How To Make Money In Affiliate Marketing – 4 Steps And 1 Error To Avoid!

Have you ever wondered how to make money in Affiliate Marketing? Is it easy to do or just plain hard to get started? If you are venturing online for the very first time then this article post might be for you. There are a lot of tutorials and guides you can find online about Affiliate Marketing and my suggestion is take what are useful and discard what are not.

In this post, I am going to be discussing the ins and outs of Affiliate Marketing and if you find it interesting that’s great I am happy for you but if you find it rather boring to read because it is too long then just skip to the end and you might find something revealing there that you can use.

What Exactly Is Affiliate Marketing?

There are a lot of definitions on this subject but in simple terms, Affiliate Marketing is when you align the buyer and the seller of which you will get a commission if a successful transaction happens.

The Seller Also Known As The Advertiser – This is the entity that has the products and services that you can market to your respective customers.

The Affiliate Marketer Also Known As The Publisher – This is basically you who will be marketing the products and services to earn commissions.

The Buyer Also Known As The Customers Or Consumers – This is who will be benefiting from the products and services that you are marketing. Once the seller and the buyer successfully conduct a transaction, you will get a commission.

That right there is the simplest explanation of Affiliate Marketing but let’s face it, we do not live in a simple world especially online and things are bound to become complicated. Nonetheless, if you stick to the basic fundamentals it will be a lot easier to understand.

In the world of Affiliate Marketing, the strategy of having a careful planning and execution is very important. There are 4 Major Steps that we will talk about and also 1 error that you want to avoid!

1. Find Your Niche Topic

Before you begin your online venture and decide to choose a niche topic, it is important to envision how the future of your endeavor would be. Pick a topic that has a product and services tied to it that you can sell to your prospective customers. The narrower the topic the more targeted you can get and you will have the least amount of time propelling your Affiliate Marketing business.

The First ideal approach and the most profitable for you to find are the ones with continuity programs. What that means is that you are selling subscription products and services. Example of which are: Monthly Membership Fees, Web Hosting Plans, Cable subscriptions, Cell Phone Plans, Netflix, Airline Frequent Flier Membership Discounts, Software As A Service (SAAS), Online Courses, Club Memberships, Insider Stock Memberships, Premium Online Subscriptions and so much more…

You being a consumer might be using a continuity program already without even realizing. Your Cell Phone Plan, your Amazon Prime Membership and Netflix are 3 good examples of them. One thing very important though is that you need to find your unique angle of selling these continuity programs. Why? Because the competition is fierce and you might give up halfway into your online journey which is just a wasted effort but don’t despair and rather trust in yourself that you can do it. The next time you see a successful entrepreneur, just know that they have also started from the very beginning.

The Second ideal approach into Affiliate Marketing is if you can find a product or service that has high commission rates. These are the ones that you can get as high as 75% or even 80% commission if you make a sale. Look into places like Clickbank, Commission Junction and High Paying Affiliate Programs. When you are picking your niche topic, it is important to be laser focus which means do not mix your topic from one area to another but rather just make sure you are catering into specific group of people that you can market your products and services. For example: if you are selling shoes, do not mix it with selling T-Shirts although you can, it is best if you don’t just yet. Why? Because the competition is fierce and you will have a rather hard time breaking through. Look at the website Swappa.com, back then they were only selling phones but now they have expanded into a whole lot of things like Laptops, Tablets, Watches, Video Games and eventually I am sure they will become the go to website for all electronics and more… So how exactly do they make money? They do it by aligning the buyer and the seller. Once a transaction happens, they get their transaction fees.

When you are in search for products and services to market, you can also look into websites such as Amazon.Com, Costco.Com and other big online retailers. Check their list of categories to get ideas and the commissions can range anywhere from 4% to 10%. Even though it seems low, the upside is that you will have millions of selections you can choose from for your niche topic.

2. Build Your Website And Fill It With Valuable Content

Once you have selected your niche topic and you have envision on how it is going to be, then the next step is to do the work. The majority of what you will be doing is creating content. You are focusing your effort into explaining what the problems are and providing solutions to them. Mainly you will be creating helpful content for your visitors.

It is sometimes necessary to first identify what the problems are to your visitors and explain why you have the unique solutions. Creating helpful, engaging and informational content are some of the ways you can build your audience. Being transparent and honest are essential to your Affiliate Marketing business. The last thing you want and this is the 1 error to avoid that I want to really make an emphasis on is the idea of becoming a “Snake Oil Salesman” meaning do not become a deceptive marketer.

Every piece of content you will create needs to be geared towards helping others and when you make that your focus, you will be much more successful in your online journey.

3. Attract Targeted Visitors That Are Ready And Willing To Buy What You Have To Offer

So how exactly do you attract targeted visitors? Well, it is easier said than done but again if you focus on creating helpful content, that is one key aspects into it. The other thing is that, make sure you associate yourself into products and services that you are comfortable and proud to market. By doing so, you will be enjoying the process of creating content and not become a chore that you hate.

Once your website is full of valuable content, you can start reaching out and promoting. There are several ways you can go with this and most people will focus on organic traffic, others will use Pay Per Click Advertising and then there is also the social media platforms that you can utilize.

If you are limited in budget, it is best to focus on organic traffic and social media. Continue creating valuable content and the traffic will come.

4. Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

There is a reason why this step is always the last because focusing on the money early on is really not the right approach. You have to really build your audience first before anything else. Building your audience requires hard work and dedication. If they see you as an honest person that provide helpful content, they are more likely to buy products and services from you. It is also true what they say that if you don’t have traffic, you don’t have an online business.

Do You Need To Have A Website To Do Affiliate Marketing

The answer is no, it is not necessary but having a website means you have a centralized platform to grow your audience that has the potential to keep coming back for more. Not only that, it will also allow you to explore other ways to monetize such as Adsense, Sponsorships and even creating your own product.

How hard is it to build a website for Affiliate Marketing? It is not hard at all and it is just a matter of clicking buttons. The hardest part is creating valuable content which you will be doing on a consistent basis. Try the website builder below and in no time you will have one to play around and have a feel on how it works. When you become serious about building your website, you can just as easily transfer it to your own domain name.

Why Affiliate Marketing When There Are Other Ways To Make Money Online

Have you ever noticed that most online businesses have their own Affiliate Programs? The reason why is because they need Affiliate Marketers like us to help them expand their reach to more customers. Affiliate Marketing is by far the best choice when it comes to venturing online for the very first time because there are several key reasons for it. One, the barriers to entry is low and you don’t need a big capital to get started.

The only initial spending you will need is the cost of your Web Hosting and Domain Name. There is no need for you to develop your own product to sell and you do not need to worry or deal with customer support.

How Fast Can You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

This is really the wrong question to ask because it varies. If you are thinking you will make money in a month or two then that is concerning because you won’t even have your website foundation built at that time let alone having it filled with valuable content. Besides, Google will not even see you as anything within just 2 months. My suggestion is give yourself a year and see where it can lead you.

You might be asking Ace one year is a long time, yes it is but that is a realistic timeline of online business not unless you are lucky enough to know how to create a successful Affiliate Marketing funnel which I will also be talking about in the details below.

How Affiliate Marketing Funnel Works

The way that this works is first you need to find the product or service you want to promote. In this case, you do not need a website but you do need to create a successful Funnel. There are 3 core steps to build your Affiliate Funnel.

First. Build Your Opt In Page – This is a page where your potential customers can sign up to receive information. You will then build up your rapport by giving them valuable freebies in exchange for their email addresses. This is key right here and you do not want to sell them anything just yet. The intent of this is to gather their email addresses and build up trust to your prospective customers.

Second. Build Your Thank You Page – The idea here is once they opt in to receive information from you, it will then automatically be redirected to a Thank you page where they can download the valuable freebies that you have attracted them to receive. You don’t want to do any selling yet in this stage because again the idea is to build trust with your potential customers. Statistics shows that it will take several emails about 7 or more before your customers are incline to buy from you.

Third. The Products And Services That You Offer – Once you have built up the trust, you will have a way to offer your customers in a continuous basis of the products and services that they are incline to buy from you. This Affiliate Marketing Funnel is also easier said than done because for one thing, you still need to drive traffic to your Opt In Page and how do you do that? Well, you still have to create content no matter what. If yo are popular in social media, you can utilize that area to drive traffic to your Opt In Page or you can use Pay Per Click which can cost a lot of money.

The bottom line here in my opinion is that when you are starting out, it maybe best to start your own Affiliate Marketing Website instead of creating your Affiliate Marketing Funnel. Why? Because it is harder to build trust on a funnel because your visitors do not know you yet and even if you give them lots of valuable freebies, they are likely just see those as spam because again they do not know you yet.

With that being said, there are also a lot of successful people creating Affiliate Marketing Funnels. The most common application they use is found at clickfunnels.com and that one can get really expensive when you are starting. The price of their starting plan is $97 per month and their platinum plan is $297 per month.

My Final Thoughts And What I Really Think

If you really wanted to know how to make money in Affiliate Marketing, the first thing to do is get started and learn as much as you can about the topic. You can Google free information and absorb what are useful and just discard what are not.

The other thing is find a platform that will serve as your command center to where you can build, host and maintain your website along with the support you need to succeed. The platform I use is called Wealthy Affiliate which I highly recommend but don’t be compelled to use them.

You are in control of your online journey and you can pick any platform you want but I just thought I’d mention that when you try Wealthy Affiliate you might find it to be the one you have been looking for to build your online business. It is the home of more than 1.3 million Affiliate Marketers that shares the same goal to succeed. If you are incline to find out more, click on the link below and start your online journey.

And as always, Your Feedback is Valuable so if you have any questions, comments and/or experience related to this post, please share them in the comments section below.

I Wish You Success in Your Online Venture,

Ace