How to succeed as an affiliate Marketer

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Last Updated on June 18, 2018 by NandiNN

Are you curious about affiliate marketing? Do you want to boost your affiliate sales and make it your main source of income? It’s definitely possible to boost your affiliate sales. Michelle from Making Sense of Affiliate marketing makes over $100,000 per month in just affiliate sales. So how can you succeed as an affiliate marketer? 

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When it comes to making a living working from home, or, especially, earning a “passive income”, affiliate marketing is one of the leading approaches.

It’s clear to see where the allure lies. While other remote working roles require you to be actively engaged with a specific job of work at any given moment, affiliate marketing allows you to create the infrastructure for your business, set up the essentials, and perform maintenance as and when it’s convenient for you.

The “money making” part — if you manage to turn it into a lucrative business — happens anytime someone else makes a purchase. You don’t need to be involved at all. In that way, affiliate marketing is one of the “hustles” with the best chance of making you money while you’re asleep.

If you’ve ever wondered how to be successful at selling other companies’ products for a profit, without keeping any stock of your own, and without the need anything more than a website, this guide is for you.

Find a good niche

The first thing to understand is that the heart and soul of a successful career in affiliate marketing are finding an appropriate niche.

Consider the way that a major company tends to operate in any area, such as for example, the food industry. A grocery store giant will have an immense variety of goods on offer and will sell themselves on that basis, as well as on the convenient placement of their stores, their price-saving deals, and so on.

If any home-based entrepreneur decided to use a broad category such as “groceries” as their niche, they would never get even the smallest shot at effectively competing with the major retailers. The exact service they aim to offer will already be catered to, far better, by a large number of immensely wealthy companies, all with physical and web presences.

However, what if there’s one specialty item which a few of the major retailers stock in their shops, but which none commit much time or energy to? A specialized drink like Kombucha, for example?

As an affiliate marketer, you’d be able to dedicate yourself completely to exactly this kind of niche area, and aggregate all of the major retailer’s supplies of that product on your site.

Not only would you be focusing on a small area where the major companies would never find it cost-effective to dedicate much time and attention, you’d also be creating a comprehensive shopping resource for a rare product, and thus making it worthwhile for the public to use your site.

Of course, it’s not quite so easy. To find an ideal niche you need to make sure that (a) it hasn’t been grabbed up by any other affiliate marketer (b) it’s popular enough with the public that you can turn a profit on it (c) you’ll be able to effectively market for it (d) the price margins and commissions on offer is enough for you to make a profit.

You’ll also want to focus on services or goods you can effectively aggregate from multiple sources. “Kombucha” may be a good niche, but “Babcock Partners Injury Lawyers” won’t be — as it will anchor you to advertising services for one solitary company.

Always remember — the entire affiliate marketing game can be boiled down to finding the right niches.

Set up a professional website

As an affiliate marketer, your entire operation is going to be based online. For that reason, it’s absolutely essential that your website screams professionalism and reliability. You do not have the weight-of-name that the major companies will have. Everything depends on your ability to put your customers’ minds at ease and to raise their trust in you, with a professional web presence.

Include information about yourself, personally. Have the website professionally designed if you can’t rely on your own WordPress skills to make it gleam? Include mechanisms on the site to try and gather customer analytics and reviews.

Positive testimonials from happy buyers will vastly improve your image among other would-be shoppers. Sign up for any “safe business” groups and guarantees that seem appropriate, to vouch for your ethical practices.

Join our free course here on how to start a blog that makes money! 

Create a site blog focused on your niche

Many would-be affiliate marketers get hung up on the idea of “passive income” — so much so that they treat their affiliate marketing business as a low-effort weekend scheme from the start.

Make no mistake, while it is possible to make a passive income from a freelance business, it’s going to take some real work to get to that point.

Both for SEO purposes and to appeal to customers, you’ll need to position yourself as an expert in your niche area of focus. A key part of this will involve setting up a blog, attached to your affiliate store, and publishing regular, engaging articles (and possibly videos) on the topic.

Sign up for good affiliate programs

Many companies have affiliate programs, but not all affiliate programs are created equal. There will be distinct differences in the commission percentage paid by different companies, even for the same goods. It may well be worth your while to sign up to certain affiliate programs but not others — especially if products from the “low-yield” programs have the potential to distract buyers from products associated with more lucrative programs.

There’s no simple, easy way to get around this. You’ll need to take the time checking out different affiliate marketing platforms, and schemes, and carefully select the ones which seem worth your while.

Use the right software to set up your online store

Once you’ve signed up to affiliate programs via a website such as Awin, you’re going to need to actually set up your digital storefront. There are many different tools available for doing this yourself, though if in doubt, consult a professional web designer.

The key thing about setting up your affiliate shop and data-stream is making it appealing and accessible to the customer. Are the products listed and categories in an intuitive, logical order? Is there a search function? Is your site optimized for use with mobile devices?

Any obstacle that causes a would-be customer to experience so much as a moment of stress, may well be enough to lose you a sale. Do whatever you can to prevent that from happening.

Want more ways to boost and increase your affiliate sales? Sign up for our FREE course here: 

Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing- The full review

7 affordable eBooks that will skyrocket your blog traffic

7 ways to boost your blog income

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***We would like to note that this post and most posts on our blog may contain affiliate links. This means that if you purchase something that has an affiliate link, we will get a commission from it. Not all items recommended on our site are affiliate links. We only recommend items that we have used and tried. These items have brought us much success and we highly recommend them to you in order to be successful. Thank you for your trust!