GET STARTED AS
AFFILIATE!
I will be happy to see you as a affiliate! This Ultimate Affiliate Master Guide is designed to help you easily get started with different Affiliate Program, learn how to set up your campaigns, monitor your stats, and use the most effective affiliate marketing tactics to unlock the earning potential of your site.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting merchants products.
Why should you learn affiliate marketing?
Here are four compelling reasons:
1. monetize your blog sooner(Passive income)
2. learn what types of products your audience is clamoring for
3. reducing the risk of any future product launch of your own.
4. get your readers used to the idea of buying from you — and increase their level of trust.
Affiliate Marketing Terms
AFFILIATE (PUBLISHER):
The partner who promotes the merchant’s products for a commission.
AFFILIATE LINK
A unique trackable default URL that identifies the affiliate as the source of targeted traffic
to a merchant’s site.
AFFILIATE AGREEMENT
An informal agreement specifying the rules that both parties agree to responsibilities, rates to be paid and other legalities.
AFFILIATE NETWORK
An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between affiliate and merchant affiliate programs.
AFFILIATE NETWORK
An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between affiliate and merchant affiliate programs.
AFFILIATE PROGRAM
A program set up by merchants to pay commissions when sale is generated through affiliate link to their products.
COMMISSION
A percentage of the total sale that is paid to the affiliate for generating the sale.
COOKIE
Cookies are files on your browser that begin their life when you visit a website.
NOTE:Cookies are used to assign a unique ID to the buyer in order to tag the purchase as being
referred by you. Cookies usually have a predetermined lifespan, so that even if
the buyer doesn’t purchase right away, you will still get credit for the sale if it occurs within that time-frame (often 30 days or more).
MERCHANT(ADVERTISERS)
Anyone who is involved in business or trade of product or service.
REFERRAL
A click or a sale that occurs
when the affiliate sends traffic to the
merchant’s site.
HOW To START AFFILIATEMarketing in 5 Steps:
THE KEY POINT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND:
You’re earning a commission in exchange for giving your readers valuable insights on products or services they were already thinking about to purchase.
Let’s start!
STEP 1: IDENTIFY WHAT YOUR AUDIENCE WANT
The first question you need to ask yourself is
What types of products and services is your audience want and the problem they are facing related with ?
Initially, you might not know exactly what products to promote, but if you think
about it for a bit, you can probably guess the major categories.
STEP 2: CHOOSE A GOOD PRODUCT TO PROMOTE AS AN AFFILIATE
Here are your main options:
- PROMOTE PRODUCTS YOU ALREADY USED AND LOVED.
- FIND PRODUCTS VIA AN AFFILIATE NETWORK
STEP 3: GET YOURSELF SET UP AS AN AFFILIATE
Whether you work directly with a merchant or through a network, you’ll have to apply, be approved and provide certain information so that you can be paid.At a minimum you’ll need to provide:
Your personal/business contact information for tax and reporting purposes.Choose your online payment method where commissions will be sent.
In turn, the merchant must provide you with:An affiliate link. Whenever you post about the product, you’ll use this trackable unique referral link. This link contains a special tracking code which helps them track the sales you refer to them.
You can easily find it in your welcome email, as well as in My Account > Affiliate Copy it and place it on your site, socialmedia, or other platforms where potential clients would click.
When a client clicks on your unique link and lands on our site, youraffiliate code gets recorded in a cookie within the client’s browser. The cookie is stored for 60-90 days according to company, so if the user you referred makes a purchase in this period, the sale is generated to you.
STEP 4: START PROMOTING YOUR CHOSEN
AFFILIATE PRODUCTS
Effective affiliate promotion can be achieved using a mix of techniques and promotional formats. In order to create successful affiliate content, you need to utilize different channels, display the promotional content in a proper way, and provide tailored and truly valuable information to your audience.
PLATFORM TO PROMOTE YOUR AFFILIATE PRODUCTS:
Blog/Website:
If you are serious about making money online, you most likely have a website already built. This is a great starting point to position fresh content and begin to drive traffic their ways.
As we’ve seen time and time again, blogging is one of the most effective ways to start generating affiliate income. Create reviews, comparison blog posts, or educational content about website management and optimization this helps you to get enough traffic and Conversion.
Don’t Know how to Start A Blog
Email Marketing:
If you have a list of subscribers, you can leverage this medium too. Sending emails is an excellent method to incentivize your subscribers to read more about merchant’s products and eventually purchase a service.
Social Media Marketing:
Social media is diverse and so are the opportunities to promote there, whether you take advantage of your existing followers, participate in groups or use paid ads. Here are some ways to take advantage of social media.
Promote to your Friends
If you have a big following, you can promote new posts, features, and deals directly to your followers.
Promote to Groups
There are multiple groups on social media that focus on website creation for different niches — from travel and fashion bloggers to ecommerce stores. You can use these groups to promote affiliate content or your services together with merchant.
Social Media Ads
To reach an even more narrowly-targeted group of people, you can also run social media ads. Display them to people with specific interests or to fans of related pages to promote your own content even better.
Youtube Promotion
In recent years, a big part of content marketing has shifted to video and streaming. So consider using this marketing channel.
Direct Recommendation
Ultimately, all your hard work finding and evaluating products only pays off if
somebody takes your advice and make the purchase, right?
For that to happen, you need to put your recommendation in front of your
audience. Even more importantly, you need to make your recommendation trustworthy.
This is where a lot of affiliate marketers slip up.
NOTE:
Here requires that you let people
know you’ll earn a small percentage commission.So wherever you share an affiliate link, whether it’s in blog posts, web pages,
or emails, let your readers know that you’ll earn commission they buy through you — and if they choose not to use your link, no worries.
Types of Products to Promote
Usually, most of your affiliate income will come from one or two “ringers” —core products that just about everyone in your audience needs and which also pay a good commission.
We highly recommend you start with digital products, services and courses
for this simple reason is :
They usually have greater earning potential.
DIGITAL DOWNLOADS
Digital downloads are online resources that your readers can access instantly, without having to wait for a package to come in the physical mail. (as is true for physical products).
Eg. audio , video files, PDFs, ebooks or even links where the content present online.
ONLINE, HOSTED AND PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
When it comes to selling services as an affiliate, it’s important to concentrate
on those which will be accessible to your entire audience no matter where
they’re located.
ONLINE COURSES
Online courses are an important subset of digital products, especially for bloggers, and the market is huge. They’re so popular that they deserve their own category on this list.They range in price from free to thousands of dollars, with higher-priced programs promising big results for students.
PHYSICAL PRODUCTS
If you decide to represent physical products on your blog, your best bet is to
choose high-quality, distinctive products that that will appeal strongly to your
specific audience. You won’t make worthwhile money unless you can drive tremendous traffic to your site.
The Bottom Line on Affiliate Marketing
That dream you’ve had of making money while you sleep isn’t just a silly fantasy. It’s a completely achievable reality.
Sure, it’s not as easy as pushing a magic button, but with a little knowledge and persistence you can definitely do it.
Once you’ve gained a respectable following, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money blogging. And the best news is that it’s so easy to get started.
Simply identify the one big thing everyone in your audience needs to reach their goals and start there.
Tell the story of your successes.
Provide lots of valuable content that helps and educates your readers, and
Be honest and transparent.
And finally, be patient.
All your efforts will pay you back with that sweet “cha-ching” of overnight deposits into your bank account.