Consider doing affiliate marketing for the following two compelling reasons:
1. Low-cost and low-risk
Launching a business carries inherent risks and expenses due to upfront investments in products, personnel, machinery, lease payments, and various other factors. Conversely, in affiliate marketing, a mere website suffices. In case of failure, the incurred losses are limited to some time and a small sum of money.
2. Easy to scale
Unlike a conventional salesperson who exclusively sells products from a single company, as an affiliate marketer, you have the opportunity to endorse products from various companies and receive commissions for each of them.
How does affiliate marketing work?
When individuals click on your link, a small file called a cookie is saved on their device. Typically, this cookie contains an expiration date, ensuring that you still receive compensation even if they postpone making a purchase.
Let me provide you with an illustration of how it functions:
Someone visits your post on the best winter jackets.
They click the Amazon affiliate link for one of your recommendations.
They close their browser to pick their kid up from school.
They go back to Amazon the next day to check out the product again.
They buy the recommended product, along with some ski gear.
You earn a commission on the recommended product and ski gear due to the presence of the affiliate cookie stored on this individual’s device.
How much money do affiliate marketers make?
According to a survey conducted by Influencer Marketing Hub, the majority of affiliate marketers make an annual income of less than $10K.
However, around 16.87% earn an annual income of $50k or above.
In terms of being a successful affiliate, Matt Giovanisci sets a commendable example. For the year 2021, his website Swim University generated affiliate commissions amounting to $149,991.
It is important to remember that these individuals have done a remarkable job establishing their brand. It has required many years of dedicated effort to achieve this level of success. You should be mindful of setting realistic expectations. You may not earn a significant amount of money immediately, but do not allow this to demotivate you.
How to get started with affiliate marketing
To maintain the same meaning, rephrase the text as follows: “Observe these five straightforward steps:”
Step 1: Choose your niche
The category you desire to discuss and endorse is your niche.
To differentiate yourself from the numerous websites present today, I recommend being more specific. Instead of addressing a wide-ranging field like food, opt for a more specialized topic such as grilling. This approach enables you to cultivate a targeted audience and potentially enhances your SEO efforts.
To identify a good niche, consider asking yourself the following four questions:
What am I good at?
What do I like doing?
What am I curious about?
What do other people tell me I’m good at?
Step 2: Decide on a content platform
Affiliate marketing can be done on any platform, which includes:
Website
YouTube
Social media (e.g., Instagram, TikTok)
Newsletter
Podcast
Your choice of method will be based on your preference and sometimes, the preference of your niche. For instance, individuals learning breakdance tend to prefer videos. Therefore, even if your preference lies in writing, starting a YouTube channel might be more suitable.
With that being stated, we advise constructing a website and implementing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to attain a high ranking for your content on Google. By doing so, we can consistently generate passive search traffic, consequently ensuring a consistent flow of clicks on affiliate links as well.
Step 3: Find affiliate programs to join
When selecting an affiliate program, there are three primary options available.
High-paying, low-volume— Niche products with fewer buyers. For example, HubSpot sells only to businesses but their affiliate program pays well (100% of first month and 15% monthly recurring commission.)
Low-paying, high-volume— Products with mass appeal, e.g. PS5 games. For example, Amazon only pays up to 10% commission. But the good thing is they offer commissions off the entire value of the purchase (and not just the product you recommended.)
High-paying, high-volume— Expensive products with mass appeal, e.g. credit cards. An issue is that these programs tend to attract affiliate marketers with deep expertise and pockets and willingness to black-hat tactics.
Step 4: Create great content
In order for your affiliate site to thrive, it is crucial to generate top-notch content that seamlessly incorporates your affiliate links. Avoid simply selecting products from Amazon’s popular listings without careful consideration. Instead, strive to provide solutions to your readers’ issues through your content, going above and beyond.
If, for instance, you are conducting reviews, you should genuinely buy the product and examine it. Utilize it for a certain duration and document your observations.
Step 5: Drive traffic to your affiliate site
Once you have produced excellent content, the subsequent task involves attracting a larger audience to read it, resulting in increased clicks on your affiliate links.
Consider these three traffic strategies:
A. Paid traffic
You can utilize pay-per-click (PPC) ads in order to pay for traffic to your site.
As soon as you begin paying, one benefit of utilizing paid traffic is the instant influx of visitors.
Nonetheless, there exist certain drawbacks.
Initially, the cost of running advertisements will eat into your profits. It is a common occurrence for advertisers to experience financial loss before potentially making a profit, if they even achieve it.
B. SEO
SEO involves optimizing web pages in order to achieve a high ranking on search engines such as Google.
If you manage to maintain a high ranking for your target keywords in search engines, you will continuously receive steady and passive web traffic.
At its core, SEO entails:
Understanding what your target customers are searching for
Creating content around those topics
Making sure Google understands clearly what your page is about
Acquiring or earning links to push your pages higher in the search engines
Ensuring Google can find, crawl, and index your content
C. Build an email list
With email lists, you have the ability to engage with your readers at any given moment.
By leveraging these tools, you can inform fans about fresh content, enticing them to continuously visit your website for additional updates. Consequently, this results in an increased number of affiliate clicks and sales.
How to Become a Successful Affiliate Marketer
Brands can effectively drive traffic to their e-commerce pages and connect with niche customer communities eager to explore new products by implementing affiliate marketing campaigns on reputable blogs and publications.
Start earning money with affiliate marketing by utilizing these strategies to optimize your campaigns.
1. Build High-Quality Creative
By having access to captivating advertisements, you will increase your chances of attracting affiliate publishing partners and effectively reaching your desired audience.
When constructing your affiliate promotions, analyze which products can be seamlessly integrated into affiliate blogs or articles. Regardless of whether you’re crafting display ads, banner ads, native ads, or affiliate links, selecting visuals and copy that will captivate new readers is crucial.
2. Dominate Your Niche
In affiliate marketing, it is essential to avoid a spray-and-pray strategy. It is advisable to select a particular niche and target audience. This ensures that you are delivering highly relevant content that aligns with their interests and requirements. Additionally, you can collaborate with publishers who have developed focused and actively engaged communities.
3. Set Competitive Payment Rates
Choose from the following options to determine how you will compensate your affiliate advertising partners.
Cost per click. Every time a reader clicks on your affiliate link or ad, the publisher receives a payment.
Cost per lead. Every time a reader completes a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or starting a free trial, the publisher receives a payment.
Cost per sale. Every time the publisher drives a consumer to your website, and that consumer makes a purchase, the publisher receives a commission.
Choosing the payment rates that align with your products, audience, and creative is crucial. For instance, if your aim is to generate awareness, you could opt for a cost-per-click approach rather than a cost-per-sale approach.
4. Partner with Top Publishers
To ensure the suitability and safety of affiliate partners, it is important to conduct research on publishers, influencers, and blog owners who operate within your industry. This can be accomplished through various methods such as conducting a straightforward Google search or utilizing keyword search tools like SpyFu and SEMrush to locate highly ranked websites. Additionally, it can be beneficial to examine the comments sections on these websites in order to assess the level of audience engagement with both content and product suggestions.
Consider The Points Guy, a prominent affiliate publisher in the travel sector that has experienced significant growth. Their website includes a disclaimer stating that the credit card offers featured on the site are affiliated with credit card companies, for which ThePointsGuy.com receives compensation. Therefore, products mentioned in their article, “The best travel credit cards of 2020,” may potentially be sponsored by affiliate marketers.
5. Choose the Right Affiliate Network
Partnering with the correct affiliate network is crucial for the success of your affiliate marketing efforts. It is important to find a high-quality platform that can link you with reputable publishers who enhance your brand’s image.
Taboola’s exclusive partnerships with leading digital publishers worldwide enable advertisers to reach the most relevant audience segments by delivering recommended articles and videos.
By advertising with Taboola, brands such as NerdWallet and Consumer Cellular are able to target Business Insider’s massive audience of over 83 million readers.
