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Affiliate marketing is a difficult industry to thrive in. Beginners have a tough time entering the market and making a name for themselves in it. The margins are tight and running profitable campaigns get more and more difficult every month. The competition is just too big. The pro affiliates have been doing this for years or even decades and they know every trick in the book.
Beginners are usually left to figure things out for themselves, and often that just takes too long, or they learn things the wrong way. Most beginners choose the wrong offers, run the chosen offers in the wrong way, and don’t optimize their campaigns enough. This all leads to them going under sooner rather than later. No wonder that over 90% of affiliates fail within the first few months of their work.
This is why beginners need to improve in every possible aspect and be as competitive as possible. This is why beginner affiliates need to learn how to pick the right offers they want to run especially in the coming year of 2022 where thousands more affiliate newbies will enter the industry.
Finding A Place For Yourself
Most beginners in affiliate marketing come to the industry and expect to conquer it all. They expect to corner a big chunk of the market and start making a killing. Unknown to them, this is not a strategy that can work at all. Most of the affiliate marketing industry has already established players in their niches. Most of the market is already cornered by experts and there is not much that a beginner can do to take over that segment from them. This is why finding a place for themselves is so important.
This is the exact reason that newcomers need to do the basics before starting to do anything. The first thing that beginner affiliates should do is carve out a niche for themselves. Trying to compete in already established niches is just not something that most newcomers can do. Because of this, picking a niche that has no or low competition is paramount to your success.
Make a list of niches you are interested in. Research if they have affiliates already doing that niche, and if yes, how big the competition is. Finding a niche that you are interested in or an expert at is perfect. But you won’t be able to do it if the niche is already popular and covered by experts.
If you can’t find a good niche that you enjoy doing, try finding the most profitable one that doesn’t have competition. The more specialized niches you aim at the less chance you will find established competitors.
Deciding Which Niche To Go For
Finding a great niche is difficult. There are a lot of factors your need to take into consideration before committing to one. The niche you pick needs to have a stable audience of passionate people that want to buy things. Finding such niches is easier said than done, but you need to do a lot of research. Try finding niches that offer products on which you can have some nice commissions on. And the less competition the better, but no niche is ever truly without competition.
You can try doing seasonal niches or an evergreen one. Seasonal niches are niches that gain or lose popularity based on events or time of the year. If there is a big sporting event coming, sports niches will gain in popularity. If it’s summer, then summer-focused niches will grow in popularity. For example, I doubt you will sell swimwear in the winter, while you will have many sales in the summer months.
Evergreen niches are popular all year round, no matter what happens. These are a lot better for the long-run game, but most of them already have a lot of competition. For this reason, you always need to do a lot of research and check the data behind any niche you want to enter. When deciding on a niche try picking only one and focusing on it. The more you spread yourself the worse you will do.
Once you find a niche you want to enter, search on Google for “niche + affiliate problem”. There you will see a list of affiliate networks that provide offers for your specific niche.
How To Find Profitable Offers?
After searching for affiliate networks that have your offer, you will need to filter the networks and decide on one. Try finding networks that specialize in the niche you want to work in. Most affiliate networks work on broad verticals, and they can be great, but they don’t have to be the perfect match for you. Create a list of the networks that you consider joining. Check what their requirements are, how big their payouts are, and what others have said for those said networks.
Do product research before deciding which offer to promote. A great product will be much easier to sell than a bad one. And if a company whose offer you are promoting has a good reputation, then you will have much more success. The same goes for companies with bad reputations. You will have a much tougher time selling anything and you will be decreasing your reputation selling for them as well. So it’s a lose-lose situation.
The most important things to check are:
- The offer description
You should know what the offer is about, and some of the basic details about it
- Offer Payout
This will tell you how much money you can make off the offer. The bigger the number the more you can make, but it usually means that it’s a harder sell.
- The Conversion Cap
This is the daily cap you will have on conversions. Usually, it’s lower for beginners, and it slowly grows as you gain more trust with the network.
- The Conversion Flow
This will describe what you have to do to convert users. Take this into account as the more steps, the less likely the people are to convert.
- The Geos Available
A lot of beginners aim only for tier 1 GEOs. That means US, UK, CA, etc. But you should check out other GEOs as well. Maybe a Tier 2 or 3 GEO has an incredible deal that you could use to get ahead.
Conclusion To Finding Great Offers
Finding great offers takes time and research. You will have to do a lot of prep work to make everything work as you might have planned. The industry is very competitive and carving a place out for yourself is harder than you might think at first.
Affiliates who have been doing this for years already know everything they need and that puts the newcomers at a huge disadvantage. For you to make it against these more advanced affiliates, you will have to give it your best. You need to research everything you do, pick carefully and optimize each of your campaigns.
Failure to do so will land you with a deep hole in your pocket. So do the best you can and you will see the results you desire!
