Basically, people kicked off their journey in affiliate marketing right when they started thinking about the possibility of making money while being asleep.
The main concept in that is that you’ll be promoting other people’s products, via an affiliate network and earning money out of it when people start purchasing those products or services thanks to your marketing skills. For more on business management, see this new blog post about the best pay stubs creator software.
Revenue sharing is the base of it, for example, if you have a product that you’d like to do better in the market, you may offer the promoter billboard advertising or a financial incentive via an affiliate program, and if you don’t have a product but you still want to make money, then just choose one that is valuable and earn a commission of It as being an affiliate marketer.
In this article, we will be tackling the definition of affiliate marketing, its sides, and how to start your journey in it.
Let’s kick in!
(Image source: CJ)
WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING
Affiliate marketing is a process of promoting products and services of other people and earning money out of it”
And if you head to Wikipedia, you will find 4 different parties that are included in defining affiliate marketing which are the merchant, the network, the publisher, and the customer.
Before tackling the 4 parties, what you need to know about marketing is that there are two sides of an affiliate equation: the product creator and seller and the affiliate marketer.
So affiliate marketing can be also defined according to Neil Patel:
“as the process of spreading product creation and product marketing across different parties, where each party receives a share of the revenue according to their contribution.”
Basically, you don’t have to be defined by just one of the two, the promotion of the product, you can be both and make a profit from it.
And now, let’s check what the four parties are about in the affiliate marketing system.
The Merchant:
This can be called the creator, the seller, the brand, the retailer, or the vendor. Basically, he’s the party that takes care of the production part, it can be one person or a company. if you have a product to sell, then you can be a merchant.
The Affiliate:
which can be called the publisher, it can be one person or a company. An affiliate would make a lot of money for it is where the magic of the marketing all happens, the affiliate will promote one or several products and always try to convince the customers to purchase them.
And this can be done by making a review blog of the merchant’s products, such as:
Or you can make a full website that is only meant to find cool products of different fields through it and promoting those different affiliate products, for example:
The Consumer:
Which is the customer, for it is the main core of the affiliate system, with no clients you will make no money and there will be no shared revenue.
The affiliate will do its work and try to market to the client in whatever suitable channel, it could be a social network, digital billboards or via a search engine by making content marketing on a blog.
Also, the affiliate is to decide whether his clients know about them taking part in an affiliate marketing system or not, in both ways the client will always be able to be on track with the purchase process and the affiliate will earn its money that includes everything.
The Network: which is only included in the affiliate marketing system for them, however, it serves as a guide and networks mainly take the role of an intermediary between the affiliate and the merchant.
Yes, you can arrange your business technically and manage to make it work, however, to give the lead to a network as ClickBank or Commission Junction that will take care of the payment and product delivery would reflect more seriousness and professionalism in your affiliate marketing.
And sometimes, it is inevitable, you as an affiliate find yourself obliged to go through an affiliate network for the merchant could only manage their affiliate program on that network.
Networks can also be a database of many products that the affiliate will get the chance to choose out of them what to promote.
This is an example of ClickBank.
And sometimes, the network will be promoting consumer products such as tools, book, toys and so on. For example, Amazon is considered to be the biggest affiliate network nowadays. The affiliate program they follow, allows you to promote whatever item that is sold in there.
Whoever can simply sign and generate a custom affiliate link to any of Amazon products, and once someone uses your link and buy off it, you will get money.
Now let’s get through an overview on how to launch your affiliate marketing business.
Overview
As already mentioned there are two sides that you can pick of, you either become a merchant, get others promoting your products and paying them for each sale they make, or an affiliate marketer for one product or many and you work on promoting them, selling them, and making money out of it.
Mainly, people prefer starting as an affiliate because it’s easier, it’ll help you to build traffic that will make you enough income.
Now, we will get through 4 steps that will help you to start just right on both sides of the affiliate marketing world.
Become a merchant in 4 steps
Alright, now that you want to become an affiliate program merchant and make your income by selling your own products here 4 steps to go through:
First, you need an idea of a product.
Second, you need to validate your idea.
Third, you have to make the product.
Fourth, you have to find affiliates that will promote your products.
We will go through each step and its details, let’s start!
STEP 01: you need an idea of a product
Actually, it’s not as hard as you think to come up with an idea, it is very simple.
Your idea doesn’t have to be original, actually nothing you see is original, everything is based on so many other observations and ideas.
So when thinking of an idea, you will have to be open to the choice of combining the ideas of the products you see here and there and think of ways to improve them or making them more beneficial for people, because there would be something missing.
Your ideas can also be based on your interests, for example, housewives are very much into cleaning tools so you would want to make their work easier by improving one of those tools, for example, vacuum robots.
Just Google it, you will find a review website of vacuum robots:
And now, check the people’s reviews about the different robots, and you will get to know what’s good and bad about those robots, and TADA! You get an idea of how to improve those negative points.
No virtual walls that tell the robot where to go and where not to go is a problem that is basically mentioned in 6 out of the 10 reviews of the top products!
Lack of remote control is a common negative point too.
Now, for example, you would come up with an idea that develops a virtual wall to be less problematic for all the different types of vacuum cleaners.
Or you can use what’s called Buzzsumo that will show you what is popular nowadays according to its social shares, even Sandcastles get shares, let’s take a look:
People are fond of those Sandcastles:
Even if you check on Youtube, you’ll find so many results:
as you can see, people are really into building some cool sandcastles, so?
You can make content out of that, make videos that show how to build cool Sandcastles step by step, or how to build a specific type of sandcastles. Write all the tools that are needed to make a great sandcastle, make forms or stencils for people to use and build amazing sandcastles, but your question should be, would people pay for that?
STEP 02: you need to validate your idea.
So to not waste your time and efforts on things that probably would pay for, you’ll need to validate your idea, how?
Basically, ask people, would they pay for it?
And where would you find those people, you can take the URL of one of the sandcastle posts on Buzzsumo and plug it into a tool called Topsy
And then Topsy will show you the list of people who tweeted this link before
And you can share your idea, by the button Reply
And ask the right questions; don’t ask if they like it only but also if they would buy it! And if their answer is yes, go ahead directly and ask them to actually buy it, because they would say yes just to be nice, but you have to put them in a situation where they’ll have to buy it.
Use PayPal as a start and tell them that you are building a business once there are several orders. You can also learn more about smart business management at the new PayStubCreator website.
Now that you are certain about your idea, it’s time to start creating it!
STEP 03: you have to make the product
There are so many resources that can help you to launch your product online, they will be showing each step in details and try to look up and learn of various resources such as: online courses, Ebooks, and Podcasts.
And now that your product is ready to be on sale, time to find yourself affiliates to promote your products.
STEP 04: you have to find affiliates that will promote your products
There are so many tools that can help you to find affiliate program partners, such as Gumroad and Digital Product Delivery.
(Image source: Gumroad)
Of course, your partners will be earning money also.
The hardest part is finding affiliates that have your target audience.
How to find them? Easy, follow up, we will be back to the sandcastles.
You can search up “how to build sandcastles” and so many websites would show up that actually sell educational material about that, for example, Sand Sculpt USA is offering lessons to teach people how to build sandcastles.
SandCastle Lessons also offers a class on the same topic.
Try to contact them and cooperate with them and plan a sale together.
Send an email that is introducing yourself and your product and ask for a partnership on sale with sharing the revenue of course.
Keep in mind that affiliate commissions of 50% or more are very common when it comes to digital products because there is no cost of replication, so don’t be greedy from the get-go.
Also, you can try Googling “toy review blog” people would write toy reviews:
There are also so many Youtube channels that made for reviewing a specific type of toys, they would also be suitable for your affiliate product
Try finding a partner so you can begin on with your first affiliate promotion, the income and further details could be discussed later but what matters is to start. Look how many YouTube likes that influencer has to know how many people will reach your product.
Now, you would also want to be an affiliate, well let’s see what you shall do!
Become an affiliate in 4 steps
there are 4 steps that you have to consider while wanting to kick off your journey as an affiliate marketer.
First, you have to start reviewing products of your niche…
Second, you need to collect emails.
Third, you may use webinars
Finally, once your affiliate marketing business starts making money, you can start scaling your growth by paid advertising.
STEP 01: Start reviewing products of your niche
All you have to do is to share your ideas and products, also start by looking at the partners that we mentioned in the fourth step for becoming a merchant, literally any product would do the trick, take a look at this, a guy reviewing hot wheels tracks and cars:
Now, if you like reading books, for example, you can review them:
There is a special type of reviews, that is usually ranking good, which is the comparison with a direct competitor.
And there are so many types, however, whatever you are reviewing, make sure it is relevant and helpful to others because people can easily tell when you are just trying to sell them illusions to get their money.
Now, let’s suppose that you don’t know much about the product, how would you promote it?
Well, it depends on the products, for example, if it is series of courses or books that are made by people that you’ve trusted their quality in the long run then you can promote them with a comfortable heart and use an affiliate link to link those products. They are recognizable in other blogs by the long “/ref…” at the end of a normal link
Here is an affiliate link:
Basically, this is your first step to start earning money.
Sing up to Amazon Associates and start using your own affiliate link to promote any product on Amazon.
Then head to the product page and click on “short link to this page”, you will have a link that will earn you money if people used it and buy it.
But if you are going to only depend on people using your affiliate links, It’ll need a lot of traffic until you start earning real money.
What about finding a way to be in direct contact with your audience and market to them whenever you want and not only when they come across your website?
Well, the second step, here we go!
STEP 02: you need to collect emails
One of the best tools in online marketing is email marketing, so here are the 3 main easiest ways to collect emails from your visitors
Number 1: Hello Bar
Hello Bar, basically whenever someone comes across your website, they will see it at the top and you may make them a special offer to motivate them to sign up for their emails
So, when they click on your Hello bar, they will be redirected to another page to submit their emails and get their special offer.
Number 2: Exit Gate
You can use Hello Bar to make an exit gate, it will pop up when they are leaving your website, once they are using their cursor to the top area of the browser.
And you can redirect them to your lead magnet, and they’ll submit their email address too.
Number 3: Sidebar Widget
You can include so many things in the sidebar of your blogs.
Don’t do this, because if your visitors found so many things to do, they would ignore the whole thing. Try to have one thing on your sidebar, and always seduce them by the special offer.
For example:
Moreover, try to keep them always updates, each week send them an email that contains the latest updates and your new reviews with a brief explanation, and motivate them to buy your products.
Also, if you ever thought about making the slightest of changes, let them know of your reasons, and in time you’ll build a bond with them and win yourself, loyal customers.
Step 03: you may use webinars
Webinars can be a great idea, for example, if you are willing to buy a television, you would indeed want to see a live presentation of the television in action rather than reading a review about it
Webinars are awesome.
You can use LeadPages to create a landing page that people will use to sign up for your webinar.
what you have to do next is promoting your webinar for a week ahead and allow people to sign up to attend it, then you can use Google hangout to host your webinar and stream your live.
Webinars will help you to directly connect with your audience and share with them live the products that you are promoting and even answer their questions, also you can:
- Talk about the product’s features
- Tell them all about different uses of the product
- Show its benefits and what makes it special
- Tell them your experience with the product
- help your audience with all the question marks
Also, you shall share your affiliate link by the end of your webinar for it’ll be the logical thing to do right after the live review you provided.
And you can always cooperate with the merchant and make a special offer for those who want to attend the webinar, it’ll be a win-win for both parties.
STEP 04: Grow your business by paid advertising
Right when your affiliate marketing business starts rising up, you may start considering the paid advertising.
Before doing anything, make sure that you have a way of making back your money.
You can use PPC advertising to:
- Ask people to sign up in your webinars
- grow your email list
- make more sales
If you Google “lean leadopages”, you will find that LeadPages are promoting their own weekly live webinar via Google ads.
So try using keywords that related to your niche or your product.
Also, you may use the strategy of targeting your competition, as you can see under the LeadPages ad, there is a different ad of Unbounce.
They also offer software that creates landing pages which make it very easy for them to attract the other brand’s audience.
But instead of trying to get others’ audience, you would be working on improving your SEO.
There wouldn’t be a lot of people buying your product after reading your review, you will be getting a low income out of it, so you won’t be paying much for your ads.
And to be more clear, your best promotion way is promoting sign-ups to your email list
Or try to get people to join your webinars via ads.
It’s a win for you for three reasons:
- You will have them on your email list and you can reach them again anytime
- High chances of them attending your live webinar and purchasing the product
- You can include them on an autoresponder email sequence that motivates them to purchase
For example, John Lee Dumas, from Entrepreneur On Fire, often runs webinars and advertise them on his homepage.
And once you opt in to the webinar, you will be getting series of automated emails.
Also, you will be offered other free courses and tools, and you will get 10 email lessons for few days and by the end, you will be invited to buy another extensive course on webinars.
And after learning all about webinars, you will be asked to join a more detailed course to continue the journey, you also get a sneak peek of how those webinars and courses are made, behind the scenes.
As soon as he gets to know how much people will be taking part in those courses, he’ll easily be able to calculate how much money he would spend on those ads and get people to sign up for his webinars/webinar courses.
This way will help you to get your customers to buy either after the autoresponder or on the webinar or future emails.
And once, your business starts blowing up, consider having paid advertising along.
And that’s it, we came to an end of the ways to start with affiliate marketing.
It’s a broad world and would be a turning point in your life!
Make to follow all that’s mentioned carefully for it contains all the things that you shall know and do.
Good luck in your journey, go out there and get them!
