate networks for South Africans to join, and they have been around for quite awhile. They have a lot of clients, some in different industries, which is great because you can be spoilt for choice. They also work with very recognisable brands such as NetFlorist, Dion Wired, Bidvest and more.

Admarula 

Admarula is another one that you as a South African can join. They work with very recognisable brands as well, the likes of Mr Price, Superbalist and more.

These two networks are great to get started, and as I mentioned it is absolutely free to join.

To give yourself the best chance of success, make sure that you have your website ready when you apply, and make sure that it is decent.

How Do I Get Started?

In order to start affiliate marketing and position yourself for success, you need to get a good program that will position you for success.

How much do affiliate marketers make in South Africa?

How much you can make depends on you and the work you are willing to put in. This platform allows you to do surveys, test apps and download games . . . to earn.

One of the best ways to earn with this platform is by referring others to join, because you earn money for every person that you share the platform with.  Once you sign up, use your referral link to get others to start earning as well.

Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quickly type of opportunity, however once you learn what you need to and apply it, you can make very good money.