Simple Steps to Start Affiliate Marketing…

Affiliate Marketing is a venture that’s fairly easy to get into. You don’t need to be an expert in this industry in order to be an effective affiliate marketer. You only need to know a few basic facts about affiliate marketing in order to start an online business that turns a profit. If you are interested in becoming an Affiliate Marketer, here are some simple steps to help guide you to to start a profitable affiliate marketing venture…

Can You Really Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?

Yes of course you can, but many have tried without much success.

The truth is, so many people who start Affiliate Marketing get disheartened after not seeing results in too short a time, and they give up way too quickly. This is why more than 90% of newbies fail.

There are people from all walks of life who start in some way, but many don’t seem to understand, its not overnight success. There’s a fair bit of upfront work to do, but don’t lose faith, all it takes is patience, determination, and a desire to succeed.

Affiliate Marketing can be fairly complex, even for those somewhat experienced in digital marketing. Fortunately, you don’t really need to know every detail to get started.

So what attracts people to this biz model?

• Affiliate Marketing is a simple business model that works! It’s one of the easiest and fastest ways to earn an income online.
• Affiliate Marketing is something that anyone can do, no matter what their technical skill level or age.
• It doesn’t take a big investment to start out, you can actually turn a profit as a beginner.
• You can work from home, or while travelling, or anywhere you have internet. As you work online, you are your own boss, and can make your own rules.
• You can continue on to become a professional Affiliate Marketer, or it can open gateways to many other forms of Internet Marketing.
• If done right, and you continually work on it, there is no limit to how much money you can make. It can end up becoming passive, round the clock income, and passive income also means you make money while you sleep.

We all like the idea of making money while we sleep, but like any other type of work at home business, Affiliate Marketing success also depends on the time and effort you put into it.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is simply the process of recommending or promoting other people’s products or services to earn a commission.

This is generally done via a website, blog, video or salespage, by sending people, AKA traffic, to a product, service or an affiliate offer of some sort. When someone purchases the product or offer, you will be paid your commission.

There are typically 3 or 4 players involved in the affiliate marketing game…

• The Seller/Merchant – the business selling the product or service.
• An Affiliate Network – an exchange between merchants and publishers (not always used).
• The Affiliate Marketer (or publisher) – you… responsible for sending traffic via affiliate links or ads, which when leads to a sale, a commission is paid to you by the seller.
• The Buyer/Consumer – Customers who buy the product or service from the seller, through your affiliate referral.

As an Affiliate Marketer, you would create a website or channel that is focused on a specific niche, and produce content around that niche, promoting affiliate offers of choice.

Decide on an Affiliate Marketing Niche

A profitable one at that!

Your Niche is the topic or industry that you want to focus on.
A specific part/category of a broader market that is made up of your potential customers that you will target in your affiliate marketing venture.

Choosing a niche is the most important step. You need to ensure that you’ve chosen the right category and/or sub-category, which has the ability to attract endless traffic.

A profitable niche is one where people are ready, willing and able to spend money. There will be some competition, but not so much that you will have to spend all your time and money fighting for consumer attention.

Most will fall under 3 main categories/markets… Health, Wealth and Lifestyle.

Niche Examples

Just a few examples of the many, many niches out there…

Health – Fitness, Weight Loss, Skincare, Back pain, Gut health.
Wealth – Internet Marketing, Investing, Gambling, Forex, Real Estate, Finance.
Lifestyle – Photography, Fashion, Pets, Travel, Fishing, Dating, Hobbies.

Some of the above niches are still quite broad . It would be better to niche down (choose a sub-niche) to find something less competitive.

For example:-

Wealth – Internet Marketing – Affiliate Marketing 🙂
Lifestyle – Photography – Food Photography

Like having a fitness blog is great but it covers too many smaller categories, think Weight Loss for a specific age or demographic. Supplements, Body Building, Nutrition etc.

Be Specific

The more specific your niche can be – the better!

Newbie Affiliate Marketers often think that choosing a somewhat broad niche helps you get more customers. However, this approach can set you up for failure, and not the success you’re after.

By focusing on something more specific, there will be a little less competition, therefore a bit more demand, and lower costs involved in promoting.

Not to be misleading, it’s ok to go for slightly broader niches, but expect it to take a longer time to make any money, and also to hire writers or outsource a fair bit of the work, so you’ll need some moolah up your sleeve.

What do you Know or Love?

If you select a category that you love, know, or could add value to, the rest of the process will be much easier for you. No need to be a complete expert… that will come over time. As long as the topic you choose will sustain your interest, the whole flow of things will come easier for you. If there’s enough market interest, you could be on to a winner!

Ask yourself the following q’s to help you decide, and make a list of potential niches.

What types of products or services are you interested in?
What hobbies, interests, or sports do you like to pursue?
Do you have any particular talents or skills?
Any issues that you are passionate about?
What are some things that you are knowledgeable about and can easily discuss with your readers?

After you have some topics in mind, (or on paper!), you now need to find out if they have enough market interest, and how it can be monetised. This is where research comes in.

Research Your Niche And Competition

To validate your ideas, you will want to do some thorough research.

Things to think about are search, demand, competition, and if there are decent affiliate programs or products for the niche you decide on.

The Niche research process is all about making sure there is a big enough audience in your chosen niche.

An effective way to research your niche and competition is to use keyword tools and analysis software built for this. Niche communities, Google, and Social Media are great places to get information as well.

Use Keyword Research Tools

There are many free or paid niche and keyword research tools out there, but the simplest way to start would be to use Google’s own tools which are free to use.

• Google Search Console is a great place to start to get “Opportunity Keywords” and see what people are searching for, and to find and research the competition.
• Google’s Keyword Planner is a solid go-to, to back up your ideas. Although it’s meant for paid advertising, you still get ranges of data.
• Google Trends is another good starting point, but you’ll need to use other tools to confirm that it’s not just a passing fad.

Check Social Media to find out what’s being talked about and promoted.

Free Keyword Tools

Some more free tools including links are…

• Ubersuggest – unlimited free searches, shows keyword suggestions, search volumes, keyword difficulties, historical data.
• Answer the Public – where you get a few free searches per day, or similarly, Answer Socrates – where you get unlimited searches.
• Quora – enter keywords into the search box to see what people are talking about.
• Subbreddit Stats -you can see which subreddits are growing and get topic ideas.
• Keyword Surfer – Chrome extension for content and keyword research.

Paid Keyword Tools

Some of the best paid Keyword/niche research tools are…

• Ahrefs – IMO, Ahrefs is best keyword research and SEO tool.
• SEMrush – Lets you perform research in multiple ways including keywords that are ranking for competitor websites.
• Spyfu.com – Great for discovering untapped or emerging markets.
• Similarweb – Estimates the traffic for competitor websites in your niche.

Paid tools may seem expensive if you’re just starting out, but you will continue to find these tools valuable and essential in your ongoing venture, as they have plenty of excellent features needed for your success.

Check Affiliate Products

What Affiliate products are available – what is out there for you to promote?

Check Affiliate Networks like Clickbank, or Shareasale to see if there are plenty of opportunities… or google your “niche Affiliate programs”.

If you dont have a site yet, joining some programs can be difficult, so it’s simple research for now, but here’s a tip…

Take notes or list down content ideas now (what you will write about). In this research phase, you should be able to list out a heap of content ideas. It’ll save you time and pain later.

And just as a reminder, picking something you know or love, will make it easier for you to produce content and you’ll be less likely to let your blog (or whatever channel you use) go stale. This is important!

Create Your Affiliate Marketing Website

Get started by building your platform. For now we’re talking about a website or blog.

Using the research you have done, build yourself a website/blog that is focused on your niche.

If you’re not at all familiar with how to create a website, things you’ll need to do this are…

• A domain name
• Hosting
• A CMS (content management system) WordPress is best
• Several important pages to start
• Some great content

Starting your own site is relatively easy and affordable. It works out to be around $10 a month.

Domain Name and Hosting

Finding a Domain name may possibly be one of the hardest things to do, so it pays to get a little creative here.

Go to Godaddy or Namecheap and play around for a while for a name that suits. Just don’t settle for anything too complicated. Try to keep it easy to remember, relatively short and of course, something related to your niche.

The rest of the process to getting your site online is quite simple. Buy some hosting, install WordPress, choose a theme, and you have yourself a basic site.

Once you have purchased your new domain name, you’ll need to sign up for some website hosting.

There are various types of hosting, from shared plans up to dedicated hosting, but to start with a shared plan is very affordable and sufficient.

Bluehost and Hostgator are great affordable options, and have one click WordPress installation integrated. Either of them is fine IMO, so maybe go to both sites and see which has the plan that suits you.

After you’ve installed WordPress, you will be given login information and you can start working on your site.

If you are new to site building and WordPress, click around for a while and get familiar with it’s user interface.

To choose a theme for your site, click on Themes and you’ll see WordPress has loads of themes to choose from, which are completely free to use, and easily customizable.

Next, some important or key pages needed are…

• Homepage (for some this will be a blog page)
• About Page
• Contact Page
• Affiliate Disclaimer (for when you include affiliate links in your content)
• Privacy Policy (if you are going to be collecting email addresses)

You can focus on the last 2 a bit later on, as for now, your site needs content.

Create Awesome Content

If you want your Affiliate Marketing website to succeed, you will need to create great content on a regular basis. A good amount of content is needed with naturally placed affiliate links.

All that research you did around your niche and affiliate products and programs, is a great place to start.

Start writing your first blog post, using keyword research tools suggested above.

If you have trouble writing, you could use a freelance writer. A professional freelance writer knows how to create content that will resonate with your readers.

Brainstorming content ideas should come relatively easy, but actually writing an epic piece of content can take time and effort.

Start with how to guides, review posts and list articles being amongst the easiest.

Make sure to have at least 10 to 15 articles on your site before you apply to affiliate programs. You’ll need that “Affiliate Disclaimer” page on your site as well. It’s also adviseable to have a “Privacy Policy” page.

Don’t get discouraged if you are rejected by some affiliate program providers as this happens from time to time. Try again later while you keep improving your site, or try different providers.

Looking Ahead

As your site grows, you will start to become an expert. You will learn more about SEO, optimising your site for traffic, affiliate tracking and making improvements where needed.

Experimenting with all the ways to make money; that’s where the fun begins!

Get Busy!

If you want to rank in search and get accepted into affiliate programs, start churning out some great content and fill that site up with awesomeness.

The key to making money successfully with affiliate marketing is to start focusing on making that first sale. Then a second and third and so on, and more importantly, don’t give up.

What you’ve read so far are basic tips to help get you started your affiliate marketing venture.

It is 100% possible to earn a reliable income as an affiliate marketer, but it may take time before you see any revenue from your site. Only YOU can determine your success.

Be Patient!

Successful Affiliate Marketers come from being patient and understanding that it’s not a fast or overnight business model.

It takes patience, determination, and a desire to succeed.

Some Tips to Consider

• Never stop learning
• Always take action
• Research your work
• Join affiliate forums
• Learn copywriting
• Track everything
• Read alot

Use these tips and examples to guide you, and start building your successful affiliate marketing business.