A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 1 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin What is affiliate marketing? A liate marketing is when you promote other companies’ products. When someone buys through your a liate link, you get a commission. As an a liate, you’re a salesperson for the company. You help to make a sale, the company rewards you. The best thing about a liate marketing is that you can do it at scale. A typical salesperson only sells products from one company. As an a liate marketer, you can promote products from many different companies and earn commissions from all of them. How does affiliate marketing work? The merchant gives each a liate a unique link so they can track who was responsible for a sale. The link will usually look something like this: When someone clicks that link, a small le called a cookie gets stored on their device. An a liate cookie does two things: 1. It helps the merchant attribute the sale back to the right person; 2. It (usually) holds an expiration date, so you get paid even if the buyer delays their purchase. Here’s an example of how this works. A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 2 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin But they realized they have to pick up their daughter from school. So they leave their house, pick up their daughter, have dinner, and then nally go back to Amazon where they nd the product again. Since they’re already shopping on Amazon, they decide to purchase some ski gear too. Here’s the good news. Earlier, they clicked on your a liate link and a cookie was stored on their device. Because Amazon has a 24-hour cookie duration, you get compensated for both the winter jacket and ski gear—even though you didn’t promote the latter. How much money can I make as an affiliate marketer? The simple answer is that there is no limit. It depends on your niche and the amount of work you put in. The most successful a liate marketers make six or seven gures a month. For example, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income made over $100,000 in a liate commissions in December 2017 Imagine that a reader visits your post about the best winter jackets. They click on one of your a liate links, leading them to a product on Amazon. A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 3 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin Ryan Robinson, another a liate marketer, reported over $19,000 in a liate revenue in . Another successful a liate website—The Wirecutter—made an , and was eventually October 2019 estimated $10 million in revenue sold to the New York Times for $30 million Keep in mind though that these people have done an excellent job building their brand. It’s taken them years of hard work to reach this level. If you’re just starting out, your checks might look more like this for a while: A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 4 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin You need to manage your expectations. You won’t earn the big bucks right off the bat, but don’t let this discourage you. The success of others tells you that with hard work, time, and the right knowledge, you too can potentially reach those levels. How to get started with affiliate marketing Follow these seven simple steps. A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 5 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin 1. Decide on a platform 2. Choose your niche 3. Find af liate programs to join 4. Create great content 5. Drive traf c to your af liate site 6. Get clicks on your af liate links 7. Convert clicks to sales Step #1: Decide on a platform Theoretically, you can do a liate marketing on any platform. Even Instagram works. However, it’s much easier to build an audience and increase your a liate sales via one of two channels: a blog or YouTube channel. Starting a blog today is relatively easy and cheap. There are plenty of tutorials online that teach you how to get started. The best part? It’ll likely only cost you a few dollars per month. Once your site is up, so that you have a . From there, you’re free to add a liate links in your content. (There is an art to doing this, which we’ll cover later in this guide.) optimize it for search engines better chance of ranking A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 6 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin The other platform is YouTube. Creating and uploading content to YouTube is free, which makes it ideal for many people. , and include a liate links in your description. Optimize your videos for SEO One of my favorite examples is on , where various YouTubers review books: BookTube Note that you’ll need to disclose the fact that you’re including a liate links. The to be transparent when receiving income from an endorsement. Federal Trade Commissions ( ) requires you FTC If you’re using a blog, create a standalone page, or include it in the footer of your website like this: A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 7 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin If you’re doing it on YouTube, include it in your description: Now, you’ll likely get more clicks from a blog than a YouTube video. For that reason, most of the examples going forward will be for a blog. Step #2: Choose your niche Let’s be honest: if you’re starting a blog today, you’re facing a ton of competition. that the number of bloggers in the U.S will reach 31.7 million by 2020. Statista estimates To stand the best chance of success, niche down. Choose a topic that . For example, the topic of “food” is an enormous category. Rather than tackling that, try something more speci c, like grilling food. focuses on a speci c category A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 8 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin Keeping your topics tight can help you build a more focused audience and potentially help you rank higher in search engines That’s what I did when I built my rst site. Instead of talking about “dance” or “hip hop,” I decided to limit myself to just breakdancing. Despite not knowing anything about back then, I managed to rank for a few key terms and generate ~3,000 organic visits per month. SEO Later on, as you cover the bulk of this category and build tra c to these pages, you can expand into other areas. Now, if you’re going to be the main content creator, choose something you’re interested in Many a liate sites die due to a lack of consistency. So at the very least, if you’re passionate about a topic, you’ll nd it much easier to press on when the going gets tough. Don’t worry if you’re not an expert in the eld. As , “document, don’t create.” Documenting what you’ve learned can make great content and attract people who are interested in following your progress. Gary Vaynerchuk puts it If you’re , then it’s better to work with seasoned experts in the niche. Experts can help you create high-quality, trustworthy work, which can lead to more tra c, engaged visitors, and more a liate sales. outsourcing the content A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 9 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin Step #3: Find affiliate programs to join There are three types of a liate programs to choose from. A. High-paying, low-volume affiliate programs These are a liate programs for niche products with high payouts. For example, ConvertKit’s a liate program pays almost $700 per month if you send just 80 customers their way. However, as they sell software for small business owners, there’s a limited pool of buyers. CRM There also tends to be more competition for programs with high commissions. Since you’re probably just starting, it’ll be quite challenging to make a meaningful amount of money competing against skilled marketers with deep pockets. B. Low-paying, high-volume affiliate programs These are a liate programs for products with low payouts but mass appeal. A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 10 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin The redeeming quality of these types of programs is that they usually offer tons of products to sell. Take Amazon’s a liate program, for example. You can earn up to 10% commissions on almost anything Amazon sells. The other good thing is that you often get commissions on the entire value of the purchase rather than just the product you recommended. To make these types of a liate programs pay, you’ll need lots of tra c. C. High-paying, high-volume affiliate programs These are a liate programs for products with mass appeal, which also pay high commissions. One example is credit cards. Everyone needs a credit card, and most people (sometimes even decades!) stay with the company for years For example, take games. Lots of people play , but the average cost of a game is only around $50, and a liate commissions are usually in the single digits. This means you’ll earn $2–3 per sale if you’re lucky. PS4 PS4 A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 11 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin And since this is a tutorial for beginners, I won’t go any deeper into this. Just be aware that these programs exist. How to decide which affiliate programs to join This depends on your niche and level of expertise. If you’re targeting consumers, you’ll likely go with the second model of low commissions and higher sales volume. If you’re going after a business audience, you’ll likely go for the rst model: high-paying and low volume. The most popular programs here are for software and web hosting- related products. The best way to nd these a liate programs is with a Google search. The downside of these types of products is that they attract a liate marketers with lots of expertise and deep pockets. Some also use spammy tactics that you just can’t compete with. A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 12 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin Alternatively, enter a competing a liate site into and go to the report. Ahrefs’ Site Explorer Linked domains For example, I know that Pat Flynn promotes a number of software products on his website, Smart Passive Income. Eyeballing the Linked domains report shows that Pat links to Aweber pretty often. A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 13 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin Clicking the “Links from target” caret reveals that Pat is an a liate. It only takes a quick Google search to nd an application form for this program. However, if there is a product you’d really like to promote without a public a liate program, reach out to the company and ask if they would be willing to build an a liate relationship with you. Step #4: Create great content If you want your a liate site to succeed, you need to create high-quality content where your a liate links t naturally. A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 14 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin Here’s an example. Tim Ferriss and asked them this question: interviewed 100+ famous people What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)? He published the answers in a blog post and included a liate links to the products mentioned: Judging by the comments, his fans loved it. This is what you have to emulate when creating content for your a liate site. Don’t just blindly curate products from Amazon’s best sellers. Go the extra mile to make sure your content solves the visitor’s problem. How? If you’re doing reviews, . This is what the Wirecutter did, which explains their success. actually purchase the product and test it A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 15 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin If you don’t have money to buy every single product, you can always start with what you have at home. For example, if you had a tech blog, you could create reviews on the gadgets you own. Step #5: Drive traffic to your affiliate site You’ve created great content. The next step is to get more people to read it, so they will click on your a liate links. Here are three tra c strategies to consider: A. Paid traffic This is where you pay for tra c to your site. You can do this using ads. PPC The advantage of paid tra c is that the moment you start paying, you get tra c. However, there are some downsides. First, running ads will dig into your pro ts. It’s quite normal for advertisers to lose money before they make it... if they ever do. A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 16 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin You need to be realistic about how long it takes to optimize a paid tra c campaign. Secondly, once you stop paying for ads, your tra c will stop. Generally speaking, ads are a great tra c strategy if you’re part of a high-paying a liate program and can make the numbers work. But if you’re completely new to paid marketing and have no marketing budget (or are working with lower commission programs like Amazon Associates), then it might not be such a great idea. B. Search engine optimization ( ) SEO is the practice of optimizing pages to rank high in search engines like Google. SEO For as long as you can rank high in the search engines for your target keywords, you’ll get consistent and passive tra c. On the , is about: most basic level SEO A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 17 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin Understanding what your target customers are searching for; Creating content around those topics (blog posts, product pages, etc.); Taking care of the “technical” stuff to push these pages higher in the search engines (which includes ). link building Learn the basics in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvwS7cV9GmQ C. Build an email list Email lists allow you to communicate with your readers anytime. Use them to tell fans about new content and keep them coming back to your site for more. This leads to more a liate clicks and sales. You can even send a liate email promotions to your list directly: A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 18 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin To build an email list, you need to persuade the readers on your site to sign up. That means offering something valuable. At Ahrefs, we show a slide-in box at the end of every article: A liate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success Page 19 CLICK HERE -For Anyone Who Wants To Start A Pro table Online Business But Doesn’t Know Where To Begin Some websites like Gear Patrol also have a “subscribe” link on their navigation bar: But there are plenty of ways to do this. You can also offer a free eBook, an email course, etc. All you need is some creativity. Step #6: Get clicks on your affiliate links Just because you have an amazing piece of content doesn’t mean people will click on your a liate links. There are a few things you need to consider.