Want to start your own affiliate marketing business? Here are 3 steps to get started….
1. Choose a niche: The first step in affiliate marketing is to choose a niche. I recommend taking a hobby or passion and turning it into an online business. This is a good starting point if you have much to say about a specific topic or area of interest. When you get out into the traffic generation part of your affiliate marketing business, you’ll need a lot of content to attract your audience of others interested in that topic. You’ll probably already know a lot about the various products and services available, which will help when promoting them.
2. Research affiliate programs: Once you have chosen a niche, research affiliate programs that offer products or services related to your niche. If you have specific products in mind, go to that company’s website and see if there is an affiliate program. Contact the company via phone or email if you can’t find it on the website. Otherwise, you can go to websites like Clickbank to find various businesses offering affiliate programs.
I made some mistakes with affiliate programs, so here are things to look for when researching affiliate programs (based on my experiences):
- What is the affiliate commission structure paid to affiliates?
- Are all products available for an affiliate to sell, or only some?
- What are the prices of the products or services (all high-priced products, all low-cost, or a mix of prices)? Hint: ideally, you want low, mid, and high-priced (aka high commissions) products to promote.
- How many sales must an affiliate make to get the first commission?
- Does the company hard code the affiliate? Hard coding means that if a customer buys via your affiliate link and then makes a purchase again but does not use your affiliate link, you still get credit. The customer is coded/linked to the affiliate.
- Does the company have any pre-made sales pages, sales funnels, or email sequences affiliates can use when promoting?
3. Test the affiliate program. Buy a product using your newly acquired affiliate link (it can be a low-cost product) and see how the affiliate commissions work. Does the company you are an affiliate for have an online report or sales area where you can see your sales and commissions? How quickly do you get the commissions? Are there any issues along the way? It is wise to test this before spending your time and energy promoting the products, only to discover later that you have problems getting the affiliate commissions and making money.
After these three steps are done, bam! You are ready to start promoting and earning money. What are the next steps? I’ll post them tomorrow!
