How to become an Affiliate Marketer
/How to get started with Affiliate Marketing
Are you a blogger but don’t know how to make money online?
Affiliate marketing is a great way to get paid for sharing products that you love with readers of your site. The concept is pretty simple, if you have a website with a following (small or large), by sharing “tagged” links to participating advertisers, you can earn a commission based on the traffic and conversions you have sent to that site. Simple, right?
Affiliate marketing isn’t really a new concept in the digital space but the opportunity to earn a passive income is still there!
Blogging and fostering a community online takes time and effort, but if you can find a topic (preferably something a little bit niche or that you’re passionate about), you can drive sales with only a little amount of upkeep for the site. But what exactly is affiliate marketing and how do you get started? I’ll answer all of those questions in this blog, including the basics, revenue models and what third-party platforms you should consider.
Affiliate Marketing - Understanding the Basics
Affiliate marketing is when brands/advertisers create programs that incentivise third-parties to sell their products on behalf of them. It’s a form of revenue sharing between the advertiser and a promoter (this could be you ;) the avid blogger). When a promoter successfully convinces a user to transaction with a product or brand they have endorsed, they earn a percentage of that sale.
Who is involved in the process for Affiliate Marketing?
There are four key parties as part of the process: the advertiser (or merchant), the third-party platform (affiliate network), the promoter (you) and the user (consumer).
The Advertiser or merchant, is the company that is wanting to engage with affiliates to promote their products or services. The advertiser is responsible for converting the user on their website, and for delivering the product to the customer once purchased.
A great example would be Amazon, who has one of the largest online stores and has a direct affiliates program. Amazon also hosts third party sellers, but they also look after the end to end experience for the customer including shipping.
The Third-Party Platform or Affiliate Network is a layer between the advertiser and the promoter. They act as a mediator to ensure the affiliate programs are run smoothly, they are in charge of payments between both parties once conversions have cleared.
There are several third-parties that you can engage with to help connect with advertisers. One of the largest is ReferralCandy, but there are plenty of others. Each third-party platform will have its own rates of commission or fee for facilitating the relationship.
Pro tip: There are affiliate networks for niche areas. If your blog is about a particular interest, try and find an affiliate network that aligns with your interests. And if you are going broad? Apply for several affiliate networks and test to see which one suits your needs.
The Promoter (Affiliate) is you! Make sure that you have found a topic that is of interest to you, because it will be easier for you to “market” a topic that you are passionate about. You have to produce content (which can be in many different types of formats i.e. blog, video, social media) but you have to position the content in a way that refers a user to the advertiser and entices the user to purchase the product.
In whatever format you choose, just make sure you have a way to link to the advertiser. This is how you track whether your traffic is driving conversions on the advertisers website.
Content on affiliate blogs can vary. Get creative…. Look at product reviews, top 10 lists, how-to guides and any other similar content. When you are building out your blog, keep in mind SEO best practises as this will help drive visibility of the content you are creating and engagement with the users.
Pro tip: Just make sure that all the effort your are putting in to create quality content is actually being seen by users. Leverage your social media networks, organic search and some native advertising to drive reach to your site.
The User is anyone who enters into your website, and they are your potential customers. Make sure that you are tailoring the content on your site to suit what your audience is interested in to drive engagement. Great tools like Ubersuggest by Neil Petel help you identify content opportunities which are similar to what your audience is interested in.
5 Steps To Get Started with Affiliate Marketing
1. Find your niche
What are you passionate about? What is that topic all of your friends know you for? For me, it’s digital marketing and spreadsheets. I love talking about the advancements of marketing technology, the changing work landscape and female empowerment. What’s yours? Nail what that niche is and the rest will come easily.
Do you love wine? A review blog on different bottles of wine would be a great idea if you’re starting out. Are you into powerlifting? Maybe you could provide online advice with call outs to where you can get the best equipment to help athletes develop.
It’s hard sometimes to see how you can stand out in the crowd when most topics already seem covered and overcrowded, but if you are passionate about your niche, you will be sure to succeed. Just don’t expect traffic to come to your site overnight, it will take time and dedication to build up a hub of “ever-green” content that delivers users.
2. Build Your Website or Social Network
I would recommend starting off simple with your website. There is nothing wrong with using a template based provider, I use SquareSpace for this site! WordPress is also a great option, there are stacks of helpful forums to help you navigate setting up your site with WordPress. Once you’ve decided on your provider, pick out a theme and customise the site to look like your own. You can easily do this by changing out pictures, updating colours and fonts. Just make sure that the site reflects whatever topic you’ve picked as your niche. Also, save on photography by using partners like Unsplash that provide royalty free images (that aren’t ugly/stock-like).
Just make sure that you choose a template that is easy to navigate. At the end of the day, one of the most important considerations when building out the site is what your user experience will be like. Don’t make the user work too hard to find your valuable content, otherwise they might exit the site before they get there.
If fostering a strong Social Network is more your thing, I would recommend starting on platforms like Facebook or YouTube where it’s easy to link to the product you are promoting in the description of the post. Instagram is still a little bit tricky with links, unless you have enough followers to activate the link swipe-up feature. To be eligible for the swipe-up, you need to have over 10,000 Instagram followers.
3. Create a Content Calendar
Now it’s time to really roll up your sleeves. Once you’ve got your site up and running, you need to start producing a steady stream of content. I would recommend publishing a piece of content a week and maintaining a regular schedule for posting. At this point, a content calendar will become your best friend in helping you plan out what you are producing, and when.
I would recommend spending sometime in upskilling yourself in SEO best practises. There are SO many websites that exist to help bloggers to identify what content, within your niche, users are searching for. I would recommend looking at MOZ and Neil Patel for beginners guides. For those who are more advanced and don’t mind paying for a subscription, I would recommend Ahrefs or SEMRush.
Start with popular styles of writing, like “top 5” style lists. These types of articles are quick to write and are fairly digestible for users.
Pro Tip: By having an article that references several products, you will have the opportunity to link to several products, opening up your opportunity for more conversions. But do keep in mind not to go overboard, sometimes too many options overwhelm consumers. And make sure you do your research and provide users with rich content that is dense with facts and information. Another great option would be to include a comparison table that helps consumers decide which product they would like to purchase.
4. Join an Affiliate Network
There are over ~16,000,000 results when you google Affiliate Networks. With so many options out there, it’s hard to be sure you are partnering with the right network for your business. There are two key questions you need to be able to answer:
Which affiliate network is best for my niche and my business?
What types of affiliates networks are best at delivering strong partnerships?
Find an affiliate network which matches the type of products you are trying to promote. If you are looking into travel, there are specific partners that you can work with. And keep in mind, that each network will have its own set of agreements and terms, make sure that you find a partner that is cost-effective in helping you connect with advertisers.
Amazon.com is a great affiliate network for beginning marketers, as you can promote any item on the site and get paid for it – giving you a wide variety of niches that you can choose from when starting an affiliate website.
5. Promote your Content
I mentioned it earlier in the article, that once you have produced quality content, the best way to get max reach for your targeted audience is to advertise. You’ve invested so much time and money in creating a quality website with well researched content, it is time to ensure that the content produced works as hard as possible for you If you are in the position to invest money into promoting your content, I would recommend looking at Paid Social (as it will often come with a correlated increase in social following and the targeting options are GREAT) and native advertising (cheap CPCs with placement against topics which can be similar to your own). Ideally you want to be growing your audience as much as possible, these platforms will help you target those interested in content related to your blog. Just make sure that before you start investing in promoting your content, that you have a thorough understanding of the media buying mechanisms. Do you need help in this area? Feel free to drop me a line if you have questions or need some help.
However, these services aren’t cheap – you should only do this once you’ve started making back your investment and have money to spend on increasing the size of your audience.
Also be cautious of what your affiliate network’s policies are about advertising. For example, Amazon Affiliate do not allow you to advertise your blog via biddable channels. So make sure you check out the guidelines of your affiliate network before you start promoting!
Conclusion
I think the only other thing to touch on is to always test. Once you’re up and running, test different ways of promoting products to your users. See whether different types of content formats has an impact on how your users engage and maybe find a way to nurture leads who have shown an intent on your site, but haven’t converted. This might be phase two, but look at building out a lead generation strategy that captures email addresses and allows you to email your users directly with product recommendations.
Affiliate marketing does take time, unfortunately one blog post won’t drive thousands of users to your site overnight. But if you are consistent, invested and passionate, the hard yards will pay off in the long run. Keep evolving your site, building on the content, optimising the experience and testing new user experiences.
