Are you interested in affiliate marketing and don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place. I will be walking you through how to start affiliate marketing as a beginner, even if you’ve never made any money online or have any audience.
So, what exactly is affiliate marketing? It is a way where the affiliate, which happens to be you, earns commission when they recommend a product to potential customers.
Make your first dollar in affiliate marketing
You can make use of different approaches when making money with affiliate marketing. One thing about this business is that anyone, even a beginner, can get into it and come out victorious. You don’t have to be stocked up with technical knowledge before you can start affiliate marketing. As your site grows and you begin to learn advanced marketing strategies, you can now advance your skills in affiliate marketing.
How Much Can You Make from Affiliate Marketing?
Everybody isn’t going to make the same amount of money with affiliate marketing. One person can make absolutely nothing, and the other person can make millions from it. So, it all depends on how you push and the efforts you make to reach your definition of being an affiliate marketer.
Your income is based solely on the amount of traffic you drive to your site, the types of products you offer your customers and your knowledge of other marketing skills.
Things to Consider Before Promoting an Affiliate Product
When you’re stuck on deciding which product you should promote, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I make use of this product? And, what is my personal experience from using it?
- Will a good number of my audience benefit from using it?
- Is the process of buying the product an easy one? Does my audience have to go through a stressful journey before they can finally purchase the product?
- How is the affiliate commission rate? (although, this is not a critical question to ask because even small commissions can surprise you when there are huge sales through your affiliate link).
If the answer to all these questions is yes, then it is worth trying.
Action item: Make a list of the products you use that you have positive remarks about and that you think your audience will appreciate when you promote it to them. Think of as many as comes to mind.
Types of Affiliate Products
You should have an idea of the type of affiliate product you want to promote. Decide which one of the types is going to be the perfect option to present to your audience. 
There are three types of affiliate products:
- Physical products: Most marketers use and promote Amazon for affiliate marketing options, but honestly, promoting Amazon products can be challenging. It is a good option for you to try out other options, especially if the niche you’re focusing on is specialized.
Amazon uses a 24-hour cookie, which means that you get your commission only after someone buys a product you referred through your link. Meanwhile, other affiliate programs offer as long as 90 days.
- Information products: This type of product is created by a marketer, blogger, or author who teaches their audience a sure way to do things.
There are a good number of reasons why you should promote information products:
- Information products usually have a high price, so this equally means more profit for you(higher commissions).
- They can have a personality backing them, and this makes the audience trust the products easily.
- Complete marketing funnels are promoting its sales.
- They usually solve a problem or provide solutions to whatever problem your audience might be facing.
Promoting these types of products can be pretty tricky. The reason is that the creator is careful about who he allows promoting his content.
It also doesn’t have a public place to go to when you wish to promote its products. It is essential to talk one-on-one with the author or go to their “affiliates” page on their product site.
- Services: Every type of affiliate product has its advantages and disadvantages, so you have to make a choice.
Advice For Newbies
- Start with a mass-market niche: People believe that newbies should start with the make-money niche, but many other niches are available. The internet is a run-to for any product these days, and 2020 helped us utilize it. People buy anything online, which means there are so many niches available for you to choose from online.
The three big niches found in affiliate marketing are health, wealth, and relationships. These niches are niches that people could never have enough of. They never seem to go away or get old because people are constantly looking for solutions in this niche, and you will be part of the solutions they find through promoting products in these niches.
If you try to make someone feel, look and live healthier, there would surely be a reward for it. That is why people are told to start with these three niches when entering the affiliate marketing space. If you notice that the niches do not bring you the needed engagement you hoped for, it means you’re not marketing it like you ought to.
“Optimize your business to minimize unknown unknowns.” Co-founder, Weebly.
This will help you on your way to managing the three monster niches.
There are four quadrants of this: The known knows, the unknown knows, the known unknowns, and the unknown unknowns.
- Interact with the audience in your niche before you begin marketing any product: Before you start selling any product, make sure to know your audience well enough. Hear people’s stories and pain points, as this is one of the necessary factors in marketing. Talk to them personally, finding out the whys and hows, because it will be a better way to connect with them and understand them better; this will help grow your audience.
- Give out free content that will guide people in your niche: So many marketers go into affiliate marketing and offer their products to their audience. They keep offering it to them without thinking of a way to fasten the whole process. You, as a marketer, will be like every other marketer out there if you use the same strategy they use. So, why not be different?
While promoting a particular niche, for example, in the sleeping niche, which also falls under the broad health niche, you can give a free calendAr that will help track one’s sleep or an e-book on managing your sleeping activities.
In this free content, you can attach products relating to sleep, so people can easily access them; this can make you earn from a good number of products all at once. Amazon is an excellent example of where you can find sleep-related products, and their affiliate program is a good idea for starting.
You can also make a YouTube video talking about that particular niche and drop some of your affiliate links to products that can help aid sleep, as there are so many online. Drop a good number of them, and people will visit their sites to check them out.
Affiliate marketing isn’t exactly an easy task like people make it look. While entering into any business, go along with your determination, and it will treat you right. Remember to follow the advice dropped in this article to properly guide you on your way to becoming a good affiliate marketer.
