Affiliate marketing for beginner

Affiliate marketing is the simplest and the most powerful way to earn money for those who have just started blogging.

Since initially when you are just starting out, you need to invest money in your blog upfront, this method proves to be a quick way to make some of it back.

What is affiliate marketing

There isn’t any difference between an affiliate sales and a regular one, the price is the same and everything else about that sale is the same.

The only difference is that sale is made through me where I play the role similar to an agency.

To understand this let’s take an example of Bluehost.

Bluehost is the best and cheapest option to start your blog along with the free domain and I totally love it.

So, I decided to become an affiliate member for it and in return, I got a tracking link from the Bluehost team.

I used this link everywhere I mention Bluehost on my blog and whenever any of my readers click on that link and registers for Bluehost, I get a small commission.

I promote it because I love it, I explain to my audience about how this product has changed my life and how it is better than other hosting companies.

For my readers, they get to know in detail about the product from someone who has actually used it and based on that they would decide whether to buy it or not.

So, it’s a win-win and this is called affiliate marketing.

In simple terms, marketing other people’s products and services and whenever a sale is made you get a reward.

How does it work

This is the most basic step of how affiliate marketing works:

• You sign up at a merchant site
• You browse through different affiliate products available at merchant site
• You select products that you really love and want to promote, and the merchant provides you a tracking link for it.
• You test out that product and include all your observations in the form of a review post.
• You include that link in your post wherever its relevant.
• Your visitor comes to your post, likes your recommendation and clicks on that link
• If the visitor buys that product, you get a commission.

It’s as simple as that.

How to get started

The first thing you will ever need to get started is identifying your niche.

If you are thinking about affiliating all products that you can get your hands on, then it will most likely fail.

No one trusts the words of a seller.

And they will only trust you if you have provided more value instead pf pushing them for sale.

You need to cater to the specific audience searching for a specific niche that has been searched by lots of people and provide tons of value on those topics with detailed posts.

This is an important step in the affiliate world, deciding your niche clears most of the doubts you will ever have regarding what will work for you.

Signing up for tons of different affiliate programs will only bring chaos.

You need to pick only the top 3 affiliate programs that you like, test those and start promoting those to your target audiences.

Analyze which ones are working for you and which ones are not.

Then replace the ones which you think are not working out for you with the new ones.

Likewise, test different products again and again.

Slowly through trial and error method, you will eventually find your most suited affiliate product.

Picking your affiliate program

There are a few things that need to be considered when you are deciding which program to go for.

Niche

Always pick only those products that align with your blog content and with the audience you are serving.

Check your google analytics to find the most popular post on your blog, also check for most saved Pinterest pins.

These are the topics for which your audience is coming to you and your focus should be on monetizing these posts only.

Evergreen products

Promoting evergreen products are an absolute must.

These are those products which are used by almost everybody.

Just like if you want to search for anything you would go to Google.

Similarly, For hosting you have Bluehost and SiteGround, in email marketing, there is Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and AWeber.

The advantage of picking these products is that you yourself will be using it and you can include your personal story in your review, telling the audience your genuine opinion about these products.

You can easily explain it to them on how it works and what exact problem it solves.

Commission rates

Most bloggers choose those products that give out high commission rates and are of low quality.

My recommendation is that you should not promote low-quality products just because you are getting good commission out of it.

This will tarnish your brand and once people start seeing that you are promoting a useless product, then it's over, you will lose their trust.

Your audience will start seeing you as a salesperson and it will take a long time to regain their trust again.

Promote products that you yourself are using or those that you think will really help your audience.

This does not mean that you should stop looking for a high commission rate, keep looking and eventually you will find the right product that will make hundreds of dollars for you.

Affiliate program rules

When signing up for any affiliate program, you need to make sure that you go through their terms and conditions.

Along with the commission rate they also mention something about cookie duration.

Cookie duration is the duration till what time your affiliate offer stands and is started from the moment your reader clicks on your affiliate link.

If for example, some program says 30 days that means that if your reader buys the product within 30 days of her first visit to your offer, then only you will get affiliate commission otherwise you won’t.

There might be other points like you will get reward only if visitor performs some action like in survey offers you might only get paid if the visitor has completed a survey, you don’t get paid if they only signup and do nothing.

So, consider all these points when you are choosing which products to promote.

The next big thing about the rules is the legal stuff.

Some affiliate program also mentions other things that you need to follow, if not followed then they can either take the affiliate income that you made so far or terminate your account and kick you out.

For example, some companies do not allow you to post your affiliate link on any place other than your blog, not even on your social media or emails.

So when you signup, make sure you read their affiliate program terms and conditions and follow those otherwise all your earning might go whoosh!

The second most important thing in legal stuff is the Federal Trade Commission.

FTC is a government institution that oversees online marketing and advertising and creates rules for safeguarding visitors from fraud.

Their major rule is that you need to disclose your relationship with the affiliate company and state that you will get paid when a sale is made.

They also specify that you need to disclose not only on your disclosure page but also near to the place where you have used an affiliate link, whether it is on your blog or on social media or even emails.

You might be thinking that why to go through all these troubles and just skip this part.

Well, my friend, the consequence is that you will get fined for not following their rules and a not small amount, but a big amount, some have been fined thousands of dollars for this.

So be careful about the legal part of affiliate marketing and make sure you go through your affiliate program rules and also FTC full guidelines.

Promote your Affiliate product

Once you have picked your favorite affiliate products, the next thing you need to do is promote your affiliate product.

I recommend having only one affiliate product per blogpost, having more than one affiliate product will create confusion for your reader and you won’t be able to make an affiliate sale.

Product review

This is the easiest and most successful type of blog post.

The main reason why this product review leads to higher affiliate sales is that you embedded your personal story in it.

Reader while reading your post should feel like this product has helped you so much, without a doubt it will help me.

Product comparison

This is another type of post that you can create to drive affiliate sales.

Here you compare two products in detail and in the end, you provide your own recommendation.

To get success with this type of post, mentioning benefits are not enough, your content should include a brief description of every feature each product has.

Make sure you also mention customer service provided by both companies because most people will generally go for that company who provides the best customer support service, this is an important factor to drive affiliate sales.

Product tutorial

For every product you choose to affiliate for, you will find plenty of tutorials for that.

Even after having these many tutorials out there, people are still searching for more answers.

Understanding this need of your audience is the reason why you need to have a product tutorial on your blog.

Make sure you include detailed steps on how to make that product work for them including all the points that other bloggers have missed.