What are the simple guides to promote affiliate products?
- Written by Peet
Are You Starting With Affiliate Marketing?
Well, if you do, congratulations on your online journey. This is the easiest way to make money online but, you will need patience, commitment, determination, and knowledge.
If you are determined to make this work and are willing to put in the time and effort, you’re already well on your way to Affiliate marketing success
Let’s start right at the beginning.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when you act as a sales agent for vendors online and earn a commission once you make a sale by promoting their products. It is as a property agent. He does not own the property but, when he sells the property, he is rewarded with a commission. The key to affiliate marketing is to build relationships, provide value, and establish trust with your audience.
There are many ways to do Affiliate marketing. Some of the examples are:
- Physical products. This is where you sell or promote physical products like T-shirts for example. The sale of physical products can be done in various ways. The two online ways are:
- Drop shipping. This is where you as an affiliate sell the product first and then place the order to the manufacturer. The price of the T-shirt will be set by you. This will include your commission. The manufacturer will then ship your order directly to the client but you will pay the manufacturer and keep the commission. The pro of this is that you do not carry stock. The con is that the manufacturer might include his address and an invoice to your client and the client will buy directly from him the next time.
- The second way is, you buy stock in large quantities from the manufacturer at a discounted price. You then advertise the stock and post it yourself to the client. Here you can make money on the shipping cost as well as the product itself but, you will need a warehouse to carry stock.
- Digital products. For me, this is by far the easiest way to sell online.
Some pros are:
- Your commission is faster
- You do not carry stock
- No client problem handling
- Low initial cost
- Low risk
Examples of digital products are online courses, software, and Affiliate tools. I call them tools because they are programs the affiliate will need right through his online journey. The tools are, for example, Autoresponders, Funnel builder programs, design tools, etc. I have a complete tool kit list for you to download from my website. The link will be at the end of this article.
Choose your Niche.
Before you even begin with Affiliate marketing, you will need to decide which niche you are going to target. Now there are thousands of Niches! I think choosing a niche when you start out, is one of the most difficult and overwhelming steps. If you do not know what your niche is yet, here are some advice you might find useful:
- What topics are you already passionate about? It is much easier if you work on a niche when you are passionate about it. Most of the time you will have a lot of knowledge in this niche.
- Is there money in this niche? The recommended option always is to follow your passion but, if there is no money in it, it is not worth following it. Choose a niche where you can make a reasonable amount of money and then learn the niche to become an expert in it.
- Is there room in this niche for another affiliate marketer? Before jumping on board with a profitable niche, make sure there is room for you. This is, will you be able to compete with already established marketers? If not, keep on looking. Some huge niches with very large competition are for e.g. Weight loss, Dating, and making money online.
- Is there enough demand or interest in the niche? Without enough consumer interest, your niche is not going to make you money.
- Are there affiliate programs available in this niche? Of course, this is a crucial factor to consider. No affiliate program is no sales and no money!
Research Affiliate programs
After you have chosen your niche, it is time to find out what programs and products are available to promote. Just GOOGLE for Affiliate programs. Invest some time to research on what affiliate programs are out there that you can use because this is where your income is coming from. Choosing the right program will make it worth your while! Believe me, there are hundreds!
To mention a few:
- Clickbank
- Shareasale
- JvZoo
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when choosing an affiliate program.
- What type of merchants are using the program or network? Some programs are making use of merchants that sell products of low value and with no backup or support.
- How much commission are you going to make? Sign up for profitable programs. I recommend a commission of not lower than $100 per sale. Also, for CPA (cost-per-action) your commission should not be lower than $1. Also, check the restrictions on how to promote this type of product!
- A good question is, do YOU want to be associated with the product? The products must be of good quality. Make sure you know the product and believe in it. Use it yourself if you can. You need to build trust with your clients thus the products must be relevant and trustworthy.
- Does the program offer any support? At one point or another, you will need support, Trust me on this one! Find out if the program has any support and how long you need to wait for a response.
How are you going to promote it?
There are loads of ways to promote affiliate products. Websites are not the only way to promote your products. You do not really need a website to succeed as an affiliate marketer. Thin of it this way. If you are selling without a website, you are renting property online. When you create your own website, you are the owner of your online property and you can sell it later on if you wish.
Website.
Decided on a website? The cheapest and most popular program to set up a website is WordPress. It is an open-source software that you can use to design or build your own website.
First, you will need to buy a domain name. This is the address for your website on the internet.
Some places to buy are: GoDaddy, Namecheap, Hostgator and Bluehost ( I am using Bluehost)
Second, you need to buy a hosting program. Normally the hosting program comes with WordPress. This is like an actual house in which your site is going to live. Make sure you choose a reliable host. A host that is reputable and long-standing.
For a website, you will need to create content and insert your affiliate links when you promote your products.
Affiliate links.
For those who do not know, an affiliate link is a link that the vendor or affiliate program will provide which is a tracking link that only belongs to you so that you can get paid.
9 Ways to promote without a website.
- Post on forums and online communities. There are a lot of online communities and forums that you can post on. The first step is to find a forum or community that will be interested in your products. After you find a website with a solid online community, check out their guidelines to see if you are allowed to advertise your product. If they do allow affiliate links, sign up, start contributing to the conversations, and provide value to gain trust first before you insert any links.
- Solo Ads. Solo ads, you pay to use other people’s email lists to promote your offer. If a solo ad provider thinks your offer is a good fit for his audience, he will send your offer to his email list for a fee. This is normally charged at a rate per click. (Not recommended for beginners)
- Viral eBook. This is a quite simple strategy. There are many programs on the internet that you can use to create an eBook. You embed your affiliate links into the script of the book and sell the book on Amazon.
- YouTube Channel. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world! You create videos that explain your product benefits or you do a product review. People always like to watch reviews before they buy. You insert the affiliate links into the description of the video and when somebody clicks on the link and buys, you receive a commission. To succeed you will have to learn how to leverage keywords and produce excellent content to reach your audience.
- PPC Affiliate marketing. This type of advertising can see very fast results but, be careful, it comes with a great risk. If you do not know what you are doing, you can lose a lot of money. I always recommend starting with organic (Free) traffic first and when you are more experienced, then use this type of advertising. Google ads and Facebook ads are the two leading PPC advertising platforms.
- Write ads or reviews for classified websites. This is about the same as the forum or online community method. You find and post on classified websites. One such site is Craigslist for example.
- Content publishing platforms. The two most prominent platforms here are Steemit and Medium. They are free to use and you can post your affiliate links in your articles. Anybody can create content and publish it for the world to see. Just be careful with affiliate links. You need to inform your readers about any affiliate links in your content
- Social Media. Social media can be an excellent channel for affiliate promotions. Instagram for instance is a great platform to advertise on. Here you will need to direct readers to your bio where your link will be.
- Email marketing. Maybe you heard the saying before but here it is again! The money is in the list. This is a potent tool. You build a list of subscribers and now this list belongs to you! What I mean by this is, if you advertise on Social media for example, the list belongs to them and if they close your account for any or other reason, you are losing all your customers! With your own list, you have full control.
Affiliate links.
The law and affiliate links: I am no lawyer but please read up on affiliate links and the law. Here are some guidelines. In accordance with the FTC Rules and Guides, ALL affiliate links or payment for products and services where you get commission, payment, goods, or services in return, you have to disclose it somewhere, where the client can easily find it, in your posts.
Not all websites, forums, or social media platforms allow affiliate links or raw affiliate links. What I mean by a raw affiliate link is a link that is received directly from the supplier and is easily recognizable as an affiliate link. Such links need to be “cloaked” or shortened as such raw links are very long and ugly sometimes. On the other hand, some media, such as YouTube, do not allow “cloaked”, or shortened links.
The message is, to read their rules and regulations before you post!
I hope all this helps and if you need a list of all the tools that an affiliate marketer needs, you can download a free list and free affiliate marketing eBooks, from my website, from the download page here: https://peetdeysel.com/free-downloads/
