Somewhere, clever marketers, strategists and designers are assessing marketplace demand, looking at offerings, and creating a range of products for other people to sell. 

They specifically put together packages of material – landing pages, videos, banners, images, graphics – intended for promotion and sharing among a community that has no connection, no network and no bond except the product itself.

That is affiliate marketing. A stand-alone multi-billion dollar industry covering every product category imaginable, and providing opportunity for those who have no talent or inclination for upfront creativity or complex investment.

The affiliate marketing opportunity is an open door to online business for the range of entrepreneurs who have yet to define their own unique product, but are prepared to deliver their singular perspective to others.

While starting an online business is an extraordinary opportunity for you to establish a foundation for your own professional satisfaction, financial security, and lifestyle freedom, to get started you have to select an online platform that fits your interests, skills and budget.

Affiliate marketing provides a low cost and diverse entry to online platforms, with an opportunity for a robust revenue stream if you can promote and market to an identified target market. 

If you think you would like to promote other people’s products, in the context of an endorsement or recommendation, your online business can be affiliate marketing.

But do you have the tools to creatively promote products you had no role in creating?

If your online platform of choice is affiliate marketing, you need to be prepared for the opportunity and challenges.

In this article, I explain the real story behind becoming an affiliate marketer to make money online.

Affiliate Marketing is For Promoters

Affiliate marketing is the practice of promoting and selling other company’s products in exchange for a percentage of the sale or a commission.

With the number of businesses running affiliate programs increasing every year, the range of products on offer has made affiliate marketing a multi-billion dollar industry.

An affiliate can promote almost any product, using any legitimate method that will drive clicks to their affiliate link, and begin to earn income without worrying about the actual product creation or manufacturing.

For an aspiring entrepreneur trying to learn business models, being an affiliate provides a worthy training ground in marketing techniques and practices…

…and an uphill struggle to separate a product that possibly hundreds or thousands of others are promoting at the same time.

To be successful, the affiliate marketer must establish a strategy that works for any type of product, and repeatedly apply it across different online platforms to achieve results.

The Trick is Your Attention

From travel to gaming, romance to survivalist tools, technology to hobbies and beyond, affiliate marketing products cut across every industry and category. When you become an affiliate, you can almost certainly find products that match your interests and experience.

Affiliate marketing includes signing up to promote a product you already use, linking to a range of products available in stores, and becoming a member of a dedicated affiliate marketing site which partners with thousands of other companies specifically to create opportunities for affiliates.

It is the latter which will be the emphasis of this article, as signing up for an affiliate program is the deliberate form of getting started.

Who Should Start Affiliate Marketing?

If you want to start an online business, but have no idea how to set-up and market a product, affiliate marketing is your direct path in…

If you:

• Enjoy researching products
• Are prepared to promote
• Have or will create a platform for promoting
• Have or will cultivate a consumer community

…you should consider becoming an affiliate marketer. 

You can select the products you want to promote, and the platform from which you will be promoting, and then let the funds come to you.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing

The affiliate marketing platforms are sites – including Awin, Clickbank and Flexoffers – that list thousands of affiliate products available for third parties to promote.

On the site, you sign-up for a free account, browse the offerings, get your affiliate links, and begin marketing on your preferred platforms.

When a consumer uses your link to purchase the product, you collect your percentage or commission. The affiliate sites usually have statistics on sales and commissions to let you know which products are the most likely to be selling well.

Some products stay at the top of the list for years, and are marketed by thousands of affiliates. But once you know how you want to proceed, you can put the product in front of your own community.

You must follow the product rules before you start promoting. Some companies do not want direct ads on Facebook or other social media platforms. To avoid being associated with spam, the Amazon Affiliate program does not want direct links from emails to their products. Some companies require that affiliates receive permission to promote, others leave the offers open.

All of these issues must be taken into consideration before you begin placing the product in front of new potential customers.

Where to Market Affiliate Products

Once you understand the rules for marketing a particular product, then the challenge in affiliate marketing is to decide how and where you will market the products. Your strategy may determine your success, and your ability to turn your affiliate marketing into a business.

Affiliates have created a multitude of approaches for marketing, among the most popular are landing pages, product specific content, product tie-ins, and paid ads.  And you distribute one or more of these options via social media, email or even in-person.

Landing Pages

A landing page is a stand-alone webpage. On the page, you can create any content you like – videos, text, images – about the product. You give potential customers the page link, which in turn has your affiliate link to the product.

To create the landing page, you can use a service like Click Funnels or Leadpages – both have a free 14 day trial before switching to paid.

The key to a successful landing page is to make the page copy compelling, and targeted to the audience you are trying to reach.  You can either write the copy yourself, or outsource it to a freelancer who can create the wording for you.

You drive people to your landing page to create the pre-sell or pre-suasion that prompts them to click on your affiliate link, and purchase directly from the product site.

Product Specific Content

To help your customers decide on the value of a product, you can create informational content – blogs, podcasts, videos – that provide background information, further research, details or data about the product that is not readily available elsewhere.

If you make the content legitimate and not strictly commercial, you are providing future customers with value prior to making the sale.

Creating this content may cost you time and money.  You can invest in equipment, record, edit and distribute, and promote the content directly to prompt customers to go indirectly to the product.

But additional content is an excellent differentiator in situations where thousands of affiliates are promoting the same product. If you target the content to niche customer groups, you can also find customers who may be ignored by the other marketers.

Product Tie-Ins

If you have your own products – books, courses, physical products – that can be appropriately connected to an affiliate product, you can promote the affiliate product with your product.

For example, if you offer a book for free in a sales funnel that leads to affiliate product offers on the thank you page.  The affiliate products should fit with the story in the book, and the connection can be explained on the landing page.

Look at your own products and determine if any would work well with the affiliate offers that you see listed on the affiliate site.

You can then create a sales funnel or landing page for your product, with the affiliate links on a second page or on the confirmation or thank you page.

The idea is to put the affiliate product in front of your customers as an option, an extension of your main offer. You do not want the affiliate product to overwhelm your main offer, or be in conflict, so select your affiliate product with care, and present it as a natural additional offer.

Paid Ads

If you have money to spend, you can create ad copy and drive customers directly to the product landing page by buying paid ads. Some platforms, and companies, have strict rules about how ads are to run and identified to viewers.  Everyone is trying to avoid appearing like a scam. But assuming you follow the rules, ads are a direct and effective marketing tool.

The key to paid ads is to keep your ad costs below your commission payouts. And you can do this through excellent ad copy.

You can learn to write ad copy yourself, or pay a freelancer to do it for you. Developing the skillset yourself gives you more flexibility. You can adapt and change ad campaigns as the market requires without having to be constantly paying a freelancer to do it for you.

To run paid ads, select your preferred ad platform – Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – set up your account, set a budget amount, create your copy, post your ads, and frequently monitor the results.

Many entrepreneurs set up paid ads and let them run without checking for effectiveness. This approach will certainly cost you more than you need to spend. Stay on top of your ads, and protect your investment by making sure your ad strategy is delivering for you.

If the ads are not working, stop running them, and either tweak the ad copy or try another strategy.

Making Money with Affiliate Marketing

Since the only way to make money as an affiliate is to have customers buy the product through your link, you have to make sure you are promoting your link in places where your customers are located online, and that you give them a compelling reason to click and learn more about the product.

The product companies will tell you about the successful conversion rates and high commission values, but it’s up to you to try and duplicate the results for yourself.

Affiliate marketing can be a promising and lucrative business, if you find the right approach for the people you are trying to reach, and consistently present them with a message they cannot resist.

What Makes Affiliate Marketing Successful

Once you have found your community of buyers, you can continue to promote appropriate products to them again and again.

In a consumer society, people always find a reason to buy – to improve their health, wealth or happiness – in a complex world.

Your ability to be successful doing affiliate marketing depends on identifying the desires of your customer base, and delivering solutions to them that they will want to purchase.

The more you can convince people of the value of the products you’re promoting, the better your chance to become a successful affiliate marketer, and make other people’s products, your business.

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