Ever since Timothy Ferriss published his blog “The 4-Hour
Workweek,” people have been ditching their 9 to 5 jobs and taking the plunge
into affiliate marketing. If you’ve dreamed of being able to make a decent
living through passive income, then affiliate marketing is a path you should
consider taking.
The idea behind affiliate marketing is that you promote the
products of other people, many times through an affiliate network, and earn
commissions when people buy those products as a result of your marketing
efforts. Pretty easy right?
Unfortunately, there is a little more to the process, and it
will take some upfront work on your part.
Before you can get started in affiliate marketing, it is
essential for you to understand that there are four different parties involved
in the process and how each fit in with the system.
When it comes down to the actual marketing part of the
affiliate marketing system, there are two sides to the equation: the creator
and seller of the product and the affiliate marketer. What does this mean?
You can look at affiliate marketing as the process of
spreading product creation and marketing across various parties, where each of
the parties receives a share of the profits according to their individual
contribution to the marketing efforts.
This, simply put, means that you can be both the creator and
the marketer and still make a profit from the underlying idea of revenue
sharing.
Four Parties of the Affiliate Marketing System
The Merchant: The
merchant is known as the creator of the product, the seller of the product, the
brand, the vendor, or the retailer. This is who creates the product. It can be
a big company like Dell, who manufactures personal computers, or an individual.
Anyone can be the merchant behind an affiliate marketing
program, from the solo entrepreneurs, to the startups, to gigantic Fortune 500
companies. They can be anyone who has a product to sell.
The Affiliate: This party can be a single individual or an
entire company, that helps to market the products of the merchant. An affiliate
marketing business can produce several hundred dollars in commissions every
month to tens of millions.
This part of the system is where the marketing happens. The
affiliate promotes one or more of the merchant’s products, trying to attract
and convince potential customers of the value of the product in hopes that they
will end up purchasing it.
This can be accomplished through a review blog of the
merchant’s products or through an entire site that is dedicated to finding
products that are related to a particular topic and promoting the affiliate
products.
The Consumer: The consumer is what makes the affiliate system
work. Without their purchases, there wouldn't be any commissions to be earned,
and no revenue would be shared.
The affiliate markets the products to the consumer through
the channels that they see fit. This can be through digital billboards, social
media, or a search engine using a blog and content marketing.
The Network: The network works as an intermediary between the
merchant and the affiliate. While technically, you could promote a merchant’s
product and arrange a direct revenue sharing system with them, having a network
like Jvzoo or ClickBank handles the payment for and delivery of the product,
eliminating the hassle. Sometimes, in order to even promote a product,
affiliates have to go through an affiliate network.
When it comes to the affiliate marketing system, you can
choose to become a merchant and have others market your products in exchange
for a commission on the completed sales, or you can become an affiliate
marketer, promoting products in order to make money.
While most people decide to take the affiliate marketer route, building enough traffic to make an income that makes it worth your while, isn’t easy, or quick.
Becoming an Affiliate Marketer in 4 Steps
There are four steps that you need to take in order to
become an affiliate marketer.
Step 1: Review Products in Your Niche
The first step to building a business as an affiliate
marketer is deciding on your niche. This step is critical to your success, so
don't ignore it.
When you are starting out as an affiliate marketer, don't
try to find a "secret niche" that no one else is marketing. Instead,
start with what you are familiar with and what has the most offers.
When choosing your niche, you want to make sure you do your
research. Here are three things you can do to help you find your niche.
1. Look at
popular affiliate networks like JVZoo, ClickBank, or Commission Junction.
2. Head to
YouTube and look for keywords that may be used for the niche you are
contemplating.
3. Use Google
to do the same keyword search.
Keep in mind, if you aren't able to find any other affiliates in that niche, the chances are high that you are probably focusing on the wrong niche.
Step 2: Choose Your Approach
After you've decided on the niche that you want to promote
as an affiliate marketer, you need to next determine the kind of affiliate
marketer that you want to be. There are three approaches that you can choose
from, but as a beginning affiliate marketing, it is crucial that you only pick
one of these ways to focus on.
After you've been doing it for a while, you can choose to
branch out into the other approaches if you wish.
The Reviewer
As a reviewer, you would purchase products to review. After
thoroughly testing the product, you would post the review on your blog, YouTube
channel or social media.
It is important that you form your own opinions about the
product and provide honest, ethical reviews in the form of a video or written
content. To do this efficiently, you have to go through the product and get a
feel for the pros and cons and provide authentic feedback as one user to
another.
By doing this, you can better engage with potential visitors,
giving good recommendations for the products you are reviewing.
As a product review, you should own or have access to the
following tools:
·
A computer with a microphone and webcam
·
PowerPoint, or an equivalent product
·
A website
·
Social media automation tools like Hootsuite or
Social Oomph
·
A budget to buy new products
·
A way to track the movements of your visitors
·
A way to track each click
The Emailer
One of the most successful ways to start your affiliate
marketing business is with an email list. The idea behind this affiliate
marketing method is to grow an email list by providing a small offer to get
people to join your list.
Once you've added them to your list of contacts, you can
start using the autoresponder feature to promote products that you feel will
help your contacts.
As an emailer, you should own or have access to the
following tools:
·
An email marketing platform or autoresponder like
SendLane
·
A product like a PLR you've written or video
you've created to offer the consumer
·
A landing page that attracts visitors
·
A great eCover to attract interest
·
A link tracking tool like ClickPerfect
The Social Media
Personality
As social media grows in popularity, social media fan pages
have exploded, giving fans a great mix of promotions and value.
If you decide to use social media to promote products for
your affiliate marketing business, it is important to ensure that it remains
classy, and not a place to post spam.
To be a successful social media personality, you need to
create solid images and content while promoting your affiliate products.
As a social media personality, you should own or have access to the following tools:
·
A way to create social media images
·
A posting tool so you can automate the posts
·
A way to track each link
Step 3: Discover Your Affiliate Network
Once you’ve discovered your niche and style of marketing you
want to do as an affiliate, the next step in the process is to determine the
affiliate network you want to start with.
Your choice will depend on the niche that you selected and
will require you to conduct some research. Here are just some of the affiliate
networks that you can use.
·
Click bank carries an excellent variety of digital
marketing products.
·
JVZoo is mostly internet marketing products and
other related products to make money online.
·
CJ Affiliate by Conversant has a wide selection of
products to choose from.
·
Amazon is one of the biggest affiliate networks.
·
Revenue Wire is a global network with a large
selection.
When you are first starting out, you should sign up for just
one network based on the research that you conducted.
Once you become more familiar with how the network works, you can begin to use multiple interfaces or even use a private program.
Step 4: Find and Attract Traffic
Now that you’ve completed the easy steps of determining your
niche, the style of marketing you want to do, and the affiliate network you
want to use, the final step to becoming an affiliate marketer is finding and
attracting traffic.
For new affiliated marketers, finding traffic can be a
troublesome prospect, and many new affiliates get stuck on this step. However,
traffic can be found in a lot of ways. Here are a few forms of traffic that are
easy to start with as a new marketer.
Social Media or Forum
Traffic
Using social media and forums is a great, free way to
generate traffic. You can visit popular forums that are focused on your niche
and offer free advice to the participants. In your signature, have a link back
to your website, landing page, social media or YouTube channel.
It is essential that you offer accurate, practical advice on
the topic. This can also be done with your social media pages by placing your
links on your personal or fan page and offering information to different
groups.
The quickest way to derail your efforts is by moving from
group to group to simply post your links or contacting each person in the group
via a private message with your link. This is called spamming and will not help
you with your affiliate marketing.
Search Engine
Optimization
This is another free way to gain traffic for your affiliate
marketing business. This is one of the oldest forms of getting traffic and is
based on keywords and search rankings. With search engine optimized content,
you can leverage the power of search engines to get free traffic.
This approach takes a lot of work and can be tedious and
time-consuming, but when done correctly it can result in a ton of visitors to
your site, without spending a dime.
Paid Solo Ads
Solo ads are simple to use if you do your research and use
them correctly. Simply put, you are buying traffic from someone who has an
existing email list.
The way solo ads work is that you pay for someone who has a
targeted email list to send their contacts a recommendation to your site and
send you targeted traffic. It then becomes your job to convince those people to
buy your product or service or opt into your email list.
Paid Facebook and
Google Ads
The fastest way to ramp up your traffic is through paid
Google and Facebook ads. However, this option will cost you considerably more
and has a higher learning curve than the other methods.
The intricacies of this process are too expansive to cover in this article, but you can find numerous resources online to help you out if you want to follow this path.
Conclusion
It can feel overwhelming to complete all the necessary steps
in order to become an affiliate marketer, but the time you put into building
your reputation will be well worth it when you have your first sale.
Making your first affiliate commission is going to require
you to put in some hard work, but by breaking it down into easy to follow
steps, it won’t feel as overwhelming.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, there is a
tried-and-true strategy that will have you reaping the rewards of your hard
work after making your first commission.
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