This blogpost will tell you about the best strategies to start earning through affiliate marketing even if you are a beginner and know nothing about affiliate marketing previously.
Earning money online while being in dreams sounds dreamy! Nah? Let’s see how you can do it even if you don’t know A of Affiliate marketing! Follow this ultimate beginner’s guide for affiliate marketing.
Here is six steps guide to start affiliate marketing and making some passive income:
What is affiliate marketing?
Summary
Affiliate marketing means getting a share from the sales of the products you have promoted. Its ever growing market and will grow a lot more in the future, giving you opportunities to ean more money passively.
As many of you know, affiliate marketing is sharing a part of the sale that is generated through your referral – as a reward for your marketing of that product. Although there are many other models like pay per click, affiliated sign ups, etc. In other words, if you have joined a referral program and referred the products under that program to your audience, you will get a share of the sale if someone buys through that link provided by you. In this blog, I will tell you about the process of starting the affiliate marketing and the major referral programs that offer affiliate marketing.
As of stats, in the US, affiliate marketing will grow up to around 9 billion dollars by 2022. That means by 2020, the affiliate marketers, like you, will get around 9 billion dollars and it’s up to you how much share do you get from this enormous amount! Do you want to get the maximum of that being a beginner? Keep following our complete guide to becoming an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing structure
Summary
Affiliate marketing consists of three major components; the merchant or seller, the affiliate, the consumer and most of the times, an affiliate network. Here are details.
Affiliate marketing stands up on three major pillars, though sometimes said to be four. These are:
- The Merchant
- The Affiliate
- The consumer
- And the fourth one is affiliate network, if any
The merchant
The merchant is the one who owns or manufactures a product and needs to sell their product. They can offer you their affiliation directly or through some affiliate network. You need to sign up on their website and create the affiliate link of the product you want to promote.
The Affiliate
You are the affiliate and you need to generate a sale through the link. As a result, you will get share from each sale generated through your provided referral link. Let’s say the share on that certain product is 5% and the price of the product is $100, and your referral link generated 100 sales out of it. You will get $500, a handsome passive income. But it is not that easy, if you don’t go with a certain plan. But don’t worry, we’ll provide you with a brilliant plan and a blueprint to a successful affiliate marketing journey.
The consumer
The consumer is obviously an integral part of this campaign. If someone clicks and buys a product/service from your affiliate link, you’ll get a share, not charging anything extra from buyer. That’s just a reward of your marketing from the merchant/affiliate network.
The affiliate network
It is taken as the fourth member of this affiliate chain. It is the connection between the merchant/seller and you – The affiliate marketer. You can find merchants there and manage your sales and their statistics there, in a well-managed way. These are being discussed in the coming lines.
Major Affiliate marketing Networks to start with
Summary
Some major affiliate networks are Amazon associates, ShareASale, CJ Affiliates, ClickBank and eBay partners program. See how they all work and which one suits you more.
Affiliate network is the network that is a bridge between affiliates and merchants or sellers. Merchants can find affiliates there, and affiliates can find merchants there. You – as an affiliate – can manage your sales (generated through your links actually), the dashboard there shows the statistics of your affiliate links and sales.
Some affiliate networks are:
How to start affiliate marketing on Amazon Associates
Amazon associates deal only in products available on Amazon. The percentage of affiliates per sale ranges from 1 to 10% on the products that are on affiliate programs (All products are not on Amazon’s affiliate program, so be aware of that). The great thing is that during the next 24 hours (cookie duration), if the person buys whatever item, you will get a share from each of the products. But the problem is that you need to get registered for each country separately.
ShareASale
This affiliate network, ShareASale has 4,500+ merchants under its belt, while amazon associate has only one – Amazon. The cookie duration depends upon the merchant in contrast to Amazon Associates. But the problem for you might be that you need to apply for each merchant and get approved by each.
Commission Junction or CJ affiliates
2500+ merchants are there on Commission Junction. A lot of big physical and digital merchants are there on CJ. Cookie duration depends upon the merchant. And again, you need to apply for each merchant separately.
ClickBank
Though it deals with physical products too, ClickBank is famous for digital products. You can find a lot of eBooks sellers, Software sellers, Online Courses, and more digital products. Minimum payout is also lesser than the affiliate networks described above – $10. Cookie duration is also bigger, around 60 days. The commission rate depends again on the merchant.
eBay Partners network
This Network offers commission from its own commission rather than from merchants. It offers 50-70% (not full sale) of its own revenue, a huge one indeed. It’s like Amazon who gives 1-10% of total sales, and the products are the ones offered only on eBay’s platform. Their products range is again a huge one and payout is lesser too – $10.
My recommendation
After going through major affiliate networks, I will recommend you to start working with US Amazon Affiliates if you are going for a physical product and select ClickBank if you are selecting some digital products niche.
How to start affiliate marketing today?
Summary
Here is how you’ll start affiliate marketing, first of all, select a platform that suits your needs and then comes the niche choice.
In earlier section, we had a brief introduction and some necessary things you need to know before stepping into affiliate marketing. Now, the real deal begins. Your Affiliate Marketing Campaign! To start with affiliate marketing, you need some audience, audience who read your things about the products and some of them buy these products and you get some share of that sale.
The best way to get started in minimum or zero amount is that you should start from either of the platforms:
- Product reviews/usage guide Blog on Blogger or WordPress: Here you can find your guide to start with blogging in minimum amount or for free
- Product reviews/usage guide/unboxing on YouTube: Probably the best way as YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. People love to search on YouTube before they buy any of the products. Just think, don’t you search for something on YouTube before buying it? We all do!
- Product usage guide on Facebook/twitter (Instagram is not much suitable as it doesn’t allow links in posts)
Now, the next question in your mind should be: what will be the products I’ll promote and how? Let me help you sort out these queries. The first part – what will be the products – is called niche. And then, how to promote these products. Let’s talk about the first part.
Selecting the profitable niche
Summary
Selection of a profitable niche comes through having some factors into the mind; your interests, your expertise in the interests, the competition, search volume and outranking the competition. In addition, a blog post I have written will assist you in selecting a perfect niche for your affiliate marketing.
There are thousands of niches, and every niche is having affiliates. But what will be your niche? Here’s how:
Interests
Firstly, start off the things with analyzing your interests and expertise. Before starting an affiliate blog, recall your interests. These can be anything like technology-related, software related, home appliances related or whatever. You can find affiliates in every market. If you are going for soft or digital products, go for ClickBank and if you are interested in any of thousands of physical products, go with Amazon Associates. However, if you are not selecting a niche you are not interested in, you will give it up after some days and some posts. So, make sure to select a niche you are interested in and have knowledge about that.
Competition
Secondly, keep in mind the competition you are going to face. My comprehensive four steps guide to selecting a great and profitable niche will surely help you find your affiliate niche according to your interests. It guides you over finding your interests, selecting the best out of these based on the profit you will get from each niche, and finding the search volume and competition, and leveraging the competition in the niche.
Revenue potential
After the first two steps, here’s another important tip for you is that you should keenly have a look at the rates and your shares on the products of that niche you are looking to get into. Conversion rate is also an important factor and 3-4% is considered as a great conversion rate.
“Marketing” for your affiliate marketing
Summary
After selecting a niche, and publishing an affiliate blog, you need to tell the people that your blog/channel exists somewhere which provides the people with the great content helping them chose the best products. In this process, all you need is uploading the content regularly, and search engine will do the rest of the job. You can share in your friends and family circle but only with the interested ones.
Here comes the most important part. How will someone know that Mr or Mrs ABC is having a blog or YouTube Channel which tells us about my favourite products in a great possible way?
A simple guide to start affiliate marketing
You have to follow a simple guide at start:
- Select suitable platform
- Create good content regularly (for around 4-6 months)
- Work for it’s ranking
- Share with “positive” friends and family
- Enjoy SALES and REVENUE out of these
What’s next?
Now, all you need to do is keep creating content regularly and consistently, the rest will be taken care by the algorithms of the relevant platforms and engagement of your audience with your content.
So, all you can do is create great content and share it with some good friends and family, who encourage you for positive things. But remember one fact about creating great content; provide value to your audience as no one will like to stay on your blog if you are just there to sell the product and getting a share. You need to tell about the product honestly and transparently. Tell about the pros and cons of that product you are talking about. It will induce loyalty between you and the audience and consequently, the people will tend to comeback to watch/read the reviews of other products of the same niche.
After creating content for around two to six months, you will be generating some handy amount of income from affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is ever growing and once you start getting some audience on your selected platform, it will go miles!
Final Thoughts
To sum up, it was an ultimate guide to start affiliate marketing, which will help you understand and get started with affiliate marketing. Firstly, you should choose a niche first and then choose a platform to start your campaign of making money online. Be careful in selecting the niche, which should be less competitive and paying you a good amount. This guide will help you understand all about niche selection. And this guide will help you rank you blog or channel in Google’s search engine ranking. I hope you are clear about affiliate marketing like never before. To make more money online, keep reading our more posts on ways to make money online. Idea Diction wishes you best of luck for your next online venture.
