The affiliate marketing sector is growing rapidly. As of 2020, the sector was worth roughly $12 billion.
If you're looking for a way to make money from home, start your own business, earn passive income, or all of the above, you might be wondering “how do I become an affiliate marketer?”
Becoming an affiliate marketer isn't as difficult as you might think, but it can take some skill to truly succeed in the market.
Let's take a look at everything you need to know about how to be a successful affiliate marketer.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
You likely heard of affiliate marketing before, but maybe you aren't quite sure exactly what it is. Basically, affiliate marketing is when you use your own site to promote the products of other companies. When a consumer chooses to buy their product from your affiliate link, you benefit with a commission.
Essentially, you are a third-party salesperson for the company. For this reason, you are rewarded when you make a sale.
The difference between being an affiliate marketer and a regular salesperson is that you can scale up big time. Because there is no limit to how many products you can be promoting from different companies at once.
How Do I Become an Affiliate Marketer?: A Step By Step Guide
Affiliate marketing for beginners can seem confusing at first but it's actually quite simple. Let's take a look at what you need to know.
Choose a Platform
The first step on the journey of how to become an affiliate marketer is choosing platform that you are going to use. You can you any Internet platform as a foundation for affiliate marketing, however, the most common channels to use are a YouTube channel or a blog. These are the most popular because they are the easiest channels on which you can build an audience and increase your affiliate sales.
The easiest platform to use would certainly be starting a blog. This is a cheap way to get started and there is a lot of information online about how to start a blog.
Once you have built your blog, you will need to use SEO to help your chances of ranking on search engines. Once you've done this, you'll want to start adding affiliate links embedded within your content.
If you choose to go with YouTube, you will be uploading video content where you include an affiliate link in the description. It is free to upload content to YouTube, and many people have smartphones that can take relatively high-quality video already.
Decide on Your Niche
There are hundreds of millions of blogs live on the Internet right now. In order to compete with the saturated market, it's important that you find a specific niche to focus on.
When you find a niche, it can help to keep your audience focused and also increase your search ranking.
Finding an appropriate niche is important, but you also want to make sure that it's something that you're interested in if you are going to be the main content creator. That doesn't mean, however, that you need to be an expert in the field. You can use a blog or YouTube channel as a way of documenting what you've learned as you learn rather than presenting yourself as an authority from the get-go.
If you're going to outsource content creation, you'll likely want to find niche experts rather than just hiring someone random. While this can be more expensive, it can end up leading to more engaged visitors, more traffic, and therefore more affiliate sales.
Join Affiliate Programs
Once you have chosen your platform, you can then determine which types of affiliate programs it makes sense for you to join.
The first kind of affiliate program is those that are high-paying but offer low volume. What this means is that these links are geared towards a limited pool of buyers, so while they pay well, you likely won't send too many customers their way. This type of affiliate program can also be quite competitive when you are starting out.
The next kind of affiliate program is those that are low-paying but offer high-volume. Basically, these are products of have mass appeal but you will not earn much per click. A good example of this category is Amazon's affiliate program.
Lastly, there are high-volume, high-paying affiliate programs. These are products that pay high commissions for affiliate links that also have mass appeal. These programs can be quite competitive and can also be filled with affiliate marketers that use spamming tactics that likely won't appeal to you.
Produce Killer Content
Once you have your platform and your affiliate marketing program, the next and likely most important step is creating amazing content. It's important that your affiliate marketing links can be used naturally so that people don't feel like you are shoving products down their throat.
When it comes to creating great content, you always want to be anticipating problems that readers have an answering/solving their question.
Drive Traffic to Your Site
Now that you got great content filled with affiliate links that don't seem forced, you're going to need to get people to go to your site. You can do this through paid traffic, search engine optimization, email marketing, and other digital marketing tactics.
Get Affiliate Link Clicks
There are certain things you can do to better your chances that people will click on your affiliate links. You want to place them strategically and in a context that makes sense. You can also use callouts such as boxes, buttons, and tables to attract attention to your affiliate link.
Convert Clicks to Sales
Once a reader has clicked on your affiliate link, you still need them to take the plunge and make the purchase. While you can control the conversion rates of how many people click your links, you have no control over the conversion rate of how many people actually buy the product.
This means that you're going to want to find products that convert well. Take a look at public income reports to find out if companies are really making sales.
Is It Time For You to Launch a Profitable Online Business?
You no longer have to wonder: “how do I become an affiliate marketer?” The next step now is to make it happen!
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