Overview of Affiliate Marketing (For Beginners)
Hi there!
This Is Brianna and Tom from Internet Marketing Tools and Programs. Today we want to get in to what affiliate marketing is and how it works.
We started looking for ways to make money online way back in 2006. We went through program after program and spent thousands of dollars trying to achieve this goal. It wasn’t until 2017 that we finally found the formula for success.
It took a LONG time before we found anything legit, that didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and that was easy to follow.
We had come across affiliate marketing before, but it sounded too hard.
But eventually, through an advertisement, we found Wealthy Affiliate (an affiliate marketing training platform) and decided to give it one last try.
What caught our attention the most, were the benefits to affiliate marketing.
Why Choose Affiliate Marketing?
Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing
- You do not need prior experience
- You do not need any tech skills
- You do not need to create any products
- You do not need to purchase lots of stock and put in your storage room
- You don’t need to sell to your family, friends, colleagues (They call this your warm market)
- Live the laptop lifestyle and work from anywhere in the world.
- No income cap.
It suited our budget and our desires. In the end, we built two online business one is this website that you are on at the moment. This is when our lives started to change!
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is the process of promoting products or services for a specific brand/ company and earning a commission when you refer someone.
You will learn how to create content on a website that educates your readers on a specific topic and then recommends a product or service.
The content will then be published online and the search engines will crawl your website. They will then index and eventually rank on the search engines.
You will then start to get free organic traffic by a method called SEO or search engine optimization.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Step 1: You Write Quality Content
Write Blogs/articles/posts about your chosen topic. This is called picking a niche (more on this later).
Step 2: Add Affiliate Links To Your Content
You will need to find products and services to promote in your content. So if you niche is babies you would want to promote highchairs, clothing, diapers, strollers, etc as long as it is relevant to your niche and article.
You would sign up with companies that had an affiliate program like
- Walmart
- Amazon
- Etsy
- Share A Sale (Affiliate Network)
- Target
- CJ.com Formally Commission Junction (Affiliate Network)
- eBay
- ClickBank (Affiliate Network but for digital products)
Using our “baby” example: you might want to promote a special baby boutique or specific baby brands.
Once you are approved by the affiliate program you will get a special link that is coded to your personal id. Now you can add these links to your content so that when a customer clicks the link you get the sale.
Step 3: Earn Commissions
Once you are setup you are ready to start earning commissions. All you need to do now is focus on getting traffic to your page.
Can You Affiliate Market For Free?
Using Ourselves As An Example
We built our first website by publishing articles about our niche. It was a niche that we were really interested in. We wrote 30 articles and then began to monetize the site
When people use search engines online, they may find our articles, hopefully read them, click through the site, and try things that we are promoting. If they decide the product or service is valuable, they will purchase said item and we will earn a commission.
Now we have started a second site (this one) to teach people how to do what we do.
18 Steps To Build A Complete Affiliate Website
Just to show you what it takes to get fully set up we have created the following list of 18 steps.
1. Choose Your Niche.
This is a process all on its own and there are many ways to go about making your decision. So We have created another list to help you with this process.
How Do I Find the Best Niche Products to Sell Online?
Conduct market research by researching your competitors, finding keywords, looking at available products in your selected niche.
Your products need to solve problems.
Your products should be niche-specific.
Look for trending products
Find products that fulfill desires and dreams
Find products with a passionate fanbase.
2. Plan Your Site.
Start writing down what topics you want to cover in your niche. If you are unsure google your niche and see what other people cover.
Then write down Sub topics.
Now it is time to find the actual keywords you are going to use in your articles. Click the link above to find out how to research keywords for free.
Watch The Video From Wealthy Affiliate’s Live Class: “The Basics Of Technical Keyword Research“. There are actually 4 classes in the series.
4. Buy A Domain Name.
You will need to choose a name for your website/ business. A Domain name is your websites address on the internet.
For example ours is https://internetmarketingtoolsandprograms.com/.
5. Set Up Hosting
Find a place to host your site.
6. Set Up Website
Design your site. Don’t worry. While this part might sound scary it is easier than you think. Websites no longer have to be coded from scratch. So there is no coding or programming required!
You can make wonderful websites by picking the right theme or using page builder plugins (such as Elementor)
Later in the article we will show you how you can get started for free.
7. Write Content: (30 – 60 articles) Write engaging and informational content. You need 25- 30 articles before you can start applying ti affiliate networks as most reqquire your site to be already active.
8. Apply For Affiliate Programs: You can apply directly to a brand or sign up with an affiliate network. (Examples: Commission Junction, Share A Sale, Etc)
Which Affiliate Program Is The Best For Beginners?
9. Get A Small Amount Of Traffic: You want to be getting at least a small trickle of traffic BEFORE you monetize. You need to build up your audience.
10. Add Affiliate Links To Your Content: This is one way you can monetize your website.
11. Monetize: Goes with step 10 but there are other methods you can add too like adding ads to your site.
12. Set Up and Create A Sign-Up Form (or Capture Page): You can use a direct sign up form or create a capture page. A capture page is designed to be a separate page that you can direct people to where they input their email address (capture their email) and they get some sort of free gift in return. Typically if you are creating a capture page it is for a sales funnel.
13. Create And Setup A Lead Magnet: This is the free gift we mentioned above. You want to create something of value that you can give away for free so that people will sign up to your email list.
14. Create Email Series for Automation: You can do this after you setup your auto responder but we think it is a better idea to start with writing a couple of emails first.
15. Set Up Autoresponder:
Why We Chose AWeber as Our Email Provider
16. Promote On Social Media: Of course you want to get free traffic from the search engines but you will also want to diversify your traffic sources. You can use social media to gain followers, “likes”, brand recognition, and to directly sell products.
Examples Of Social Media Platforms
- Quora: Create your own space on Quora.
- Google’s Keen: Read staykeen.com: What is Google’s Keen?
- Youtube
- Tik Tok
17. Write More Content: 60++ articles
18. Start Making Money
We recommend the Wealthy Affiliate training course for in depth information and training. In our opinion, it’s the only place to start if you are a beginner.
More About Our #1 Recommendation For Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing
We started our journey with Wealthy Affiliate because we wanted to learn how to make money online. We were looking for something that was affordable and legitimate.
But we were full of doubts and we were very skeptical. We read review after review even the bad ones. We finally decided to give it a try and we are so glad we did.
WHY?
Because it helped us make money online in our first year! The training truly works.
What To Do Next?
- Read Our Wealthy Affiliate Review
- Read More Information And Frequently Asked Questions About Wealthy Affiliate3. Create A FREE Starter Account and get access to the first 10 lessons for free. Try the platform BEFORE you have to pay for the membership. Test the waters.
- Please note that you can stay a starter member forever but you will only have access to support, live chat, and posting in the forum for 7 days.
- Fill Out Your Profile And Money Goals.
- Get Started On The Training
Our Bonus To You
We will provide personal support and advice for anyone who joins Wealthy Affiliate through us.
You can directly message us inside the platform at any time, and we will try our best to get back to you at soon as we can.
Hey, I was wondering, any suggestion to choose an autoresponder service? Do you have any recommendations? Thanks.
Our recommendation is Aweber. That is the one we use and we are very happy with. It is free up to 500 subscribers.