How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing

We have already told you about Affiliate Marketing through a blog.

In that blog, we told what is Affiliate Marketing, what are the Affiliate Marketing Benefits, what are the Best Affiliate Programs, and many other related important information.

By reading that blog, you must have got clear Affiliate Marketing Definition and must have come to know about some terminologies related to this business.

Taking the same blog forward, today we will talk about – How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing.

We will understand this in 7 steps, after implementing which you will be able to create an additional source of income for yourself.

All these steps have been designed keeping in mind a Beginner Affiliate Marketer (Affiliate Marketing for Beginners) so that the question does not come again in their mind that how to do Affiliate Marketing.

Let's see without delay - How to Start With Affiliate Marketing!

Choose your Niche & Affiliate Products

Niche selection is the most primary step to start Affiliate Marketing Business.

Niche is the foundation of your business on which your business is based.

Therefore, it is very important to select it carefully.

To select a niche, first of all you should know in which field your interest is. No one else knows it better than you.

Once you know this, you have to see how much competition is there in your selected niche and how much is its demand.

Always try to select a niche with low competition and high demand.

After this, you have to see your expertise in that niche – do you have good experience of that niche?

If you have any prior experience in that niche or field, then it may be a little easier for you to get success.

However, even if you do not have prior experience, you still have to ask yourself this question, are you ready to study that niche or field and master it?

Keeping all these things in mind, you have to select your niche and then start researching the affiliate product.

Only by selling the affiliate product will you be able to generate affiliate income and create an additional source of income for yourself.

Try to choose such an affiliate product which you use yourself or have prior experience of using it.

This way you will know which product works well and which does not.

In affiliate marketing, your job is like a problem solver where you help your customers with the help of some products or services.

You will be able to help only when you are an expert in that particular field and are able to make consistent efforts for your audience.

Bonus Tip: Always choose a specific niche, don’t go too broad.

You will see a lot of competition in the Broad Niche Category and it will take you a lot of time to create your own Digital Presence.

For example, if you want to do Affiliate Marketing on Home Appliances Niche, then instead of selecting all the categories of Appliances (Cooler, Fans, Mixer Juicer, A.C, Dryer, Refrigerator, etc.), create your Affiliate Sources around a single category such as Coolers or Fans.

Search and Join Best Affiliate Marketing Programs

After selecting the niche, it comes to joining the Best Affiliate Marketing Websites or Best Affiliate Marketing Programs.

Only after joining these Affiliate Websites, you get to know things like Affiliate Commission Rate, Threshold Value, Cookie Duration.

The longer the Cookie Duration, the higher the chances of getting commission!

As far as possible, you should try that the Affiliate Programs or Merchants with whom you partner, their commission rate should be good.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program or Amazon Associates is a platform that offers commission ranging from 0.2% – 9%.

But, Amazon is the world's largest e-commerce company and people also trust it, so most people prefer to make Amazon their affiliate partner along with their other affiliate programs.

You can become an Affiliate Partner in two ways – by joining Affiliate Programs or Networks or by directly connecting with a Seller or Merchant.

Before joining Affiliate Programs, you can also do Competitor Research in your niche and see what your competitors are promoting and how they are promoting it.

No matter how you start your Affiliate Journey, you must always advertise High Quality Products to your audience.

Rather, before promoting the product to your audience, evaluate it yourself and see if you are getting the promised benefits mentioned or not.

Choose the Best Platforms to Create Content Related to Your Affiliate Products or Services

Content creation is as important as selecting a niche.

Consistent content creation creates an identity for you among people whom you can gradually convert into your customers.

But when we talk about affiliate marketing, the question arises that how to create content and on which platforms.

To know the answer to this, you have to understand in which form the affiliate product you want to promote can be presented in a better way?

Is textual content enough for that, or will video content and graphics be required?

Along with this, you can see other people doing affiliate marketing in your field and how they are producing content.

To create content, you can choose the following platforms:

1. You can create your own website or blog where you will tell people about your affiliate niche and promote your affiliate products.

To create a website, you will have to invest some money to buy domain and hosting. These should be purchased from such companies whose plans are good and customer support is always active.

Apart from this, being a beginner, you may face some difficulties in writing and editing content.

In such a situation, Grammarly Tool can help you, which provides you more premium features at a low price.

2. You can create a YouTube channel around your affiliate niche and post informative and review videos there.

To create YouTube videos, you will need many editing tools and resources which will make your YouTube content better.

For example,

• Canva: for designing thumbnails and other visual content
• Ring Light: for good lighting and clarity
• Webcam: for recording video
• Microphone: for speaking

3. You can add your affiliate links by sharing relevant content on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter etc.

To design posts on all these social media channels, you will have to take the help of a tool like Canva.

 

Along with creating content consistently on all these platforms, you also have to interact with your audience from time to time and keep educating them.

For this, you can arrange webinars, interact by creating groups on Facebook, come live on Instagram and answer questions, etc.

Bonus Tip: If you are thinking of creating multiple sources of income for yourself through affiliate marketing by creating a website or your affiliate blog, then initially post 15-20 articles without adding affiliate links.

With this, you will gradually be able to reach your target audience and your content will look informative instead of promotional.

By the way, this is also mentioned in the policy of many affiliate marketing programs and they do not provide affiliate links to new websites or blogs.

Apart from this, if you are writing a review article of your affiliate product or making a review video, then try to buy and test the product yourself first and then give some feedback to the audience.

This will create trust in your audience which is very important for transacting. 

Create Your Digital Ecosystem to Reach Your Target Audience and Drive Traffic to Affiliate Sources

If you want to sell any of your products online, then it is very important to create a digital ecosystem for it.

Through this, you create your presence on different online platforms and target your audience with the help of free and paid digital marketing strategies.

Under this, you can target your audience in the following ways and send traffic to your affiliate sources:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Under this, you can rank your website organically on Google by optimizing it according to the search engine.

As soon as the website starts ranking, you will start getting relevant traffic and clicks will also start coming on your affiliate link.

Apart from the website, you can also do SEO of YouTube videos and your other social media platforms.

For this, you will have to find relevant keywords and do competitor research.

2. Social Media Optimization (SMO): Under this strategy, you optimize your various social channels.

You have to keep producing content in it continuously and keep posting it. This will also increase your interaction with your audience and you will also be able to understand their problems in a better way.

As they start trusting you, you can start promoting your affiliate products and create an additional source of income in the form of commission.

3. Content Marketing: Under this marketing strategy, you have to post your social media content at different places.

In simple words, you have to market your content or make it viral.

By making the content viral, it will reach your target audience and people will come to your affiliate sources and transact with you.

Therefore, your content should always be unique, problem solving, and shareable type.

4. Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Under this strategy, you run paid ads to bring traffic to your affiliate platforms.

One advantage you get in this is that you get a lot of traffic, which also increases the chances of conversion.

The thing to keep in mind here is that this method is adequate only for your website.

5. Email Marketing: Whenever a prospect comes to your website, you can take their email from them and pitch them your affiliate content.

You can give them tailored messages and deliver content related to your niche and product.

See, being an affiliate, your aim is to target those people who really need a product like yours.

Therefore, it becomes very important for you to choose the best email marketing tool.

ConvertKit is one such tool that helps you in lead conversion. 

Implement Copywriting Strategies to Increase Your Affiliate Sales 

Copywriting is an art in which products and services are sold through words.

Because Affiliate Marketing is also ultimately a game of selling; here conversion can be increased by adopting copywriting strategies.

There are many methods and formulas to implement copywriting strategy, but today we will understand the most used method i.e. A.I.D.A formula.

Attention (A): To attract any user, reader, and visitor to your content, their attention has to be grabbed.

For this, you frame your text or words in such a way that creates interest, curiosity, and relevance.

Example – “Do you want to earn money by working just a few hours a day from home?”

Interest (I): Through your affiliate content, you have to show your audience some interesting facts, data or anything that will keep them in the buyer journey.

For example, you can use some words that will help in maintaining the interest of your readers in the content.

Desire (D): By tweaking your content a little, you have to provide value to people so that they develop a desire to buy your affiliate product.

They have to be told how your product can make their life easier and grow their business.

Example – If you do affiliate marketing in the Appliances category, then you can write –

“Sewing clothes by hand is possible, but do you want to work 25 times faster? With the use of this sewing machine, it is no longer a fantasy.”

Action (A): Call to Action plays a very important role in your prospect to customer conversion.

This is the last stage of your Affiliate Funnel.

By taking your user to the last stage of the Affiliate Funnel, you have to tell the user what he has to do now or what step he has to take.

Example – “Get 10% instant discount by using my coupon code and start building your website by buying a domain today.”

You can use all these strategies in your website, YouTube videos and posts on any social media platform and get better conversion for yourself.

Build a Basic Affiliate Marketing Funnel to Increase Your Conversion Rate

 Funnel building is a selling strategy with the help of which you convert your prospects into customers by taking them through various series of steps.

To convert them into customers, you provide different types of content to the prospect at different stages and keep nurturing them continuously.

For this, many marketing materials like Email Marketing, PPC Ads, Landing Pages are used.

The following steps are implemented to bring the audience to your affiliate sources through funnel:

1.Whenever a visitor comes to your website or any social media platform, you take his name and email.

2.After taking the email, the work of lead nurturing starts.

For this, you share content related to your affiliate niche with your leads. In this, you can give free e-books, relevant premium video links, and webinar links. Apart from this, to keep your prospects in the funnel, you show testimonial videos, comments etc. of your existing customers and create trust in your prospects.

3. Create some emotions like fear, scarcity in your email content and take the prospects to your affiliate landing page.

This landing page can be a review blog of your affiliate product or an SEO-optimized blog post, where you have mentioned your affiliate link and given a proper CTA.

This is the last stage of the funnel where there are the highest chances of sales and conversion.

You can use ConvertKit to design an excellent convertible landing page.

Increase Your Sales by Track & Tweak Affiliate Marketing Strategies

In any business it is important to keep track & tweak your strategies.

With its help, you can know which strategy is working for you and which is not.

Based on the results or your findings, you can adjust your strategies which are necessary to increase your sales or ultimately grow your business.

You can do tracking and tweaking in many ways:

1.If you advertise many affiliate products, then you can see which of your affiliate products is selling more and getting more commission.

2.You can see from where the most conversions are coming in your landing page, YouTube videos, or any social media platform.

Based on this, you can tweak your affiliate content creation strategy.

3. It is possible that you are an affiliate partner with both Affiliate Marketing Programs & Merchants, but the audience likes your merchant's product more.

In such a situation, you can change your strategies and see how to promote your affiliate products and increase sales.

4. Many top paying affiliate programs provide textual links, image & textual both, and image only links to promote their affiliate products.

In such a situation, you can apply these three types of links in your affiliate content and see what is working and what is not.

So in this way, by implementing all these steps, you can become a best affiliate marketer and create multiple sources of income for yourself.

Conclusion

Affiliate Marketing is one of the trending online businesses of today.

The biggest advantage is that you don't need to design your product and then sell it.

That's why people are doing it on part-time basis along with their jobs and are able to earn good money.

You can also do it along with your work and create multiple sources of income for yourself.

You just have to keep in mind the above mentioned 7 steps before joining affiliate marketing programs. After reading these, the question that how to get started with affiliate marketing will never come to your mind.