How do I get into affiliate marketing?
By: Prem Kumar
Tags: Make Money Online, Beginners Guide, Affiliate Marketing

At the time when I started getting into an online business, one of the business models that attracted me was affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing seemed simple to start and a lot of marketers were claiming to make money with it. As someone new, I often wondered “How do I get into affiliate marketing”? If you had the same question then read on.

There are 6 basic steps to get into affiliate marketing

You need to decide on which market category you want to be in. Once you have decided on the market, pick a product within that market which you would like to promote Create an email series that provides information about the product which you would like to promote. Build a landing page to capture the email addresses of your potential buyers. Once you have the email addresses, you will then send your email series to them. Now that you have your landing page, you need to drive visitors to visit that landing page using multiple traffic generation methods. Repeat the process from #1 to #5.

Now let’s take a look at what this means and what you need to do to get started.

Affiliate Marketing In A Nutshell

Affiliate marketing can simply be explained as commission-based sales. This is where you sell other people’s products and receive a percentage of the total sales revenue that you make. What makes this business model appealing is that with the help of the internet, there is no limit of the potential buyers that you can reach to sell that product hence increasing the potential of making money as much as you can.

It is probably the easiest online business to start because you don’t need to spend time creating any product of your own. The startup capital is very low, in some cases, you can even get it done for free and it’s a machine that works for you 24/7 as long you keep promoting that product.

Why Choosing an Online Business Niche Is Important

Choosing a niche is the first step in getting into the affiliate marketing business. Deciding the right market category to be involved helps to keep you focused on what product to promote, what kind of knowledge you should have about the target market, what kind of audience might be interested in that niche, and most importantly, the amount of money you can potentially make. A niche that is too competitive may be too hard for you to make sales and an unprofitable niche will just waste your effort and time because no one is interested in making any purchase.

Where Can You Choose A Niche To Start Your Business

There are a few places that you can go to look at the type of available niches. These places are called affiliate networks and they usually list the type of popular niches that are in demand and also the products related to that particular niche. You can also view the type of products that is available in each category. That’ll give you an idea of which market you should be involved in and the kind of product that you should be promoting.

Here are some of the top 5 network affiliate sites where you can choose your niche

http://www.clickbank.com– most likely the most popular affiliate network site on the planet www.jvzoo.comhttp://www.cj.com– called as Commission Junction www.linkshare.com www.sharesale.com

How Do You Choose A Good Affiliate Marketing Product

You can practically choose any product of your choice that is listed in the affiliate network. The only difference is whether the product has the potential to make money or not. One best practice that you need to keep in mind is choosing a low ticket item which means low priced products. Remember! You are not earning from the overall sale of the product instead you are only getting a percentage of the sale as commission. If you promote low-priced products that means you need to sell more to make a decent income. If you are just starting in the business, choosing a low ticket item is not a good decision.

You might also want to check who is the owner of the product, how did the past product launch perform, how much sales have the product made so far, etc.

You can also visit the best sellers section in these affiliate networks to see which current product in demand. Read more about how to choose a product to promote here.

Where Can You Get Good Autoresponders Skyrocket Your Affiliate Marketing Business

Auto-responders is an email marketing service that helps you communicate constantly with the people who subscribe to your mailing list. This is an extremely important tool that every successful online marketer has. Have you heard of the saying “the money is in the list”? Well. The list refers to your email list subscribers and the money refers to the promotion the autoresponder will do for you based on the email series that is created.

When choosing a good autoresponder service, you might want to evaluate the price point, the number of subscribers allowed for that price point, and any additional features that are offered. If you are not sure about where to look for good service, here are my top 5 recommendation;

What Is A Landing Page

A landing page is a one-page site that is intended to capture the emails of your visitors. It is also called a squeeze page. The purpose of a landing page is to convert visitors into leads. Once you have their email address, you can use an autoresponder to send emails that contain information and also the promotion of other affiliate products for them to purchase.

A landing page is a gateway to the main product which you are promoting. It has to be attractive and compelling to entice the visitors to provide their email address to you.

The Key Components Of A Landing Page

When it comes to the landing page, we can talk about the design, the words, copywriting techniques, and so on. However, to simplify your understanding of what a landing page is, I just want to touch on 2 important features of a landing page which is the lead magnet and the call to action box.

Lead Magnet

The lead magnet is a free offer that you will provide on your site. This free offer will be the reason why a visitor would want to exchange an email address with you. The lead magnet has to be relevant to the main product that you are promoting. For example, if your main product is about how to start an online business from home then your lead magnet must be a simplified version of that category such as a checklist of online home business resources, a simple ebook about how to drive traffic, etc.

The lead magnet must be valuable enough for the visitor to want it.

Call to action box

This is where a visitor would enter the email address. This call to action box is linked to an autoresponder. When you sign up, you will get an Html code and you can paste this code on your page.

You can then set your autoresponder to send a sequence of the email so that when people key in their email address, they will automatically start receiving follow up messages from you.

Types Of Traffic That You Can Drive

No traffic no sales. I hope this is very clear to you. Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. Traffic generation is probably the hardest part of this business.

There are 2 types of traffic that you need to know:

Free traffic

This traffic is organic. It comes from SEO, keyword search, people who are already part of your social media community, your email list, your podcast, people who find your site link from forum posting, etc. This is the most ideal traffic you can have but it takes time to build.

2. Paid traffic

Paid traffic (as the name suggests), is when you pay for people to come and visit your site. Very straight forward approach and you don’t have to put in much effort in building so long as you can finance it. This traffic is highly targeted.

However, paid traffic can be a financial pitfall for those who don’t understand how to buy the right kind of targeted traffic to get back their ROI. I would say that it is more for experienced marketers rather than beginners.

In Conclusion

At the time when I wondered how do I get into affiliate marketing, I wish I had known earlier about how the model works. We can talk about many other nitty-gritty aspects of this online business but as someone who is just thinking of starting, I hope you managed to get a good picture of this system. When you master the fundamentals, it will be easier for you to move forward to other areas of this business and build your competence.

If you know of other ways, please do leave a comment. If you like the post and you think it can help someone, please do share it.