Introduction to Affiliate Marketing

If you’re searching for a possible way to make an income online from anywhere in the world, this option could be for you. I’m not going to tell you that you’ll be making thousands of dollars within a couple of months, far from it. But this is a sustainable online business model that will get you out of your 9-5 job and give you the flexibility you’ve always wanted.

Unlike scam websites, proper affiliate marketing is a legitimate opportunity for anyone willing to put in a bit of time and effort.

You’re probably wondering what affiliate marketing is exactly and how it works. Well I’m here to explain exactly this, and how YOU can create your own affiliate marketing empire with the correct education.

I will walk you through the following sections to help you get a handle on how affiliate marketing works.

What is Affiliate Marketing

Step 1 – Choose Your Niche
Step 2 – Create a Website
Step 3 – Write Content and Reviews
Step 4 – Join Affiliate Programs
Step 5 – Add Links
Step 6 – Be Consistent and Persistent
Step 7 – Enjoy the Fruits
Step 8 – Your Best Education

What is Affiliate Marketing

In simple terms, affiliate marketing is where you promote companies’ products on your website, with the intention of making a commission if you initiate a sale. So basically, you’re the middleman, helping companies make sales. These companies will reward you for your efforts by paying you.

The majority of affiliate marketers use their website as their vehicle to make commissions. The following step by step guide will teach you the process that can offer you a great way to make money online, and you won’t require any previous experience.

First of all though, you’ll need to know these two terms and who they are.

The Merchant

A merchant is any company that trades in selling products. These companies, or merchants, are who you’ll be partnering with to make sales and commissions. Without these merchants, affiliate marketers don’t have the avenues to create wealth.

Merchants companies set up affiliate programs, which are designed for affiliate marketers to leverage.

The Affiliate

An affiliate marketer is anyone that joins these merchants affiliate programs, with the intention of promoting their goods and services. This is usually done via a website, which when clicked on, takes a visitor to the merchants’ website to make a purchase.

Now let’s get into the simple process of Affiliate Marketing.

The 8 Step Process of Affiliate Marketing

Step 1 – Choose Your Niche

You can’t be a master of all trades, so don’t think you should start a website that covers everything. As a new affiliate marketer, you’ll want to come up with a niche to build your website around. This could be basically anything.

You could choose one of the most popular blog topics like dating, dieting, travel or fitness. Or alternatively decide on a less fancied subject. My advice is to choose a niche subject that interests you, and you can find plenty to write about the topic. Writing content about your niche is going to be the cornerstone and foundation of your success, so make sure the niche is reasonably expansive.

It’s also preferable that your niche in evergreen. This means that the content is rarely outdated, meaning it’s always relevant. Although it’s good to go back over old post articles and modify them (Google likes this), sometimes it’s not sustainable due to unforeseen constraints. If your content is evergreen, then people can visit the posts in 2 years time, and it will still be meaningful.

The more you get into your new affiliate marketing website, the more it consumes you. This is your new online business, so choose a niche wisely as you’ll want to keep your interest in it.

Step 2 – Create a Website – or Not!

As I mentioned earlier, generally a website is needed for this kind of online business venture. But in essence, do you need a website to do affiliate marketing in this era? Although its possible to achieve sales via social media channels such as YouTube, I believe a website is a stronger foundation on which to build a sustainable online business model.

A website will, overtime, build your credibility. You’ll become an authoritative figure through Google’s eyes, and will have this solid foundation on which to build. Once your website has been established for a period of time, your new content will become immediately well liked by search engines. This means your content will rank highly because Google and co like what you’ve previously submitted.

From my perspective, a website is imperative and will hold you in good stead. You may be wondering the best way to build a website. There are website builders about, but what is the best free website builder for small business such as affiliate marketing? I’d suggest checking out this one on the Wealthy Affiliate platform.

Step 3 – Write Content and Reviews

The meat of your website (sorry vegetarians and vegans!) is going to come from informative content and product reviews. If you can write articles that can help the audience you’re targeting, you’ll give yourself every chance of ranking highly in the search engines.

There’s 2 main features that search engines are looking for in your written articles.
1. Quality information
2. Length of content.

Writing quality content also means being unique. That doesn’t mean that nobody has written about the subject before. It means you cannot copy an article from another post. This is frowned up and is known as ‘duplicate content’ in the industry. Duplicate content will have Google penalise you, meaning a drop in rankings.

Anyone can write quality unique content, it’s up to you to apply yourself to take action. Many people find writing a chore, others find it much easier and enjoyable. Whichever category you’re in, you won’t survive as an affiliate marketer if you cannot write informative content or product reviews.

As part of your content, you’ll also be placing relevant images into your posts. Don’t forget to do this, as it creates more interest for most visitors due to the visual nature we all have. So hey, here’s an image. Isn’t that a pleasere to look at!

You may find it easier to setup templates for your posts, especially when it comes to product reviews. This is made easier with some WordPress themes, such as Divi theme which I use.

This is probably the most crucial part to becoming a successful affiliate marketer, so learn how to write and you’re halfway to achieving your dream of earning money online while you sleep.

Step 4 – Join Affiliate Programs

Without affiliate programs, there’s no income! So, you’re next task is to join affiliate programs in your niche. Just about all niches have affiliate programs dedicated to offering commissions to online marketers.

Probably the largest and most well known affiliate program is through Amazon, where you can sign up to their Amazon Associates program. They don’t offer the best commissions available, but you can offer thousands of different products.

Alternatively, you have 2 options. Many merchants will have their own affiliate programs where you can sign up via their individual websites.

Some companies find using affiliate networks a more satisfactory option. Affiliate Networks work on behalf of merchants to run their affiliate programs internally. This creates a great opportunity for affiliate marketers also, as many merchants are available under the one banner of the network.

Here’s a list of affiliate networks that you can sign up to:

• SharaSale
• AWIN
• Linkshare
• Clickbank
• Flexoffers
• CJ Affiliates
• JVZoo

There’s plenty of affiliate networks to choose from, so you’ll never be short of affiliate programs within your niche.

Once you join up to these networks, you’ll have a market place to go searching through to find suitable affiliate programs. You’ll have to apply to each one and have approval granted before you can promote their products. You may be asked what your website is about and how many visitors you get per month. Don’t worry if you’re not getting much traffic, most merchants will approve you.

When you are approved, there will be a section where you can find affiliate links for each approved merchant. These links, which are just a piece of code to add to your products or content, will have your personal ID within the code. This is so the merchant can identify where the referral has come from.

All you need to do is attach this code to the products on your website. You can learn more about how to create a link to a website here.

Step 5 – Add Links

Part of the SEO rankings process for each post you create, is adding links within your content. I don’t mean these affiliate links like mentioned above, I’m talking about internal and external links.

Internal links, are text links directed to other posts you’ve created within your website. Not only do these provide navigational guidance for your audience, but they offer ranking juice for your website.

The other links that help with search engine optimisation, are external links to authoritative websites. These are websites that attract huge numbers of visitors each month, such as Wikipedia.

Step 6 – Be Consistent and Persistent

So, you’ve setup a website, you’re writing great informative content with internal and external links, and you have accounts created with affiliate networks with several approved affiliate programs. You have affiliate links added to product reviews and all seems to be running as expected.

You may want to check how many visitors you’re getting on a regular basis, although I’d expect it won’t be much early on. You can add Google Analytics to track your audience and see which pages they’re hitting most.

Now comes the reality. Firstly, I want to emphasis that this one of the most sustainable online business models that is only growing with the advancement of technology. Think how many people are purchasing products online via smartphones everyday. But, you will require inner toughness to earn your keep.

Google ranking are not just distributed to anyone that decides they want a website. You need to earn rankings. This comes with persistence and consistency of posting multiple times each week. This can often require motivation to keep going, especially when you don’t see much traffic for your first few months.

If you want to create this freedom for yourself, you need to be determined. Anyone can do this but as I said, this freedom to work where and when you want, only comes to those willing to put in the effort.

Some Perspective

Learning a new skill can often take years to master. A university degree can take up to 4 years to complete, this is before you even see any financial rewards.

You can learn all there is to know about affiliate marketing, and be earning a decent income within 1 year! If you have 10, 20, 30 or 40 years of your working life remaining before retirement, why not see if you can work hard at this for one year and set yourself up for financial freedom.

Step 7 – Enjoy the Fruits

Your website is well established and you’re consistently making multiple sales everyday. Waking up each morning to find you’ve made hundreds of dollars or more whilst sleeping, is one of the joys of this success.

But better than that, is the ability to decide where you want to write your next article. I often meet my wife when she finishes her work day. I’ll take my iPad along, find a nice bar on the river, order myself a pint of beer, and write a new article. The freedom to do this beats the heck out sitting behind a desk for 8 hours!

Freedom to travel, more time with family, overnight earnings are all huge benefits from the early work that you will put into this venture. Keep your eyes firmly on the big prize.

Step 8 – Your Best Education

Yes, you can learn how to do this from better educators than me. In fact I learned how to master this from the industry leaders in affiliate marketing, and I’m still a member there.

If you’d like to join me and learn every aspect of affiliate marketing, these guys offer the best training hands down. You’ll also learn about email marketing, video creation and marketing, social media and so much more.

Wrapping Up

If you’re tired of waking up early to get into the office, sick of the 9-5 grind or just need more freedom of time, then switching to the affiliate marketing lifestyle could be for you.

The opportunity is available for anyone, but is slowly closing due to the demand of people entering the industry. Many people are attempting to rank for the highest positions in Google, and there’s only enough room for those that have the knowledge and do the work.

This could be you, should you take my advice.

Here’s to your success.