Learning how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria could result in a lifetime opportunity for you. You’ll discover the best affiliate marketing programs and strategies to make passive income.
In fact, one of the most lucrative businesses you could do and start making money online is affiliate marketing.
Based on Statista’s report, affiliate marketing spending in the United States alone will reach $8.2 billion by 2022.
This doesn’t mean you’ll be parking money on the internet after joining some top-paying affiliate programs.
There are things you need to do before you can become a successful affiliate marketer.
So, as a beginner, this guide will walk you through the whole process.
You’re going to learn the rudiments of marketing other people’s businesses and earn commissions online.
Affiliate marketing being one of the most profitable online businesses you could do with no capital, you no longer have an excuse for not making money online.
This is the kind of business you do where you don’t need to have your own product, inventory, stores, or shipping capacity before you can make money.
As everything you need is taken care of by the affiliate marketing companies you work with, your own is just to market for them.
You’ll help them promote their products and refer new customers to them.
While the companies take care of the costs of running the business – designing, producing, and shipping the products, you have your own shares in their profits.
If you can persuade people and influence their purchasing decisions, then affiliate marketing could be a great way for you to make money online.
Meanwhile, affiliate marketing for beginners may be challenging.
But the truth is you have to work hard to earn big commissions. And if you can follow the right strategies, affiliate marketing really pays off.
All you have to do is to know how to get clicks on your affiliate links and ensure you generate enough sales through your leads.
- Read also, how to monetize your blog.
People like Pat Flynn didn’t get to the level he is now in a day, he worked for it. So, don’t expect any magic in your own case.
If you’re ready to learn how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria, this guide will teach you.
So, what to learn in this guide includes:
- What are the best affiliate marketing programs to join in Nigeria?
- How to drive traffic to your affiliate website and maximize the clicks you get on your affiliate links?
- How to create highly engaging content that converts?
With this business, you could make your first 6 figures in less than a month.
The bottom line is you need to make a lot of efforts to succeed in doing affiliate marketing in Nigeria.
So, what are the efforts?
You need to know the strategies to earn affiliate commissions and this would be explained down the line.
What is affiliate marketing?
According to Wikipedia, affiliate marketing is a “performance-based” marketing strategy.
It allows big businesses to reward those who are affiliated with them for their marketing efforts to make people buy their products or services.
This was corroborated in the short video below by Tyson Quick, the founder of InstaPage.
Affiliate marketing, however, is an amazing sales and marketing model that allows you to market and promote businesses that are into e-Commerce and earn commissions.
In Nigeria, the top paying affiliate programs to join include:
- Jumia affiliate
- Konga affiliate
- Wakanow affiliate
- Bet9ja affiliate
- PayPorte affiliate
- VConnect affiliate
- Web4Africa affiliate and so on.
You can use your website, blog, or social media pages to market for them online.
But before joining the top paying affiliate programs, it’s important for you to know how affiliate marketing works.
How affiliate marketing works
As you may need to know, you have to work before making money from affiliate marketing.
However, the following steps demonstrate how the programs work:
- Promote products
- Customers find products
- Customers buy products
- You make commissions
#1. Promote your affiliate products
After signing up for any affiliate marketing program, you MUST commit your efforts to promoting the business.
If an affiliate marketer tells you he makes certain figures monthly, ask him how he does it.
His answer won’t be different from saying:
There’s time to sow and time to reap…
In affiliate marketing, “the time to sow” is when you promote the companies, and “the time to reap” is when the companies reward you.
If you’re looking for how to make money online and you need something faster than this, I’m sorry to tell you there is none.
There is no guarantee that you can make money doing a legitimate business online without working for it.
IF YOU’RE DETERMINED TO WORK AND EARN BIG ONLINE, AFFILIATE MARKETING IS THE RIGHT BUSINESS FOR YOU!!!
You can join any of the best affiliate marketing programs in Nigeria.
What matters most is promoting the products that you can handle professionally.
In the later part of this guide, you’ll be taught the strategies to promote your affiliate products and get massive clicks on your affiliate links.
#2. Customers find products
This can happen via your marketing platforms – affiliate website, blog, or even social media.
Assuming you want to help Jumia affiliate to promote Gillette shaving blades on your Facebook page, any of your audiences who needs a shaving blade at the moment can be a potential customer.
All you need to do is to frequently publish content related to shaving and recommend Gillette shaving blades to the audience.
When those who have issues with shaving read your post and click on the affiliate link contained thereof, they will be referred to Jumia where they can find the product.
From there, Jumia will take over the customers from you.
#3. Customers buy products
Once the customers visit Jumia and purchase the blade, Jumia has an eCommerce system that processes the transaction.
Each customer you lead to Jumia will receive his purchased item at his doorstep.
#4. You make commissions
Different companies offer commissions to their marketers at different rates. So, when you lead more customers to them, you earn more commissions.
If a customer buys a product 10 times, your commission will be 10X of the actual rate.
In fact, you can generate a thousand customers with a single affiliate link and your commissions will be a thousandfold.
For that reason, you have to lay a very good foundation for your success in the business.
How to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria
The same way affiliate marketing is done in Nigeria is done in every other part of the world. The truth is learning how to start affiliate marketing can be sweeter than you thought.
If the business isn’t viable in the environment you find yourself in, you can target different geographical locations without leaving the corners of your room.
I study what works for others and apply my findings to my own enterprise. In that way, affiliate marketing has been a very good business for me.
I’m going to share my testimony with you.
Most successful affiliate marketers like Neil Patel, Pat Flynn, and Bill Hartzer don’t have any secrets regarding their success too.
They talk about it in their posts all the time.
After studying their huge affiliate marketing success stories, I put the best of their tricks into action.
Meanwhile, the following steps on how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria reflect my personal experience cum other people’s intelligence, insights, tricks, and achievements in the marketing landscape.
Since I wasn’t the first person to treat this subject, anywhere you go to learn the affiliate marketing business, these are the eight (8) basic steps you’ll always come across.
I’ll walk you through each of these steps to make you learn the business successfully.
So, here are the things you need to do:
- Choose your niche
- Join top affiliate programs
- Create your marketing platforms
- Adopt content marketing strategies
- Build your audience
- Target your audience
- Promote relevant products
- Repeat Steps 4 – 8
#1. Choose your niche
Your niche is very fundamental to what affiliate program you want to join.
It determines what affiliate programs to focus your attention on and what you want your business to be known for.
If you are into sports, what sport is it?
Those who are into fashion will perform well if their niche focuses on specific aspects of fashion such as men’s fashion, women’s fashion, or kids’ fashion.
It’s unproductive to focus on multiple niches at a time.
As a soccer enthusiast, you can simply choose soccer instead of addressing sports as a whole.
When you’re talking about soccer, swimming, car races, boxing, and wrestling at the same time, it confuses your audience. Consequently, that will affect your turnover.
Focusing on a more specific niche will help you attract leads from the people that have the tendency to buy your affiliate products, not those who will land on your website and walk away.
You can’t blame them.
They walk away because your content is not relevant to them.
Let’s say your niche is on “Pets” and you want to be known for “Dog Breeding”. Whatever content you’re writing must be relevant to dog behaviour, discipline, foods, health, vaccines, accessories, mating, sales, and so on.
Let’s say you’re looking for “crime scenes news” and come across two different websites or blogs: one is a mixture of politics, business, crime, sports, education, and tech news while the other strictly focuses on crime news.
Which one will you choose?
The crime-focused news website has the potential and authority to give you more relevant and in-depth “crime-scene news” than the other which lacks focus.
You’ll rather choose the one that focuses on “crime news” since that is where you can get the most reliable and relevant updates you need.
That’s how consumers choose between a niche-focused website and a website with scattered niche ideas.
RECOMMENDED: how to come up with blog post ideas.
Validating your niche will make people in need of a business you promote trust and be loyal to you.
This effort is to boost your leads, engagements, and conversions and retain your customers.
Benefits of focusing on a niche
AffiliateMarketerTraining has a list of what you can benefit from focusing on your niche.
These include:
- To help consumers identify your business in the crowd.
- Targeting and maintaining good customer relations.
- To help establish authority in your niche.
- To help find the best affiliate marketing program that supports your niche.
In fact, if you ever lose focus, remembering what you wanted to be known for will help you get back on track.
How to identify a profitable niche?
Be informed, that not all niches are profitable.
The profitability of a niche can be determined by the number of people that show interest in the niche. You may not know this without validating your niche.
To avoid laboring in vain, you can place an assessment on your competitors to see the engagement rate of their content so far.
If most of their posts don’t get read, shares, likes and comments, it means the niche is not profitable.
So, why go for what won’t profit you?
This is the reason why most websites fail to generate income. The problem is not the websites but the niche.
You might like reading also, 5 Profitable Side Hustles You Can Start.
#2. Join top-paying affiliate programs in Nigeria
There are many affiliate marketing programs you can join to start making money online.
In this guide, a list is prepared to contain 10 highly paid affiliate programs you can join.
You just have to ensure, you join programs that are relevant to your audience.
When you join an affiliate program, it becomes your responsibility to help the company promote and generate potential leads for its business.
Depending on your marketing platforms, you need steady web traffic to generate leads and convert.
You can use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, Search engine marketing, search optimization, email marketing, Facebook, or video marketing strategy to generate leads.
All the strategies and skills you need can be found in this tutorial.
#3. Create your marketing platforms
Affiliate marketing is an online business so you need a website, blog, or social media to run it.
In fact, the business will be easier if you can use as many platforms as possible.
If you have an active social media account like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you can perform excellently by linking them to your website or blog.
Most affiliate marketing programs want to know your authority and relevance to their programs before approving your request.
They assess you based on the engagement rates of your followers both on your website, blog, and social media.
So, if you have a good website and highly engaging social media accounts, you can link them together to maximize your performance.
This strategy means you have the potential to become a successful affiliate marketer.
And when companies see this, they will be eager to do business with you.
#4. Content marketing strategy
Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to create and share relevant content that can attract and retain a target audience in making a certain profitable customer action.
Content marketing can be in different formats, ranging from text, audio, and video to infographics.
Affiliate marketers use this strategy to help their audience find answers on the web.
Having identified your niche and audience, then you can find products that are relevant to your audience.
Create content around the products you want to market to make your audience realize how the products can solve their problems.
You don’t need to pester anyone to visit your website and buy a product. People will definitely follow your content wherever it leads them if it matters to them.
But if this is not happening, it means the content is not relevant to your audience.
So, to succeed in affiliate marketing, be sure that your niche, content, and products are relevant to your target audience.
#5. Build your audience
It’s sad to get to the stage of building an audience and your content can’t reach the right audience.
So, all you have to do is to start building your own audience by targeting their search intent with the right keywords.
There are many ways to build a target audience. And this includes the use of the following strategies:
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising
a. Email marketing
This is a digital marketing tool used to make visitors drop their email addresses before exiting a website.
Affiliate marketers use this strategy to keep in touch with their audience and extend their relationships beyond the first visit.
The email address will be used to send more interesting stuff to the visitors and that will make them like to return.
So, if you have ever dropped your email address on a website and keep getting emails from that website, then you have engaged in email marketing.
The major function of this tool is to make you come back to the website and learn more about great content depending on what you’re looking for.
You can equally use this strategy to build your own audience. So when sharing your content, it reaches all your audience.
From that act, you can market whatever affiliate product you want and make your money.
If one of these days you receive an email about something you’ve been looking for, you will be compelled to go back to that website and do whatever you need to do.
b. Social media marketing (SMM)
If you visit some websites, you will see the number of followers and subscribers connected to them.
From each of your social media platforms, you can build your own audience as well.
Learning how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria doesn’t mean you have to build a thousand audience before you can start making money online.
You only have to start from somewhere and ensure you start well.
Gradually your audience toll will grow.
If it’s one person you are able to build, it’s possible you start earning your commission on that one single person.
Inasmuch as your affiliate product is relevant to your audience, they will buy from you whenever they need the product.
c. Search engine marketing (SEM)
This is the use of search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu and so on, to market your business on search engines.
The strategy can be used to make your content rank above #1 on a search engine.
Since Google and the like also want to make money, they control what appears on their pages.
And when you pay for this service, your brand gains exposure and traffic on search engines.
d. Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is to make search engines understand what your website or blog is all about. It can be to get your business to those who are likely going to benefit from it.
According to Statista, Google has the largest user base in the world.
However, SEO is about how you can leverage the search engine to build up and target your audience without paying Google for it.
If you want this to happen, all you have to do is to optimize your website and its content based on Google SEO standards.
I won’t talk too much about this aspect here because it is an advanced digital marketing strategy.
But if you want, you can read Off-Page SEO for Beginners to learn more about it.
e. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
Search engines and social media offer PPC advertising services that can help you get your content clicked online.
Read how to advertise on Google using Google ads.
This service can be used to get an audience that will click your affiliate links. If you pay for the service and no one clicks your campaign, you won’t be charged.
#6. Target your audience
Audience targeting is sharing relevant content with the right audience at the right time. Targeting doesn’t mean spamming or tricking your audience.
Spamming is the system of sharing unsolicited content on the web repeatedly to advertise a business on the internet.
If you’re too disturbing, your audience might report you to Google. And if your report gets to them, they might remove you completely from their properties.
Another abusive advertising is the use of marketing cliches. Too much exaggeration in your marketing campaigns is also not going to help.
Using some unrealistic phrases to compel patronage is unprofessional.
Leave your audience with your real intent to decide what to do with your content.
To learn more about audience targeting, read how to use Facebook Audience Insights.
The good news is if your content is specific about your niche and the audience, those who will buy your stuff will do so without being cajoled.
How is that possible?
Let’s say you’re a tutor and your niche focuses on “how to pass GRE or TOEFL examinations”, then your target audience is GRE or TOEFL candidates.
Your main objective is to teach them the “A to Z” of how to pass the exams.
However, targeting your audience in that niche means your consistency in creating and sharing content that the candidates need the most.
As long as your content facilitates the success of your audience in passing those exams, they’ll buy whatever-related product contained thereof.
Such products are so relevant that if you don’t recommend them to your audience, your competitors will do and your audience will buy from them.
That means, targeting your audience with the things they need won’t only inspire you about what content to create but also help you to stay within the scope of your niche.
Determine your audience, recommend the types of products that are relevant to them, and maintain the status quo.
You can also convert your stress and effort into building a very strong online presence. And that makes it very important to learn how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria.
As a matter of fact, the affiliate marketing business begins with creating a good brand identity.
#7. Promoting relevant products
As an affiliate marketer, your work includes guiding your audience to do something in a certain way and offering products or services that can help them get good results.
They will be happy with you.
It’s not your job to track sales, provide customer service, fix prices, and authenticate payments as an affiliate marketer. The affiliate companies handle that.
Meanwhile, you have all the time in the world to market what is relevant to your audience.
Affiliate marketing can get sore if a visitor opens your affiliate link and lands on the wrong website – a page where she can’t find anything related to her wants.
Such practice is offensive and could deteriorate your credibility and reputation. The most important lesson here is to promote and recommend products or services you’re familiar with.
#8. Repeat steps 4 – 8
Your prospective customers may not show interest in you immediately or during the very first time, they visit your marketing platforms.
In fact, you won’t see traces of someone following you but that doesn’t mean you’re not being followed. Those who are in dire need of your products follow you silently.
But because they don’t trust you yet, they won’t make you notice them.
They read your content, like, and even talk about it when they’re with their friends, but they don’t just click the like button and drop a comment.
People generally behave that way online to avoid being scammed. They take their time to build confidence before showing interest in things they come across.
While this happens behind you, use the moment to prove to your audience you have solutions to their problems.
Repeating yourself will make them know you can offer them better information, products, and services they desire.
So, be consistent until you begin to see desirable results. Then keep repeating the steps and watch out for your commissions to generate.
Best affiliate marketing programs in Nigeria
Affiliate marketing = Join + Promote + Earn. The following local companies offer the best affiliate programs in Nigeria.
Depending on your niche or market interest, there are different affiliate marketing programs that you can join.
These are some of the best affiliate marketing programs in Nigeria for beginners:
- Jumia affiliate program (now Jumia KOL)
- YuBoss Konga affiliate program
- Payoneer affiliate program
- Web4Africa affiliate program
- WhoGoHost affiliate program
- WakaNow affiliate program
- TravelStart affiliate program
- Bet9ja affiliate program
- PayPorte affiliate program
- VConnect affiliate program
So, let’s briefly look into what each of these Nigerian-based affiliate marketing companies offers.
#1. Jumia affiliate program
Jumia is one of the top-paying affiliate marketing programs in Nigeria that deals in daily deals, ranging from electronics, and fashion to beauty products.
It’s an eCommerce company that offers up to 13% commissions to anyone who refers customers to its website.
Recently, the company announced the plan to roll out the Jumia KOL program on the 8th of December, this year.
Jumia KOL (Key Opinion Leaders) program is an enhanced software to improve transparency and user experience.
This new program changes nothing in your affiliate earnings.
However as an inclusive measure, it would enable more people to take part in the Jumia affiliate program in Nigeria.
So, if you don’t have a website and you’re not a blogger, no hope is lost.
With the Jumia KOL program, you’ll still be able to join the Jumia affiliate program, whether as a content creator, social media group owner, influencer, affiliate, or app owner in Nigeria.
How to join the Jumia affiliate program
To join the Jumia affiliate program is very simple, just take the following steps:
- Sign up to become an affiliate of Jumia;
- Log in to your affiliate account and select the products you want to promote;
- Copy promotional (affiliate) links, banners, and feeds for each product;
- Create content about the products you intend to market;
- Embed the affiliate links on your content and share them via your website, blog, social media pages, or email marketing campaigns;
- Learn more about how to start Jumia affiliate marketing.
#2. YuBoss Konga affiliate program
Konga which was ranked the 28th most visited eCommerce website in Nigeria has over 100,000 products.
Konga is into daily deals of varieties of products ranging from fashion, toys, automobiles, electronics, and kitchen appliances to computers.
Konga affiliate program allows you to earn commissions seamlessly when you sell their products via their affiliate links.
How to join the YuBoss Konga affiliate program
To join the Konga affiliate program is very simple, just take the following steps:
- Sign up to become a Konga affiliate;
- Log in to your Konga affiliate account and select the products you like to promote;
- Copy your affiliate links, banners, and feed for each product;
- Create content about the products you intend to market;
- Embed the products affiliate links on your content and share them via your website, blog, social media pages, or email marketing campaigns;
- Learn more about how to promote Konga affiliate products.
#3. Payoneer affiliate program
Payoneer affiliate program is another way to make money online by referring people to Payoneer products and services.
The affiliate program allows Nigerian affiliates to earn commissions on leads or referrals they generate over their affiliate links to the Payoneer website.
When a sale is generated through the affiliate link, you earn $25 automatically. But sometimes, you may get more or less, depending on Payoneer.
How to join the Payoneer affiliate program
To join the Payoneer affiliate marketing program is very simple, just take the following steps:
- Sign up for a Payoneer Prepaid Debit MasterCard.
- Log in to your account.
- Apply for the Payoneer affiliate program.
- Go to your affiliate page.
- Locate and click on the Refer a Friend banner.
- Copy your unique Payoneer Affiliate Link.
Once you have your link, you can begin promoting Payoneer on social media platforms to refer more people to join.
#4. Web4Africa affiliate program
Web4Africa is a web hosting and domain registering company for Africans, most especially Nigerians and Ghanaians.
The company offers an affiliate marketing program only for its clients. Before you can join, you first need to buy their product.
And this makes it easier for you to get automatic approval.
In fact, after using their services, your experience will serve as a source of inspiration. While you’re promoting the company and mentioning your experience to your audience, they have more confidence in you.
And once they buy through your affiliate link, Web4Africa pays your commissions.
If you’re a Nigerian blogger or digital marketer, Web4Africa can be the best affiliate program to make additional income online.
How to join the Web4Africa affiliate program
- Log on to Web4Africa and register as a client;
- Buy a product – domain name, hosting, or anything;
- Sign up for the Web4Africa affiliate program;
- Log in to your affiliate account;
- Copy your affiliate link;
- Create content about Web4Africa products you intend to market;
- Embed the affiliate link on your content and share it via your website, blog, social media pages, or email marketing campaigns;
- Learn more about how to promote Web4Africa products.
#5. WhoGoHost affiliate program
WhoGoHost is another popular local web hosting and domain registering company in Nigeria that offers an affiliate program.
You can make up to 15% commission on every product someone buys on WhoGoHost through your leads.
All you have to do is join the program and create promotional content for the product you like to promote.
Let the content have your affiliate link, then share it via your website, blog, and social media pages.
#6. WakaNow affiliate program
WakaNow is one of the leading online travel agencies in Nigeria.
The company sells various travel products and services such as domestic and international flights, hotels, airport pick-ups, and tourism packages at discounted prices online.
You have access to sell reservations for people in over 508,000 local and international hotels and earn up to 40% discount on each customer you refer.
If you have an interest in hospitality, travel, or tourism business, you can join the WakaNow affiliate program.
#7. TravelStart affiliate program
TravelStart is Africa’s leading travel agency on the internet you can partner with and make money.
The company sells cheap flights on more than 500 airlines with over 11,000 destinations in the world.
Join the TravelStart affiliate program to make a 70% commission on every booking the people you refer to the company make.
#8. Bet9ja affiliate program
Bet9ja is one of the biggest sport-betting companies in Nigeria. It offers an affiliate program in which you can earn up to 50% commission on each player you refer to.
After joining the Bet9ja affiliate program, you will be provided with marketing tools to boost your performance.
#9. PayPorte affiliate program
PayPorte is one of the e-commerce companies in Nigeria that seeks partnerships with every individual who can promote their products.
You can join the PayPort affiliate program if you like to partner with them.
#10. Vconnect affiliate program
Vconnect is Nigeria’s local search engine for business directories. The company offers an affiliate program to expand its coverage.
The strategy allows interested people to partner with the company and helps spread the word and earn a commission.
It’s very simple to join the Vconnect affiliate program just like the others. All you have to do is visit the company’s website and register as an affiliate.
Some of these programs require you to meet certain criteria before your application can be approved, while some don’t.
So, it’s impossible to tell you categorically which among them will accept you.
Your application to Jumia or Konga can be approved and you will get your affiliate account generated immediately.
But that doesn’t make your revenue level up if you don’t have what it takes to make money with affiliate marketing in Nigeria.
For this reason, affiliate programs that require you meet their standards, like ClickBank, won’t accept you if you don’t have substantial web traffic and authority in your niche.
So, whether an affiliate marketing program grants you approval or not, what is important is to ensure you have all it takes to generate leads and sales before sending your application.
Otherwise, no companies will give you a commission without seeing your efforts.
This shows, that there is no way you can make money as an affiliate marketer if you don’t do all the needful.
Meanwhile, your authority, reputation, audience, and traffic, among other key factors, are considered before any affiliate marketing program can grant you approval.
Common mistakes beginners make in Affiliate marketing
The mistake most beginners make is looking for money without working for it. But because legitimate money doesn’t come that way, they find real businesses boring.
Impatience serves as one of the reasons why bloggers fail.
While most people are looking for fast money, they end up being scammed.
In the first three months that I started an affiliate marketing business, I wasn’t looking for money. Instead, I took my time to create quality content out of my passion to help!
After a lot of dedication, I’ve started getting the reward I deserve.
It’s almost certain you’ll get your own reward too learning how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria the right way.
Since success depends on efforts, start your affiliate marketing business now.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing for beginners could be challenging. But with good strategies, this business can change your story from pain to gain.
Explore this guide to learn how to start affiliate marketing in Nigeria and succeed.
Join any of the top affiliate programs in the country and optimize your content to boost your traffic.
Also, ensure your affiliate links are strategically distributed across your marketing platforms to increase your ROI.
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