This is affiliate marketing the smart way, so you increase your conversion rate and make more passive income.
Making affiliate marketing work takes time, dedication, and persistence.
I first started my affiliate marketing journey in 2007 and immediately saw how powerful it could be. In my first month, I made over $1,000 – just from the occasional affiliate link.
At the time, my counter-culture website was receiving tens of thousands of visitors every.
And what I didn’t realize was, there was a better and more profitable way to do affiliate marketing.
The amount I was making turned out to be very little compared to what I could have been making.
Find affiliate offers that interest you
People usually start with the wrong mindset. They go to Google and search for “best affiliate programs” or “best affiliate offers.”
In almost every case, this is the wrong approach.
This is usually going to bring you many results that are either outdated or totally irrelevant to your site’s niche.
I’ll come back to this later on so you know how to choose the right affiliate programs.
First, you need to understand the basic principles behind affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is about building relationships
Most people fail at affiliate marketing because they do not treat it as a relationship-building business.
You must identify yourself with your customers and prospects; you must tell people why they should consider buying from you instead of someone else.
You can’t just slap some affiliate links on your website and call it done.
The majority of sales happen during the follow-up. I’ll explain more in a minute.
But either way, an affiliate program will not bring you results overnight.
It usually takes months before an affiliate campaign starts bringing in significant income. This is something that most new guys completely neglect. They think it’s all about promoting offers.
Wrong.
Affiliate marketing is about selling products for someone else, but it’s also about building relationships.
The money is in the follow-up
You may have heard the common saying, “the money is in the list.” Meaning, if you have a list of subscribers or newsletter recipients, then your sales will be higher than without.
The same goes for affiliate marketing.
Many new affiliate marketers make the mistake of thinking that the money is in simply promoting the product and getting a few sales here and there. That’s not true at all.
If you want to make high income from affiliate marketing, it’s all about how many leads you can capture. The more you build an audience around your brand, the more sales you will make.
The majority of sales happen during the follow-up. This is why you must build a relationship with your visitor BEFORE pitching them any products or affiliate offers.
You need to engage your visitors before promoting anything.
People get annoyed when they are pitched directly, and that’s usually what happens when someone sees an offer on a site without being engaged first.
This also means that proper marketing requires more human interaction than just pressing a few buttons in your affiliate account and getting money for it.
Some people promote offers by sending out newsletters every week (if not every day).
Others do it via email autoresponders.
How to promote affiliate offers via email
Affiliate marketing the smart way requires two things; value and a relevant offer.
You already know the importance of investing time in building relationships with your subscribers.
People will rarely take suggestions from someone they don’t know, like, or trust.
This is why it’s critical to give value first.
How do you provide value?
The easiest way to provide value is through helpful content.
Write about stuff that readers will genuinely find useful and not necessarily what you want them to buy.
Your goal should be to build trust and credibility as an expert in your niche.
When people see that you’re the “go-to guy” for information on a given topic, they will trust you.
This is why content marketing works; when done right, it puts you in front of your target audience and gives them a reason to pay attention to what you have to say.
But that’s only half of the equation.
The value you provide must also contain relevant affiliate offers.
This means know exactly what your target audience needs.
How to choose the right affiliate offers
I’ve briefly touched upon choosing affiliate programs that you’re interested in.
But what’s even more important is understanding the needs of your email subscribers.
For a while, those who’ve been following me will know that I’m a big advocate of using the “needs-based” approach.
It means creating offers that respond directly to the needs or problems of your target audience.
What’s the best way to find out what problems your email list is facing?
Ask them.
It’s easy to run a survey using tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey.
This gives you a data-led approach to affiliate marketing.
You find out what people want by asking them and then offer a solution based on the information you’ve gathered.
Increasing passive income
Once you know which problems you should be solving, you’ll know what kind of products to look for.
But there’s a smart way to increase your affiliate marketing earnings by choosing a specific type of product.
If you promote affiliate products with a recurring income, such as membership programs, you will be guaranteed a monthly affiliate commission and a continuous source of income.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing isn’t dead, but it certainly has evolved.
The smart way to increase your affiliate earnings is through building an engaged list of email subscribers.
This doesn’t mean simply getting people to opt-in for your newsletter on the website; it means truly engaging with those who visit your content and actively provide value before asking them to buy anything.
I hope this article gave you enough ideas on creating content that will attract relevant leads while promoting affiliate offers at the same time.
Now you have everything you need to become a successful affiliate marketer if you’re prepared to put in the work.