Affiliate marketing often comes up when discussing the best ways to generate passive income. After all, if we’re to believe the multitudes of affiliate marketers out there, all you have to do is start a blog, sign up to be an affiliate, and sit back as the money pours in.
If only it were that easy, every other industry on the planet would experience a rather sharp spike in job openings. But seriously, affiliate marketing, when done right, is a great source of passive income, and for many folks who are full-time affiliate marketers, it is also their main source of income.
As with any other profession, many people find it difficult to enter affiliate marketing, simply because they don’t know where to start. Keeping that in mind, the following article explains how beginners can get started with their digital marketing careers.
Affiliate Marketing: Getting Started
Affiliate marketing allows you to earn money by promoting the products or services of other brands. As an affiliate marketer, you need to find a product or service that you’re interested in marketing and subscribe to a relevant affiliate marketing program to get started. The merchant or owner of the product or service will then pay you a commission on every lead or sale that’s generated through your blog. The purpose of creating informative blogs and other content that’s related to the brand will be to help readers through every stage of the sales funnel.
While the concept is simple, finding the right affiliate marketing programs and creating great content that helps generate sales for those affiliate programs can be a real challenge.
Finding the Right Affiliate Network
There are plenty of options when it comes to affiliate networks that you can be a part of, but the trick to finding the right platform is to first decide what products you’re interested in promoting. Some of the best-known affiliate networks are:
- Amazon Associates
- ClickBank
- ShareASale
- CJ Affiliates
- eBay
These only make up a small fraction of affiliate networks that you can join; you can easily find hundreds of affiliate marketing opportunities. Since all products and services are different, you will need to get familiar with the sales funnel that is used by the company so that you can craft your content accordingly. You can also use many sales funnel tools to find out what brands are more likely to use in their marketing efforts and create content based on your findings.
Choosing the Right Affiliate Marketing Program
This is going to be the key to your success. If you’re just starting a blog, then it’s best to stick to a subject that you know a lot about. It should also be a subject that will be useful to readers who could be interested in a particular product. However, if you already have a blog and are looking for affiliate programs to promote, then you should probably stick to the products that are relevant to the information on your blog.
While how many affiliate programs you want to join is going to be up to you, it’s best to start with one and then grow your portfolio. This is also why it is important to find the right affiliate network that offers you a variety of products from which to choose. The more variety, the better.
Questions to Ask Before You Subscribe to an Affiliate Program
Before you go ahead and subscribe to an affiliate marketing program, you need to first ask yourself a few important questions, such as:
- Do I use the product?
- Are my readers going to be interested in this product?
- Do I have enough knowledge to provide useful information on this product?
- How difficult is the buying process?
- What is the rate of commission?
- Are commissions lead or sales generated?
These are just some of the questions that you need to ask yourself before signing up for an affiliate marketing program. You should also make sure that the niche you have chosen does not already have a high volume of affiliate marketers who are selling their wares, or else you’ll have to deal with a lot of competition.
That being said, sometimes, you don’t have a choice, especially if you already have a blog and are looking for affiliate programs from a certain niche. The only solution then is to create epic content that’s going to entertain and inform your readers.
Customer Support
So, you’ve found yourself an affiliate program that is relevant to your niche blog; you still need to make sure of what you’re getting into. You don’t want to be an affiliate to a program that doesn’t offer proper customer service support to its affiliates. To make sure you join the right affiliate programs, it’s always best to do your homework and find out as much as you can about a particular affiliate program before you decide to join it.
Produce Epic Content
Now that you’ve found the right affiliate program, it’s time to start creating amazing content that will give your readers useful information on particular products or services. The goal of your blog is to position yourself as an authority in that niche so that people who are searching for that product or service read your blog and gain the confidence they need to take the next step, which is to click the link and go to the website of the affiliate program to make a purchase.
The content you create can be in the form of blog posts, product reviews, or white papers, and your aim should be to address common problems and answer the most common questions that are asked by customers. Creating content that’s extremely useful to readers will increase your chances of getting more clicks.
Remember that the content you create should not be generic, but rather, complete and on-topic. In short, all of your posts that have the affiliate links should be highly informational so that you’re able to generate the most traffic from your blog to the brand that is offering the affiliate program.
To build your blog’s audience, you can use email marketing, social media, guest posts, and paid advertising (but you’ll want to leave that last one for when you start generating income).
Conclusion
While the idea of having a passive income source that won’t run out (and a four-day workweek) is attractive to many folks, that is only possible if you do affiliate marketing the right way. Those who are thinking about starting a career in affiliate marketing in 2020 should find the tips that are mentioned in this guide useful. Of course, these aren’t all the tips and strategies you can use; you will learn about many other Sales funnel tools, techniques, and affiliate marketing programs when you’re on your journey toward affiliate marketing success.
