Affiliate marketing is the future of marketing. The affiliate industry is growing at an exponential rate. You may not know it, but you are already a part of it. If you have ever clicked on an ad or bought something on Amazon, then you are a part of the affiliate marketing industry. It’s a market estimated to grow by billions in the coming years.
One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you don’t need any startup funds to get started. You can start your own business with just an affiliate link, and then use the profits from that affiliate link to reinvest in your business and grow it over time.
The key when it comes to affiliate marketing is making sure that you have an audience before you start promoting any products or services on your website. If you have no audience whatsoever, then there’s no point in starting an affiliate marketing site because you won’t be reaching many people.
The great thing is that you can start, even with a small following, right now, and here’s how in just 5 simple steps!
1) Find a product or service that you believe in and want to promote.
The first step to marketing a product is to find one to market in the first place! Since the monetizability of affiliate marketing is based off of how much you sell, a good rule of thumb is to always advertise things within your niche to some degree. Your followers are following you for a specific reason. If you give them something they don’t want they won’t buy it.
Furthermore, by choosing something within your niche, it becomes easier to market and advertise for you. You can write a better, more direct ad, as well as easily showcase it on your page.
By finding something you believe in that’s related to your niche you can effectively market it better and therefore have a higher chance at making money.
Of course, the more vague your niche is the more easy it is to sell things. If you’re entering your respective line of work with the intention of focusing on affiliate marketing, you might find it in your best interest to choose something easy to work with and widely available.
2) Choose the affiliate network (or networks) you want to work with.
Even with a good game-plan you need to have a source of getting affiliate links to market in the first place, which is where affiliate networks come into play.
There are a ton out there. Many offer benefits others don’t, while some work with better companies than others. Our personal favorite is Impact, due mainly to the fact that the platform works alongside very high-quality brands and offers the advertiser high commission rates.
The application process is quick and simple and the better your website is the higher of a chance you have to land great marketing opportunities!
Another one we recommend is FlexOffers, which has great positives too. Whatever platform you use is up to you, but finding the right one is key to getting affiliate links that people will click on.
3) Create your own website or blog and create content around the product or service you are promoting.
So now you have a product category in mind, and you have a means of getting the marketable material. What’s next? Marketing it of course!
In order to market your products, you need to be able to have a platform to do it from. The best way to do this is through a blog page, however you can do affiliate marketing with a social media page. Either way, it works out.
The best way to make more money off of affiliate marketing is to get more followers. The more people you have engaging with your posts the higher chance you have at getting them to click on your links. It’s the same for a blog page too. When you write eye-catching articles with strong headlines you have a higher chance at getting more people to click on your links.
Then you can start making money.
4) Connect your website or blog with the affiliate network of your choice
Then the next step in the process is to, of course, actually use your links.
In order to get money off of clicks and purchases made via your referrals, you have to take the links from the website and somehow put them into your articles or link funnels (such as linktree).
Once a company accepts your application, and provides you their links and banners for marketing, you’re good! All you need to do then is cleverly put them so that someone may click on the link. One way you could do this is by linking specific phrases in your article so that when a potential customer clicks on them they get taken to the link of your choice.
However you go about it is up to you, but you need some way of directly advertising the affiliate links in question on your site or page.
5) Monitor your progress with reports from the affiliate networks, as well as social media analytics tools
Now you’re ready to market! The more you write articles with affiliate links in them, the higher chances you have at making money off of them.
Make sure as you’re writing to always be checking your statistics. The way in which you go about this depends on which platform you use to market on. Most mainstream websites or website-platforms have certain tools and techniques to easily looking at what gets more impressions, clicks, and views.
You should try to then prioritize those posts that get more attention, as this increases your chances at getting more viewers and thus more clicks overall.
You should also monitor which links get clicked more than the others in order to see what products or services receive more positive feedback on your page.
