For some, the promise of earning passive income with affiliate marketing seems too good to be true. We understand, making money while sleeping, seems to be nothing but a dream. However, every day more and more people bet on affiliate marketing to increase their income.
Just google the sentence affiliate marketing and delight yourself with zillions of success stories that automatically pop up on your screens. Go beyond and check out when they started doing affiliate marketing.
Paradoxically, the fact of having so much social proof is what usually makes people have second thoughts about going further on affiliate marketing. Questions like what should I do to be one of those success stories? Are there some tricks or tips to make it work from day one? It’s perfectly fine to have some reservations. Today, we’ll explain how you can start in the world of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing: The Steps You Should Take
Doing profitable affiliate marketing only takes three simple steps:
Choose a product or service you love
This will be your niche. Make sure you’re convinced about this product or service that you choose. You’ll be creating lots of content about it, so it’s easier to stay motivated by loving what you do.
Of course, you can have more than one product or service in mind. We do recommend, however, that you reduce your options to a maximum of three. Then, analyze your possibilities for all selected products. You need to determine if your product meets a specific need.
Are there any tips to choose a good option for you that additionally works well in terms of commercialization? Sure! Google Trends becomes very handy to determine the best market for your niche. Open a Private Window in your browser, go to Google Trends, and type a Search Term related to your service or product.
Colorful lines will appear on your screen as you type your search terms on the bar. What you need to look for is some activity in analytics; this means your search terms need to show discrete and acceptable peaks and valleys, but not chaotic or dramatic patterns because they will render the same unsteadiness to your affiliate marketing campaigns.
On the other hand, a flatline isn’t the best idea either – especially if it sits at the bottom line of the graphic. Then, you need to look for search terms with an upward trend over time. Those are popular products from which you can create excellent strategies for your affiliate marketing campaigns.
Step 2 – Choose a Renowned Affiliate Marketing Service
When it comes to affiliate marketing, a good reputation is crucial. The next step then is choosing the best option in affiliate marketing for you. Check this list with renowned programs for affiliate marketing:
- Amazon Associates
- Clickbank
- GlobalWide Media
- Commission Junction (CJ)
- Affiliate.com
- Tradedoubler
- Rakuten Linkshare
- PeerFly
- JVZoo
- eBay Partner Network
- ShareASale
What can I earn from Affiliate Marketing?
Most affiliate programs offer up to 20% commission, but you need to check how much your preferred affiliate program pays for your chosen service or product. Depending on the net value of the service or product you select, commissions can go anywhere from 4% to 50%.
You also need to take into account other variables, such as Key USPs (Unique Selling Propositions), Cookie duration, Terms, and Conditions, etc. Read and weigh them carefully before signing up.
How does it work?
Affiliate marketing is based on a pay for performance (P4P) business model. It works as a channel through which SME and big companies pay to third parties (you) an agreed percentage over the price for sales promotion, advertising, or commercializing their products and services on their web pages, blogs, social media fan pages, etc.
In short, you create a webpage and other means to promote a product or service for an SME or big company, and you get paid for each sale, click or referee you catch. But keep reading, you need to know more about building a substantial niche opportunity to earn money with affiliate marketing.
Step 3 – Build a Targeted Audience to Market your Service or Product
You’ll also need to think about the features of your preferred audiences, profiling them in the best option for your product or service and, in parallel, create your campaigns.
Types of Affiliate Marketing
In principle, there are two types of affiliate marketing: face-to-face and online.
Face-to-face Affiliate Marketing
You probably get a bit confused about conducting the principles of affiliate marketing beyond digital endeavors, but yes, it is entirely possible. Offline affiliate marketing can be considered the “original.” Think about Tupperware, Stanhome, or Amway, ring a bell? Yes! Our grandmothers most probably did early affiliate marketing.
Online Affiliate Marketing
If you got hooked with the promise to earn passive income with affiliate marketing, then this is the best option. For online marketing, it is essential to create fantastic content in different formats and share it with your target audiences. The following question is, where would you share it? Yes, a website, blog, vlog, podcasts, mail lists, and your social media are the answer.
Keep in mind that the main goals of delivering great content are adding value to your customers with your solutions while collecting relevant data (email, telephones, social media, etc.), and redirecting traffic from and to different websites. For this reason, you should always provide real and right answers to your audiences’ inquiries and questions.
What to Do to Create a Solid Niche Site
As experts in creating dependable niche sites to earn passive income while sleeping with affiliate marketing, we strongly recommend using different formats and means to create a trustworthy Niche Site. Same, as we mentioned before, these formats and ways are:
| Written Means |
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| Audio/Video Means |
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| Graphic Means |
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In short, your niche needs a Web Page with a Blog, a YouTube Channel, a PodCast, and Social Media to link them all.
What to Post in your Web Page
Make sure to post recurrent content to feed your web page before promoting your niche service or products. Follow these specifications:
- Articles. Ten articles with around 1,500 words focused on answering specific inquiries and questions.
- Posts. Ten posts with at least 500 words of light and shareable content. Listicles, Infographics, Quizzes/Tools, Checklists, Slideshare, and How to’s are the most popular posts.
- Cornerstone Content. 10 long and specialized articles like whitepapers, eBooks, or research with around 3,500 words covering broader and more in-depth topics.
Choosing your Topics
What should you do to get inspiration and choose the best topics for your niche? The answer is simple, study your competition. They have been around longer than you. Analyze and understand what they do by answering these questions:
- What problems and issues are they addressing?
- What are their communities talking about?
- What related videos their communities track and follow on YouTube?
There’s a trick to write fantastic content while keeping focused on the relevant. “Yes, your product or service is the ultimate answer to solve your customer’s pain, yet, it isn’t the star. The questions and inquiries of your audience, they are the most important.”
So make sure not to sound like an aggressive direct sales script when creating your copy and focus on the solutions you are offering to your audience. Be helpful while you smartly modify the features of your product or service, you know, adding here and there some SEO keywords (the ones that work for you) and your related links, enough to show why it is their best choice discreetly. Point them as an advantage for your customers, and do not overuse praises and commendations. Give insight in dribs and drabs.
Create YouTube and Podcast Channels
Piece of cake. Once you have created a Website with Blog (so demanding), customizing a YouTube channel seems more relaxed, and it is. As YouTube is a platform with preloaded features, what you need to do is customizing your YouTube channel to replicate your voice brand.
Apply the same principle to your Podcast channel. Replicate and amplify your voice brand, figurative, and speaking. Here are some of the most popular choices to upload your Podcasts:
- SoundCloud
- BuzzSprout
- Smart Podcast Player
- Transistor
- Blubrry
- Libsyn
Now, about the content you share in your YouTube and Podcast channels, you can entirely use the same plan and material you use for your web page but adapted for the different formats. Using both voiced/image with written content, you can build a loyal community that will redirect traffic to all your social media and Niche sites.
That’s it!
Developing a new WooCommerce store will help to promote your business and the opportunity to earn money, “find high-profit items,” and sell products effortlessly.
Once you have done all we have told you up to here, your pages and channels will be ready to catch visitors who will have the chance to learn from you and click on your affiliate links to make you earn passive income while you sleep.
Do not forget to track your performance to detect which ones of your strategies and content are producing more clicks (and why), and redirecting more traffic. Use that information to improve those who aren’t working as well as you need, and keep on moving.
Last, let people know you are using affiliate links and cookies, ensuring transparency and protecting yourself and your audience from potential affiliate marketing scams. Kudos!
