Affiliate Marketing…

What exactly is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the practice of promoting the goods or services of others. You earn a commission when someone makes a purchase after clicking on your unique affiliate link.

The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to worry about having your own products or providing after-sales service. As an affiliate marketer, you can promote a variety of products and earn money from each one.

How does affiliate marketing work?

As an affiliate, you are given a unique link that allows purchases made through your link to be tracked and attributed to you. When someone clicks on your affiliate link, a small file known as a cookie is stored on his or her browser.

This cookie serves two functions:

1. It assists the merchant in attributing the sale to the correct affiliate

2. It usually has an expiry date, so you get paid as long as the purchase is made before the cookie expires.

How to start making money in affiliate marketing?

Just follow these six simple steps.

1. Select a platform

To begin, you will require an online platform. This allows you to build an audience to whom you can sell affiliate products. These are some examples of such platforms: Blog, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok etc…. Which platform you choose is determined by where your target audience spends their time, how effective you are at building an audience on the platform, and how simple it is to drive affiliate sales through the platform. Personally, I enjoy writing, so a blog is ideal for me. I can also build an audience from search traffic, which is made up of people who are looking for specific terms. Running my blog also means I have complete control over my own platform. Starting a blog today is simple and inexpensive, with web hosting starting at a few dollars per month. Read more about how to make money blogging for beginners. More importantly, a blog is more likely to generate clicks than a YouTube video or an Instagram link. As a result, the majority of the examples in this article will be for a blog. Once your site is complete, optimize it for search engines so that people searching for specific terms can find it. Then, include affiliate links in your content so that you can be compensated whenever someone purchases through your links. It’s important to note that you’ll need to disclose the fact that your blog contains affiliate links. When receiving affiliate or endorsement income, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires you to be transparent.

2. Identify your market niche.

There is a lot of competition if you start a blog today. According to GrowthBadger, there are over 600 million blogs worldwide today, out of over 1.7 billion websites. Niche down to increase your chances of success. Keeping your topics focused can help you build a more targeted audience and possibly rank higher in search engines. You can always expand into other sub-niches after that. Also, choose a topic about which you are enthusiastic. This will help your affiliate marketing business succeed in the long run because you will be more likely to enjoy what you’re doing and will be less likely to give up halfway through. Don’t be concerned if you’re not an expert on the subject. Documenting what you learn as you go can result in great content and attract people who want to follow your progress.

3. Participate in affiliate programs

There are two approaches to joining an affiliate program:

1. Networks of affiliates

2. Standalone affiliate programs

An affiliate network is a platform that enables merchants to set up affiliate programs. Marketers like us can then search the network for products to promote. In short, you only need to sign up as an affiliate once, and you will have instant access (usually) to sell a wide range of products from various merchants. This is a very efficient method of getting access to thousands of products that you can promote.

 Popular affiliate networks include Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, ClickBank, JV Zoo, ShareASale.

A separate affiliate program, on the other hand, is provided by the merchant. As a result, you can only promote items sold by the merchant. To promote items offered by different standalone affiliate programs, you must sign up for each affiliate program separately. To begin, I would strongly advise you to join the large affiliate networks mentioned above in order to get a sense of the products on offer. You can also consider what products you are currently using and enjoy. Then, on its website, look for its affiliate program. You can also search for “(product name) affiliate program.”

For example, I adore Aweber, my email marketing platform. So I’d search for the “Aweber affiliate program” and fill out the application form.

Many affiliate programs will review your blog before approving your application, so I would strongly advise you to have a ready-to-go blog with at least a few posts before you begin submitting applications.

4. Produce excellent content

To be successful with affiliate marketing, you must produce high-quality content that people will read. Your affiliate links should also be integrated naturally into your content so that it does not appear to be a hard sell or spam website. Don’t just promote Amazon products blindly. Go above and beyond to ensure that your content solves your reader’s problem. How? If you’re writing a review, it helps if you’ve already used the product. If not, go ahead and buy the product and put it through its paces. Promoting products you don’t truly believe in or haven’t used yourself will only harm your blog’s credibility in the long run.

5. Get people to visit your affiliate platform.

The next step is to increase the number of people who see your content and click on your affiliate links (and hopefully make a purchase). Here are a few examples of common traffic strategies:

Paid traffic- This is where you pay to have people visit your blog. You can accomplish this through PPC ads or Facebook ads. The benefit of paid traffic is that it is instant. Ads are a great source of traffic if your affiliate program pays well (at least hundreds of dollars in commission per sale) and you can make the numbers work. However, running advertisements will cost you money before you make any. Also, if you stop paying for ads, your traffic will stop. I don’t recommend paid traffic if you’re new to paid marketing or don’t have a marketing budget.

Search Engines Optimization (SEO)- SEO is the practice of optimizing pages so that they appear high in Google and other search engines. You’ll get passive and consistent traffic as long as you rank high for your target keywords. In another post, I’ll go over SEO in greater detail.

Create an email list- With an email list of subscribers, you can contact your readers whenever you want. With your own email list, you can notify your followers about new content and encourage them to return to your blog on a regular basis. As a result, more affiliate clicks and sales are generated. You can even send affiliate links to your email subscribers directly. (Please keep in mind that many email providers DO NOT allow this.) That is why I recommend Aweber, which is great for affiliate marketing.) You must persuade your website visitors to sign up for an email list in order to build one. This entails giving them something valuable in exchange for their email addresses.

6. Increase the number of clicks on your affiliate links.

People will not click on your affiliate links simply because you have great content. There are a few things to think about here such as Placement of links, The anchor text, Callouts

So, Those are the basic principles of affiliate marketing. Using them alone will put you far ahead of the majority of affiliate marketers and allow you to make money online as a complete beginner. Affiliate marketing requires time and effort to be successful. Concentrate on making your first affiliate sale. Set higher goals for your blog as it grows, and continue to experiment. Eventually, you’ll create an affiliate blog that generates a decent income and allows you to live the life you want. You might even want to learn how to start an online store and sell your own products in the future for a higher profit. If you need immediate income replacement, the best thing you can do is learn how to start freelancing work, a digital marketing agency, or a consulting business. Then, on the side, start your affiliate business to generate long-term passive income.

Author- Hruni Kalinga