Understanding Affiliate Commissions and Creating a Passive Income

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online!

As with any business, though, you need to approach it with the correct mind-set and you have here some valuable insights that you can use to get started with your business.

So iIf you are at the point where you have already decided to become an affiliate marketer and launch a business in this niche, your next step is to search out affiliate programs to join.

There are lots of programs and one consideration to make when selecting them is to see what type of commissions they offer.

Simply put, an affiliate commission is the payment you receive for sending a buyer to a certain website via your affiliate link. After the sale has been made you will be notified that you have earned a share.


The thing about commission rates is that they vary. Some affiliate programs can offer as much as 75% while others such as the Amazon program pays out less than $10%.

When looking at commissions you need to take the actual product into consideration as well.

If you are promoting a high ticket price such as a diamond ring or necklace then a 10% can still mean a nice pay day! But if you are only going to earn 4% on a $5 eBook then you have to determine if your effort is going to be worth the pay check!

If you were to promote internet marketing products on a site like JVZoo, then you can expect to earn higher commission rates. Plus the added advantage is that you can get paid instantly, which is always a nice benefit. 🙂

The thing to remember with this type of product is that they are often only on sale for a week or so and then disappear from the marketplace. So unless you change your links they will point to a dead link. 🙁

If you are looking for longer term products to promote then look at the programs offered by sites such as CJ Affiliate, Amazon and ClickBank. You can find specific programs to promote such as car seats, yoga equipment, running shoes, lawn mowers and more.


Another aspect to look for when it comes to commissions is to see if they offer a two tier commission structure.

A two tier network is when you, as the affiliate, get other affiliates to join the company’s program. Then each time one of your referred affiliates get paid, you earn another commission. This can be a great way to add to your monthly affiliate paycheck, so it is worth seeing if this option is available or not.

Some companies will actually increase your commission rate by your performance level.

If you can demonstrate that you can send them lots of new customers, then they will be happy to reward you. Even if they don’t offer this it never hurts to ask, they will most likely be happy to reward top affiliates.

So basically this is how you create that passive income which is that kind of stream where you get paid month after month without having to put in a huge effort.

Now this does not mean it is a quick way to earn money. In fact it means that you get paid on work you have done weeks or months ago.

It all boils down to doing the work once and getting paid repeatedly. If you are still unclear, you can compare it to renting out a room to someone and getting paid over and over. You only rented the room once, but you get paid multiple times.

From my experience one of the best ways to truly create a passive income stream is to become an affiliate marketer.

As an affiliate marketer you spend time creating blog posts, articles, product reviews and emailing your list or you have the Rob’s VIP Membership Area and a lot of these tasks become redundant as they help you with most of the ground work.


But all of these actions create long term links all over the internet for you, just waiting to be found because over time, as people search online for information, your site pops up. The person visits your site, loves what they see and clicks on your affiliate link. The end result is that you generate an affiliate commission.

So even though you may have written that first post in January, it is now April and you are still earning money.

Do you see the beauty of creating a passive income stream with affiliate marketing?

This is also the reason why not all affiliate marketers make money in their first week or month, it’s not as the Easy Path inside the VIP Membership Area, which is a system built to make money from day one you launch.

Affiliate marketing, which is just one of the 4 paths that you can make money with the VIP Membership, takes some time to get affective.

This is partially because it takes time for the search engines to find your site and display it in the search results.

google love

But as your site earns more Google love you will see an increase in visitors and sales. How to do that, it might not be easy for a newbie but you get all the support from Rob and his team once you join them.

Although it can be a little time consuming, it’s exactly the reason why experienced affiliate marketers (including myself) love this business model.

Yes, it does take time to set up a site (again, not if you’re in the Rob Rider’s team, they do that for you, completely for free inside the VIP Membership Area) create your content and market it. But once you have done this you will start to reap the rewards of your hard work, over and over again.

You have one site that is making money regularly you may want to set up a brand new one.

This way you can repeat the process and generate additional commissions.

Don’t neglect your first site as you always want to continue adding new content, this is what will attract the search engines to you.  Just keep duplicating this process and watch your affiliate earnings rise.


  1. Avatar
    Benjamin T.

    Rinse and repeat is the way to do affiliate marketing but you for sure need a good platform and a good site that’s not too boring and plain. Once you have the system running, it’s all about the people.

  2. Avatar

    Are Amazon Affiliate sites making money? I feel it’s simpler and somehow easier to start a site with Amazon links inside rather than looking for vendors on Clickbank or other places.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.