What exactly is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the practise of promoting another company’s product or service in exchange for a commission on sales generated. Commissions are usually a percentage of the sale price, but they can also be a flat fee.
Why should you use affiliate marketing?
Here are two reasons why you should think about getting into affiliate marketing:
1. It is low-cost and low-risk.
Starting a business entails incurring initial costs for products, employees, equipment, and rent, among other things. As a result, it is risky and costly. All you need for affiliate marketing is a website. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ve only wasted your time and a little money.
2. Scalability
A typical salesperson sells only one brand of product. As an affiliate marketer, you can promote products from a variety of companies while earning commissions from each one.
What is the process of affiliate marketing?
The merchant assigns a unique link to each affiliate so that they can track who was responsible for a sale. Typically, the link will look like this: When someone clicks on that link, a small file known as a cookie is placed on their device.
An affiliate cookie performs two functions:
Here’s an example of how this works.
Assume a reader comes across your post about the best winter jackets. They click on one of your affiliate links, which takes them to an Amazon product.
They soon realised, however, that they needed to pick up their daughter from school. So they leave their house, pick up their daughter, eat dinner, and then return to Amazon, where they find the product once more.
They decide to buy some ski equipment because they are already shopping on Amazon.
Now for the good news. They previously clicked on your affiliate link, which resulted in the placement of a cookie on their device. Because Amazon has a 24-hour cookie duration, you are compensated for both the winter jacket and the ski equipment—even though you did not promote them.
It assists the merchant in attributing the sale to the correct person.
It (usually) has an expiration date, which ensures that you are paid even if the buyer postpones their purchase.
Here’s an example of how this works.
Assume a reader comes across your post about the best winter jackets. They click on one of your affiliate links, which takes them to an Amazon product.
They soon realised, however, that they needed to pick up their daughter from school. So they leave their house, pick up their daughter, eat dinner, and then return to Amazon, where they find the product once more.
They decide to buy some ski equipment because they are already shopping on Amazon.
Now for the good news. They previously clicked on your affiliate link, which resulted in the placement of a cookie on their device. Because Amazon has a 24-hour cookie duration, you are compensated for both the winter jacket and the ski equipment—even though you did not promote the latter.
What can I expect to earn as an affiliate marketer?
The simple answer is that there is no such thing as a limit. It is determined by your niche and the amount of effort you put in.
The most profitable affiliate marketers earn six or seven figures per month.
How to Begin with Affiliate Marketing
Simply follow these seven easy steps.
Choose a platform.
Choose a niche.
Look for affiliate programmes to join.
Make really good content.
Increase traffic to your affiliate website.
Increase the number of clicks on your affiliate links.
Convert your clicks into sales.
Step 1: Choose a platform.
Affiliate marketing can theoretically be done on any platform. Instagram is also functional.
However, building an audience and increasing affiliate sales is much easier through one of two channels: a blog or a YouTube channel.
Today, it is relatively simple and inexpensive to start a blog. There are numerous tutorials available online that will teach you how to get started. What’s the best part? It will most likely cost you only a few dollars per month.
Once your site is up and running, optimise it for search engines to increase your chances of ranking. You can then include affiliate links in your content.
YouTube is the other platform. Because creating and uploading content to YouTube is free, it is ideal for many people. Make your videos SEO-friendly by including affiliate links in the description.
Step 2: Pick a niche.
Let’s face it: if you’re starting a blog today, you’re going to face a lot of competition. According to Statista, the number of bloggers in the United States will reach 31.7 million by 2020.
Niche down to increase your chances of success.
Select a topic that focuses on a single category. For example, the topic of “food” is a vast one. Instead of tackling that, try something more specific, such as grilling food.
Keeping your topics focused can help you build a more targeted audience and possibly rank higher in search engines.
Step 3: Look for affiliate programmes to join.
There are three types of affiliate programmes from which to choose.
A. Affiliate programmes with high pay-outs but low volume
These are affiliate programmes with high pay-outs for niche products.
ConvertKit’s affiliate programme, for example, pays nearly $700 per month if you refer just 80 customers to them. However, because they sell CRM software to small business owners, they have a limited buyer pool.
B. Affiliate programmes with low pay and high volume
These are affiliate programmes for products that have a low payout but a large audience.
C. High-paying, high-volume affiliate programs
These are affiliate programs for products with mass appeal, which also pay high commissions.
What factors should you consider when deciding which affiliate programmes to join?
This is determined by your specialty and level of expertise.
If you are targeting consumers, you will most likely choose the second model of low commissions and high sales volume.
If you want to target a business audience, you’ll probably go with the first model: high-paying and low volume. The most popular programmes are for software and web hosting products.
Step 4: Produce high-quality content.
If you want your affiliate site to succeed, you must create high-quality content with natural affiliate links.
Step 5: Increase traffic to your affiliate site.
You’ve created some excellent content. The next step is to encourage more people to read it and click on your affiliate links.
Consider the following three traffic strategies:
1,Paid traffic
This is where you pay to have people visit your website. You can accomplish this by using PPC advertisements.
The benefit of paid traffic is that you get traffic as soon as you start paying.
However, there are some drawbacks.
To begin with, running advertisements will eat into your profits. It’s common for advertisers to lose money before making money
You must be realistic about the time required to optimise a paid traffic campaign.
Second, if you stop paying for advertisements, your traffic will immediately stop.
Ads, in general, are a great traffic strategy if you’re a member of a high-paying affiliate programme and can make the numbers work.
2, Search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO is the practise of optimising pages so that they appear high in search engines such as Google.
You’ll get consistent and passive traffic as long as you rank high in search engines for your target keywords.
On the most basic level, SEO is concerned with:
Recognizing what your target customers are looking for;
Creating content (blog posts, product pages, etc.) around those topics;
Taking care of the “technical” aspects that will help these pages rank higher in search engines.
3, Create an email list
You can communicate with your readers at any time by using email lists.
Use them to notify viewers of new content and keep them returning to your site for more. This leads to an increase in affiliate clicks and sales.
You can even send affiliate email promotions directly to your list:
Step 6: Increase the number of clicks on your affiliate links.
Just because you have fantastic content does not guarantee that people will click on your affiliate links.
There are a few things to think about.
A. Link positioning
Clicks will be few and far between if all of your affiliate links are at the bottom of the page, where people rarely scroll.
Make every other word in your introduction, on the other hand, and your content will appear spammy.
You must strike a balance between link placement and the other factors listed below.
B. Context
Assume you’re writing an article about the best kitchen knives under $50.
Your introduction should not look like this:
Today I’m going to go over the best chef knives.
The links appear to be out of context and spammy.
This makes more sense:
Today, I’m going to review three different chef knives that you can get on Amazon for under $50. They are as follows: product name 1, product name 2, and product name 3.
C. Calls to action
Using callouts such as buttons, tables, and boxes can help draw your readers’ attention and make the post easier to skim.
When the Wire cutter shares a top pick, for example, they use eye-catching boxes with product links.
Step 7: Convert your clicks into sales.
To make money with affiliate marketing, you must complete two conversions.
The first conversion is a product page click.
You have complete control over this action. Use the strategies outlined above to increase your chances of getting that click.
The visitor purchasing the product is the second conversion. The merchant controls the checkout in the case of affiliate marketing, and their conversion rates are beyond your control.
The trick is to use the game to your advantage and look for merchants with high-converting programmes.
conclusion
First and foremost, concentrate on making your first affiliate sale. Set new goals and keep experimenting as your site grows.This is how you build a site that will eventually generate a good income.
