Affiliate marketing careers have quickly become one of the most popular search queries online. People from all over the world have started researching affiliate marketing and a lot of them have already dipped their toes in the industry. There are multiple reasons for this sudden popularity increase.
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Since the lockdowns started across the world, people started having a lot more free time at home. Some of them researched how to make money online from home, and affiliate marketing was probably the result that got shown to most of them. Affiliate marketing jobs have started popping all over the web in advertisements and on social media. A lot of influencers advertise affiliate marketing as the easy way to make money, and in some ways, it really is like that. But not for everyone. Beginners have a lot to learn and adapt to have a chance at competing with seasoned veterans of the industry.
This constant marketing push by influencers and pro affiliates makes people very interested in affiliate marketing jobs. Who wouldn’t be interested when affiliates flash their fancy homes, cars, and lifestyles online. Who wouldn’t want to have a sports car and a house at an exotic location? But what people fail to realize is that these are the 0.1% of affiliate marketers. They are an exception to the rule, not the standard. A lot of affiliates fail within the first few months of starting.
In reality, most affiliates just get by. The beginners might not even get profitable campaigns for months. The ones who know a bit can have a normal life and lifestyle, but with the added freedom of working from home. And the true professionals can earn a nice paycheck each day. But there are differences even at the top level. Not all affiliate marketing jobs are the same, and not everyone makes the same kind of money.
The best of the best in affiliate marketing are called super-affiliates. These are the ones that people hear of and compare themselves when they hear about affiliate marketing. They are mostly guys that have been doing affiliate marketing for years, and who turned their whole lives to optimize their campaigns and marketing efforts. They are the cream of the crop and reaching their status is incredibly hard. But with some tips and guides, you might get the ball rolling and who knows, maybe you can become a super affiliate as well!
How To Start Affiliate Marketing
The first thing you need to do is to lower your expectations. Don’t expect to make boatloads of money in your first few months. Most likely you should expect a small amount of money that will be more there to motivate you than pay the bills. But if you keep on working and improving, it can become a replacement for your everyday job! Don’t expect too much in a short time from an affiliate marketing job. But the more you optimize your campaigns the more profits you can expect.
Pick a platform
If you want to make it big in affiliate marketing you should start working on a platform. It can be any platform you want. Social media, a website, or a blog. Whatever you feel most comfortable with. But whatever platform you choose you will have to sink a lot of time and effort into it to make it work.
Blogs are easy and cheap to set up. You will need to optimize your page for search engines and create some quality content that people want to read. If you want your platform to be social media, then you will have to focus on other things. Creating regular content that caters to your audience is the top priority.
Pick a niche
Finding your spot on the web is important. At first, you might think that you will be able to create a store that can corner the whole market. But that is far from reality. Most things already have established brands and companies that have millions of dollars to spend on advertising. You as a newcomer have no chance in such a market. This is why finding a specific niche, just for yourself should be your primary goal.
Niches usually have smaller audiences but less competition. You should try finding a niche that you have an interest in so that you don’t get bored of it. When you decide on one stick to it and learn as much as you can about it. Even if you have some competition it most likely won’t be a tough place to succeed. Give it your best and aim for the #1 spot in your niche. Once you acomplished a stable audience in it, try going a bit broader, and continue doing so until you have a stable and massive audience. Note, this might take years to do properly, so take your time and don’t rush into things!
Find affiliate programs
There are a lot of affiliate programs that you should check out if you are considering doing affiliate marketing. They are usually grouped into categories that take the pay and volume into consideration. This is how we get “high-paying, low-volume”, “low-paying and high-volume”, and “high-paying, high-volume” networks.
These categories are simple to grasp and understand.
High-paying, low-volume affiliate programs usually offer a nice payment, but getting the traffic required is usually hard as it’s mostly some niche that you need to advertise for. These programs are focused on people that already know how the market works and how to promote what products. As a beginner, you should avoid this, even if the payout seems incredible.
Low-paying and high-volume affiliate programs are the opposite. They are easy to advertise to the masses, but the payout is relatively small percentage-wise. Low paying doesn’t mean that you will not make money from it, it only means that you get less for each specific conversion compared to other programs. But this method makes up for it through volume. You will get a lot of small paying commissions instead of a few high-paying ones. This is much better for beginners as mass products are much easier to sell than niche ones.
The last category is “high-paying and high-volume”. These are products that sell a lot and offer a high payout as well. These sound perfect, and if you are a big affiliate with deep pockets, they probably are. The competition on these programs is insane, and newcomers almost don’t even have a chance to compete with the big players.
Focus on your content
If you want to promote affiliate links, you need to promote the products that these links point to as well. This is hard to do effectively as good content is hard to create. Your content needs to be interesting and engaging to your audience. It needs to offer your audience new knowledge that they can’t get as easily from other sources.
This is hard because as you might have guessed, you aren’t the only one on the web trying to make this kind of content. You will need to do a lot of research on who your audience is, what they are interested in, and how to get them what they want in the easiest way. The better your content is, the more success you will have. But even with incredible content, success won’t come overnight. You will have to spend some time pumping out great content for it to gain traction!
Drive traffic to your site
Now that you have a niche, affiliate program, and content, you might think your affiliate job is over. But it’s not. Now it’s time to drive some traffic to your page. After all, if you don’t get traffic, you won’t get clicks, and thus no money. To drive traffic there are a couple of things you can do. You can utilize paid traffic or organic traffic.
Paid traffic is pretty self-explanatory. You pay to direct traffic to your site. As soon as you start paying, you will get traffic. Finding the right amount of money to spend compared to the click you get is important. You need to target your audience perfectly so that people you advertise to are interested in what you have to offer. Messing up your targeting will have a massive impact on your profitability, so it should be a top priority to get right.
The native approach is different. You will focus on pleasing your platform’s algorithm, doing a lot of SEO, and building email lists for your audiences. This all takes a lot of time and knowledge. There is no easy way around it, and the worst part is, there is no guarantee that it will work. The only way to know for sure is to try your best and hope for good results.
Then all that is left is to optimize your landing pages, placements, CTAs, the ads themselves. After all of this is done you should expect clicks, conversions, and some nice profits.
To conclude things
Starting your affiliate marketing career is hard. Finding the right affiliate marketing job to do is even harder. The marketing industry itself has a lot of competition and it’s hard to get started if you are a complete beginner. But it’s not impossible. If you have the will, time, and money you can become a profitable affiliate marketer and earn a nice paycheck each month. Heck, you can even replace your regular job with this affiliate marketing job and in time become a super affiliate.
The most important thing in affiliate marketing is patience. Stay patient, and consistent and don’t expect anything to happen fast. Slow and steady will win you the game!
If you didn’t read this post, you should check it: The Ultimate Beginner Guide: Affiliate Marketing for Dummies in 2021!
