Who doesn’t want to make money on today’s date? And when it comes to making money with little investment and a lucrative award in return, no one would ever say NO. This is where affiliate marketing comes in. What is affiliate marketing you ask, ok let me explain.
Affiliate marketing is the act of promoting other people’s product and getting a commission in return if someone visits the referred product from your link (affiliate link) and ends up making a purchase.
This article will be example driven so that it is easier for you to understand and also relate to the scale of affiliate marketing.
Recommended read: How I sold my amazon affiliate website for $8,924
Who am I to teach you about affiliate marketing, well major chunk of my monthly revenue comes from Affiliate income. I have multiple websites that promote affiliate products and that drives a lot of commission to me. So my experience in affiliate marketing is the backbone of this article.
So let’s begin with the step by step instruction on how to use affiliate marketing for your profit.
1) Niche that will roll in income
Decide a niche that will intricate you to work for hours and hours without getting bored. Be it something related to fashion, food, books, traveling, or any other thing that you are interested in, don’t over think, just frame your thoughts into actions, and there you will be, shining like a star.
Now, why am I focusing on the niche? It is because in the initial phase you will have to work for prolonged hours and to put efforts on something that doesn’t excite you, will do no good.
Like one of my friend, who loves to talk about fashion all the time, decided to opt for a gadget related niche.
Want to know the outcome?
She hardly worked on it, and her idea failed badly.
Now the website bestproducts.com (one of the biggest affiliate website on the internet as of now) is not in any niche, they are a general all category website, but for each article they publish and promote they make money from people they refer to buy the product.
2) Start By Creating a Website
Just like a shop is needed to sell products, you need a website to place your recommendations. If you already own a website, don’t worry, you can use that and start earning or else you can even start a new blog.
Out of the various website services available you can go for GoDaddy and Hostgator which offer enough services at affordable price. Although I recommend Bluehost as it is the best in the business. Or using a free web service like Blogger will also do but is not recommended as you don’t have the control.
A website hosting is just like home for your website and this is why it is extremely important for any website.
Start your affiliate site now
3) Play to the Room
Select a product that is related to your niche because choosing the right product is a crucial factor. I have seen many people promoting irrelevant products on their site, and if you think doing so will help you become a successful affiliate marketer, and then probably you will not be able to make much out of it.
Imagine you visit a health related site, and you are made to see some property related ad. Annoying, isn’t it?
Google Adsense, attracting a lot of marketers can also be used as it requires less input from your site but one con is that you will be paid less.
Tip: Choose the right Product and promote it in the Right way.
Let me give you an example of a niche affiliate website which is www.thankyourskin.com. Now when you look at this website you will realize that this website has one niche and that is Skin (under the umbrella of Beauty)
Now this website is making close to $10,000 all through affiliate earnings.
4) Finding the best affiliate links
Almost all big online companies that sell products or services have their affiliate program.
So whatever niche you decide you will find some companies that will be happy to make you an affiliate.
If nothing works, then Amazon associate will come as a savior. Thousands of affiliate marketers rely on Amazon for their earnings (as that is the best affiliate program in the world). Both of the examples that I have mentioned above use Amazon as a major source of their earnings.
You can check my article on best affiliate programs for this.
5). High-Quality Content
High-Quality Content is the need of the hour. Let me make it very clear, attracting traffic solely depends upon the type of content you provide.
Write the content for your users while pleasing the Google Bot. Your content should be focused for the person reading it while all points of its on-page SEO checked so that later it helps in driving organic traffic to your blog post
Tip: Deliver irresistible content so that people visit your site, leaving the others. Competition is tough in each market these days so make sure your content offers 5 times more value then what is already ranking on Google.
If you look at the articles of 10beasts.com (another huge affiliate website) then you will realize the quality that you must strive for.
6) Bring in targeted traffic to your affiliate site
What’s the use of building a website without traffic? No use! Right?
So, how to attract the right audience?
Organic traffic through SEO is the best form of traffic. Trust me if you are building an affiliate website then you need to optimize your website for SEO and driving organic traffic. Although teaching SEO will take at least 10,000 more words, so I will list down best resources to learn SEO so that you can also drive free targeted traffic to your website.
Bestproducts.com has majority of their traffic coming from Google, why because they are ranking #1 for very high search volume terms
With all that high quality traffic they are easily making millions of dollars/month. Yes you read that right, making millions of dollars each month from one website.
For initial launch and building authority of your website the best tactics you can use are:
#1 Guest Posting
Increase your brand popularity by guest posting. This will help you secure many backlinks, highlighting your brand in the market and making community with other bloggers.
A most preferred technique to pull traffic to your site. But it is beneficial only if done correctly. If you think writing content and distributing the same content on the various platforms would help you in getting traffic, then you are right. It will do so, but that traffic would not last longer.
If you are smart then Google Algorithm is smarter than you, it will detect your activity and may take action against you.
So Beware!
#2. Guestographic
Make amazing infographic and do email outreach and promote the hell out of it. The links you will accumulate will drive you organic rankings up and hence traffic will start flowing.
To learn more about this technique, check this guestographic article by brian dean
#3 Email Marketing
This tactic comes when you are already getting the traffic. You can create a huge email list and then monetize it by driving them to your affiliate articles.
This technique will help you in creating a strong user base. Email address of your viewers is the most valuable commodity, and you can’t miss any chance to get it. Also, it helps to build a relationship with your audience. So capture as many emails as you can. Also, make sure that users must subscribe to your newsletter.
There are many tools available, email marketing like GetResponse and AWeber; you can choose any of them.
If you want to become an SEO pro then without wasting any time anywhere head over to backlinko.com the best and most amazing resource on learning SEO.
Some Amazing Resources to motivate you:
1. Nichepie.com
2. Nichepursuits.com
Conclusion:
Affiliate market requires a lot of efforts from your end. Yes, there will be times when you will have to work for 12-13hrs/day for each week. But trust me sincere efforts do not go in vain and will reward you with long lasting and promising results.
The key to success in Affiliate Marketing is “PATIENCE.”
As said by Aristotle – “Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet.”
Keep putting efforts in the right way and in the right direction to achieve excellent results.
