The best way to do affiliate marketing is to:
- Choose A Niche
- Search For Affiliate Products
- Create Content
- Build An Email List
Choose A Niche
The first thing you need to do when starting as an affiliate marketer is to choose a niche. The three most popular niches are:
- Health
- Wealth
- Love/Relationships
The reasons these niches are so popular are because:
- Within them, there are many people searching for solutions to problems.
- People are very passionate about solving those problems.
For example, a person who wants to lose belly fat has a problem that they want a solution for. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to connect them to that solution.
Aside from the big three, there is really an unlimited number of niches you can choose from. Some people recommend that beginners choose one of their hobbies. For instance, you might really enjoy basketball.
Well, there are many affiliate products that can be found within that niche, and you have the benefit of being knowledgeable and passionate about that topic. It might be a great niche for you to pursue.
Search For Affiliate Products
The next thing you need to do is search for affiliate products. Now, some affiliate programs will reject you if you don’t have any digital marketing experience. However, there are a couple of great programs that I recommend for a beginner:
- Amazon Associates
- Clickbank
Amazon Associates - The Amazon affiliate program is a great place to start for the following reasons:
- They are an easy affiliate program to join (you probably won’t get rejected).
- Amazon sells almost everything (great for almost any niche).
- People trust buying from Amazon (you won’t have to be a great marketer or salesman to get people to buy).
The main negative of the Amazon affiliate program is that their commissions are relatively low. So the best strategy is to promote products that are $100 or more.
Clickbank - Clickbank is another great place to start for a beginner because:
- Again, they’re an easy affiliate program to join.
- They have products in a wide variety of niches.
- Their commissions are generally higher than Amazon.
Aside from Amazon and Clickbank, you can search in google for affiliate programs in your niche, and you’ll probably find that there are a lot of opportunities to earn commissions.
Create Content
The next thing you want to is to create content related to your niche. The two best ways of going about this are to:
- Create a blog.
- Start a YouTube channel.
Creating A Blog - Starting a blog is a relatively simple process. You just need:
- Web hosting
- A domain name
- Wordpress
The web hosting and domain name won’t cost you much money at all, and Wordpress is free to install on your website.
Once your site is up and running, you want to create blog articles about topics in your niche. ‘How to…’ articles are great because they establish you as an authority and teach people information that they’re eager to learn.
Starting A YouTube Channel - Starting a YouTube channel is also a simple process. It’s free, and you just want to brand your channel name to go along with your niche in some way.
Once your channel is up and running, start making videos that are helpful to people in your niche.
You also want to join Facebook groups related to your niche and online forums and start answering the questions people have. When you do this, direct people to your blog articles and videos for further information.
Build An Email List
One of the common sayings in affiliate marketing is, “The money is in the list.” Let me explain how that all works.
Within your blog articles and videos, you want to direct people to something called a ‘squeeze page’. A squeeze page is a web page that offers up something for free in exchange for an email address. Common examples of free giveaways are:
- free ebooks
- free reports
- free cheat sheets
- free recipes
These free giveaways should have real value and actually help the people in your niche.
Now, your squeeze page can be built using any number of different software programs. I like to use Clickfunnels, but there are many other options as well.
Once you have an email address, you want to send out an automated sequence of emails that:
- Build a relationship with your email subscriber.
- Offer them more valuable information.
- Suggest affiliate products that will help them solve problems and/or achieve their goals.
To do this you need an email autoresponder. I like to use Get Response because it’s inexpensive and easy to use, but there are several email automation services you can choose from.
Now all of this is just a rough overview of the whole process. If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, in detail, I recommend you check out this article that shows you how to start an affiliate marketing business in 5 steps.
