This is how to get started with an affiliate marketing business. I’ll compile some of my best video tutorials in this post, to walk you through it, step by step.
But why listen to me anyway, when the Internet is full of self-proclaimed ‘experts’?
Well, I’ve been in the digital marketing industry since 1998 and making a full-time income online since 2004.
That’s probably longer than anyone you’ve met.
So here’s what I’m going to cover in this post:
- How you can find the right niche
- How you can find the right offers to promote
- How to build a website quickly
- How to SEO your site
- How to build an affiliate marketing funnel
- What to do if you can’t afford the essentials
How to choose the right niche
I think it’s important to choose a niche that you have an interest in – most are profitable now anyway, so you may as well pick one that you can talk about for hours.
This will set you apart from the hundreds of other people who enter a niche just because they think they can make money in it. The fact is, the people who make money are the ones who do it for real.
So if you play guitar and won’t shut up about it – that’s your niche.
Don’t overthink it too much, just validate it properly.
- Check relevant ads are being bought on Google
- Check relevant books are being sold on Amazon
- Check relevant digital products are selling on Clickbank
If you want a walkthrough, this video will help you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU13QiMkMrQ
How to choose the right affiliate offers to promote
Obviously you want to only promote products that you know will convert.
I suggest promoting digital products because the commission rate is always higher than physical products.
For example, Amazon Associates starts you off with a 4% commission rate, while most digital products will give you 50% – 75% commission per sale.
It’s kind of a no-brainer to me.
This video will show you, step by step, how to choose the right product to promote, so you can improve your chance of making sales:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNjiob0gSP0
Here’s how to build an affiliate website quickly
Ok, lots of free options exist but I strongly encourage you to go for paid hosting.
The reason is because it gives you more control.
A few years ago a free website hosting service called Blogger (owned by Google) purged thousands of websites on their platform, without any notice or warning.
Google changed the terms of service and thousands of businesses vanished.
Going with a free option is like building a house on someone else’s land. They can take it away from you anytime.
So it’s important to only build on land you own. I’ll talk more about this later.
But for now, I encourage you to go with a self-hosted WordPress website (not the free version).
Here’s how to do that, step by step:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUubAQrzbP0
How to SEO your affiliate site for free traffic
Now your site is online, you need to learn to optimize it for the search engines.
This is going to provide you with a steady stream of free targeted traffic to your website.
My first digital marketing job was in SEO, in the late 90’s and it’s still massively important, even if the rules and techniques have changed over the years.
Thankfully a free plugin will make things a lot less technical.
Here’s how to SEO your site, step by step:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVD6GHdOgBc
How to build an affiliate marketing funnel
You’ve heard of funnels but you might now know why they’re important.
They do two things… they turn strangers into customers, and they give you more protection and control over your business.
Remember I mentioned about building on someone else’s land?
With a funnel you can build on marketing channels you don’t own, like social media, and ‘funnel’ that traffic into a marketing channel that you do own – like an email list.
When you do this, you have the chance to turn strangers – cold traffic, into customers – hot traffic.
You need hot traffic because people only buy from people they know, like and trust.
If you want people to buy stuff based on your recommendations, they need to trust your judgement first.
The funnel is an easy way to turn up the temperature of the traffic.
Also… this is important…
What happens if you try to sell directly in a blog post or banner ad?
You’ll get a few conversions, but not many.
The people who don’t buy will click away from your site forever and you’ve lost an opportunity to build a relationship with them, so they eventually do trust your recommendations.
Plus you can sell to these people over and over again, as many times as you like.
But if you link to an offer from a blog post, you only get one chance to make a sale.
That’s why building a funnel is so important.
But you don’t need any fancy software, sure it makes things quicker and easier, but we’ve been building funnels long before Kartra or Clickfunnels came along.
Here’s how to build one without using any expensive software:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5sl3_nXSpQ
What if you’re REALLY broke?
So… what if you can’t afford hosting or email? This will help you to get started, but only do this if you’re really stuck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=johB4_eZrTg