The Proven 10 Steps to Make Serious Money from Home with Affiliate Marketing
To most people, affiliate marketing can sound like a mysterious business model that might even be super cumbersome and just on the verge of being legal.
The truth is, however, that it is a business model in rapid growth.
A business model where almost everyone can make money no matter where in the world you are and what background you have.
In this article you will get a simple overview of how to get started and of course an explanation of what affiliate marketing really is exactly.
So, let’s get started so you can consider whether affiliate marketing is something you should throw yourself into soon.
Maybe you dream of having your own passive income machine.
I STRUGGLED FOR YEARS…
I have more than 20 years of experience in marketing and sales, but for many years I did not find the key to making affiliate sales.
I spent many hours searching YouTube, reading blog posts and following experts, but without finding the step by step guide I was looking for.
One day at the social app ClubHouse I came across an Italian guy named Alessandro who was an affiliate expert.
He offered me a 10 day course which changed everything in quite a short time.
WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?
Affiliate marketing is a business model where you sell other companies’ products or services and earn a commission on sales.
An average commission is usually around 10% to 20%, but you can sometimes get paid more than 50% of the price of the item or service.
Of course, it depends on whose products or services you sell.
You promote another company’s products, usually using a sales funnel with organic or paid traffic to the product.
These companies then pay you a percentage of the revenue for each product you sell.
In order to make money as an affiliate partner, you need to sign up for an affiliate program or maybe even more.
You can find affiliate programs at clickbank. com.
You can also sell via Amazon which, however, does not give a very high commission.
This means that you have to refer a lot of customers before you make serious money.
Once you have signed up, the goal is to generate traffic for the product or service so you can sell the company’s products.
Affiliate marketing is a pretty simple way to make money, but it obviously does not come easy.
Affiliate marketing is an extremely simple, effective and profitable business model.
The best part is … you do not have to have your own products in stock, think of payment solutions or ship your own products.
You can do it all from one computer no matter where you are in the world.
Imagine yourself at a pool in Dubai with a lab top in your lap and a cold cooling drink next to you.
Pretty nice way to work, right?
Globally, the affiliate marketing industry is worth more than $ 12 billion. 81% of brands are dependent on affiliate marketing, which of course indicates that affiliate marketing is a successful way to generate customers.
THE EXACT 10 PROVEN STEPS TO GET YOUR AFFILIATE BUSINESS STARTED AND LAUNCHED
Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, let’s talk about how to start a profitable affiliate marketing business.
1. Choose Your Product or Service That You Want to Promote
The first thing you need to do is choose which products or services you would like to work with.
Choose affiliate programs carefully. Your chance of success is far greater if you choose according to the following criteria …
A.
Choose suppliers with a good landing page. Stay away if the landing page has an outdated design, is full of disturbing ads, contains many misspellings, or seems cluttered.
B.
Choose products or services that you use or are really interested in. If you sign up for affiliate programs for products that do not interest you, you may find it difficult to sell … because you are not interested in the products. So try to choose a product that you feel you can really stand behind and recommend to others.
C.
Choose products and services with a commission above 20% This will give you better opportunity to spend money on advertising and keep your business profitable. If you choose products or services with more than 20% commission, it is of course even better.
D.
If you promote digital products, your commission is usually astronomically high. Therefore, digital products are some of the best affiliate programs to make a lot of money online. If you choose high quality digital products, they often have high conversion rates because they provide instant access and instant satisfaction to buyers.
E.
Choose a product or service that is easy to sell. Something that is really impressive and effective for its target market. The more the product sells itself, the easier your job will be!
F.
Choose quality over money. Of course, you can probably earn a higher commission if you sell a lower quality product, but people will probably be less likely to buy because most people have thought of cheap products. Promoting you bad products can seriously damage your credibility. And the goal is to make money many years in the future.
G.
If you have the opportunity to promote products that are renewed monthly, this is great for your business. Instead of a single commission, you receive one, you receive a monthly recurring commission. This can make your business more stable and much more fun!
H.
Choose suppliers with a good landing page. Stay away if the landing page has an outdated design, is full of disturbing ads, contains many misspellings, or seems cluttered.
When looking for affiliate programs, it is important to focus on their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities.
If you want a greater chance of success, you can identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses while staying focused on the buyer’s point of view.
Some of the easiest ways to monitor your competitors are by becoming their customer and following them on social media.
Furthermore, you can also use various tools that help set up an alert system when your competitor publishes a new blog post, video or such marketing activity.
Your research of affiliate products within the same industry can help you understand what your audience really wants.
It is important to understand what issues you can solve for your audience.
2. Choose Who You Want to Promote To
If you do not know who you are trying to sell to, then you are going to create problems for yourself when it comes to selling. Many affiliate marketers forget to think about this.
In fact, it is almost impossible to succeed with affiliate marketing if you do not have control over your target market.
To find the right customers that you would like to help with your affiliate products, you can ask yourself the following questions:
What problems does your target market have?
What products should you choose to help your target audience?
Where do they hang out online?
What gender are they, how old are they, where do they live, and how much money do they make?
What products can you choose that are related to your current company?
You need to find your own tribe, establish trust, deliver consistent value, and then they will start buying the products you recommend.
3. Select Your Platform
When it comes to choosing where to promote, it can be a bit confusing.
You should choose a platform that suits your temperament and has the right customer profile.
Below I have listed a number of the most popular platforms.
Once you have chosen your primary platform, you should of course create consistent content at least a couple of times a week.
I would recommend that you start with one platform so as not to get overwhelmed and therefore give up on your affiliate project.
YouTube
Many affiliate marketers are very successful in making videos on YouTube. Search for your closest competitors for inspiration and remember to write your link below your video. It is possible to sell all kinds of products and services on YouTube. Publish a video once a week or once a month. In the beginning, it may be a good idea to be very productive, so you have more videos lying around.
Follow me on YouTube
ClubHouse
A completely new platform that is exclusively audio. Many have already built up a large following on this platform. With a large following, you can direct your followers to your website or your other social platforms. ClubHouse has a very positive effect on your Instagram account as you can insert your link to your Instagram profile. However, this platform requires that you use your energy to get on the “Stage” to get many followers.
You can connect with me on the ClubHouse app here
This platform is still the world’s largest and should not be overlooked. You can create curiosity about your products through regular postings on your wall, but especially the history feature many have been successful in using. If you use the history feature, you should consider making more daily posts.
Connect with me on Facebook
Instagram is a great place to sell visual products. If you have affiliate products that are related to fitness, travel, consumer goods or health, Instagram is a good platform. To be successful on Instagram, you should post at least once a day.
Connect with me on Instagram
Blog
When you build your own blog, you have more ownership over your material. In addition, both Youtube and your own block are platforms where Google can help you on your way in searches. You should focus on creating good and relevant content where SEO is the focus. Of course, you can also pay for traffic through the social platforms to your website. Write a post once a month to keep the Google algorithm warm.
Pinterest is a great place to sell affiliate products to a predominantly female audience. According to experts, it is recommended that you post at least 3 new pins a day.
Tik-Tok
TikTok is a relatively new social platform with lots of potential. Especially in the younger segment. Follow creators who get many views for inspiration. With TikTok you have the opportunity to succeed without original material. Find trending videos and emulate with your own style so you can have great success without being particularly inventive.
This is probably the most serious platform to promote on. If you want success with this platform, you will not get far with videos where you dance to a trending song. Consider creating valuable posts to attract your customers through this platform. Create relevant relationships and create value for your followers.
Of course, there are many other social platforms that you can use. In the future, there will be even more, but the important thing is that you find a platform that fits with your personality and your style.
4. Produce Your Sales Funnel
Some studies show that our online attention span is worse than a goldfish.
This means that you only have a few seconds to get the attention of a potential customer.
The competition on social media is fierce and it is easy to drown in the crowd.
You can have a squeeze page/landing page on your website or you can guide your topics directly into the affiliate offer.
Later in the text I will explain why I think you should have a landing page and not guide the topics directly to the affiliate offer.
Once you have your landing page in place, it’s time for you to generate traffic for your affiliate product or service.
5. Drive Traffic to Your Affiliate Offers
Now you have chosen your product and you know who to market to.
There are two ways you can drive traffic to your affiliate offer. One is organic traffic, and the other is paid ads.
You can generate traffic organically by making live videos, YouTube videos, blog posts and posts on your social media, but it may well take time before you experience results.
However, you should not skip organic traffic if you want to have a long lasting business.
As Google is the world’s largest search engine, you should be aware that you are constantly updating your website with SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Ranking your website on Google with valuable phrases in a search engine over time can be extremely effective.
It takes longer to generate traffic this way but can be extremely beneficial 4 to 6 months later.
The fastest and perhaps best way to drive traffic to your sales funnel is by running paid ads on a platform like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest or Google.
On YouTube, you can run ads for other influencers’ followers. So, pick a few influencers who have the same target market as you, and run ads for their followers.
Do not start running ads until you have studied a bit on the subject as it can cost you many expensive dollars to do it wrong.
When choosing your ad targeting options, try only to show ads to your ideal market. It will cut down on the price per. click and keep your business profitable.
You can also consider using paid promotion. This is a little different than paid ads, but just as effective.
With paid promotion, you reach out to other sites and influencers who serve your target market.
You pay them to promote your business or affiliate products. You should always be aware that they remember to use your affiliate link.
Use different traffic sources to generate sales for the product.
Use your Facebook page, website, blog posts, emails, and other free tools.
Make sure your website is properly linked and ranked in the search engines.
6. Build Your Reputation
Your credibility is super important when you want to build a solid affiliate business.
When promoting products / services in a niche, the best way to sell is to promote it with integrity.
You will not sound like a salesperson promoting certain products or services just to make money. If your target audience does not trust you, they will most likely not trust the product is good.
If the product or service you are promoting is relevant to your audience, they will not mind the content.
But if they feel you are trying to cheat on them, they are likely to leave you and not return.
Familiarize yourself with the products so that you can more easily gain trust when you talk about the products.
This will give you the winning advantage over your competitors as you will have knowledge of how your affiliate product or service benefits your potential customers.
You can study the product, its features, benefits and how it addresses the audience’s pain points.
You can play your part in community forums and discussion groups by talking about how related topics and not just the products and services you promote.
If your potential customers feel you can help them you are much closer to an affiliate commission.
Remember, it is your repeat visitors that are most valuable to you; These are the ones who will recommend your site, which will increase your customer base.
You get no value out of those you have lured at once by misleading them.
You need to be honest and ethical with your customers and build relationships with genuine content.
If everything they see is a profit motive and do not think about helping them, they will not come back.
And in the worst case, they can give you negative comments on social media so you will have a very hard time achieving success.
7. Build Through Consistency
It’s super boring to hear over and over again, but consistency is the key to achieving long-term goals.
It’s frustrating, painstakingly slow, but there’s actually no such thing as overnight success.
To be successful with affiliate marketing success, you are forced to stick to the established route.
On the other hand, the reward is great when you can later get a commission via an old YouTube video you made 2 years ago.
If you create fantastic and timeless content that people want to see in 2 years, you have come a long way. Remember that everything you do on the Internet exists in the future.
Do not be afraid to experiment until you find your own style and most effective way to generate sales.
Make sure most of what you produce is “evergreen” so you don’t have to spend a lot of energy changing links, updating dates and content.
Make sure your content is relevant, entertaining, useful and / or informative.
8. “Patience is a Virtue”
You have probably heard the old adage “patience is a virtue” and this is especially true of affiliate marketing.
Most affiliate marketers start their journey at a very slow pace and give up before they start to see any progress.
It takes months to build a YouTube channel, a good blog and content that can get people to buy your affiliate offers.
Instead of staring blankly at your missing sales curves, you should tighten up and produce lots of content, build relevant links, make contacts and do SEO.
The frequency of your posts or uploads must remain consistent for your followers to grow as you establish authority in the marketplace.
Affiliate marketing success is long term and it is therefore important that you do not lose the spark.
Take comfort in the fact that most of your competitors give up before they achieve success and optimize your work processes so that you get the things that are needed.
Stay the course and you will come out the other end with a winning business.
9. Learn – Teach – Repeat
You should be willing to learn as affiliate marketing success is long and requires constant learning.
You need to become the expert. It is important that you learn new skills and build your understanding of the industry.
On this journey, you should enjoy the process of growing instead of focusing on your lack of profits.
Learn from the best in the industry by continually finding mentor help.
As you continue to grow and learn, you can become an expert in this field by sharing your learning.
Be sure to become an expert in your niche!
If you are considered a reliable expert, you may later make extra money teaching others who want to learn affiliate marketing.
A big part of maturing in your niche is sharing what you have learned in your community.
If you have been through the initial work of identifying and executing successful affiliate strategies, it would be obvious to teach and help people who are new to affiliate marketing.
This will improve your authority and reputation in the niche you have worked in.
Why niching down is crucial for your success
10. How to Put Turbo on Your Affiliate Business
It will be tempting to sign up for the first affiliate links that you see, choose products you use and return to yourself.
Less is more… keep your product list short, especially when you are just starting out.
Focus on successfully promoting these products before adding more affiliate links.
The best affiliate links are usually the ones you already use in advance or have a positive knowledge of.
If you want to make a lot of money as an affiliate, I can recommend that you follow these tips…
Some people are confused about how affiliate marketing works, but the process is actually quite simple.
Affiliate marketing is actually simpler than you might think and generally consists of only 3 steps if you want to do it in the most effective way.
1. Your own landing page
2. Your own Thank You page
3. Your own email follow up series
When you start generating traffic, it’s a good idea not only to direct them to the product itself directly.
You should instead have your own landing page, so you have the opportunity to collect email addresses.
CONCLUSION
I hope you are ready to give your competitors rear wheels when it comes to affiliate marketing.
The fact is that quite a few percent buy the first time they see a product or service.
With an email address, you can influence your topics and maybe even sell other products and your own expertise along the way.
Ps.
In this blog post there are quite a few links to affiliate products.
I recommend that you click on the various links to see examples and to be inspired for your own affiliate adventure.
Kind Regards
Erik Praecius
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