Interested in becoming an affiate marketer, but don’t know where to start?
Becoming an affiliate marketer is a great way to earn passive income from home. Because of Covid 19, many of us are looking for a home based business, and AM ranks at the top. It’s a great way to get paid for your opinion, and your recommendation for products and services.
Many of you already give your opinion publicly, and endorse certain products and services. It’s time that you setup a proper business and website to get paid for your opinions! It does take some effort to setup your platform and grow your audience, but it get’s easier once it’s setup.
5 Steps to earning your first affiliate commission
Step 1 – Choose an Industry or Niche
In this step, we choose a Niche product or service, or maybe an industry that you want to sell. The best part about being an affiliate marketer, is that you don’t have to only sell one thing. In fact it’s wise to not put all your eggs into one basket, and to promote several products. Not too many, but a handful of products or services to start. That way if something happens to one stream of income, you have another there as backup.
Are you passionate about an industry? Are you knowledgable or opinionated about a certain products? Let me know if you need help in brainstorming this process, I’m happy to help.
Step 2 – Build your Platform
- Buy Domain
- Buy and setup Hosting
- Install web designer program
- Install Theme
- Create Content
Some would say that step 2 would be to research merchants first. I would disagree with those people, because there are merchants for every industry. The key to being successful is to build your audience/network through your microphone. If your microphone is loud enough, and you’re engaged with a bigger audience, you can sell anything. Your platform will be your microphone, and you will share your blog/opinions and reviews through your social media. So start by building your website and designing it to support the industry that you want to engage.
You can book a free appointment with me to help you brainstorm. A 30 min. appt. should be all we need.
You can start searching for domain names and Hosting here:
BlueHost will offer the most affordable prices to get started. You can buy your domain and hosting through them. Your domain will cost about $14 usd/ year and hosting about $4/month. A templated website builder comes with their services free of charge. Start there, and see if you can design a website that makes you happy for free. If you find that you’re not happy with the free templates, contact me for more help. I can build your site, I can also build out your CRM and marketing platforms as well. Feel free to browse my services here.
Step 3 – Research Affiliate Programs
Once you have your website up, and you decide on the industry that you want to promote and play in. You will need to setup affiliate marketing relationships. You have two options here, you can go direct to the merchant/company if they offer Affiliate relationships. Or you can go to an affiliate network and browse there.
What’s the difference between setting up a direct relationship vs through an affiliate network?
This is a very good question, and worth considering. You will generally make a higher commission per sale by going direct. If all of your sales are counted, and the merchant is honest of course. Which doesn’t always happen btw, you may not have a way of tracking what traffic actually turned into a sale. What’s to stop them from paying out only 98 sales instead of 100? Would you know if all of your sales were being counted?
That is why having a good CRM setup is important. Not just for keeping notes on your clients, but to also provide tracking analytics and daily reports. Do some research into which CRM would be a good fit for you, or book a free appointment with me. I would be happy to discuss some of the best options available at what price.
So being a member of an Affiliate Network has a lot of advantages. They already have many merchants setup, with embeded links and banners to offer you. One of the most important factors, as a third party they keep the merchant honest and can track your sales for you. That way you are sure to get paid for the traffic that you drive. They get paid a small amount of what you sell, so they’re sure to make sure the sell is counted! I’m happy to discuss the difference between some of the networks out there. My top two that I recommend and use are Commission Junction (www.cj.com)and shareasale.com
You can search by industry, category, and top payouts ect.. Once you do your research on any of the merchants, you simply click to apply. The merchant will review your website and ask you how you advertise, and approve or disapprove you.
Top Factors to consider when choosing a Merchant
- How much commission you will make
- The market demand for programs and products
- Does the product or service resonate or conflict with your other affiliate relationships
- How long their referral period last, and can it occur more than once
Step 4 – Create and Produce New Unique Content
This is key to separate you from the competition. Think about the times that you’ve been to a friend’s facebook page. The times that here’s nothing there to see because they don’t ever comment. How about wishing a friend a happy birthday, but you notice that they haven’t been active for over a year. Do you still leave them a comment? Maybe, but the point is that the sqeaky wheel get’s the oil.
So creating unique content on each page will help with your search engine optimization. There are also several other factors to consider for SEO, but that’s another blog, because it’s extensive.
Build your Audience
- Blog Daily – Consistency is Key. Topics could include product reviews, Industry Insights, Industry or product or program Tips, addressing common questions and problems.
- Share your blog through social media
- Engage in comments in blog and make genuine connections on social media
- Create and produce marketing campaigns, SEM, email etc..
Best practices will entail categorizing your blogs into subjects that can easily be searched. When you share your blog with social media, it’s important to engage and nuture your audience. Not everything will be a plug for your business. You need to have a genuine conversation about a topic, product review, or common questions and problems. Providing tips on best practices or at least what you’ve learned, can start a conversation.
I’m not big on social media, but I’m getting better. I could also be better at sharing a weekly recap of my blogs on social media. I am however very good at creating email campaigns, monthly newsletters and target marketing campaigns. Also growing my database of subscribers. I can run an email campaign, and have hundreds of interested subscribers within 24 hours. It is common to only convert 1-2%, but you can work on that.
Step 5 – Create and Produce Marketing Campaigns
- Email Marketing Blasts
- Monthly Newsletters
- Blog – Product Reviews, Insider Insight/Tips, banner ads, text links etc.
- Weekly Recaps of your blog
- Social Media Share
- SEM – Search Engine Marketing paid campaigns (PPC, Google Adwords etc.)
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