Affiliate Marketing is a very popular and effective business model to make money online. However, not everyone knows the basic concepts and steps of affiliate marketing. The following content brings you to these basic steps. We usually talk about making money with affiliate marketing, which means selling anyone’s (almost) products/services to earn a commission.
Affiliate marketing is not an immediate money-making model, or it can make a lot of money in a very short period of time. This is the same as the business principle in the real world, and it takes a certain amount of time to accumulate. As for the length of time and how much money you can make, it depends on your understanding and hard work. Any business can make money, it just depends on how you do it.
The biggest advantage of this kind of business model is that it does not require much investment, background, experience. It needs study, practice, verify what you have learned and worked on, and repeat the process until you succeed. And this successful model can be copied, and everyone can do it.
If you are ready, let’s start.
Basic steps of Affiliate Marketing
Countless people buy and sell various products online every day. That is to say, this is full of huge business opportunities for affiliate marketers. ( Things that cannot be done in the real world are possible in the virtual world, breaking geographical and time constraints.)
The task or goal of affiliate marketers is to build a bridge to connect these people who are looking for products or services online (those people who are interested in a specific field are called audiences for your site). Then generate sales and earn commissions.
Okay, let me briefly describe the process of affiliate marketing.
Step 1: Niche: Choose Your Marketing Direction
Sometimes the virtual world has advantages over the real world. It can be said that you can make money with any product/market on the Internet. However, you need to choose a direction. Doing everything is equivalent to nothing. It is best to start with something you are familiar with or interested in, and then turn them into a profitable business.
The niche itself does not matter whether it is good or bad, any niche can make money. However, the following principles should be followed while choosing a niche:
(1) Don’t be too broad or too narrow
For example, TV isn’t a marketing direction ( not a niche).
Why?
This word is too broad to have a clear meaning.
What TV? TV app, TV sales, TV cabinet, TV channel， TV prices…….
So you need to add some words to narrow it into a meaningful longtail keyword.
Let me give you another example: Smart Android TV
Niche is a marketing direction, and you can find many opportunities under it:
- 4k android tv
- android tv smart player
- amazon android smart tv
- smart tv vs android tv
- ……
(2) The niche should be low competition
A niche is a keyword, a longtail keyword.
Low competition longtail keywords always give the opportunity of ranking on google. Such traffics is targeted with a high conversion rate.
Generally, if the search results are more than 300 or 400 ( Keyword search results in quotes）, it means that it is competitive and is difficult for your website to rank, that is to say, it is difficult to make money.
Such search refers to a precise search, a keyword with quotation marks on google, such as "Smart Android TV".
(3) A market with a certain number of consumer groups ( your audiences )
The smaller the niche, the lower degree of competition, and the more accurate the audiences. However, there must be a certain limit in detail. If the consumer group and the market are too small, there will be little profit.
According to many affiliates’ experiences, the number of search results is generally high than 100.
The opposite of a narrow niche: too broad. This niche lacks clear meaning and is highly competitive, difficult to rank and make money.
As a newbie, if you make a website called make money online, I believe that in this direction, you will not make any money. If you do a Google search, you will find that the competition is too fierce and the top websites are extremely professional. And your website cannot be ranked.
Free Training: How to understand and choose a niche- with video demo
Step 2: Build a Website
A website is a platform or a carrier. This is the most basic thing.
After completing niche research and getting the direction, the next step is to build your own website. The website is your business, your company, and a bridge that connects customers with affiliate products. You earn commissions from it month after month, year after year.
There is another important reason why you should have your own website:
The so-called affiliate marketing is that you can sell other people’s products for free. When you join an affiliate program, you will be assigned a special unique link (affiliate link) through which you can earn commissions.
However, many advertising sites such as Facebook ( Meta ), Google aAds, etc. do not allow you to directly use this link to advertise. And some merchants don’t allow you to lead traffics to their sites directly as well. You have to put these products/services with affiliate links on your website and then make money by promoting your website.
Moreover, you can be independent and not controlled by others with your own website.
(1) Obtain a domain name
The domain name is the first step of building a website.
It is the address or the brand of your online business. The domain name is not taken casually. You’d better follow some principles to find a good domain name.
(2) Website hosting and building tool
Now you have owned the business address. The next step is to find a place to open your business online.
You also need a place to store the content of your website, such as various files, videos, etc. This is a virtual host. Virtual hosting providers now basically come with free site-building tools. The two are already integrated.
Popular web hosting (Built-in website building tools):
Free Training: How to build a niche site with WordPress -with video demo
Step 3: Choose right Affiliate Network/Program
There are many types and numbers of affiliate networks, with different standards and requirements. Not all affiliate networks join for free.
Although some are allowed to join for free, the requirements are extremely high. They don’t allow new websites with no income or low traffic to join them. And some, although new websites are allowed to join, are not suitable for novice ( difficult to make money ).
Some affiliate networks are not friendly for newbies, although they are popular and outstanding in affiliate marketing.
For example:
Amazon Affiliate Program is a very famous and popular one, but there are two problems that it is difficult for novices to make money:
- Low Commission: At the beginning, only 4%, at least 6 or more successfully sold each month, the commission ratio can be increased
- The cookie is only valid for 24 hours: If your audience doesn’t put products in the shopping cart by clicking your affiliate link within 24 hours, you cannot get commission ( even if he/she buy it at last).
- If you haven’t got 3 sales in 6 months, your account will be closed and all your affiliate links will be Invalidation.
Clickbank is a famous affiliate marketing platform of virtual products, but it is difficult for novices to make money for several reasons.
- After the first product is sold, if there is no new sale, a processing fee of $5 per month will be deducted.
- At least 2 payment methods. Paypal, credit card, and so on. For example, If you have earned $ 1000， they are all paid by PayPal. Then you cannot get your money.
- There are so many fake products on Clickbank that novices can’t distinguish
and many more.
So what are the criteria for novices to choose affiliate programs or products?
- Try to choose the free one-so there is no risk
- Choose legal and good reputation, and avoid online scams online.
- If promoting physical products, then choose the one that is small, light, and convenient for packaging and transportation.
- High quality. Poor quality products or high return rate products will damage you and your website’s reputation, and it will be difficult for your website to make money later.
- The training courses should be embedded in the affiliate marketing platform, with clear steps and tools to help you grow in the future.
- If no one guide and answer your questions in time, it is still a bit difficult to succeed.
- …
This article How to Find Relevant Affiliate Programs can help you find and choose the best affiliate program that is fit for you. You can choose one or two items or products from the list below to promote and make money.
Top affiliate networks you can think to join:
- CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction)
- Shareasale
- Awin
- Rakuten Marketing (formerly LinkShare)
- Peperjam
- Avangate Affiliate Network
- eBay Partner Network
- Impact
- ……
By the way, wealthy affiliate is one of the top affiliate programs as well. Check the series of tutorials by its creator-kyle.
Training ( with video demo ): Understanding Affiliate Programs & Networks Relevant Affiliate Programs are Everywhere
Step 4: Create quality & Relevant Content
The best way to promote products online is to write articles for your website. The content should be original, not plagiarized, and it is highly relevant, closely surrounding your marketing direction ( niche ) and product.
Although there is no clear standard, according to statistics, the word count of high-quality articles (especially some important articles) is about 1000 words, and a website needs about AT LEAST 30-50 articles to effectively organize the structure of a website.
In this case, your website will be ranked in the relevant keyword search results, and start to make money.
High-quality content = search result ranking (google, bing, yahoo) = attract higher traffic = more sales = earn more commissions
High-quality content will make your site visitors stay longer, and the longer the time, the greater the likelihood of successful sales.
Many websites used a large number of keywords, which may be useful for website ranking and traffic in the past, but this method is no longer effective. Understand what you write is not only for search engines but for people. If visitors can’t find the information they need on your website, they will leave your website immediately, so that your website is naturally unlikely to have any sales.
Therefore, you should study the product and SEO article techniques in order to get the ranking and target traffics. The practice of copying and pasting is extremely harmful. No pain, no gain.
Free Training: Understanding Keywords, The Start of Your Content-with video demo
Step 5: Attract Target Traffic
The best traffic is the targeted traffic with a high conversion rate.
The best way to attract target traffic is to write a series of high-quality and readable articles with SEO keywords for your audiences.
Furthermore, there are many effective measures to increase organic traffic. For example:
- Optimize the site structure: Make your contents with a logical link structure . A good structure is conducive for search engines ( Google) to index and ranks your site.
- Paid advertising. Such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads and Instagram Ads.
- Use webmaster tools to submit your website to search engines. Such as google search console, bing webmaster…..
- Visitors commenting on your website is a valuable asset. This shows that your website is highly interactive with readers. Google will index these comments and improve your website’s position in keyword search rankings. Ways to increase comments on your site.
- Leave your URL in your email signature
- Use professional tools to get high quality and reliable backlinks
- Join Quora, Yahoo Answers, Fluther, and forums related to your niche to answer people’s questions there and leave your site URL.
- Add some famous social plugins to share your posts. Such as Revive social, AddToAny, Smash Balloon……
Step 6: Start to Make Money
If you insist on doing your work by following the above steps, then the rest is to take the commission/money. A website will bring you very good income month by month, year by year. You only need to update it every month to keep the website active and ensure that it can bring the latest and authoritative information to your readers.
$0 Start Your Affiliate Marketing Business
Many things are said to be the same thing, but they are the same thing when they are done. For novices, no matter how clear they are, they will find it difficult to actually operate, especially if they do not know how to deal with details. What novices need is a guide who can really teach step by step from scratch. You can succeed by exploring on your own, but I’m afraid you are likely to take a long detour, which consumes time and money.
Now I recommend Wealthy Affiliate to all of you. ( I have been here since 2014) . It is a perfect and verified package solution, not only for affiliate marketing but for all your online business.
Strong support and help:
- Everyone can get Kyle and Carson’s direct reply and help ( WA creators)
- In the community, you can also get the help of many marketing experts, all marketing directions are available, learn their website and 1 experience
- Online Q & A
- Free members can get a WordPress website for free.
- Free web hosting services and related tools
- ……