How To Start: An Affiliate Marketing Business
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online because it can be with little capital investment and without taking any major risk. Affiliate marketing involves selling someone elses products and earning a commission each time you recommend customers to buy that products
affiliate marketers use special affiliate links which show that the link has come from them. The seller can then track that you have recommend their product and made the sale so you earn commission.
Choosing Your Product
The first thing that you will want to do is choose the product(s) you are going to promote. There are many different products that you affiliate market out there with everything from games to books. Choosing the right product is important as you will see better results with some products. For example digital products such as eBooks and WordPress themes are good to promote because they are not very expensive and are in high demand. It is best to avoid high-priced items at first as it may be harder for you to recommend these to potential customers.
Once you are happy with your product you then need to choose the affiliate program that you want to join. When choosing you should take a look at the percentage commission you can earn and also the minimum withdrawal limits. Amazon offer one of the largest affiliate networks but there is also many smaller ones available for niche products.
Starting your website
The best way to affiliate market is through your own website/blog. The best way is to create a valuable and useful website about the product that you are going to market. At first you do not want to worry about making sales as these will come if you concentrate on building a great website. For example if you are marketing WordPress themes then you could create a website reviewing and discussing WordPress themes.
It is also a good idea to take advantage of social networks to maximise the exposure of your website and build up your visitors. Using social networks will allow you to start creating a community of visitors around your site.
The key to creating a successful affiliate website is to build up trust with your visitors. Once ou have built up trust you will be able to recommend products and people will buy them because you have recommended them.
Affiliate Marketing your product
Once you have a great site setup it is time to start concentrating on the sales. If you are reviewing products then one of the best ways for you make sales is to include a link at the bottom of the review. Visitors who have then read your review will then be able to go straight to the website and buy the product. Many affiliate programs also have sidebar ads that you can use to promote products.
If you are looking for a more advanced way to promote products then you could start off a mailing list. E.g. “How to create a WordPress website” you could then send subscribers several emails, each of them providing the next step in creating the website. In these emails you could include links to WordPress themes when it comes to the point of installing a website theme.
By using this email method you are building up trust with potential customers as they are getting useful information from you. As they want to keep up to date with your guide they will buy the product you are recommending as you have built up trust through providing useful content and not with direct advertising.