How to make money with Affiliate Marketing?

Just like the stock market, affiliate market is assumed to be a fast-tracked money making method. However, you could be far from right. Yes, I do agree that affiliate marketing is great for making money online. But, nothing comes without proper effort and smart/hard work. With affiliate, the work isn’t manual; rather it’s all a game of mind that is coupled with proper target marketing and unique content.

Before we jump in to learn the different ways to make money with Affiliate Marketing, let me first tell you something about this method of earning.

 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing can be summed up as a platform used by a blogger or content marketer for promotion of a brand or product for which the same online retailer provides you with some commission as you generate sales and traffic via your referrals.

Before I started working on my blogs to make it an ultimate affiliate marketing website, I had to understand how it works. Basically, affiliate marketing was something like rocket science to me. What I learnt from my journey are a few basics you need to know when getting started which include:

• You need to recommend a service or product to the followers you flaunt
• Your followers make a purchase using the affiliate link provided by you
• You get the commission promised to you by the brand

 

Now that you know the basics of affiliate marketing, let’s get started with how affiliate marketing helps you bag a good amount of money.

How it all starts: Affiliate Marketing

As I started my journey as an affiliate marketer, I didn’t have anyone to guide me. I was unaware of the dos and don’ts, so basically mine was a hit and trial run that came with a lot of failures and disappointments. However, I was determined and optimistic enough to carry myself through these failures and today things are working pretty well in terms of finance.

What many marketers today do is don’t take enough time to sort and plan things. Instead, they sign up haphazardly for every network for affiliate marketing they can lay their hands on.

The result being: a storm of overloaded and overwhelmed emotion.

For some of my affiliate websites, even I did the same. However, the failure taught me something no answers from search query ever taught. I started developing patience and a knack for prior planning before jumping in to catch the big fish.

Here are some things that you need to do before you actually start making money with the use of your affiliate networks.

1-Locate Your Power Niche:

Regardless of what you have heard about affiliate marketing, you cannot trend on all the niches available. You ought to pick something you are actually good at. Planning a proper niche will help you focus on the business and create engaging content. Further, it will make the acquisition of target market an easier process. There are a few things that you need to know when picking a niche which includes:

 

• Pick Something You Are Passionate About: Say, you love guitars! Wouldn’t it be easier to blog about things that you actually love? So, it is essential that you pick a niche that you are comfortable at or rather the one you love. This would make it easier for you to create engaging content.

 

• Vastness of the Niche: Now, as an affiliate marketer, you need to focus on a topic that is vast enough to create enough blogs in days to come. Affiliate marketing isn’t a task of a day or two. It is a continuously updated thing that requires information-rich blogs to be provided by the blogger. A lack of content in the niche can lead to a struggle in SEO and website ranking which lowers the inbound traffic.

 

• Don’t go for an oversaturated niche: Before jumping right into the niche selected by you, the first things you need to do is determine if the niche has already too much competition with no scope for another website to flourish. If you find that is the case, try and look for any other niche with less competition.

 

• Choose the Money Maker: If you are struggling with multiple niches, the key is to go with the one that brings you the best returns. Even though not everything is about money, having money as the reward for your efforts isn’t too bad as well.

2-Create A Website:

Once you have located a niche that is highly profitable, you need to create a blog and website. Now, you might think that creating a website could be a monstrous task. I thought the same thing and struggled to create a website with no knowledge of coding what so ever. However, things have started getting automated in recent years. The same applies to the creation of a website. You can opt for pre-build templates to create a wonderful website. The main focus of the website is your blog along with other pages which include:

 

• About Us: Make the “About Us” section of your website personable & allow people to know you properly.

 

• Contact: This particular section in your website should house all the contact details that you would be willing to share with the advertisers, readers, as well as potential partners.

 

• Disclaimer: If you have monetized the site, which in case of an affiliate website is true, you provide all the information in this section.

 

• Privacy Policy: Let your users know if you are collecting any kind of information from them or the way this information is being used.

 

• Terms of Service: This actually is the legal page that limits the liability you hold in any event of information or service misuse that is provided upon your website. Further, it also provides details about the responsibilities with regards to trademarks and copyrights.

 

• The Customer 404 Page: Having a customized 404 Page caters a better user experience in case of any error.

 

• Advertise: If you have plans to sell some on-site advertisements, this page lets the advertisers gather information with regards to the monthly views, available spots, contact form, and the audience demographics.

 

3-Create Engaging and Quality Content:

After creating the framework of your website, you are all set to add inappropriate content relevant to the niche of your choice. Some of the affiliate networks or programs require an already established site traffic, content, as well as monthly view to accept you as an affiliate partner. So, make sure you are ready to read through the requirements and be prepared with all before you start with the application. Now, this doesn’t suggest that you should have more than 100 blogs to start your affiliate marketing protocol. However, you should flaunt a minimum of 5 strong blog posts already networked with more in line.

 

4-Grow the Email List:

Yep, Email still ranks as one among the most recommended communication channel designed for marketers. It still flaunts a whopping $35 profit return for each $1 spent. What does this mean for you? This means you get a whopping 3500 percent of your investment. This is why you should try and spend some time to grow the existing email list.

 

5-Choose the affiliate Products for Promotion:

Before you shoot up with your content, you need to decide the services or products you plan on promoting in the niche decided. Create a proper list comprised of all the services and products that any user will look for in Google. After this, you can write reviews or blogs about the service or product using the affiliate links.

 

6-Always promote products which fill the requirement:

Try and survey the people interested in the target niche. What you need to do is understand the issues being faced. Are there any gaps in solutions available already in the market? Locate products that have been slowly picking up with the trend. If the products you have picked are actually good, your affiliate website will surely do well. Your audience requires a reliable solution and your website should give the same to them.

 

7-Use social media channels:

Today, without a doubt social media is the way to promote things. Whether it is a short video, any information, or blog content, everything can be promoted with the right set of rules and practices that help you target the right kind of audience and generate maximum traffic and hence better revenue. You can use amazing platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.

Now, the thing is targeting a specific section of the audience requires you to pick the best platform suitable for your niche. Say that you have a blog related to jobs. For this, you need to target websites such as LinkedIn that focus on career specifics. Now, if you have a fashion-based niche, Instagram could be a great website to promote your affiliate website.

 

8-Join a reliable network for affiliate marketing:

The networks for affiliate marketing are essentially popular online marketplaces over which the retailers list the services and products. Now, these products or services can be promoted by affiliate website. The marketing network serves as the middleman. As an affiliate, you might come across several websites that might require you to pay for sign up, but you don’t have to do that. This is because you are increasing their business and instead just charging them a minimal fee.

As far as my research and experience in affiliate marketing goes, here are some of the reliable affiliate networks for you to pick from:

• CJ Affiliate
• ShareaSale
• ClickBank
• Amazon Associates

Of course, you do not need to limit yourself when picking your affiliate network. However, if you are just starting, the safer option would be to go with these networks.

 

9-Always Track the Results:

Imagine you have planted a seed in your garden. How will you know if it has been growing well? The key is to track your seed’s growth which in this case is the progress of your affiliate program. You can use several tracking programs that aid you in proper planning and revenue generation. Make sure you check every few weeks whether your current strategy has been working and if not you can try and change things a bit to get better results.

 

Why should you opt for affiliate marketing?

Apart from being a good income source, here are some of the best reasons for you to pick affiliate marketing.

 

• It is Free:

Affiliate Marketing requires zero investment. Plus, marketing a product using the online platform is comparatively inexpensive as opposed to the traditional field marketing protocol. Plus, you can do it all by yourself and there is no need for an office or employees.

 

• No Need For Customer Support:

This obviously isn’t necessary as you aren’t creating the products.

 

• No Storage or Shipping:

All you need to do is promote and drive traffic to the website and everything else is taken care of by the product manufacturer or the online e-commerce website.

 

• Passive Income:

Even if you have a full-time day job, this affiliate marketing business can help you gain a passive income which is substantial enough to ramp up your overall income. Affiliate marketing lets you earn even if you aren’t able to come online at times.

 

• Work from Anywhere:

If you are doing well with your affiliate marketing website with regular income, you might not need to work full time. You can get this job done from any part of the world as long as you have proper internet access and a system at hand.

 

• Global Target Market:

With the affiliate market, you can connect with a lot many people all around the globe and promote a product while earning from the affiliate marketing website you own.

 

Bottom Line

I hope by now you have understood everything you need to start making money online with affiliate marketing. Earning through affiliate marketing requires a good chunk of effort, so make sure you don’t actually expect any instant results. It all starts with picking the right niche, followed by popular products in the very same niche, and so on. Maybe you might not get it right the first time. However, remember that practice makes a man perfect. The strategies for affiliate differ from one individual to another. While the basics are same, the strategies for affiliate marketing are like fingerprints, no two are the same. So, create a great future with affiliate websites that will help you make money with things you love such as blogging.