Affiliate marketing is a great way of making money without selling your own products and services. With affiliate marketing, you promote products and services from different organizations and are paid when someone completes a purchase. This amount you are paid (commission) can be a percentage of the amount paid or a fixed amount depending on your agreement with the organizations. Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative, and in this guide, we will look at the steps you need to take to get started.
Choose a Platform
When doing affiliate marketing, what you are trying to do is to get people to click on your affiliate link. This means where you place the link does not matter as much as long as people can find it.
However, you want to place your link somewhere with high traffic so more people click on your link. The two platforms that fit this description best are blogging and YouTube.
Starting a blog is relatively easy and cost-effective. Numerous tutorials can help you get started, and it will cost you a few dollars per month to keep the blog going.
Once you have the blog running, you need to do keyword research, write SEO-optimized content, and find traffic for it. You can then add affiliate links to appropriate places inside the content.
YouTube is free and this is why it is so appealing. You will need to create and upload videos, ensure your videos and descriptions are SEO-optimized and add the affiliate link to your description.
You will have to disclose that you use affiliate links and programs to monetize your website
Choose a Niche
The chosen niche will dictate the type of content you can create as well as the affiliate programs you can join. Because there are millions of bloggers and blogs on the internet, it is always best to choose a very specific niche.
While you can find success going with a broader category like “dogs”, you will have to work hard to rank, so you should niche down to something like “dog food” or “dog toys”. There will be a lot less competition and more chances of ranking high when you niche down like this.
Once you have some traffic, you can start exploring other areas within this niche, keeping your main niche in mind so you keep your main audience coming back.
Find and Join an Affiliate Network
The next step is finding an affiliate network to join. The first types of programs are high-paying, low-volume programs. These typically have niche products that pay very highly for each conversion.
The second type is low-paying, high-volume programs. These contain products with mass appeal, which means there is a high number of customers, but they typically pay a lot less. A great example of this is the Amazon affiliate program.
With this program, you can earn up to 10% depending on the product sold. Amazon has unique advantages too because if you look at how the Amazon affiliate program currently works, you will see that they pay out on all purchases made by customers instead of the product that took them to the site. You can also try for Amazon vendor central as that way you can sell products directly to Amazon.
The last option is high-volume, high-paying programs. These typically have products that have a broad mass appeal, and they pay very high commissions. A great example is credit cards. This category has the most competition and difficulty, so it is best to avoid it unless you have lots of experience and a sizable marketing budget.
Drive Traffic
There are different ways to drive traffic to your link, including using paid advertisement, optimizing SEO, leveraging social media, and others. Choose one that aligns with your budget and the level of effort you are willing to put in for the results you are looking for.
Affiliate marketing is a great way of monetizing your content, be it on a blog post or a video. Getting started with affiliate marketing is relatively easy as long as you are prepared and put in the required work.
Image Credits: Brooke Cagle
Like this article? Share with your friends!