How to start with Affiliate Marketing? A 7-step guide for closing your first affiliate marketing sale
Affiliate marketing is one of the best sources of passive income and if done right, it can exceed your active income! However, you will have to do some groundwork before you learn howto start with affiliate marketing.
To start with, you will have to take care of a few points before earning the first affiliate points. In the start, you need to be proactive and close in on your affiliate sales. If you have the drive and determination to close it, you will definitely become a successful affiliate marketer.
Closing on the first affiliate marketing sale is the key and once you have your first sale, it will serve as a major motivating factor to drive you through the subsequent affiliate marketing programs.
The majority of effort is predominantly involved in your first sale and in this article, we will take you through the 7 key steps required to earn your first affiliate commission.
The 7-Step Guide for closing your first affiliate marketing sale
Read on to know more about the 7 key steps required for closing your first affiliate marketing sale.
Before you start building a website of your own, you will have to decide on your niche and the target audience that you will be looking for.
In case you are not aware of the industry you are targeting, you will not be able to build a website along with the similar content.
Ask yourself a few questions and your thought process will automatically lead you to the answer:
- In which area does my passion lie?
You will start finding your work interesting when you are work on areas that you have a passion towards. Also, your knowledge will be substantially higher in your areas of passion and hence, it is recommended that you pick your niche around the area that interests you.
- Does your niche have good money?
Sometimes, the chances of making good money in the niche industry you are passionate about are lesser. Hence, when you are looking to be an affiliate marketer, it is recommended that you carry out your research before picking a niche area.
There are some businesses that are solely built owing to the passion and there is very little money involved.
- Can you write over 100 blog posts in the niche area?
When you pick a niche area, you should make sure that it has enough areas to cover that you can write ample content about it. When you want to be up there in the search results, you should make sure that you can churn out quality content. In case there is little content available about a topic, there are lesser chances that you show up higher in the search results and in turn, lesser chances of people buying from you.
You can always refer to the model of MoneySavingExpert, which provides with a variety of topics that have a wide range of ideas available.
- Will the niche area be able to accommodate another affiliate marketer?
Some of your audience might also feel attracted to this niche and they might end up becoming your competitors. You will have to consider this factor as well and be doubly sure that when there is a new entrant, your business will not take a hit.
- Does this niche have affiliate marketing programs available?
Although you would be able to pick a niche market and there is also enough content available, you need to make sure that it has affiliate marketing programs available. In case there is not, there would be no point in trying to monetize your content.
A few other resources required while picking your niche
There are a few other articles available if you are confused while picking your niche. Stay tuned to read more about it.
- Research about Affiliate Programs
After having decided on your niche market, the next essential step that you should consider is about the terms and conditions of the programs or marketing products that you intend to promote. While you would have touched upon the surface while picking your niche, you should do in-depth research about your niche.
Although you might end up spending some time on picking the affiliate program, it is okay to invest significant time in picking your niche, as this might be your next source of passive income and hence, sufficient research would translate to great returns.
Listed below are some key factors you need to consider while picking an affiliate program:
- Know about the type of merchants that make use of this affiliate network or program?
Prior to settling in on a niche, you should make sure that there are other sellers who are using the same network, as your chances of success increase significantly when there are multiple players.
- The commission payout for the products
When you sign up for any programs, you should make sure that they are profitable and fetch you considerable returns on your investment. Here are some thumb rules you could follow:
- When you use ClickBank, the commission payout rates for the product should be over 50% and typically around 60%.
- In case of CPA, or cost-per-action programs, your commission payout should be more than $1 and there should not be high restrictions on the way in which you promote the product.
- In case of physical products, the payout should be over $40 as commission.
- How well can you associate with the product and services?
When you are selling something, it should be of good quality and you should be able to associate yourself with it well. You should essentially believe in the product and everything around it, as it will form the sales pitch for the audience. If you need to have a great level of trust coming from your audience, you have to ensure that you can personally vouch for the products and services you are marketing.
With this, you should also take a call if you want to market products that are new in the market and might not even see the light of the day.
- The support provided by the program
Also, make sure that you check on the customer support that is provided by the affiliate program after you sign up as an affiliate. If needed, speak to existing sellers and know more about how they are finding the program to be. Is there a wait time or can you have someone on the hotline when you need any assistance? When you write to them, do they revert immediately or how long would it take before they respond. This is essential because you would definitely need their support at one point or the other.
A few other resources required while picking the right affiliate program
There are a few other articles available if you are uncertain about the affiliate program you are planning to pick. Stay tuned to read more about it.
Building a website is one of the most important parts of learning how to start with affiliate marketing. While the previous steps are mainly about the research involved, from this step, you have to focus on building a profitable affiliate marketing program. You should put all your research into good use from this point.
Once your website is up and ready, you should start improving the quality of your website. You can have a website built within a few hours.
In case you have no experience in building websites, the easiest way you can do so is by using WordPress. This article link has a lot of useful tools and information about building your WordPress. The WordPress CMS is highly user-friendly and the although you can leverage your coding skills for building a website, it is not necessary to build a website.
Listed below are the steps involved in having a basic site ready:
The domain name is the website address that you have to buy, for setting up the website. This should essentially be your business name and as there are millions of websites available on the internet, there are high chances that you might not get what you are looking for. Hence, make sure that you have different options and backup names before you choose a nice domain name.
There are different websites from where you can purchase a domain. Some of the common websites that are available include GoDaddy and NameCheap.
While the domain name is the address of the website, the address should be hosted to make sure that it is live. You will need hosting services to host your website related content. The hosting costs have gone down significantly over the years. It is highly recommended that you stick to a well-known website hosting services company as you should not have any downtime for your website.
You can do your bit of research to know more about the different hosting services available. Some of the widely used website hosting services include GoDaddy, HostGator and BlueHost. Ipage web hosting can cost as little as $35 for a year of web hosting and a free domain.
In case you purchase the domain from a different company, you should link your website to the host. This process is simple and will not take much time either.
Once your hosting is sorted, you will need a Content Management System, or CMS, for which, we recommend WordPress. Even if you have no prior knowledge, it will not take much time for this and there is a one-click installation available for WordPress in most of the website hosting services. This way, you can install WordPress within a few minutes.
The theme of a website is required for stylizing the website and this is what people who visit your website would see. You can choose from thousands of themes that are available. We recommend that you pick a theme that is simple and easy to install, maintain and customize. The theme of the website can be changed at any later point in time.
You can go ahead with AffiloTheme, as it serves to be a great option owing to the level of customization offered and it is highly suited for affiliate marketers. This will serve as a shortcut as you would not have to get into the intricate details of website design. An alternative for this would be Theme Forest.
Once you have your website up and running, you need to have content for the website. You should make sure that the content you put up on the website should be relevant to the niche you have picked and the content should also be appealing and interest the audience. While you build the content, make sure that it is Search Engine Optimized, so that your website ranks in the top results of searches.
A few other resources required while building your website
There are a few other articles available if you need more clarity while building your website. Stay tuned to read more about it.
- Come up with Quality Content
Once the website is up and running, you should join an affiliate program and this would take a great deal of time, as you will also have to produce quality content to be successful in your affiliate business.
The content you put up proves to be a highly determining factor and hence, you should be a market leader when it comes to content. This can only be achieved by producing unique and high-quality content. There is no shortcut to this step.
Listed below are some content that can be classified as high-quality content:
You can have an affiliate model where you review the products and services that are available. It is a common model and serves as a great source of affiliate marketing strategy, generating considerable income.
There are websites that solely review mixers and grinders. They tell the user about when it would be purposeful to buy a particular product and by following the link when users buy the product, they are clicking on the affiliate link and the website would earn commission from their purchase.
- Coming up with blog posts to address the frequent questions and issues, leading your target market to you
You can also come up with blog posts that prove to be beneficial in having quality content on your website. When you create blogs, make sure that you carry out research around the keywords people would generally search for when they are looking for options in your niche. To further enhance your keywords, you can take a look at what your competitors or players in similar industries are targeting, thereby coming up with content on the same lines.
A good example for this would be Security Guard Training HQ, which has topics that people who are looking for security guard training would be on the lookout for. It also includes jobs, tips etc.
When you are developing content, make sure that you have content that is bound to last and the information you put in the content should not get obsolete or useless at any point in time. Hence, carry out quality checks on the content before you put it up. Prior to developing your content, spend some time in keyword research and ensure that you are using the keywords appropriately throughout the content.
No matter how new your car is, you would have to reach out to a mechanic at one point in time. Hence, you can have content around the lines of ‘What to do when you buy a new car?’ etc. so that the users are familiar with the website when they are visiting your website for what they actually want.
- Informative content always helps
It is recommended that you put up highly informative content. You could have an e-book on your website, which you can mail to your users. This way, you will also get the e-mail addresses of your intended audience. When you have a considerable number of e-mail addresses, you can come up with an email marketing campaign and this could lead to a great fraction being converted. When you have informational content on the website, it would attract followers and people would want to know more about the products and services you review. When you have significant traffic directed towards your website, you can also monetize the traffic in different ways available. A common option available to do this is AdSense.
You can have a Call-to-Action and lure people with an attractive giveaway, where you get the details about the users. Once you have their e-mail addresses in place, you can start a marketing campaign.
Do not have generic content on your website, as it might give you a spike in the number of visitors. However, that is not essentially what you would want in the long term and you would prefer having visitors who will be prospects: either now or at some time later.
A few other resources required for content creation
There are a few other articles available if you are confused while picking your niche. Stay tuned to read more about it.
With great quality content comes a great audience. When you have an interested audience, it will result in a constant flow of traffic and this way, even conversion rates will start picking up. We have some tips to help you build an audience for a new website that you have built:
- Use Social Media for content promotion
One of the best ways to advertise your content is using social media. Based on your niche, you can advertise on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ etc. so that you can target your intended audience at a minimal cost. By creating engaging content on social media, you can have better trust among people and they would in-turn promote your content when they like it.
Imagine having a page on Facebook with enough likes, nearly to the tune of 100k people. When you put content up on your Facebook page, you can reach out to these people and when the content is engaging enough, a considerable fraction would also visit your website and result in better conversion rates.
- Use Guest posting on blogs with high traffic
When the content is new, you can capitalize in on the audience of some other person. When you focus on building your content, you can write content on high traffic blogs that are apt for the niche you are working on. When you create content for a bigger website, it will put you in the limelight in front of a larger audience and eventually, it will lead to an increased traffic to your website.
You should always have an e-mail marketing list that is ever-growing. When you get into affiliate marketing, having an e-mail list is critical and you can send marketing emails to the audience, who have either visited your website or have made purchases from your affiliate link. This way, you have a better chance of cross-selling and up-selling the services and products. Once you gain enough trust with your audience, they will be looking forward to your emails, thereby driving your sales further.
- Using basic SEO methods to increase the search engine traffic towards your website
Organic searches matter significantly when it comes to your website traffic and hence, you should ensure that the content you have is search engine optimized. The content you build should be evaluated from a reader’s perspective and at the same time, work on the search engine optimization part of your content.
You can either learn the tips and tricks around SEO or can hire an SEO marketer to do the needful for you. The traffic to your website will only increase when your website starts showing up on the top results of search engines.
Affiliate marketers also make use of paid advertising to redirect more traffic towards their website, which eventually results in better conversion rates and better payouts. You can start by advertising on small websites appropriate to your niche and this way, some traffic can be redirected to your website. You can also try Google AdWords to redirect more traffic to your website.
A few other resources required while building an audience
There are a few other articles available on how to build a quality audience for your website. Stay tuned to read more about it.
- Affiliate Offer Promotion
This is a key factor to drive more affiliate sales your way. You can add value to your website by promoting the products that would serve to be useful to your audience and it would result in more people turning to your website.
There are different ways in which you can promote an offer. It mainly depends on the type of product or service that you are advertising on your website. Some ways in which you can promote the offers are as follows:
You can write an honest review of the products and services so that your audience place their trust in your reviews. Never review a product with solely the pros; also include the cons of a product. Audiences greatly value an unbiased opinion and once they know the product or service entirely, there are better chances of them buying it despite the flaws if any.
Towards the end of the review, add your affiliate marketing link, so that users end up buying from your link. You can have better sales using this approach.
Have banner ads on your website, so that you promote the content of affiliate offers. Generally, affiliate programs offer the flexibility to come up with their own creation of the offers. Place your ad on a website or web page that generates high traffic and it will certainly bring in more sales.
Another way marketers commonly use to promote offers is by having in-text links for the products and services they offer. Whenever the user clicks on the click and makes a purchase, the blog owner will earn a discount. The in-text links can be cleverly placed in between the article and will propel the users to visit the website. However, you need to have content around the in-text link to ensure that users click on the link.
After you build an e-mail list, you can promote your affiliate offers and promotions using the e-mail list. Prior to that, you should ensure that your audience is aware of your e-mails, as the chances of selling something drop significantly if you are sending an email for the first time.
There are many affiliate programs that run giveaway campaigns, discounts and promotions that might interest your audience. This is not only confined to smaller websites, but large websites like Amazon offer discounts for promoting discounts on your websites to visitors.
You should stay updated and be aware of such discounts and the terms and conditions that surround such affiliate programs. There might be restrictions in some places about how you can promote the content, such as not allowing e-mail marketing or posting on certain websites.
It is essential to put up a disclaimer on your website to make sure that your audience is aware of having affiliate offers on the page, which is also mandated by the FTC in the US.
A few other resources required for affiliate offer promotions
There are a few other articles available if you wish to know more about affiliate offer promotions. Stay tuned to read more about it.
- Continue with Steps 1 to 6
While you may disregard this step, it is essential that you do step 1-6 periodically. To ensure that you are on top of the competition, you should continue working. Never come out of the cycle of creating, promotion, marketing, innovating and selling, as it will help you stay on top of the competition.
It is vital that you emphasize on steps 4-6 periodically, as it will help you to stay updated and in-turn continue attracting more audience.
An Overview of the Strategy
Although the steps might seem to be time-consuming, you would never feel the same once you have your first affiliate marketing sale. Eventually, you will realize that everything you did to become an affiliate marketer was worth it.
It might take some time, effort and patience, but you can segregate the tasks and work on it – one thing at a time.
Learning how to start with Affiliate Marketing is very attainable. This strategy is tried, tested and has proven to be successful across niches. We highly recommend you stick to this approach and look at how things progress! Good luck with your new source of passive income! Let us know how it is shaping up!
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