So, you want to get started with affiliate marketing? But how much do you know about affiliate marketing? Does it just sound like a fun way to make money while sitting at a coffee shop? Or while relaxing on a beach? Or maybe it still sounds like a scam to you. In this article, I go over how to get started with affiliate marketing, some tips and tricks, general challenges with affiliate marketing and some paths to success.
As with any business, research and education are paramount to success. There are so many tools out there to help people get started that it seems somewhat scary. I can tell you, it’s not. The business model for affiliate marketing is rather simplistic and easy to start. I promise you that there are multiple nuances that can make things challenging. When you are done reading this article, you should have a better sense of how to get started with affiliate marketing. Plus, have a little more confidence in your ability. Let’s dig in.
How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing: The Basics
We discussed what affiliate marketing is in my ‘Affiliate Marketing Business’ post, so I won’t go into much detail here. Quickly, affiliate marketing is a business where a company pays someone (an affiliate) a commission or fee if they bring customers to purchase products from the business. Sounds a lot like a sales position, right? And it is, for all intents and purposes. Probably the best sales position there is because you don’t necessarily have to talk to anyone. It can help, but once they have agreed to your terms and signed up for your list, you can sell them anything. They can, of course, unsubscribe though. So, it makes sense to give them more of what they want.
When you start Affiliate Marketing, I would strongly encourage purchasing a program or having a mentor where you can learn some basic terminology. It’s best to have both. I know when I started, it felt like I was back in college and having to study until the early hours of the morning.
There are multiple terms that are important to understand, too many to just mention on this post, so I found a glossary here. Feel free to check it out when you have time. The three main points in order to get started with affiliate marketing are: 1. Pick a niche, 2. Select offers to market in that niche, and 3. Build your social media platforms.
Picking a Niche
This is the first step after understanding the terms. If you don’t have a niche, then you have no starting point. A niche is, for our understanding, a particular segment of the market that you want to focus on. Think about what you are passionate about. This is the fun part about affiliate marketing. You have a blank canvas. What are you passionate about? What do you think about? A niche, literally could be anything. Some common niches are; Entrepreneurialism, Health and Fitness, Travel and Vacation or Relationships. However, there are so many possibilities. Please don’t just decide based on these.
In my opinion, when selecting a niche, you must be passionate about the subject matter. However, you can also narrow down a topic by considering how competitive your niche could be and how extensive the topic can be. Basically, how hard will it be to write or think about new discussion topics. Also, if you can make any money with that area. Which leads me to the next section in this how to article, selecting offers and ways to market.
Select Offers to Market
It is amazing how many affiliate programs are out there. Don’t believe me? Seriously, I want you to open another browser and type in the search bar “affiliate program for…”, then list the first company that comes to your mind. I thought of Apple and sure enough there is an affiliate marketing program for Apple. They call it Performance Partners Program, but it’s an affiliate marketing program.
Depending on your niche, there are so many products that you could offer. The health and fitness sections are one that you could connect with a large fitness corporation or sell exercise equipment from Amazon. Yes, Amazon has an affiliate marketing program as well. Likewise, you could sell workout membership programs and online fitness instruction videos. Once you select what you want to market, we must figure out how to we are going to find people to sell our products or our programs.
Build Your Social Media Presence
Everyone is going more online and connected via social media. Affiliate marketing needs to target this area. One particular way to grow your affiliate marketing business and be able to reach customers with paying for advertising is creating a blog. This is where you effectively write about your niche. Health and fitness may have better luck with a vlog, but blogging or vlogging is a great way to reach new customers. In many cases, you can start a blog site for very little upfront cost.
In addition, you can post this to multiple social media sites. I would encourage having at least five social media sites that are solely dedicated to your blog or marketing your business. Fiverr is a website that can help you grow your blog and social media presence. They offer various services in the digital marketing realm.
The concept here is to create content on either a blog or a vlog and post to followers or post to a website. When they read the content, you can show them how you learned to blog, or how you learned to create a vlog. Better still, you can market the products that you use. If they click on your affiliate link and buy the product, you get paid. All for just writing a blog or creating a quick video.
Disclaimer: I receive affiliate compensation for some of the links in this post at NO cost to you. However, these are the best tools I have used and tested that I believe are most effective for launching and running an online business. You can read our full affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.
Challenges You May Face with Affiliate Marketing
Whenever you start anything new, inevitably there will be growing pains. When you get started with affiliate marketing there may be some challenges. Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. There is hard work required. Oftentimes, you need to work long hours. Especially at the beginning. It will be worth it, though.
Besides long hours, one of the biggest challenges at the beginning is developing a list of customers. Affiliate marketing is most effective once you build a list of followers. There are multiple ways to do this, but the fastest way is to pay for advertising. You can start affiliate marketing and make money without paying for advertising. However, it is much faster if you set aside a little bit of money for a marketing budget. The strategy is work on your blogs or vlogs while marketing your products with paid ads. Doing these in tandem will make the path to success much easier.
Finally, one of the last challenges I would like to bring up is the time factor. When you become an affiliate marketer for a company, sometimes there is a time limit that you have to make sales before they no longer allow you to be an affiliate. If you are just starting out, I would avoid these types of affiliate marketing programs. Once you are established and have a decent following, then look more into these types of programs. There are many programs that don’t require a sales quota at all, and oftentimes they are better companies to have a relationship with anyway.
Should You Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?
Yes, you should. If you are employed or under-employed, affiliate marketing is a great side business that you can do in your spare time or a great full-time opportunity. It’s a great way to start a second source of income. We learned from my post ‘Mindset of an Entrepreneur’ that we need at least five sources of income because the wealthy have at least five sources.
It’s unfortunate, but we hear at an early age to, go to school, get a jog, and retire when you hit 65. The government will take care of you after that. This is just a complete flat out lie. The government cannot and will not take care of the people. The Social Security system is bankrupt. Our currency is not backed by anything other than the name of the United States. Plus, our our national debt continues to rise.
The good news is if we invest in ourselves and learn how to build wealth without relying on any government policy, we can be successful. Building an affiliate marketing business is an easy way to get started on that.
Before you go…
Do you want to learn how you can take ANY business and scale it to achieve your dreams and goals?
Partner up with me by clicking on this link and watching the video.
We will show you EXACTLY how to build a business online and customize a plan just for you. We will help you choose a niche, setup your online business and help with selecting offers that you can promote.
On top of that you will get ONE on ONE mentoring to make sure you are doing things right.
A great way to be able to save more money is when we make more money.
Cheers to your success and See you at the Top!
-Cameron
