Affiliate marketing is a tough industry to get into. There are a lot of things you need to take into consideration. If you want to succeed in the industry you need to know all the tricks and things that other affiliates had years to learn. This is why you should learn about affiliate marketing before starting. The more knowledge you start with the bigger your success will be!
[toc]
Articles like this can be your “affiliate marketing for dummies” guides. You can learn what you need to do and how to do it to make money from home. If you know little or nothing about affiliate marketing and want to learn, this is the right place!
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the business practice of introducing an audience to a new product or service. As an affiliate marketer, your goal is to get them to know your product and convince them to buy or subscribe to your product or service. The key difference between affiliate marketing and regular marketing is that you don’t own or have any affiliation with the products yourself. All you do is link the audience to the products and receive a percentage commission of each sale you manage to achieve.
Sales attributed to your work are tracked via affiliate links so you always know how many people you converted, and thus how much money you earned. This type of marketing is great for the product owners as well as the guys marketing it. The product owners don’t have to spend money on advertising campaigns that can be hit or miss at times. All they have to do is make their products available for affiliates. Affiliates on the other hand only have to focus on advertising without worrying about shipping, support, or anything else product-related.
Most newcomers don’t know what exactly they should do, and this is why affiliate marketing for dummies guides is so valuable!
How Much Money Can You Earn Through It?
Money is always a difficult thing to determine. Most affiliates brag about making millions yearly, and while that is possible, most affiliates don’t make anything close to it. Especially not in the beginning. The sky is the limit, it all depends on how much effort you are willing to put in.
If you are a complete newcomer, you can make a few thousand a month within a few months of practice and improvement with some work. If you continue improving and scaling your campaigns, you can expect to make six figures yearly! The best part about it is that most of them are purely passive! But don’t get ahead of yourself, starting is difficult and most beginners decide to quit after a month or two.
How To Get Into It?
While there isn’t a full-fledged affiliate marketing for dummies guide online, here are some of the things you need to learn and use if you want to start working as an affiliate marketer.
- Find a niche for yourself
Newcomers to the affiliate marketing space think that they will compete with the top dogs in the most popular sections of the market. This is not something you will be able to do at all. Your biggest hurdle as a newcomer is finding a place for yourself. Something where the competition is low but there is a chance to earn a profit. This is where niches come to play.
Finding the perfect niche is difficult. You need to take into account your interests, what your audience likes, and what is popular yet not overcrowded with the competition. The less competition there is the better for you, as competing with industry veterans is almost impossible as a beginner.
- Build your website
Having a website is one of the first tips that any affiliate marketing for dummies guide will tell you. And it for a good reason. The best way to advertise products that you want to sell it through your website or platform.
You can optimize it to convert your audience as best as possible. This is of course easier said than done. You will need to take into account a lot of data and reports to know what your audience responds well to and what they don’t.
- Pick a domain name that is short and seems legitimate
- Use the right platform to host your website(s)
- Use WordPress and its incredible plugins to make things easier
- Spend some time making your website good looking and functional
- Find affiliate marketing for dummies programs
Learning should be an everyday part of your affiliate life. Finding programs for beginners is a great way to start. You will have to pick between joining affiliate networks or individual affiliate programs.
Affiliate networks are usually a group of publishers that host a bunch of programs under one website. You need to get accepted to join one, but once you do you will have access to plenty of affiliate programs.
Individual affiliate programs are usually companies that decide to host their affiliate platform. This requires an individual application to each company you want to advertise for.
You can and will be rejected, but don’t take it personally, apply to other programs and improve your reputation and website in the future.
- Create content for your website
Now that you have a website and an affiliate program you want to join, it’s time to create content that will promote those products and services. Since you already decided on your niche, try incorporating the new products and services in blog posts, or social media posts that focus on your niche. Your affiliate marketing should be subtle yet impactful.
Nobody likes to get products showed down their throat, and promoting all kinds of products with every post might lead to you having a less than stellar reputation amongst your audience.
Content-wise, it should always be interesting and offers some kind of value to your readers. This is mostly done by providing knowledge that cant be found elsewhere. People will feel inclined to buy something off you as they got something from you.
The content types you can focus on are vast. You can try reviews, comparisons, how-to guides, lists, best of, infographics, videos, and much much more.
- Learn SEO
Search engine optimization helps you rank your website on search platforms like Google, Bing, Yandex, and the rest. While the exact workings of each of these search engines are not known, some things are almost certain to contribute to a better ranking overall.
- Build an audience and promote yourself
Your content itself won’t be enough for you to have success in affiliate marketing. You will have to invest some time into creating and building an audience that is interested in buying your products in the first place.
You can do this through guest posting on similar blogs or platforms. Building an email list through various techniques. Investing in paid advertising and staying consistent with your content generation.
After you have a base audience that is slowly expanding it is time to promote your products and services. The goal is for people to know about your products and give them time to decide if they want to purchase them or not. This is usually done through promotional materials like banners, ads, emails, or other types of content.
Other Affiliate Marketing for Dummies Guides
After doing all of this you might still be confused about what you should do or how to improve further. This is where the most important part comes in. You starting to learn for yourself. In order to make some kind of success, you will need to do a lot of research on your own.
Google is your friend! Search for any terms or subjects that you don’t understand, you are bound to find out about new things. A great way of improving is reading through posts on this blog. There are a lot of beginner-friendly guides and tutorials that might help you improve. You can also check out my eBook “From Zero to Superaffiliate”. It is a boog that is meant for beginners and to guide them through the basics of affiliate marketing.
Another great resource for all your beginner questions, as well as those more advanced ones is the forum iAmAffiliate. Here you can meet thousands of affiliates with varying knowledge and time spent in the industry. You can connect with other beginners and get knowledge from the real pros.
To Conclude Things
Affiliate marketing is not the easiest of industries to get in. But once you do the possibilities are endless. You can make a lot of money through your campaigns but you need to know what you are ending before committing time and money to your campaigns. Combining multiple knowledge sources is the key to learn the things you will need for a successful career in the industry. Don’t waste your time and start learning and improving your skillset today!
