Make Money From The Growing CBD Craze
How big is the CBD opportunity?
Numbers have been projecting that the CBD market will grow from what was a $390 million-dollar market in 2018, to a $1.3 billion market (or 3.3x) by 2022, representing a 27.2% 5-year CAGR as reported by New Frontier Data.
We have already seen that CBD has been a more popular search term than Beyonce or Kim Kardashian (though we wonder if CBD will ever beat her on Instagram searches). New brands and product types are showing up daily that contain CBD (cannabidiol) and everyone from your Mom to your Great Uncle in Nantucket is wondering how CBD may help them.
Though with great opportunity, comes great competition. So the days of just starting a CBD brand that looks like every other product will likely just be a way to throw away money, but that doesn’t have to be how you cash in on CBD.
Are you saying there is no reason to make an actual CBD product?
If you have a great idea of a product that can differentiate itself from the rest of the market and have a great brand identity than you can succeed.
We have partnered with hundreds of CBD brands and seen a wide variety of products and brand stories, still, regularly we are blown away by not only new brand identities but new niches that CBD products are being crafted to serve.
Brands that are newer and can cash in on the CBD market not only stand out but make a trusted and exceptional brand. So if you are heading into the CBD industry with the mindset that price will be your only differentiator than you are likely to have a hard road, but if instead of just being the cheapest you have a way to specifically craft your brand as the most trusted and transparent priced item then you may succeed (think of Everlane who has built a brand of high quality, ethically sourced clothing with clear and transparent pricing as the main focus of their branding).
But in all transparency on our end, this article will show you why you don’t need to build an actual CBD product and can still capitalize on the growing CBD opportunity.
Getting CBD Online
The biggest eCommerce opportunity related to cannabis is CBD. CBD products are going online at a rapid speed.
Leading THC product brands are going into CBD so that their branding has an option to be seen nationwide, while new CBD brands are distributing straight to consumers as their entry point into the cannabis market.
Since the Farm Bill, hemp-based CBD products are legal to ship (though not actually all 50 states as you might have previously heard) almost nationwide and even into many international markets which makes eCommerce the largest opportunity for all CBD related brands.
While many brands will fight to be the ones on the shelves of Walgreens, even those that have gotten those coveted opportunities are still self-distributing online at the same time.
The issue for all these brands looking to get a market share of the online CBD pie is competition. The only brands being seen are through SEO warfare, struggling to top the list of searches. A CBD brand won’t be found if they aren’t on the first pages of Google.
The Opportunity in CBD eCommerce without Building Products
Have you ever read a Top Ten list on the web, whether it be the best cameras or best baby strollers?
If you have seen a list like these online I can guarantee they had what we call affiliate links in the content.
An affiliate link is a URL that is tracked so that the content maker can see what sales of the products they’ve referred and so the brand also can track and PAY the content maker. That is right, PAY the content maker just for people clicking on their links and buying the products.
Since brands are having troubles being found on the web, it’s up to us to locate the ways that we can make content or build platforms that will help them get found.
These are the early days of legal cannabis and CBD going digital. Think about that, globally the world is just starting to recognize the ability to buy cannabis-related products online just like they buy their favourite deodorant.
When it comes to helping brands be found online this means there are many other models from other industries that can work, so do your research and recognize working content platforms on the web that haven’t yet made it into cannabis or even different angles for becoming a social media influencer or blogger.
How do I make money promoting online CBD brands?
This is why our site exists. Our goal is to help you find all the cannabis related affiliate programs, which includes CBD.
When you browse our directory you will find all free to join programs that take little more than a couple minutes of a sign up form and knowledge of where you will promote brands.
Each affiliate program on our site will pay you for every sale you deliver.
How you make money from affiliate programs:
- Sign Up for the Program
- Get Your Affiliate Link
- Shorten Your Link (read below why)
- Make Content, Share to Audience
- Get Paid For Each Sale
We will be regularly updating our list of CBD affiliate programs so that we have an ongoing and complete directory.
Why and How to Shorten your Links (Expert Affiliate Tip)
Shortening your affiliate URLs is done with services like Bit.ly or like the one we use and recommend Replug.io.
These tools let you use a custom domain for all your affiliate links and also provides analytical data for each click.
Shortening your links is necessary as an affiliate marketer for a few main reasons:
- Affiliate URLs are long and ugly.
- You need to track your clicks to verify brand data.
- Brands change their affiliate software option, shortening your link makes it easy to update in your content.
Why we added this section into this article is we don’t want you to make the mistake of having to ever go through and update every link in your content or have dead links based on a brand changing their affiliate software. When you use a link shortener this means you only have to adjust it in one place in the link shortening software.
I’m not a marketer…so, how can I be an affiliate marketer?
As long as you can drive sales for a brand in a respectable and non-spammy manner you can be an affiliate marketer.
Don’t worry about terms, figure out how you can connect to an audience and engage with content or a platform that give the brands a new place to be seen.
A brand wants to find all the audiences possible, help them do it anyway you can.
The main golden rule of affiliate marketing though is to respect and fully appreciate the brand’s image guidelines. Only ever show the brand in a way they approve. We always recommend letting brands review any content we build and giving them editing rights.
Even with product reviews we let brands give notes to the reviewer, the reviewer will not need to incorporate them and the brand can request for us to un-publish a review so that each party has control over their content.
Also, be honest and don’t just try to sell by being fake or material. People will only have an interest in your content if it is legitimate and interesting. For our content on our platforms we always look to represent the brand respectably and to do whatever we can to build tools that are most useful to our visitors.
List Yourself As a Marketer in Our Affiliate Marketer Directory
On our site we not only showcase the cannabis affiliate programs, but we are also offering a place for you as a cannabis affiliate marketer to showcase yourself to brands.
Free to list head on back here when you are ready to have brands reach out.
What are you waiting for?
This is usually when your head tries to make excuses of time and committments that will get in the way of you truly trying to take advantage of this opportunity. This site does not cost money, the affiliate programs are free, and you won’t have big overhead to get started…so go ahead and start.
Think about which shows you can give up watching to do this on the side of your job, or what you can do on your phone to build the content instead of reading articles, but don’t let excuses stop you from trying.
If you ever need some help or guidance reach out to us and we will give you are insights at [email protected].
Thanks for reading!!