How to start Affiliate Marketing
Do you want to start Affiliate Marketing and make money online?
Affiliate Marketing is the process of selling a company product or service and taking a commission from the company. Affiliates promote company products to their audience and when someone makes purchases from the company-provided affiliate link, the company pays the commission to the affiliate for that sale. Do you know what is affiliate marketing?
How to start Affiliate Marketing
Here are a few basic steps to start Affiliate Marketing:
1. Affiliate Platform:
Typically you can start an Affiliate marketing program from any of the social media platforms. You can do it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. All these social media are good to start affiliate marketing with.
However, it’s much easier to build an audience and increase your affiliate sales via a blog or a YouTube channel. You can easily generate traffic and convince your audience through one of these platforms.
Starting a blog today is relatively easy. Its cost is also reasonable. You can do it with only a few dollars per month. You will require a Blog / Website Domain Name and a hosting plan from any of the authenticated hosting agencies.
The other way to start Affiliate Marketing is through YouTube. YouTube is today a very much popular video-based social platform. Most people prefer to watch a video instead of reading content. YouTube is absolutely free and it is very much easy even for beginners.
Therefore if you’re good at video making and can promote Affiliate products via video, then YouTube is also a good option where you can easily interact with your audience. Here, it will be needed from you to display Affiliate links in a YouTube video or in the description of your video.
However, in both of the Affiliate platforms, you will have to disclose the fact that you’re doing Affiliate Marketing via a YouTube channel or a Blog/Website.
If you’re doing it via a YouTube channel, include (Affiliate links) in the description of your channel. And if you are doing it via a Blog, make a static page and include Affiliate links in the footer of that page.
2. Niche:
Finally, you have decided to start Affiliate Marketing. I will encourage you that you have done a good decision to make your future. You can make a good income from Affiliate Marketing programs.
But there’s a dilemma that requires a little attention from you. Affiliate Marketing is full of competition. You will have to survive and compete with already settled affiliates.
Here your niche will be your best weapon. You have to select a niche carefully. Instead of selecting a broad category, you have to prefer a topic that focuses on a specific category.
For example, the topic of “Jewelry” is a vast category. Rather than tackling that, try something more specific, like Rings. Later on, when you succeed in ranking your blog you can include more search topics in your blog.
Here it is important to discuss that with a few specific keywords; you can higher in Google and can get huge organic traffic.
Now I will suggest you choose a topic you are more interested in. It will give you the motivation to do it with passion. If you’re passionate about a topic, you’ll find it much better and easier in Affiliate Marketing.
In addition, skill is necessary to take any new steps in life. However, if you think that you are not professional, wait for a little and work on your skill but don’t worry if you’re not an expert in this field. It will be better to join the company of an already settled affiliate.
You can learn a lot from expert affiliate marketers and can make good sales. Otherwise, you will be stuck in the middle and there is a possibility that you lose stamina due to a lack of motivation, inspiration, and experience.
3. Find Affiliate programs to join:
Mainly there are three types of affiliate programs. You have to decide on an affiliate program that suits better your niche.
- High-paying, low-volume affiliate programs:
These types of companies’ Affiliate products are of high payouts. They pay a higher commission for the least sales too.
At an initial stage, it will be quite challenging for you to get sales because due to high payouts, there is huge competition in such affiliate programs. Already settled affiliates prefer to choose such products because they have good traffic for their affiliate links.
Here are a few high-paying, low-volume affiliate programs;
i. BigCommerce: Pays 200-500% commission and their cookies remain on clients’ sites for 90 days.
ii. Weebly: Pays a 30% recurring commission and their cookies remain on clients’ sites for 120 days.
iii. 3dcart: Pays 300% commission and their cookies remain on clients’ sites for 45 days.
iv. Shopify: Pays 200% commission and their cookies remain on clients’ sites for 30 days.
- Low-paying, high-volume affiliate programs:
These types of Affiliates’ products are of low payouts because of their high market demand.
Amazon is one of the top Low-paying but high-volume affiliate programs. Let’s take the example of PS4 games. There are many people who love to play PS4 games. If you succeed to make a sale, you can get up to 10% commission from Amazon.
However, you will require high traffic for such type of affiliate program. If you succeed to get eligible for the Amazon Affiliate Program you can get good money from Amazon because of its high volume.
Amazon is good for Low-paying, high-volume affiliate programs because Amazon pays affiliate commissions for all of the purchases a client made within 24 hrs. Every company has different rules and a commission strategy for affiliate programs.
- High-paying, high-volume affiliate programs:
These are affiliate programs for products and services with high volume and pay high commissions. But these types of affiliate programs are not recommended for beginners because it requires the highest skill set to compete. Also, some of these use spammy tactics that are more difficult to compete with.
A credit card is one of the examples of High-paying, high-volume affiliate programs. So, A credit card is the need of everyone and there are people who prefer to be connected with companies for longer.
Which Affiliate will you choose?
Now it is up to your expertise and interest. If you want to target consumers with high volume and low commission, then the second option will be better for you.
But if you want to make more money and settle a good business then the first option will be better to suit your personality. Hosting companies are some of the high-paying affiliate programs.
4. Create nice Content:
Your Content must be outstanding. Content is king. Good content always attracts the audience. Attracting the audience with another art. You must know the way to attract the audience and engage them with featured content.
Sometimes you succeed to bring traffic to your site but if you have published low-quality content, you won’t be able to stop them for a longer period.
Here your content will be the reviews for different products you choose from Amazon. You won’t be able to purchase every item from Amazon. But you can still create reviews for different affiliate products.
How?
Let’s suppose you choose any of the daily used items that are available in your home. Try to create reviews for them first. When you get some experience then choose a product from Amazon for review.
Don’t just blindly select products from Amazon. Make some efforts and make sure your content could solve the client’s problem. Check the already posted reviews by different buyers and then only select Amazon best seller products with 5-star reviews.
Because there will be a high possibility to make a sale and earn a commission if you select a high-rated affiliate product.
5. Traffic to your blog/site:
There are many ways to bring traffic to your blog. Some are called direct and some are called indirect traffic. You can get paid traffic and free traffic depending on your content. Here are, The 6 Top Tools to Check SEO Results.
Here I will discuss three types of traffic to your website;
- Paid traffic:
To get traffic sometimes you need to pay. This can be done by using PPC (Pay per Click) ads. At an initial stage when you have no traffic to your site you can use PPC ads to get traffic to your site.
First, running ads will take your profit before getting any money. You can run such ads using Google Ads or social media Ads. Traffic gain from the paid way will be lost if you stop paying anymore. So you have to think of it to use it or not.
Second, ads are a good strategy to get traffic if you’re part of a high-paying affiliate program and can generate a good income from it.
- Search engine optimization (SEO):
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the best way to get organic traffic for your affiliate site. In SEO you optimize site pages to rank higher in search engines like Google and Bing.
In SEO you work on targeted keywords. As you get higher in the search engines you get more passive and consistent traffic from them. Here’s a complete guide on, How to Rank your Website in Google?
SEO is another technical term and you will require getting some skills of it. There are “On=page” and “Off-page” SEO factors that are equally important to rank higher in the search engine. Understanding your targeted audience, creating content specific to your topic, and link-building are the few important steps that matter a lot in good SEO.
- Build an email list:
You can also get traffic to your site by building an email list. There are plugins available that will help you to create an email subscriber list and automatically generate a message to your readers.
Email lists allow you to communicate with your readers easily. Email lists help you get more affiliate traffic and more sales. You can use it to inform readers of the new content when published.
6. Get Clicks on your Affiliate Links:
Creating only good content doesn’t mean that customers will click your link’ and make a purchase.
- Link placement:
Placing a link should be attractive and eye-catching. It should not be at the end of your content nor should every second word be an affiliate link. You need to balance link placement in your content.
- Use Callouts:
Using callouts like buttons, tables, and boxes can make the post more eye-catching and can help you attract readers’ attention.
You might also like, How to Make Money with a Blog?
7. Convert Clicks to Sales:
In affiliate marketing, there are two conversions for you to make money. First is the click that a client has clicked through your affiliate link.
The second is how you could tackle that the client is purchasing the product. In affiliate marketing, it is in the hands of the company and the conversion rate is out of your control.
Here you need to take care of which affiliate program you have to select. You can check it by using Google before selecting an affiliate program.
Here Google is your best friend. Google will provide you reviews for different affiliate programs updated by people on their sites, blogs, and also in comments.
Conclusion:
These were the few steps that will be required to set up an affiliate site/blog. Affiliate marketing is not a one-day sale.
Remember, You can’t make good money at the initial stage. You have to work first as a volunteer. Focus on your first sale. After that, as your site grow and your traffic will increase you can get more income from it.
In which type of Affiliate Marketing you are interested?
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