How to start in affiliate marketing

The affiliate marketing industry is a fast-growing industry. With a value of about $12 billion, it has proven to be the top way to make huge money online. It's a type of marketing where businesses reward their clients or customers for each product they sell or for new customers they bring to the company. Businesses spending on affiliate marketing hit a total of $8.2 billion in 2022 according to Statista. 

You might have come across affiliate marketing and you might probably haven't realized it. If you have bought a product recommended by a friend, then you have come across affiliate marketing, and if you have recommended a product to a friend then you are an affiliate marketer. Sounds great Right? The affiliate marketing industry is a growing industry, however for many beginners, it can be a tedious workload, but not to worry I will guide you on how to start affiliate marketing, you will understand how to make money online through affiliate marketing.

Chapter 1

Definition of affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is an act of promoting other brands' products and services. It's a type of performance-based marketing where customers are rewarded for the promotion of a product, for referral, or for selling a product. The affiliate earns a commission from the products sold or for the referral. Affiliate marketing is solely focused on generating leads and sales for businesses while providing their affiliate commission or another form of payment, to pay them for lead generation or sales made. 

Although affiliate marketing has been around for several years or decades, it became an industry during the invention of the Internet. When traced back to the 1980s William J. Tobin was the first to create the first affiliate program for his company PC Flowers and Gifts. This company paid businesses who linked to their products. Since then affiliate marketing continued to evolve, and now it's a very profitable industry.

How does affiliate marketing work

Let's look at this scenario; you signed up to work for a company as an affiliate marketer, the merchant supplies you with products, which can be physical products or digital products and you are expected to make sales and also bring people to the company (referral). For each product you sell you are expected to make a commission of 30% and for each person you refer to you are entitled to a 40% commission. Your job is to make sales and earn commissions.

Depending on the kind of product you are selling, you will need to choose a specific audience to focus on; Assuming you are advertising makeup products, your target audience should be mainly women aged 17 and above. 

Nowadays most men also apply makeup but your focus on them can be minimal and you can put maximum focus on the women. You can decide to market or advertise the product on social media platforms (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc.), on a blog, website, or podcast. You are to persuade and convince them of the benefits of the products or services and how they can benefit them. 

Convince them to make a purchase, each time anyone purchases through your unique affiliate link, you receive a portion of the revenue made which is also called a commission.

Affiliate marketing is a billion-dollar industry, where an affiliate who could be an owner of multiple websites or email lists is hired to promote a product or service on social media platforms by running ads, posting links, or on a website by running banner ads, writing a review on the products or by sending emails to clients. Visitors who click on those links, and banner ads will be redirected to the products page to make a purchase, and if they made a purchase, you will get your commission which can be 10%-50% but the list commission you can get as an affiliate marketer is 5%. 

Affiliate marketing is like a microphone on the rooftop that merchants use to announce or make their products known to the public. Affiliate marketing follows a path and it has several components which we will be looking at.

Merchant: this is the person that manufactures, or creates the products. A merchant can be an individual or an organization.

Affiliate Network: This can be seen as an organization containing a database of products and services for the affiliate marketer to promote products. For example, Amazon which is a leading affiliate Network connects merchants with affiliates. They have a program called Amazon Associates Program, this program allows people to promote or sell a product using generated affiliate links and in return, they earn a commission. 

In the affiliate Associates Program, the merchant provides the affiliate marketer with a promo code or an affiliate link. The affiliate promotes the merchant's products either on social media platforms or on their websites. With the affiliate link provided the merchant can track each sale made from that affiliate link.

Affiliate Marketer: This is a person that promotes the product. They can also be called publishers. These people join an affiliate network and sign up to be an affiliate. The affiliate program provides them with a unique code that they will use to promote products and services to their target audience. When a customer clicks on their link or banner ads and makes a purchase, they get rewarded for each sale they made.

Consumers: They can also be called buyers. They are the ones that purchase the products and services promoted by affiliate marketers. Without them, affiliate marketing cannot be successful. Affiliate marketing becomes successful when a product can be sold. 

For a consumer to buy your products and services, you must convince them that the product will benefit them, and also show them how it can benefit them. However when marketing to any consumers try to find out their needs and how to meet those needs, also make sure you have a target audience, that will make the job smoother and less stressful because you already have a defined audience.

Benefits of affiliate marketing

Here are some of the benefits of affiliate marketing to an industry and an individual. First I will be discussing the benefits of being an affiliate marketer and then the benefits of affiliate marketing to an organization.

Benefits of being an affiliate marketer:

Easy Entry

Affiliate Marketing programs are easy to join, and most of them are also free to sign up for. You just need to go over to the affiliate program and fill out the form with the necessary details needed and boom! you have successfully signed up for an affiliate marketer. However, make sure you read the terms and conditions of the affiliate marketing program before accepting it; you won't like to be suspended for violating a rule or regulations. The terms and service section should thoroughly be studied as they contain rules and regulations of the affiliate marketing program for example, Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program terms and conditions state that, 

"To participate in the associate's program and receive commission you must comply with the affiliate agreement to participate, you must provide us with any information needed to verify your compliance with this agreement, and if you violate this agreement or terms and conditions of any other Amazon marketing program we reserve the right permanently cease payment of any or all commission payable to you." 

If you ignore these conditions, you are at risk of not being paid your commission income, so be careful.

No or Little Experience Needed

You don't need to have any experience in affiliate marketing to get started. It's easy to start and adapt to the system. Most affiliate marketing comes with a guide to how you can work as an affiliate marketer in their organization and earn money. They will provide you with the step-by-step process you need to understand the products and what has been requested or required of you as an affiliate.

You can earn commissions through the products and services sold. You learn by doing and also become an expert by learning from your mistakes. Affiliate marketing doesn't need any requirements to get started, it doesn't need any degree whatsoever to get started, just a click on the signup button and enter the necessary details is all you need to start making your money. Sounds good right?

Independence 

For someone that doesn't like the everyday hassle and stress of waking up early in the morning to go to work, running around in the office to get jobs done, being yelled at by your boss, etc. affiliate marketing is just the perfect job for you. 

One thing I love about affiliate marketing is the freedom you have as an employee, is like running your own business, no need to get up early in the morning so as to avoid traffic, you do everything in your house, and you owe and run this business, you can decide which company you chose to work for i.e promote their products and services and who not do work for. You can decide to switch between brands if you think that it's hard promoting an affiliate offer from a brand.

Flexibility

You have the right to choose when to work, how to work, and for whom to work. You can decide to be either a part-time affiliate marketer, a full-time affiliate marketer, or a freelancer the ball is in your court. Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways of earning money in the comfort of your home. All you need to kickstart is a laptop, PC, Smartphone, and an internet connection. Also, the amount of time you spend promoting a product depends totally on the type of product you are promoting and also how many companies you are working for.

Huge Income Stream

Working as an affiliate marketer is a lucrative business. With affiliate marketing being a multi-billion dollar industry it's highly beneficial to join this Industry, according to Glassdoor you can make up to $66,029 per year as an affiliate marketer. Whether you take this as a side hustle or as your full-time job, you can still make a huge stream of income, and also the amount of money you make depends on the niche you are promoting (beauty products, home appliances, etc.), and the commission allocated to each product.

Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing to an Organization:

High ROI

As a business owner, using affiliate marketing is very beneficial for the promotion of your brand and products. It's easy to start at low-cost and it also has a great impact on your ROI (Return On Investment). Affiliate marketing for an organization leads to higher ROI and you have nothing to complain about. With affiliate marketing, you are sure to earn more and make more sales and also leads. 

Many brands are using affiliate marketing as a means of online advertisement. For example, Amazon, a very popular e-commerce site, has bought into affiliate marketing to make sales. They employ affiliate marketers to promote their products and services depending on the niche the affiliate chooses, they pay the affiliate commission income for each sale they make.

Increase in Traffic 

Need higher traffic to your e-commerce site, then dive into affiliate marketing. They are the true leader when it comes to traffic generation. As affiliates are bringing in consumers using the promo code or affiliate link you gave them to make purchases, you can also experience a great increase in the number of website visits, and your website will greatly benefit from this. Of course, more website visits mean higher sales and increased ROI. Sounds awesome right? All you need to kickstart is a group of affiliate marketers to make the magic happen.

Brand Recognition

This would have been on the top list, but it found its way to the third list. Brand recognition is one huge benefit of affiliate marketing to an organization. You can't have high traffic without brand recognition. Employing this marketing strategy is an effective way to build, and improve your brand recognition.

Affiliates are the ones spreading the good news about your brand, both physically and digitally. They are there to preach the good news of your brand to people, to their target audience, and convince them to make a purchase. If they successfully make a purchase and experience the goodness and find your products to be valuable, they will likely come back again for more purchases, and this time around, they might come with their friends. 

You see the circle, your brand is getting recognized and acknowledged. You can also build your brand recognition through word-of-mouth advertising and also encourage customers' feedback and reviews.

Common misconceptions about affiliate marketing

There have been so many misconceptions about affiliate marketing and we will be looking into them in this section and also I will be dispelling some of these misconceptions about affiliate marketing.

1. Expensive to start

This is one of the top misconceptions on my list because it's one of the biggest misconceptions on the internet. Most people believe that affiliate marketing is expensive to start, and may not be affordable to some people. In reality, this misconception is quite the opposite. If you have been reading through this article, you would have noticed where I indicated that affiliate marketing is easy to start at a lower cost. Although without any financial investment, it will be difficult because you will need to create a website, but trust me affiliate marketing is less costly to a startup than other forms of marketing.

2. It's too late to now

You might probably be wondering, "Affiliate marketing is becoming too popular nowadays on the internet. Maybe there isn't a chance for me to join, it's too late." Well, you are mistaken, there's more than enough chance for you in affiliate marketing. This misconception has made some businesses drop the idea of affiliate marketing but in reality, it's quite the opposite. 

The best time to start affiliate marketing is Now! Yes, there is a lot of work to do, but the effort is worth it. Don't look at the competition going on, and the number of affiliate marketing programs on the internet today, you should know that as the day goes by, there are more emerging companies on the internet and they will also be promoting their products, so the best time to start is now.

You will need to create a website, create a social media profile or page for your brand and then start posting links, promo codes, and banner ads.

3. Talk about the advertiser

There has also been a misconception that affiliate marketing is all about the advertiser, but that's only half the truth. Imagine if you have a great advertiser but a poor quality product, the reputation of your brand is at a big risk. Affiliate marketing isn't all about how great your advertiser is, or his/her fan base, it's also about the quality of your products and services.

It's great to have a good advertiser, and also high-quality products.

4. Technical skills needed

I can't remove this misconception from my list. This is a very common misconception going on. You might have probably heard someone say "Affiliate marketing requires technical know-how." With the basic skill you have, you can start affiliate marketing simply by promoting links on your social media platforms, and gradually you learn how to create a blog. 

You take the baby steps, you don't need to have strong technical skills to start affiliate marketing.

5. Fast stream of income

Don't be deceived to think that affiliate marketing is one of those make-money-quick schemes, No! It's not. However a little percentage of this misconception is true but that's if you already have a well-established audience, a website with high traffic, and a large email list. But for starters, I don't think you can earn money quickly from this marketing strategy. 

Yes! Affiliate marketing will make you a lot of money, but it takes time and effort. Also as an affiliate marketer, it might take a month or less to start earning from affiliate marketing, but all the same affiliate marketing is worth the effort.

6. Goes hand in hand with advertising 

Affiliate marketing isn't the same as advertising, it is more than just advertising.

Affiliate marketing requires communication and trust before it can be successful. In affiliate marketing, you recommend to your buyers the products that have been tested and tried either by you or someone else and proven to be true but in advertising, it's the opposite, you don't need to test the products.

There are many more misconceptions on the internet but don't let them get in your way.

Chapter 2

Why should you start affiliate marketing?

Don't know where to start? Then don't worry, in this section, we will be looking at reasons why you should start affiliate marketing. 

1. It's cheap

You aren't surprised, are you? The reason why I picked this to be on my top list is that, like I said earlier affiliate marketing is cheap and not as expensive as other marketing strategies. There are no start-up fees, you don't need to have a warehouse, or store to get started. All you need is to sign up for an affiliate program, your laptop or smartphone, and an internet connection.

Although some sites require you to pay before joining their affiliate marketing program, some sites offer free affiliate marketing programs.

Affiliate marketing programs are free only if you might spend some money to create a site and produce high-quality content on the site, which is optional, you can decide to focus on promotion on your social media platforms.

2. Independence

There's nothing that feels better than having your independence while working. Being your boss, and deciding your work hours. Affiliate marketing can give you the Independence you desire, you can work anyway, and anytime. You can also choose your own work hours, and work wherever you like at your own time, pace, and comfort as long as there's an internet connection you're good to go.

Nothing feels as good as knowing that whether you work every day or not, there are always streams of income trickling down.

3. Low entry barrier

You don't have to worry about your educational background, work experience, and skill acquisition. You can be an affiliate marketer just by signing up and filling out the forms provided. The low entry barrier makes it easier and hassle-free to be an affiliate marketer. You don't have to worry about having any degree or work experience.

You don't need to submit any CV/Resume, you don't need to attend any interview, all you need is just your smartphone, laptop, and an internet connection.

4. Can be a side hustle

You can be working as a full-time affiliate marketer or as a part-time affiliate marketer. If you already have a well-paying job, affiliate marketing can be a side hustle for you. You can still be making a handful of money as a part-time affiliate marketer regardless of your work hours.

It might not be that easy at the beginning as a part-time affiliate marketer, but with time, and consistency you will start earning enough, afterwards you can decide to either quit your current job and focus more on affiliate marketing or to still retain both. 

5. Passive income 

Once you have started, and established your affiliate marketing business, you can start making some money online.

With little effort, you can make passive income even on a product recommended months ago. You don't have to start going about posting on your social media platforms, or website every day, once you have already set up your profile and website, you are sure to make sales and earn money even while at sleep. 

6. Great for competitors

There are people who love competition, if you are one of them then affiliate marketing is definitely for you. As more and more people tend to dive into this marketing strategy, you can also follow suit. You can compete with others in the same niche as you, to see who gets the best performance, to know whose site gets more traffic and whose products attract more buyers.

Just like you can get addicted to playing your favorite but competitive game, trust me affiliate marketing can be addictive too.

Players involved in affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing involves three players, each collaborating to promote a product and services.

They include:

- The merchant or the brand

- The Affiliate or publisher

- Affiliate Network 

- The Consumer 

The merchant or the brand is the first person in affiliate marketing, they offer the products and services to affiliate marketers. They are the ones who create and own the products or services, they provide the affiliate with the goods they need according to their niche. They also offer the affiliate the necessary support and resources they need to effectively promote the products.

The Affiliate: Also known as the publisher, they are one of the key players involved in affiliate marketing. You can see affiliates as those who work with an affiliate network program to promote goods and services and earn commission-based income.

As an affiliate, your job is to convince customers to buy the products and tell them about their value and their benefits.

Affiliate Network: This connects the merchant with the affiliate. Without an affiliate network like Amazon Associates affiliate program, there won't be a connection between merchant and affiliate, and when there's no connection, there won't be anything like affiliate marketing.

The Consumer: Without the Consumer affiliate marketing will not be a successful one. They are the one that buys the product.

Types of affiliate marketing

There are three main types of affiliate marketing. They include Unattached, related, and involved. We will be looking at each of them.

Unattached Affiliate Marketing 

This is the most uninvolved form of marketing. Here the affiliate does not know the products or services, they don't possess any skills needed to promote the products. 

This type of affiliate marketing is like pay-per-click, the affiliate has no presence or authority on the niche they are promoting, and all they do is put affiliate links through Google AdWords, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, etc. This type of affiliate marketing needs time to build a reputation and trust from customers. It might seem attractive because there's no authority needed, but it might be hard to gain the trust of customers. It focuses mainly on income rather than the customers you're serving.

Related Affiliate Marketing 

Here the affiliate has the audience needed to drive traffic and generate sales. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate has a connection with the niche and knows the niche products. They don't need to use the product or make claims of using the product but they have knowledge of the product's niche.

For instance, a YouTube influencer or lifestyle blogger may promote skincare products that they haven't used or even enlargement products they haven't used, simply because they have an audience interested in skincare and enlargement products.

Involved Affiliate Marketing 

In Involved affiliate marketing, it involves the affiliate having a connection with the products. You can see them as the opposite of related affiliate marketing, unlike related affiliate marketing which doesn't use the product before marketing an Involved affiliate marketing program involves the affiliate having a first-hand experience of the product before recommending it to their audience.

They talk about their experience with the product and also discuss the advantages, and disadvantages of the products to the audience. It takes more time to build trust and credibility from your audience but your ROI tends to be high.

Finding the right affiliate program

There are many ways to find affiliate programs. You can find them by searching for affiliate programs on Google

Although some companies use different terms for affiliate marketing, Amazon uses the term Affiliate associates program. And many others.

To be able to find the right affiliate marketing program first is to search for them. Like I said earlier, you can search for an affiliate marketing program on Google, or your friends can recommend some affiliate programs to you.

Once you have found an affiliate marketing program, you'll need to check the company's website, and also ensure that the Company has a good reputation, because this will also boost your reputation and marketing efforts.

If the company has a poor reputation, and a poor quality product, it will negatively affect its reputation, and trying to market the product will only make it fail faster. To know what customers think of a product or brand before marketing to them, you can check out the review site on Google, their Business page, forums, and Google reviews. You can also check your social media platforms, if you notice high levels of engagement from their customers, positive reviews and feedback, low product return rate, and positive rating then you can trust the brand.

When you are done checking out the company's profile and reputation, then you can consider picking a product. I advise you to pick a product you know or have used before or maybe one that you can easily market. Know what your audience wants and what sits well with them then go for that kind of product. Choose a high-quality product, you can use it before marketing it to your audience, you can also read customer reviews and testimonials. This will enable you to be able to answer questions effectively on it, and also clearly explain the advantages and disadvantages of the product. The more you know about the products and services, the easier it will be for you to sell them effectively thereby leading to high ROI.

As I said earlier, promote products your audience is familiar with and fits your niche. Also, you can earn higher commissions as an affiliate marketer if you choose programs that offer competitive commission rates.

Here are some affiliate programs you can consider;

Amazon Associates affiliate program

Click Bank

eBay partner network

GiddyUp

Impact

Commission Junction (CJ)

Rakuten Affiliate

Chapter 3

How much money can you make as an affiliate marketer?

As an affiliate marketer Affiliate Marketing is meant to provide you with the financial freedom you need. It's a profitable industry to invest in. You must have been hearing about people making a 6 digits figure monthly from affiliate marketing. Is it really true? We would find out in this section.

As an affiliate marketer, you are sure to access some level of financial success, but it isn't a get-rich-quick scheme, don't think that if you join affiliate marketing you will start making millions and millions in just one month. To be successful in affiliate marketing you need to put in effort before you can start seeing results.

According to Hacker’s Niall Roche affiliate marketing is divided into three categories which include

Beginner: $0-$1000 per month.

Intermediate: $1000-$10,000 per month

Advanced: $10,000-$100,000 per month.

Super Affiliate: over $100,000 monthly 

According to a survey conducted by a Marketing benchmark, it was disclosed that about 3.78% of survey respondents made more than $150,000 per annum, 7.95% made about $100,000-$150,000 every annum, about 5.15% made about $50,000-$100,000 per annum, 16.21% made around $10,000-$50,000 per annum, and finally 57.55% of respondents made below $10,000 every year.

However, it's worth noting that these figures represent people who stuck at affiliate marketing - many have tried and failed to make a useful income from it.

According to Hacker’s Niall Roche, before you can start making enough money from affiliate marketing to consider replacing your current job, it can take up to two years. This can discourage some, that's why according to the diagram, most beginners hardly make it to the advanced category they give up on the way. You should know that to be a successful affiliate marketer it does take time, and a lot of effort, you will need a lot of patience, persistence, and commitment to make it work.  

Getting started with affiliate marketing

To get started with affiliate marketing here are things you need.

Choosing your niche

Choose the niche that you are knowledgeable and passionate about. This helps you to be able to easily build trust among your customers. 

For example, let's say you're passionate about your skincare and how to maintain healthy skin, you can open a blog, or a YouTube channel to help people care for their skin healthily and also maintain healthy skin. You can also recommend some products to them that can help them maintain healthy skin. Also, you encourage them to like, share, and follow your content

To grow your audience you will have to invest in content marketing.

The niche you select says a lot about you and if you are passionate about the niche, you will like to invest more time and effort in building it.

As a beginner in affiliate marketing, when choosing a niche to focus on, choose less competitive niche tools like Google Keyword Planner, SpyFu, and SEMRush will help you know, and give you insights on the level of competition in each niche.

According to Rae Dolan, a well-known affiliate marketer, here are steps to take in choosing a niche:

- PPC bids are used as an indicator of competition in the topic. You will find out if no one is advertising in that space or maybe the volumes are low, this will indicate limited appeal.

- Conduct research on the keywords in the niche and see if the results are major brand home pages. If they are, it will likely suggest a high level of competition in such areas. But if they include only small blogs, you may have an opportunity.

- Create a list of ranking sites and go through their inbound link to see how difficult it might be to meet those numbers. We recommend choosing a niche with low competition and high search volume.

Once you have decided on the niche you want to venture into, and checked the volume and possibility to scale in such an area. We will now look at the profitability scale.

As an affiliate marketer, when choosing a niche you should also consider its revenue generation rate. Find products, or brands around your area of interest with high commission so as to make profits. Take the niche and test its worth, as an affiliate marketer it's of no use getting into a less profitable niche, and you can do this on ClickBank. Start by clicking on the affiliate marketplace at the bottom of the top menu. Begin by searching for your category in the provided search bar on top.

Once you have found your niche, click on it, and you will see a search result giving you a list of profitable products you can sell for your niche. To better understand this search result as it can get confusing most times, we recommend sorting your results by 'Gravity' and from high to low.

Here you will be able to see clearly how well affiliate products sell well for a particular niche.

Another step to take is to double-check your niche on Google AdWords to check its Cost per click (CPC). Since your focus will be on how to increase sales, revenue, and drive traffic, finding out how much clicks cost and knowing how to compete is important.

Who is your target audience? This is the next question that should come to your mind. To find out who they are, look at their demographics to know about their names, countries, addresses, gender, income level, education level, and hobbies.

Once you have identified who they are you can now know the kind of product that you will offer them, know their needs, and be able to choose products that will meet those needs.

Also, remember that to effectively market a product to your customers, you must know its benefits, features, advantages, and disadvantages. This will make them see you as an authority in that niche.

Building a website or blog

To be a successful affiliate marketer, you need to build a blog or website. There are many website builders on the internet they include:

- WordPress

- Wix

- Square space etc

We recommend WordPress for various reasons, and especially because even if you don't have the technical know-how on coding, you can build a professional and responsive site in minutes.

WordPress has more tools built into it to help their site perform well at a higher level. You also need to customize your site with themes and plugins. WordPress has varieties of free themes for you to choose from. Moreover, you can install the best WordPress plugins on your site to improve its security and help manage your site better.

However you also need a domain name, this is your site address. Pick a simple, short, and unique domain name.

Creating quality content

Poor quality content doesn't convert. As an affiliate marketer you need to earn the trust of your customers, and creating high-quality content that resonates with them Is one of the best ways to do so.

High-quality content not only earns you trust and credibility, but also improves a site's organic traffic, and boosts its performance on search results. Regardless of what type of content you are creating, whether it be a YouTube video, blog post, email copy, or newsletter, you should aim to create engaging, educative, informative, and original content.

Use specific target keywords to help you in determining their pain, needs, and problems. You can consider using long-tail keywords as they are easier to rank. For your keyword research, Google Keyword Planner and SEMRush will help you. 

Growing your audience and traffic

Good content drives traffic. Driving traffic to your site is necessary for boosting its leads, conversation, and sales, and attracting potential customers.

To boost your site traffic you need to invest in your SEO strategy. This includes your keyword optimization, ensuring the responsiveness of your site, how easy it is to navigate, ensuring it's mobile-friendly, and also link building.

There are also ways to generate traffic to your site they include;

Social Media Posts: If you have a large audience on your social media platforms, it's a huge advantage to you, as you can increase your brand awareness easily without stress. If you don't have a large audience on your social media platforms, then you will need to build up followers, to increase engagement, and brand awareness. You can also optimize each of your content with hashtags to boost discoverability, especially on social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. 

Email Campaign: Another form of generating traffic is through email marketing. Email marketing is an act of sending business, and commercial messages to your audience through email. Through email marketing, you can send advertisements, make sales, or donations.

As an affiliate marketer through email marketing, you can build your brand awareness, trust, and credibility. When sending emails to your audience, make use of a custom email address that contains your company's website.

Guest Posting: Guest Posting has proven to increase site traffic. You can reach out to sites that have a similar niche as you, and offer to write quality content for them. This will increase your site traffic and audience.

Promoting affiliate products

To promote affiliate products, you will need to choose an affiliate program. You can select from the list of affiliate programs above or you can search for affiliate programs online. Once you have chosen your affiliate program you select affiliate products to sell.

Before you promote an affiliate product, you should check its commission rate. 

Tracking and optimizing your results

Tracking your affiliate results is very essential to know whether you should adjust your marketing strategy. You can track things like pages, links and know which one gets the most traffic. Tools like Post Affiliate Pro, LinkTrack, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Voluum can help you to track and optimize your results.

One of the most popular, and free tracking tools is Google Analytics which you can use to track the conversion rate of your affiliate links and website traffic. Post Affiliate Pro can be used to track sales, commissions, and clicks.

To optimize your affiliate results you can use data gathered to increase your Conversion rates by creating high-quality content and tweaking your website.

By tracking and optimizing your results, you can build a successful affiliate business.

Chapter 4

You have spent time building an affiliate business, in this section we will be looking at the advanced affiliate marketing strategies to scale your revenue. 

Diversifying your income sources

Affiliate Marketing is a popular and profitable industry. It has become a popular way for people to make money online either as a part-time affiliate marketer or as a full-time affiliate marketer.

Many affiliate marketers are signing up for multiple affiliate marketing programs to diversify their source of income and increase their access to a wide range of products in their respective niches.

As an affiliate marketer diversifying your income source is very important. As a beginner in affiliate marketing, we advise you to rely on two affiliate programs for a start. Diversifying your income helps to gain more revenue thereby reducing the risk of focusing on one source of income.

One of the main reasons we recommend diversifying your income sources is to reduce the risk of relying on one source of income.

For example, assuming you are promoting a product from ClickBank or a brand like Nestle, a change in the market i.e. signing up for a different affiliate marketing program or focusing on two niches can earn you a significant amount of money and increase website traffic.

Ways to diversify your income source include:

Use several affiliate networks

As I said earlier I advise you to sign up for multiple affiliate networks. Imagine having to make a huge amount of money from Amazon Associates affiliates and also from ClickBank. Signing up for both of them and successfully building an affiliate business on them will not only serve as a means to diversify your income but will also increase your revenue and commission rates. You will also have access to a wider range of high-quality products in your niche.

Create your own product

Consider creating your products. It can be anything from ebooks, skincare products, beauty products, courses, or even software. This will increase your revenue, and also build a stronger audience. If you look there must be something you're good at, tap into that potential, and you will make a huge amount of income. Now you can earn money from products from other brands and your brand. Sounds great right?

Promote on different platforms

There are many social media platforms you can promote your product on including TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and a lot more. Instead of relying on one platform to promote your product like a website and blog, you can leverage the power of promoting products through emails, social media platforms, and other platforms. It will not only diversify your means of income but will also increase your reach and improve brand engagement.

Sponsored content

We can omit this strategy. Creating sponsored content for brands in your niche is an additional way to diversify your income. Also don't forget to let your audience know of any sponsored content on your platform and also don't promote products you don't believe in or haven't even tested.

Coaching or consulting services

If you have enough knowledge in your niche or maybe you are certified in your area of interest, you can consider offering consulting services to your audience. This is a highly lucrative way of diversifying your income source as an affiliate marketer. 

By following the above-listed ways you can make a significant amount of money by diversifying your income.

Leveraging email marketing

Email marketing is a powerful tool used to market products, notify customers of any promotions, make sales, donations, and many more.

Here are the ways to leverage your email marketing as an affiliate marketer:

Building an email list

You can leverage the power of email marketing when you don't have an email list. You build an email list by collecting email addresses from your audience to build a list of subscribers. You can collect email addresses from your audience by creating a newsletter, a lead magnet, or running a contest or giveaways.

Segment email List

When you hear the word "Segment" it means 'to divide.' To segment your email list means dividing your email list into groups according to their internet, behaviors, demographics, occupation, etc. Doing this gives you insights into what type of email Campaign will resonate well with a particular audience.

Provide value 

If you aren't providing value, then you aren't going to build an authority in that niche. Customers go for what has value. Make sure that the content is YouTube videos, blog posts, newsletters, etc. Offers value to them. When we say value, we are talking about creating content that is engaging, educative, informative, and relevant to their area of interest.

Promote products via email

You can also promote your affiliate products through email, after you have successfully built an email list, and established an audience. Choose products that will be relevant to your audience based on their interest, purchase history, demographics, and occupation.

Sense of urgency

To increase the conversion of your email campaign create a sense of urgency while creating your email. Encourage them to take a specific action by putting in a deadline for them to take action. If you are running a promotion on skincare products, you can create a sense of urgency by creating a deadline for your deal. For example

"Oriflame Skincare Products is running a promotion, to get all Skincare products at a cheaper rate with about a 30% discount on each of your purchases, this promotion begins on the 23rd of May 2023 and is going to end on the 5th of June 2023. Shop Now!"

Make sure you include a link to your website in your email In Case you want them to perform a specific action.

Automation 

Automation has made email marketing stress-free, and easier. The power of automation can save you time, effort and also improve the effectiveness of your campaign.

For example for your new subscribers you can send an automated welcome message to them, introducing them to your brand, and products.

Leveraging the power of email campaigns helps to generate sales, increase traffic and also build relationships with your audience.

Utilizing social media and paid advertising

To be a successful affiliate marketer you have to leverage the power of social media platforms. Billions of people use social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. daily. Most businesses are making waves by using these social media platforms to boost their brand awareness and sales. Having a well-laid-out social media marketing strategy can help you increase your conversions, generate sales, and reach a wider range of audience.

Here's how you can utilize social media and paid advertising as an affiliate marketer:

Choose the Right Platform

This is the first thing to take into consideration. Know which platform you can likely find your audience, or platforms your audience uses on a daily basis, and sign up for that platform. 

Also considering your niche, some platforms can be more effective than others. For example, if you are advertising in a niche like Fashion, health and fitness, politics, housewares, arts and crafts then you can leverage the power of Facebook. Facebook has nearly 3 billion users each month, making it one of the world's most-used social media platforms.

If you are in the programming, digital marketing, personal development, travel, and web development niche then you can leverage the power of Twitter. This platform is most popular with people between the ages of 25 -34 years old. With over 206 million daily users. You can post on these platforms on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 9 a.m. to increase engagement.

If you are interested in beauty, travel, fashion, health, and fitness, you will find your target audience on Instagram. Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms with half a billion people using it daily.

Build Strong Social Media Presence

It's one thing to be found on social media but it's another thing to build a strong reputable presence on social media. To build a strong social media presence, you should create a professional business profile, which includes your business details such as the company's logo, engaging description, company address, website URL, etc. 

Posting regularly increases engagement. Provide your audience with valuable content, and make sure it's informative, engaging, and relevant to their needs.

Share Content

Once you have taken the above step, it's to share your content with your audience. To establish trust and credibility you need to create and share valuable content with your audience. Make sure it's informative, engaging, and relevant to their needs. By doing this you aren't only earning their loyalty, and trust but it will also attract more followers.

Below are some best times to post on some social media platforms.

Best time of the day to share content on Facebook between 

• Monday: 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM
• Tuesday: 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM
• Wednesday: 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM, 1:00 PM, 4:00 PM
• Thursday: 9:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 4:00 PM
• Friday: 11:00 AM, 4:00 PM, 6:00 PM

The best time to share content on Instagram is between

Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., 

The best time to share content on Twitter is between 8-10 am and 6-9 pm. For better engagement, then you should consider posting early in the morning (7-9 am) or late in the night (8-11 pm).

Promote Your Products 

You shouldn't ignore your social media platforms; they are an effective way of generating sales and traffic. To promote your affiliate products on social media platforms, make sure you choose products that are relevant to your audience and resonate with them.

If your audience is interested in beauty products, post on beauty products and don't diversify, if they love and are interested in home decor products then give them what they need, by doing things you will improve your engagement and increase sales.

Paid Advertising

Running ads can be a powerful way to boost Sales and traffic. There are several advertising options on social media which can include display ads, sponsored posts, etc. 

One benefit of paid advertising is that you can target a specific audience, interests, and demographics to reach your target audience.

Partnering with other affiliates

There are many benefits of Partnering with other affiliates.

Wider audience

Partnering with other affiliates gives you access to a wider audience, it also boosts your reputation and credibility in your niche. With other affiliate marketers, you can reach a wider audience than you can imagine. Their different audience base together with your own, can help you reach new potential customers.

Income diversification

Think of diversifying your income then consider partnering with other affiliates. You can promote a wide range of products to both your audience and your partner's audience. By doing this you increase your earnings.

Cross promotion

This method can open doors of cross Promotion between affiliates. You can decide to cross-promote your products and services across each other's audience. By doing this you are increasing your sales, revenue, and traffic.

Improved SEO

By providing backlinks, and social signals, partnering with other affiliates can improve your SEO. Collaboration with other affiliates with stronger audiences, authority, and audience can boost your site ranking on search results.

Chapter 5

Best practices for affiliate marketing

In this section are tips to succeed as an affiliate marketer.

Lay out your affiliate marketing goals

Set out measurable goals for your affiliate business. This is the most important step to take before starting an affiliate business.

It's important to be single eyed and focus on your goals. Before you start your affiliate program, you should be able to know what you want to achieve with your affiliate program, and how you want to achieve them.

Make your goals S.M.A.R.T. 

S- Specific

M- measurable 

A- Attainable

R- Relevant 

T- Timely

These acronyms are very essential if you want to have a successful business. The more your goals are in line with these acronyms, the easier it will be to excel and achieve those goals. 

Your goals should be specific, write them down, be straight to the point, and be detailed. For example, I want to increase my website traffic

This is a typical example of a specific goal, and it's not ambiguous.

Measurable: A measurable goal for instance takes into account what is required to achieve that goal. For example "I would love to increase my website traffic from 2000 hits every month to 10,000 hits per month, and I can measure my progress through my Google Analytics which shows how many clicks, views, and number of visitors I have."

Attainable: This takes into account how long it might be for the goal to be achieved. For example 

"I would love to increase my website traffic from 2000 hits every month to 10,000 hits per month, and I can achieve this goal by investing more in organic traffic, running advertisements,  and posting regularly on my social media platforms at least three times every day.."

If your goals aren't specific, or measurable, then they can't be achievable.

Relevant: For your goals to be relevant as an affiliate marketer, they must align with your company's mission. For example "I would love to increase my website traffic from 2000 hits every month to 10,000 hits per month, to make this happen I will employ more writers to create more engaging and informative content, and also set aside 30 minutes each day to evaluate the site's performance."

Timebound: this contains how long it will take to accomplish your goals. Know whether it's short-term goals, mid-term goals, or long-term goals. Then you can set up a specific deadline for each of your goals, make sure your Deadlines are specific and relevant. 

For example "I would love to increase my website traffic from 2000 hits every month to 10,000 hits per month, to make this happen I will employ more writers to create more engaging and informative content, and also set aside 30 minutes each day every week to evaluate and measure the site's performance." 

Disclosing your affiliate relationship

This is very important, especially on your website, blogs, and social media platforms. Always disclose your affiliate relationship with your audience. Let them know that there is an affiliate link on your site and when they click on the link and make any purchase, you will receive some sort of commission.

There are ways to disclose your affiliate relationship with your audience

Providing value to your audience

Your marketing goals should be to provide value to your audience, knowing their needs, pain points, and expectations will give you insights on how to market to them.

If you don't know your customers, they will all be strangers to you, and you will look like an intruder to them. Knowing your customer is very vital for the success of your business. Your customers are as unique as your products. 

Ways in which you can know who your customers are Includes:

1. Conduct a research

The first step to understanding your customers is to conduct research otherwise how else would you be able to do so? You can sniff out who they are. Conducting research may involve your audience demographics, analyzing their demographics such as age, gender, occupation, location, and income level. You can also go ahead and analyze their psychographic data. This includes data like their values, behaviors, and interests.

2. Leveraging the power of social media forums

You can gain customers' insights through social media or online forums. You can do this by carefully monitoring their conversation on Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc. There you can learn more about their experience with other products, needs, pain points, and expectations.

3. Analyze website and emails

By doing this you can gain insights into who your audience is, and also understand them better. This can help you know how your pages are performing, which page has the highest engagement, and why.

Staying up-to-date with industry changes

Staying up-to-date with the latest affiliate marketing industry trends helps you to maximize your earnings, and stay competitive, and successful.

Here are some tips to help you:

1. Subscribe to get information from industry publications

Subscribe to get information from industry publications and blogs to stay current with the trends and news in the industry. It will increase your chance of more conversion, it will let you know of the latest development in the industry, and help you remain competitive.

2. Join forums

To find your fellow affiliate marketers or business owners, then join Forums and groups, where they talk about trends, the latest development, strategies, tips, tricks, and best practices.

It's essential you stay connected with other affiliate marketers, and one of the best ways to do that is to join groups and forums to learn from their mistakes, past experiences, and also success stories.

3. Influencers

Most businesses are leveraging the power of famous influencers. One of the best practices to succeed as an affiliate marketer is to stay connected with industry influencers on their social media platforms, blogs, and newsletter. This will enable you to know about any current trends in your niche.

4. Attend conferences

This is one of the most important ways of staying up-to-date with industry trends. Attend Conferences, and events in your industry to catch up with the latest development, strategies, and practices. You can as well meet potential customers and partners for this gathering. 

Don't be selfish as an affiliate marketer, or business owner. Don't focus only on the profit or commission you would make, and ignore your customer's needs, feedback, interests, and benefits. Don't mislead your audience with fake, poor-quality products, or dishonest advertising, or hide the truth from them. Remember if you do these they are to your company's detriment.

Let them know the products will benefit them, if there's an affiliate link on your website, and provide services relevant to your audience. 

One main reason to maintain transparency and honesty as an affiliate is that your customers are the ones to recommend your products to others and build a relationship with genuine products. If they notice that you're all in for the profit, they will back off and this will lead to a bad reputation.

Be honest with your reviews, don't try to hide the negative reviews or feedback from your customers, and be sure to mention any negative reviews, feedback, drawbacks, etc to them. This will make your brand more trustworthy and appear credible. Also, promote only products you believe in, and probably have used, this will earn you the trust of your audience.

Avoiding common mistakes

Having looked at various ways you can succeed as an affiliate marketer. In this section, we will be taking a look at some common mistakes you can avoid as an affiliate marketer if you want to succeed in affiliate marketing. Here are some mistakes you should avoid.

1. Low-quality content 

We emphasized earlier in this content that your content is your best product. The way you produce your content determines how many numbers of clicks you will have. 

High-quality content leads to higher conversion. To create high-quality content you will have to keep your audience in mind while creating content. Your users determine the quality of your content and they value high quality content when they see it. They won't stay on a site with poor quality. This is bad for your SEO too as low-quality content leads to a high bounce rate.

When writing for your audience, keep in mind their area of interest, needs, and the solutions they seek. Make sure your content contains information that will be valuable to your audience. Also when writing content make them engaging, informative, and enjoyable to read. Create quality content that's different from your competitors, do not copy and paste, be original, and authentic, have fun while writing, and be personal in your information.

2. Site speed

Have you come across a site that takes almost forever to load? If yes then probably you didn't stay long on that site. Study shows that if your site speed is slow or takes longer than 2 seconds to load, it will lead to a higher bound rate.

Large contents like images or videos can slow down the site's speed, so we advise compressing them before uploading them on your site.

Caching is another way to improve your site speed, it's a simple term for temporarily storing files or data. It improves site performance.

3. Having a shallow understanding of what you are selling 

Invest to learn what you are selling. One of the biggest mistakes you can make I'm affiliate marketing is having a Shallow Understanding of the products you are selling. Make sure that you study the products well, make use of it if you have to, and gather facts, and customer reviews from the company's website.

Equip yourself with the necessary information about the company, so you can be able to answer your customers' queries, and also be able to communicate the advantages, and disadvantages of the products. 

4. Organic traffic only

Relying only on organic traffic can be the biggest mistake you can make. If you want to be successful as an affiliate marketer you shouldn't rely on search engine organic traffic alone, also invest in other platforms. 

Social media can be a great way of generating enough traffic for your site. You can invest in paid advertising, and run ads on your social media platforms to create brand awareness and generate leads and sales.

5. Get rich scheme

Most people think that affiliate marketing is a get-rich-quick scheme. If you are still having those kinds of thoughts then you should wave it off. This is one of the mistakes some affiliate marketers make.

The truth is affiliate marketing is not a "Get Rich Quick Scheme" Period! If someone tells you that affiliate marketing can make you a huge amount of money in a couple of days, please run to the hills! In case you are thinking that affiliate marketing is a get-rich-quick schemes snap out of it!

Just like any other business affiliate marketing takes time, and effort before you can start making a significant amount of money from it. Affiliate Marketing will surely make you a lot of money, but you will need a long term business plan for your marketing and operations.

6. Profits instead of value 

Finally here on our list is one mistake you can actually be making as an affiliate marketer and don't know you are making this mistake. Focusing on your profit instead of the value you offer can be a wrong choice.

If you really want to be successful as an affiliate marketer and build an authority then you will have to focus on providing value to your audience. Let your content help your audience by doing this, you are not only building credibility but also you are changing their mindset from believing you are selling to them to believing you're helping them.

Conclusion

Conclusion

In conclusion, affiliate marketing is a very lucrative business, a multi-billion dollar industry that you can invest in. 

Investing in your brand is one way to earn recognition. Brand recognition is one huge benefit of affiliate marketing to an organization. You can't have high traffic without brand recognition. This marketing strategy is an effective way to build and improve your brand recognition.

Affiliate Marketing can also help you experience a great increase in the number of website visits, and your website will greatly benefit from this.

As a business owner, using affiliate marketing is very beneficial for the promotion of your brand and products. Also, remember that building a strong relationship with your audience is very essential if you want to earn their loyalty and trust. 

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