Today, I’m going to walk you through a step by step guide on mastering affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing could seem extremely complex and hard to master but in this article, we would be breaking it into three parts.
The first part is going to talk about the general overview of what affiliate marketing is, then we’ll quickly move into what options you have for building your platform and getting traffic to it to make your affiliate marketing work. This could be with or without a website.
Finally, we’ll move into what kind of affiliate offers you should be focusing on. There are both low ticket offers and high ticket offers.
By the end of this article, you’ll have everything you need to start affiliate marketing today.
So let’s begin with some definition.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
If you have ever referred anyone to any business in the past, then you might have done affiliate marketing. For whatever the reason, when you refer them to your person, that is effectively affiliate marketing.
It is all about referring people to things that you know and you like and trust. So when you look at the actual definition, affiliate marketing is essentially commission-based or performance-based marketing in which a business rewards you for bringing them a customer.
Ease of Affiliate Marketing
So you’re not actually an employee. You’re not on a payroll, you have no commitment and you can work whenever you want to work. You only get paid when you drive them a new customer or a new click or a new lead.
You don’t need to have crazy marketing experience for this. We would learn how you can share your knowledge and your experience to lead other people to make decisions.
Your only duty is to help others find the product that’s right for them and by doing that and doing it this way you will actually earn Commission.
Example of Affiliate Marketing
Now that we understand what affiliate marketing is, let me show you two examples of affiliate marketing websites. One is really big, this is Expedia.com.
Expedia gives you all the tools in a search engine, everything you need. They put their money into building this tool so you have all the information to find the best option of available deals out there.
Expedia does not have an airline, they do not have hotels. Instead, they send you to a company that does and then they get a commission for sending you to that company. This is a large-scale affiliate marketing website.
The second example is much smaller. It’s a website called recordingnow.com.
It does reviews of products that are on Amazon and puts an affiliate link in the reviews. So people know exactly what to expect and they can buy the products on Amazon. They use an affiliate link so it costs them nothing extra and they know that they’re getting the exact product that was reviewed.
Affiliate Marketing Options
In mastering Affiliate marketing, you have to know your options.
I have discussed two examples of affiliate marketing websites, one large scale, and one smaller scale.
Now that leads us into what kind of options you have when you’re making an affiliate marketing business. You don’t have to have a website. I would share with you four main options that you have when you’re starting affiliate marketing.
A lot of people begin affiliate marketing without investing money, they just want to try it out and see what happens. If you are one of those people, you’re probably not going to be able to make a website.
Affiliate Marketing on A Zero Budget
In this article, we would discuss making websites but first let’s talk about starting affiliate marketing with zero budget.
If you are one of those who would begin with no money, then these two options will be really good for you.
Marketing on YouTube
First is YouTube based affiliate marketing. If you go on YouTube and you type in any type of product or service, you will find a ton of videos and reviews about that topic.
Take headphones, for example, there are almost a million searches every single month about headphones. If you go to YouTube, you would see all of these video reviews of headphones.
This is basically affiliate marketing.
You would see videos such as; my favorite wireless headphones 2018, and top five best active noise-canceling headphones.
Then as you check the description previews, you can see that there are affiliate links right at the top. Using this strategy, these videos are reviewing products and then sending you through the affiliate link to the stores.
So like these Youtubers, you too can make a free youtube account and if you’re comfortable on camera, you can film yourself reviewing products.
On your channel, you can compare two different products. It could be any kind of product or service that you have used in the past that runs an affiliate program. Upload the videos with your affiliate links and bingo!
Marketing on Social media
Another zero-budget way of doing affiliate marketing is by using social media. Social media is a really cool tool for mastering Affiliate Marketing. Instagram is my favorite social media to use.
For example, a page can be based around print-on-demand. You could use a website called teespring to fulfill orders so it’s kind of like a combination of drop shipping and print on demand and affiliate marketing all-in-one.
All you’re doing is changing out the products and the link of where people can buy it with your affiliate link.
You don’t even need a following to start this. All you need is to put in relevant niche hashtags when you make a post.
Website Based Affiliate Marketing
Now, let’s talk about the two main ways you could use a website for affiliate marketing. In Mastering Affiliate Marketing, you definitely need a website.
You begin by creating a niche website so this starts to rank in Google. Google would be the source of the bulk of your traffic. When someone is searching for something related to that niche or that product your website will come up in the rankings. That’s how you get your traffic.
Although Instagram and YouTube are very good places for you to start, eventually you’re going to want to move into a niche affiliate marketing website.
A niche affiliate marketing site is much more powerful and scalable. With that being said, to create a niche affiliate marketing website there are two main options that I recommend.
Choosing Your Website Builder
Although you have a ton of website builders out there such as WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace, I recommend you use either Wix or WordPress.
I suggest you take a tutorial on website building because you may not want to wing it. There is actually a process and there is a specific layout that you want to use.
Furthermore, you need to understand the types of content that you want to be posting to rank better on Google. If you’re interested in making a niche affiliate marketing website with either Wix or WordPress there are tutorial videos on youtube.
The biggest differences between Wix and WordPress are the price and usability.
Wix
If you are brand new to making a website, then I would recommend Wix. It is a little bit more expensive but much simpler to use.
It’s literally drag-and-drop and it’ll save you all the frustration. So if you have a little bit extra money or if you really are not tech savvy I would recommend going with Wix.
WordPress
Then again, if you do have some experience building websites and using WordPress, and you want to save a couple of dollars each month then I would recommend going with WordPress.
It’s just a little bit cheaper each month and although it has a heavy learning curve, you can customize it and do everything you need.
No matter which one you choose, you’re going to be in good hands.
Now that we have options laid out, we need to move into what kind of offers you can promote. Also, we would look at where you can find these offers and which are the best for you.
Using Amazon Associates
You can start out with Amazon Associates. It’s an ideal step in mastering affiliate marketing. This is what I recommend to everyone getting started in affiliate marketing. Amazon Associates is so beginner-friendly and often leads to accidental success.
Also, Amazon Associates is the biggest affiliate marketing program in the world and that’s by no surprise. Everyone knows how big Amazon is.
On Amazon Associates, you can promote any product. You would receive a special link that has your affiliate tracking in it. Also, as you know there is basically everything on Amazon.
Category Breakdown on Amazon Associates
Here, it’s by category, so whichever category the product falls in, decides the commission that you would get. These commissions are a percentage of the price of the product.
The process is the same, whether you’re making a YouTube video, Instagram page, or you have your own website, you create this link. The link is good forever so you can create it for any product and you have it forever.
Once someone clicks the link, it’ll send them to Amazon and it sets a cookie on their computer. That way, Amazon knows that you sent the person there. Amazon cookies last for 24 hours so if they buy anything on Amazon in the next 24 hours after clicking that link, you will get a commission.
Low Ticket Affiliate
Amazon associate affiliate links are considered low ticket affiliate items because you’re only getting a small percentage.
Chances are if you’re using the Amazon Associates affiliate program you’re probably only going to get somewhere between $2 and maybe $50 on whatever you’re sending someone to Amazon for.
If you’re recommending products like a MacBook or something that’s more expensive, you will get more money. But most of the time, you’re relying on products like headphones or something that might be a hundred or two hundred dollars and then the commission on that would be about 6%.
Conclusion
I definitely challenge you to push yourself to make a website. Down the road, you will really thank yourself especially when you start ranking on Google. Having a website is a major step in mastering affiliate marketing.
Soon you would get flooded with all this organic traffic and you don’t have to pay for it at all. So if you are strapped for cash I recommend starting with a WordPress website. It’s only a couple dollars per month.
