HOW TO BECOME A PROFITABLE AFFILIATE MARKETER Expert-made 1 Step by Step Guide
INTRODUCTION Affiliate marketing is becoming more and more popular as a great way of making money online. Many people who are entering this model of business tend to have an unfitted mindset for it. Affiliate marketing often is not a way to earn easy and quick money. Becoming a successful affiliate marketer requires the right mindset and work ethic. Fortunately, here you can find 6 main steps you have to take to walk into the amazing world of affiliate marketing. Let s start! 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Choose a Niche That You re Interested in 4 2. Make a Plan 5 3. Do the Research on Different Affiliate Programs in Your Niche 6 4. Create a Site/Platform 7 5. Produce Good Quality Content & Promote Affiliate Products 8 6. Repeat Step 5 Daily and Start Generating Money! 10 3
1 CHOOSE A NICHE THAT YOU RE INTERESTED IN Before doing anything else, it s really important to decide which niche suits your interests best and which niche will be your core in creating content. If you don t pick out one, you won t be able to target the audience correctly and build your site around it. This step is probably the most important because it s the groundwork of your affiliate marketing career. Understandably, it can be quite difficult to choose the right niche but do not worry! Here are some tips for you to make it easier. First of all, ask yourself - what are you passionate about? Because it s obviously so much easier to work on something that you love and honestly enjoy. Not to mention the amount of knowledge you usually have on things you re passionate about. Another question you should ask yourself - is the niche at least somewhat profitable? As was said in the Don t Do It! A Short Guide To The Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes article, profitable niche is not the most important aspect while choosing but it s also not smart to choose a narrow and unpopular niche and expect money to flow into your bank account. You should also choose a niche in which you can write 100 or more articles or posts. It has to be wide and deep enough to create lots of content about it. The amount and quality of the content you re creating is vital for the attraction of audience as well as for search engine optimisation. Choosing a niche that has no room for more affiliate marketers is sometimes a bad idea too. This happens a lot with really popular topics (eg. weight loss or makeup) because they already have hefty amounts of affiliate marketers promoting their products. So before choosing your niche, make sure that you have a chance to be heard and seen among other giant affiliate marketers. That s why one of the best niches for affiliates is anything related to education. It s really broad and because it s popular and relevant world wide, it can be very profitable. Even better if it s related to technology - the world is getting more and more tech-crazy! But if you re here and reading this handbook, no need to worry - you re on the right track and are probably interested in educational technology, online courses or blockchain already. So lucky you! And if you re not, give this subject a try - maybe you ll find your favorite niche. 4
2 MAKE A PLAN You ve probably heard it a lot and it s applicable everywhere, but planning and strategizing is really the key to sustainable success. Two major aspects that you need to establish are time frame and strategy. Having the skill of time management is vital nowadays so make sure that you have your schedule figured out. When you start, affiliate marketing probably won t be your main source of income or your main job and activity. But if you want to build it into something successful you have to make time for it on the daily bases - at least 3 hours a day. As for the tactics, this topic is covered more in-depth in the Behind The Scenes: 9 Kickass Affiliate Marketing Tactics Uncovered article, but the main aspect is knowing what kind of tactics 5
3 DO THE RESEARCH ON DIFFERENT AFFILIATE PROGRAMS IN YOUR NICHE Once you figured out your niche and set up a plan, it s time to analyze the market and find out what kind of and how many affiliate programs are out there. Choosing the right affiliate program is not an easy task as it requires in-depth research and comparison of alternatives. Finding which companies have affiliate programs is not so hard though, because they usually have Affiliate Program, Affiliates or Partners written on their header or footer. So when you finally come to choosing an affiliate program, answer these questions to yourself: what type of brand (merchant) issued the affiliate program? Can it be trusted and does it have a good reputation? What s the commission rate? Is it competitive enough? Do you mind being associated with the product/service? What kind of support system does the program have? Does it have a manager you can talk to? Are the reviews from other promoters good or bad? BitDegree is a great example of an unique educational technology company, which has very competitive commission rates of 50 % and a 60 day cookie! The range of products to promote is quite wide - more than 150 courses on various subjects and the number is growing rapidly. Another important aspect of researching the affiliate programs is testing out the products. Even if it has great commission rate, wonderful support system and good reputation, maybe you just didn t find the product/service useful or appealing? That actually can happen a lot because not every product that has seemingly great attributes and social presence will be suitable for you and your audience. So if you recommend it without trying it can turn out to be a fiasko. You can try all of the BitDegree online courses here. 6
If you want to do a little research on your competitors it s not hard to do. You can start by joining various affiliate marketers forums and platforms as well as just reading the blogs of such marketers. Not all of them, though, reveal that they re affiliates to their audiences. But you can sometimes recognize that by analyzing the banners on their website or the links they re embedding - they usually are not clear and have the affiliate s ID. 7
4 CREATE A SITE/PLATFORM If you don t have a platform already set up, this step is really important for your content. But fear not, because setting up a website is not as hard is it may look. If you re new to the website world, the first thing you have to do is buy a domain. The domain is the address of your website (e.g., ). But make sure to have several possibilities of your domain name prepared, as there are millions of different websites in the world, so it s possible that the domain name you wanted is already taken. Another important step is setting up hosting. Hosting is like a house where all of your website s files are stored. Hosting is not an expensive service, so make sure you choose reliable and eligible company (e.g. Hostinger). You should also install WordPress, which is not complicated at all and perfectly suitable for beginners. It requires close to none coding knowledge, so it s both easy to set up and operate. After setting up WordPress you should choose and install your website s theme. There are a lot of different options, so make sure you choose a theme which is suitable for your niche and your content. Now that the website is up and running, you ll have to start creating good quality content in order to attract visitors to your new site! 8
5 PRODUCE GOOD QUALITY CONTENT & PROMOTE AFFILIATE PRODUCTS You ve probably already know how important content is to an affiliate marketer. You can choose different affiliate strategies, only use banners or only use text links in forums, but when it comes to the most profitable affiliate marketing strategy - it s creating great and steady content. I will not go into details about why content matters, but we ll focus on what can the content consist of instead. Your affiliate marketing website could be for reviewing products. This is done often and can be really profitable. But your reviews have to be honest and your audience should know that you re getting a commission if they click on the link. The niche that you re writing in has to be broad and have many different types of products. Just like the niche of educational technology! Writing reviews for online courses is a great idea, because a student chooses those kind of products usually by reading comments, reviews or suggestions of others. Simply writing a blog can be profitable too. There you can discuss problems, latest news, techniques, questions, etc., related to your niche and simply blend in the affiliate text links for products which might solve the problems you re talking about. For example, if your niche is education, obviously there are a lot of issues and problems students usually have, like expensive price, poor quality, unengaging lecturers and so on. You can be the one to help solve them! If you have the ability of writing interesting and engaging texts - blogging is a really great alternative for affiliate marketing. And it s useful for search engine optimization too! 9
Banner ads are not technically part of the created content, but it s a part of the whole website and promotion. A lot of affiliate marketers (especially beginners) like putting up banners because they are usually provided by the merchants and are easy to use. You can put the banners up in your own website, but if you think it doesn t have enough traffic yet, you can also try to place them in some other highly trafficked website related to the educational niche. Email promotions is also a good way to market your affiliate products because it s personal and builds up a relationship. But you have to have a solid list of emails that are of your target audience! When you have the list, all you have to do is send personalised emails with short but engaging text in which you have to put the affiliate links. You can read more about email affiliate marketing in the Behind The Scenes: 9 Kickass Affiliate Marketing Tactics Uncovered handbook. Don t miss out on guest posting as well! Choose blogs and sites that are of your niche and are highly trafficked. The niche of educational technology has many many blogs and bloggers, who are really onboard with guest posting. It s a good strategy for beginners because you can use someone else s audience for your gain. Getting in front of a big audience is a great start because you can show your knowledge and expertise on the topics of your niche and drive traffic your way. A lot of affiliate marketers also use paid advertising to generate traffic. If it s done correctly, it can be very profitable but it s very important to read Terms of Service of the merchant affiliate program before carrying out any paid advertising strategy, as some of the merchants don t allow it. 10
6 REPEAT STEP 5 DAILY AND START GENERATING MONEY! This step may sound silly, but if you want to succeed as an affiliate marketer, especially in the niche of educational technology, you have to constantly create, improve, promote and analyze! Only by taking time to do that you ll start seeing money flowing into your account. 11
FINAL WORD Making your way as an affiliate marketer may seem hard at first but let s hope that this guide will help you along the way! By choosing the educational technology niche you can be sure you re on the right track. Just don t forget that by creating a smart plan & an engaging website, writing good quality content and rightfully promoting affiliate products you ll probably become a profitable and trustworthy affiliate marketer. Good luck! I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. Thomas Jefferson 12