Learn how to start affiliate marketing from scratch and actually make money. This the a definitive guide to affiliate marketing for beginners.
You should look for new ways to advertise, even if you are selling the same niche products. Try to offer your readers something exclusive. I will take a case study of John Chow. John Chow is an affiliate of HostGator. He provides free WordPress website installation for any purchases that you make using his referral link. You might wonder why he does this?
.
While this may sound similar to the first strategy, it is different. As you write blog posts, you’ll inevitably mention a product or service that has an affiliate program. Even though the focus of the blog post is not about that product, you have two choices. You can either place your affiliate link in the post or create a link that points back to your blog post review of that product.
One of my absolutely favorite affiliate programs to promote as a beginner is the Ultimate Bundles products. I promoted their Genius Blogger’s Toolkit in my first few months as a blogger and earned around $130 and then went on to be a contributor a year later and earn almost $1500!
We mentioned earlier that the sky's the limit when it comes to affiliate marketing. To see this type of advanced affiliate marketing in action, you need not look any farther than Jason Stone. He got started as an affiliate in 2014, and today—just six years later—he’s amassed an incredible six million followers, earning himself the nickname the “Millionaire Mentor.” At one point, he managed to earn $7 million in sales in just 18 months, without ever selling his own product!
Affiliate marketing – you have probably heard about it from a Youtube video and want to learn more about it.
To do this, you can also use Buzzsumo, but as it costs $99 a month, I’ve found a pretty impressive alternative: Social Animal.
Currently, they work with over a thousand merchants with some of the most diverse offers on the market. Most of these merchants focus on physical products and software services, making them very competitive in the market. Getting accepted is quite easy and you shouldn’t have any trouble getting into this incredible affiliate network!
So, you want to do a quick search on your affiliate platform and find product alternatives to test for yourself.
Your only task is to pull them to your page, account, or board. While it’s certainly not an easy task (otherwise we would all be famous), it’s doable.
You should ensure that you address customer’s recent issues and how you are overcoming them in your ad plus add keywords and add a call to action as it would drive more customers when they would see the solution to their problems.
Add these links seamlessly into your content. For example, if you’re writing product reviews, your content should be honest. When providing product reviews, you need to discuss the downsides and the positives of the products openly. Honesty will prevent you from coming across as biased or disingenuous by overly promoting something. It would be best if you had your audience connect with your content and your responsibility is to promote products or services that your users actually need. Credibility is a great asset as an affiliate and is something you’ll need to build up over time. In time, as a credible and established source of information, you’ll see the amount of traffic to your site, and the sales you make are more likely to increase.
The first mental hurdle you have to cross is the difference between in-house affiliate marketing programs (merchants) and affiliate networks.
Bluehost, a web hosting platform that supports more than 2 million websites, offers a phenomenal affiliate program for any business or entrepreneur looking to monetize their blog or website. If you promote Bluehost's products or services on your own blog or website (either through custom banners or links), you can earn anywhere from $65 to $130 per sale generated from your website — an incredibly high fee.
Even if you don’t convert sales immediately, continue with your regular posting. Be consistent in engaging with your audience as well.
Another benefit that the location-focused model has over the others is lesser competition. Being more localized and specific, your website won’t have any direct competition since most sites tend to focus on a global audience.
There are some elements of an affiliate marketing business that really are worth spending a little money on. Like keyword research that we mentioned earlier, investing a little in a tool that can significantly increase your click-through rate (CTR) will both catapult your profits and pay for itself many times over.