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In this post I want to give a quick and easy guide to getting started with an affiliate marketing business. I tried my best to keep it concise and broken down into four (4) steps. For more information on what is affiliate market and why this is a great business to get into check out my previous post on: 7 Great Reasons to Build an Affiliate Marketing Business.
According to Statista, business spending on affiliate marketing will hit $8.2 billion in the U.S by 2022.
If you are ready to drive into the billion-dollar affiliate marketing industry? This guide will help you get started.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to get started with affiliate marketing in four (4) steps:
Finding Your Niche
In starting an online business right now you are facing major competition, the internet is huge with millions of other marketers and more coming on each day. To remain competitive in this area you must focus your marketing on a specific area. To stand the best chance of success, niche down.
Choose a topic that focuses on a specific category. For example, the topic of “sports” is an enormous category. Rather than tackling that, try something more specific like “football.”
Keeping your topics tight can help you build a more focused audience and potentially help you rank higher in search engines.
Now, if you’re going to be the main content creator, choose something you’re interested in. One of the beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can actually make money based on a topic you enjoy and are passionate about.
Many affiliate sites die due to a lack of consistency. So at the very least, if you’re passionate about a topic, you’ll find it much easier to press on when the going gets tough.
I encourage you to take out a piece of paper right now and jot down 5 to 10 things you like, things that interest you, things that a friend might come to speak with you about. These can be hobbies, professions, skills, favorite foods, favorite activities, sports, knitting – don’t worry about whether or not you think you can make money with it, just brainstorm about the stuff you like.
Within this list is where you’ll find your niche. With an affiliate marketing business, you can build a blog or a website around virtually any topic you can think of. But how will you make money with it? We will get to that when we talk about monetizing your blog.
After you have chosen a few things examine them to see which one you can be enthusiastic about building a business around. A good way to concretize this decision is to identify your target audience.
In this step, take time to closely define your target audience. Develop your audience persona by answering the following questions:
Is my target audience online or in-person?
What frustrations does my target audience have that I can help alleviate?
What specific interests do members of my target audience have?
Do I want to work with businesses, individuals or agencies?
What goals does my ideal client have?
Finding your niche can be as simple as this, however there is so much more you can do in this area if you want to dive deeper. Doing some keyword research is a great way to also tell if there is a market for your niche. The Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for this.
Create a Website
One of the great benefits of affiliate marketing is that you have a choice of various platforms to launch your business from. You can promote affiliate products through your website, blog, social media platforms, email marketing or by creating online courses.
Based on your preference you can choose what works best for you and your business. A format that has been found to be most successful is a combination of a website with complimentary social media platforms.
The creation of a website was usually a difficult task however with all the resources available today this can be done quickly and easily through many companies.
In 2021, anyone can build and design a website without knowing anything about web development, design, or coding.
Whether you want to create a website for yourself or for your business, you can easily do that by using the right tools and resources.
Things You Need In Order to Build a Website
Domain name (your custom web address, www.YourSite.com)
Website hosting (service that hosts your website)
WordPress (free, commonly used website platform)
To build a fully functional website, you will need to secure a domain name (web address) and a web hosting account. These two make sure that your website is fully accessible to others. Without one or the other, you will be unable to set up a website.
Web hosting is a service that hosts and stores your website files (content) on a secure server that is always up and running. Without a web host, your site will not be accessible for others to read and browse.
We recommend using Bluehost.com for web hosting and domains. They offer free domain registration for the first year and getting a domain name and hosting from the same company saves you some time and money.
Once you have your domain name and web hosting ready to go, you’ll need to choose and install a website building platform.
We recommend choosing WordPress since it is easy to use and comes with thousands of free designs and add-ons that make your website look professional and unique.
Setting up your WordPress website is easy, and your web host mostly does it for you, so you don’t really have to get your hands too dirty. Once your website is up and running, if you are a bit tech savvy you can design and set it up yourself or you can hire someone to do it for you. So many great freelance companies out there to help with this.
Setup Your Autoresponder
An autoresponder is an invaluable tool in creating a successful online business. It is the marketing tool that will catapult your business regarding communications.
All messages, campaigns, webinars, and much more is handled here with all customers that have subscribed to your mailing list.
Here are five (5) reasons to setting up an autoresponder:
Convert organic website visitors into subscribers
An autoresponder allows you to capture the email address and name of visitors to your website.
The best way to start a communication line with these visitors is to offer them something of value in exchange for them giving you their name and email address. This can be a free eBook, a report, a video course, or anything that has a high perceived value and is high quality.
Once a visitor has subscribed to your mailing list you can continue to send them email messages for as long as they remain a subscriber.
Build long term relationships with subscribers with little effort.
An autoresponder allows you to write prewritten emails and schedule the messages to be delivered automatically to your subscriber list on any given date and time you specify.
This makes maintaining a relationship with your subscribers easy and almost effortless. The autoresponder does all the work for you automatically 24/7.
When subscribers hear from you on a regular basis, receiving quality content you build trust and credibility.
It is a great channel to lead your subscribers to all your marketing platforms
In communicating with your subscribers, you can lead them to your varied channels, whether social media, podcast, blogs, etc.
If you are consistent in delivering quality content and offering valuable products and services, your customers will likely do business with you on a regular basis.
Being able to access all your platforms will keep them updated on all your products and services and make a buying decision a lot easier.
There is nothing better than an automated selling tool for a business.
Brand yourself with all the e-mails.
You can brand yourself and your company in your e-mails that you are sending to your subscribers by adding your logo, your tagline, your physical address, your phone number, and anything else that you want to keep emphasis on about your business in the minds of your subscribers.
Provides Integrated Features you need to run your campaigns
A good autoresponder company covers all the basis of your email marketing campaigns, landing pages, webinars, paid ads, conversion funnels, etc.
Also, an excellent feature is email analytics, which allows you to track performance through key metrics and automated reports. Track email activity in real time and learn your subscribers’ engagement patterns and optimize your email marketing to match your audience preferences. The best part is you can start with an autoresponder company like AWeber, which in my opinion is one of the best for free up to 500 subscribers.
As I have said an auto responder is an invaluable tool in your affiliate marketing business and working with a good autoresponder company will increase your chances of success.
Monetize Your Website
Once you have your business operational, your next goal is to monetize your business. This area is where your learning curve is constantly expanding. The resources available to you are limitless, it’s a matter of researching what products and services would be of most interest to your audience.
While products related to your content are useful, you aren’t restricted to these alone. Consider other types of products your audience might be interested in.
Typical products used for monetizing blogs with affiliate marketing programs include:
Digital Downloads: These are online resources your audience can access instantly. They can be video courses, eBooks, audio books or links to webpages.
Professional services: When selling services through affiliate programs, focus on products accessible to your entire audience regardless of their location. It explains why professional services like design, creative business, and content marketing are great for affiliate marketing. Research, membership sites, and consultancy also make excellent services for monetizing a product
Ecommerce stores: If promoting physical products, choose high-quality, distinctive products targeting a specific audience. Stores such as Shopify, Amazon, Ebay, just to name a few.
Joining Relevant Affiliate Marketing Programs
The next step involves finding an affiliate marketing program that complements your niche or blog content. Affiliate marketplace are a great resource to find various products and services which would be ideal for your audience. These sites host thousands of brands offering affiliate programs. Some reliable options include:
- CJ Affiliate
- ShareASale
- Amazon
- ClickBank
- Alibaba
- Impact
Monetizing your business is the area that you might need to do the most research. The choices that are available to you are endless and it will be up to you to sort through all the information and make choices that best serves you and your audience.
To summarize everything that we have covered, the four steps to success in affiliate marketing are:
- Finding Your Niche
- Create Your Website
- Setup Your Autoresponder
- Monetize Your Website
For additional resources you can check out some of my other posts:
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