Getting Started As An Affiliate

You will be surprised at how many sites on the web offers affiliates programs like the most popular ones such as Clickbank, JvZoo, Amazon associates program, Cj.com, Shareasale, etc… The list goes on and on.

Usually, there is an affiliate link on the bottom of the page of the site where you can signup to join as an affiliate. Affiliate programs usually only take a few minute to sign up to, and once you have embedded your personal affiliate links, and banners on your site you are off to a good start.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

The way affiliate marketing works is based around promoting a website’s business or services. You as an affiliate will either have to gain visitors to a site, subscribers or most popular, sale leads.

It is usually referred to as paid on delivery. You will not get paid unless you deliver a sale.

In a nutshell – affiliate marketers get paid for successfully getting a customer to click and then buy a product through your unique affiliate link, or banner.

Summary

1. You find a product you want to promote
2. You sign up for their affiliate program
3. You get a special link that allows the merchant to track the people who clicked your link
4. If they buy the product, you get a commission.

Top Affiliate companies To Register.

1.Click bank.com: offers only digital products gives as high as 50-70 percent commission. I always recommend click bank to beginners.

2.Amazon associates: gives 6-20 percent commission, offers physical and digital products.

3.Commission Junction.

4.Paydotcom

5.Jvzoo, e.t.c

What Do I Need To Do to get Started As An Affiliate? 

First you should have A website or blog  to get started as an affiliate marketer, not necessarily though but it helps. A blog or website that is well established will give you better results to start with than with a site you just register today.

So get that website started asap to build your foundation on.

Before you start, you should know that a blog where all you do is promote product without offering free valuable contents is not laying a good affiliate foundation, don't let your visitors think all you want is their money because that way, your affiliate career is so over, Yeah.

The look and feel of your website can also play a big part. It is not essential to spend high on template or whatever, but a site that look unprofessional will not make your a visitor come again.

Just keep it simple and professional and you are good to go.

Next is to pick an affiliate niche for your blog or website, don't host different niche on a particular website cos it will look crappy and unprofessional, so if you are promoting products on health and fitness, your website should cover that aspect only.

Give free reports and provide articles for your affiliate product,

For example, you want to promote a product on how to quit smoking, write a 300-500 words article on the negative impacts of smoking, then at the end of the article, include a short statement like

"hey, if you want to quit smoking today, I help a something that can help you quit smoking"

Then include your affiliate link, surely you will get lot of sales, but make sure your articles are very informative or else they will think your product will just be as dumb as your article or might not even read up to the middle of your article.

Done with that, you need to get traffic to your blog posts, or do you think your articles will convert to sales without targeted traffic, No

You need people interested in your niche to read your article and there are lot of ways to get them.

Here is a summary if how you can  get targeted traffic to your website

Forum posting: search for top forums related to your niche, go on and give a report and include your post link (not your affiliate link)in the byline.

Social Media: Top social media such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram e.t.c are loaded with people on any possible niche, share your posts and tell them about your website and surely they will come visiting.

Means of getting tons of traffic will be explained in upcoming post.

How Do You Find a Product to Promote?

Here’s the thing, you can pick just about any product that you can buy online, and there will be an affiliate program that will pay you a finders fee for referring a sale.
However, just because you can promote anything, doesn’t mean you should. 
The most important thing to consider when selecting a product to market is, “is it relevant to your audience?”
For instance, for me to try and advertise for dumbbells on Location 180 probably isn’t the smartest thing, because 99% of my audience could care less about them.
Note: If you happen to be in the market for dumbbells, feel free to go ahead and click that link and prove me wrong
However, for me to promote, say, WP Engine a WordPress hosting company – makes much more sense, since almost every one of my readers either has, or has considered starting a website.
When I’m trying to decide what to promote I always ask myself the following questions:

• Do I use this product?
• Will the vast majority of my readers benefit from using this product?
• Is the buying process easy?
• Is there a good affiliate commission? (Not always necessary)

If I answer yes to each of these questions, then it’s probably a good fit and worth promoting.


Promoting Your Affiliate Products

Blog post promotion:

Another way to promote your affiliate income is by using affiliate links to your own blog post. When doing this, you should always write targeted-posts. For example, when you are writing about How to Select the Best Hosting for your WordPress Blog, you can add a line at the end saying: “I recommend this particular host for a WordPress blog:” (insert your affiliate link).

Google PPC

Google’s PPC advertising through AdWords gives you access to their massive display network. Write ads that point to your site, not to your affiliate links directly. Google doesn’t like displaying affiliate ads directly unless they’re the affiliate. Write and test different ads for different keywords, study the results, optimize, iterate and build advertising schemes. Try to avoid dumping money into fruitless keywords, but don’t be afraid to explore.

Use Social Media

Just use it. Even if you’re a narrow affiliate niche, you can find some benefit on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or Google+. Facebook in particular is essential because of the audience information you gain through Insights. Use a lookalike audience for your PPC to draw in more people.


Email/Ezine Promotions to a Targeted List 

One of the funniest, common realizations at a recent conference was that customers do not buy until the third or fourth visit to a Web Site. Direct response marketing has been built on this fact for years, following up initial contacts with repeated messages inviting people to visit. Email is the best means to conduct this and to keep up with the volumes of email that come with a new affiliate program.

Yet the real power of email comes in the endorsed mailing. When an ezine or list has been developed, with a trust between the writer and the audience, the endorsement is gold. It moves people from being strangers to being introduced to you personally. The unfamiliar is replaced by a recommendation from someone they trust. Response rates to email offerings are much greater; a recent article about the December Internet retail push claimed a 300% increase in sales via email than via other methods. This is the hottest, unknown affiliate promotion available.

There are lot of ways to promote affiliate products and they will be published soon, keep up with the villa to know when it breaks.
 

Why Affiliate Marketing is Better than Other Types of Blog Monetization

Most new bloggers assume that advertising or banner ads are the best way to monetize your site.
You couldn’t be more wrong.
They often get started with Adsense because it’s easy. To be honest I can’t remember the last time I saw an Adsense advertisement – thank you Ad block!
But seriously, not only will these make your site hideous, you have to have obscene amounts of traffic to actually make any real income.
Selling ad space to sponsors is almost as bad.
A good rule of thumb I’ve always used for how much you could sell ad space for is this:
 
Daily visitors divided by 10 is the dollar amount you can make per month on an ad.
 
Example:
If you get 1,000 visitors a day, you divide that by 10, and see that you can charge $100 a month for each ad on your site.
Now keep in mind this is just a rule of thumb, and depending on your niche it could be substantially higher or substantially lower.
If you’re just starting out, $100 a month could seem pretty good, but it takes a lot of work to get up t0 1k visitors a day – and if you get that many, you’re much better off monetizing via affiliate ads or ads for your own product.

But Wait!!!

Many people believe that you can make an affiliate site today and then tomorrow be rich. I am sorry to disappoint you but it is really not that simple.

If you had a huge advertising budget then, sure, you will get results a lot quicker. For the rest of us however, it is going to take some time.

Without traffic to your site you are going to make no affiliate commissions whatsoever.

Most affiliate programs will not pay you the $5 you made last month if that is all you made. You need to read the small print as many affiliate programs do have a withdrawal minimum, and they will not let you withdraw any funds from your account if it is below this minimum threshold

Note: ( The exception being instant affiliate platforms like JvZoo for example where you can get paid instant affiliate commissions right to your PayPal account if the vendor approves you for instant commissions that is or else you will be set to delayed commissions where you will be paid after the refund period is over. )