What is Affiliate Marketing And How Can Beginners Start?
Affiliate Marketing is a business strategy for procuring commissions for selling another person’s products or services to your internet audience.
You can do this either by informal communication, blogging, Email, SMS promoting, and so on.
It’s super easy to get started in affiliate marketing, but it takes a bit of effort to become successful at it.
But there is no point in starting something if you can’t make a real go of it.
So I will first share with you a mindset or approach that might help you become successful after you start. And then we can get down to some of the nuts n bolts, fair?
Affiliate Marketing | Mindset #1: TRUTH
Tell the truth about what you are marketing. Your reputation is the most important aspect of your viability as an affiliate marketer. If you decide to promote a product, you have staked your name on how good the product is – If people don’t like the product, they also won’t like YOU.
Never choose a bad product because then you have to lie about it to make affiliate sales. You won’t get rich being a liar.
Affiliate Marketing | Mindset #2: Creativity
It does no good, to tell the truth in a way that nobody wants to listen to you.
Your job is to make people feel excited, to get them up off their seats to take actions that will change their lives.
Be creative with words. Be creative with visuals. There is no formula.
Nuts ’n Bolts
Once you have swallowed the mindset that marketing is telling the truth in a creative way, you are ready to get started in affiliate marketing.
Here’s a simple list of steps:
- choose a topic
- build an audience
- find affiliate programs
- promote affiliate offers
Choose a Topic
The topic you choose should be something you are really really interested in. It doesn’t matter so much what it is, so long as you are passionate about it.
Build an Audience
I don’t care if you blog on your website, post on social media, do pay advertising on social or pay-per-click platforms, create YouTube videos on the topic, borrow your uncle’s email list and see if his readers are as fond of white ponies as you.
I really don’t care.
I do care if you do none of these things because you need to build an audience.
My advice?
Just choose one way to build an audience.
And if you have some trouble figuring it out, do all of them once and then continue doing the one that was actually kind of fun for you. Then you will build an audience.
Find Affiliate Programs
The next step is to find the right affiliate programs for this.
The ideal way is to think about YOUR favorite product on the topic and see if they have an affiliate program. Have you taken an awesome course on the topic or bought a product that changed your life?
The easiest way to see if there is an affiliate program for your favorite product is to look on the company’s website or just go to Google and type: “company name” AND “affiliate program.”
The next best method is to Google: “your topic” AND “affiliate program” to see which companies offer affiliate programs on your topic.
Promote Affiliate Offers
Now that you have chosen an affiliate offer and maybe a couple of other ones related to your topic, it is high time for you to promote them to your audience.
Follow what other people tell you, look over some standard advice and just choose ONE method (sound familiar). In fact, this is probably the same platform where you are building your audience. If you are posting useful content about your topic on social media, for example, you can then promote the affiliate offers right on the same social media platforms where your audience is at.
Some affiliate marketers prefer to build up their audience on one platform and then sell affiliate products to those who opt-in to their email list.