How to make money with affiliate marketing for beginners
This is a stage by stage plan for you to adapt into a financially successful Affiliate marketing business, run
from your own website or blog. If ever you’ve wanted to see a license to print money, this is it.
You will learn a plan of action that explains:
how Affiliate Marketing works,
helps you build your website,
choose a niche for your marketing,
choose the best products to introduce to your readers,
target awesome traffic through your marketing and
repeat consistently.
What is affiliate marketing and what is an affiliate?
Where we talk about a product or service within affiliate marketing, it belongs to a company or business
and is not directly available from you. As the affiliate marketer, you provide the link from the customer
to the company and their product.
Think of yourself as the ‘middleman’ – you are affiliated with the product or service for sale, but do not
provide it yourself.
In reality; you’re involved in the sales process where you earn a commission from each sale.
Here’s the short version before the details. Currently you:
own a blog or website or can design one
can recommend a product or service to your readers
can strike a partnership with the company that sells the product or service
you can market the product or service from your blog or website
you are now an affiliate marketer
You will be targeting specific customers to a website page from your affiliate link or banner. By linking
customers and the best offers, you increase the chance of a sale and receive commission.
This is what happens in affiliate marketing, in real-time;
you write a blog post telling your readers about the product or service from the company that
you recommend, or
1 you place banner ads or buttons on your website; these link to the company’s website. The link
contains a unique ID. The ID is you so the company knows who to pay
the reader clicks on your link in your post or the advert on your website
the reader is sent to the company’s website
when the reader purchases the product or service the company adds your payment to your
commission statement
the reader is happy
the company is joyful
you are ecstatic
As you set up your new business you have two choices to make:
1. You can choose to link to a few companies that are linked by niche to your current blog/website.
This means joining an affiliate program direct from a merchant or through an affiliate network
that manages the entire affiliate transaction.
2. The alternative choice is to set up your new blog/website as one gigantic affiliate marketing
business and join several affiliate networks.
Take time to look at competition across the marketplace that interests you. This will help you decide
which actions to take.
Let your thinking concentrate on three important points throughout your new business planning:
1. Choose the best possible products and services matched to good/great commission for your
business
2. Targeted traffic to your website is vital. Great traffic will help your readers click your affiliate
links for commission, even where your products are average.
3. Match the traffic to great products and hey presto!
Alternative websites
Instead of offering a website/blog, some successful affiliate marketing businesses use to other methods
that you may consider as opportunities for you.
Coupon websites - everyone wants a bargain and where you are paid to generate traffic to a merchant
that offers coupons, you will be paid a commission for your work.
Download websites - consumers often wish to try software before they will purchase it. By offering a
download option and targeting great traffic to your website, you will be paid for each customer that
downloads software via your website and then again, as an affiliate marketer, when they purchase the
full product after the trial period has been completed.
How to start your business venture
2You cannot achieve success without a website or blog. Where you already have a successful website, or
a following on Facebook, Twitter or other social media, you already have a built in customer base.
Alternately, you’re starting from the beginning.
You will benefit from operating direct from your own domain/website, even if you use Google for traffic
elsewhere, use Facebook for attention and Twitter for marketing.
If Google change their rules or one of the social media companies cuts you off, you’ll be pleased that you
run your business from your own domain.
Rewards for your hard work
You will be offered two completely different types of commission from merchants and affiliate
networks.
CPL; as an affiliate, you will be paid a commission for every enquiry which moves from your website to
their website.
CPA; as an affiliate, you will be paid only when a sale is completed through the products or service
provider’s website.
You can choose to mix and match these different commission methods. Depending upon the price of the
product or service, you will usually receive more commission when a product or sale is completed,
compared to customers who use your website where a company pays you for clicking through, only.
As you consider your affiliate links, some companies will offer you a higher commission once certain
sales targets have been reached. This is an incentive for you to send more traffic through to a particular
merchant.
Website basics
Okay; let’s get past the basics. We’re not going to waste your time here with irrelevant clutter. You
know how to do these:
how to register a domain,
get a hosting,
install a blog,
get an autoresponder,
creating landing pages
If you’re unsure how to complete these tasks, become an expert from lots of free resources online to
enhance your affiliate marketing results.
Optimizing your website is vital; now is the time to perform the maximum SEO for search engines.
As soon as your website is up and running, maximize the use of Title tags, description tags, keywords,
robots and other meta tags.
Niche marketing
3Choose your affiliate marketing links carefully, attracting customers that will enjoy a range of advertising
that is linked to a niche, rather than choosing links from anywhere, without a common thread.
Individuals that visit your website for more information about musical instruments will be interested in
links to keyboard music, keyboard stands, guitar effects, singers on tour and so on. They may not be
interested in Barbie doll sales, how to paint your garden shed or movies about how to create calm
through yoga.
Small niche marketing can be good for you and may offer less competition. The greatest successes may
come from extremely popular and lucrative niche markets, even though they offer more competition.
Buy your hosting
Now is the time to carry out these first necessary steps;
•
register a domain
•
get a hosting
•
install a blog
•
acquire an autoresponder
Avoid the free services and pay so that you remain in control of your domain, hosting, blog and auto
responder.
Your WordPress blog will help build a relationship with your customers and boost your search engine
rankings.
How to choose your niche?
You must narrow down your choice of niche marketplace before you can move onto the next stage.
To help you find your favorite niche consider this;
What problems can you solve for your customers?
When customers search Google or other search engines which other businesses advertise on the
first few results pages?
Is there space for your business or is your competition invincible?
Do you need to know the subject completely or can you gain the knowledge quickly?
Do you need to enjoy the subject to keep it fresh for you?
Keeping up with the times
Google are constantly and consistently upgrading algorithms for SEO. You will need to regularly check
what Google considers to be positive or negative so that you can update the links in your website.
When they change their rules, part of your website may be affected and business temporarily reduced.
By keeping up-to-date with Google information, you can keep your website ahead of the rest.
As long as you consistently think that affiliate marketing is all about quality rather than quantity, you will
be heading in the right direction.
Working your affiliate marketing
As you stroll through the Internet, the highest traffic for affiliates is driven by SEO (around 80%)
followed by social media (around 60 %.)
The key is to link with successful affiliate marketing businesses where you will both be pleased with
profits and conversions.
Your next action is to choose merchant’s websites which you can link to via an affiliate link.
As you start to research your potential merchants or affiliate networks, consider;
How well each sales page at the relevant company will attract your potential customers?
Is it a good product and will it help the customer?
Does the sales page motivate the purchaser to complete the transaction?
Is it easy for the customer to buy?
Does the merchant provide great after sales support?
Does the merchant care about the customer?
Choose an affiliate network
What is an affiliate network?
Effectively, an affiliate network is the business operator that links larger companies to deal with a high
number of affiliates to promote their products and services.
An affiliate network works like this:
An affiliate network introduces you to a large number of companies and publishers who have a wide
range of products and services for sale.
The affiliate network provides you with all of the necessary tools so you can promote the products
effectively. You will be placing links and banners on your website/blog where they are relevant to the
subject matter.
The tracking codes within each link or banner are the ID that links you to the commission you will
receive after a sale.
You may gain a greater affiliate commission percentage with a direct link to a company. Alternately,
when you link through an affiliate network, the network needs to take their share as well; but they may
have negotiated a higher rate to cover the difference.
Which affiliate networks are best for you?
There is a good choice of networks which will be right for you. Visit them and evaluate which feels best,
what affiliate sales they can offer, check out the deals, investigating the percentage of commission you
can receive.
After joining, follow their training so you know how to search the network for suitable affiliate offerings.
Also, make sure you know, 100%, how to copy the link from the product or service, to your website, to
ensure you get paid when a sale completes.
Click bank are one of the most well-known, one of the biggest, but this also means they have the most
issues.
Of course, and here’s a large hint; everyone has heard of Amazon. Don’t they sell everything in the
world?
As you investigate each merchant’s product or service, you must decide whether it is worth promoting
for the commission you might receive or whether you should move on to a different product or service
that will be more effective to your bottom line profits.
6The products you choose must;
Be excellent products or services
introduce an excellent commission structure
offer great support to your customers
Important note about affiliate networks
Life changes and updates. Before you choose from any of the above listed networks or others, just
because they are a top rated network now, doesn’t mean they will stay that way in the future.
Check reviews, check other affiliate comments and feedback and keep up-to-date with changes in the
marketplace.
Arrange for Google to send you direct notification any time that your favorite affiliate network is
mentioned in the news so you can stay one step ahead and be prepared to change at a moment’s notice
when necessary.
Affiliate sign up process
Signing up for a network is easy. You just follow the prompts offered to you. For affiliate networks, you
sign up to the network. With some networks, you sign up separately for each product or service you
intend to use.
It’ll take you around five minutes providing you have your account information available, so they know
how to pay you.
For direct merchant affiliate sign ups, have ready:
Your personal and business information
Know which promotional methods you intend to use
An estimate of your monthly sales (difficult to guess, I know!)
Read the full terms and conditions agreement. If there are any parts you do not understand, find
out what they mean to you.
Have your savings or checking account information available. Many will pay you by PayPal, as an
option.
Your website/blog
Add Google’s AdSense banners to your blog to see which advertisements appear across your pages.
These will almost certainly be good money earners.
Go to these companies direct and add them as an affiliate.
Remove those AdSense from your individual website pages, so they do not clash and lose your business
large commissions.
How to place your affiliate links and banners
7The content of your website is the key to your affiliate sales. Where the content and your affiliate sales
are not of a high enough quality, your customers will quickly move on to another website.
Content is king
Good quality content on your website/blog will attract customers and help you to a higher page ranking
within search engines. Poor quality content will result in low page rankings and your readers will
struggle to find you.
Original content will always prove much more successful than generic or copied content, which is
effectively wasting your time.
The best positioning for affiliate links and banners are within the content of your website/blog.
Affiliate banners in your sidebar may look pretty, but this is not where your customers will click.
The best way to make the content and link interesting for your customer is to ensure that the two
blends well and mix kindly within your overall website. This is why products related to your website
work best.
Your webpages should not appear as a mass of links for affiliate sales. Each page should be full of great
content with links you hardly notice as you read.
Customers who are reading your content are interested in the information you are providing. This
makes them more likely to click on your link and make a purchase.
Some merchants will provide you with custom copy for your website/blog. Where you can alter the
content your page will appear as an individual option within the search engines.
