The growing popularity of social networking services, as well as the emergence of Web 2.0, has revolutionized the way people make money. Among other revenue streams, affiliate marketing is considered as one of the most successful platforms for those who are willing to make a profit in the online environment.
If you want to go back into education, buy a sports car, or get a better lifestyle – affiliate marketing can become a life-changing opportunity for you. Many people have managed to become millionaires by selling other companies’ products and services.
It is totally fine if you are a little bit skeptical about this opportunity at this point. But believe us, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest roads to make a 6-figure income. In this article, we are going to share 5 tips on how you can become financially successful in the affiliate marketing field.
Since you are reading this article, you are probably aware of the affiliate marketing concept and its importance in today’s business world. Just in case, we would like to refresh your memory and provide a short introduction to this term so you could become as excited about affiliate marketing and the opportunities it provides as we are. So what is affiliate marketing?
Put simply, it is an advertisement model, in which business entities compensate third-party publishers for generating traffic to their websites and making purchases from them. In this type of relationship, the third-parties are affiliates, so the commission fee motivates them to find a way to promote these companies and their products/services.
However, if you decide to follow this route, be warned that many people may not be necessarily supportive of your decision. This is because too few of them actually know how to make money online. We bet they are not aware of the fact that the commission from only a single sale can be up to $1,000.
This can be possible if you follow certain principles and strategies, similar to those adopted by smart and successful affiliate marketers. Of course, getting others to purchase the product is not easy by any means. But, if you learn how to market these goods strategically, you can become a successful affiliate marketer and make money in millions.
Here are some really useful tips on how to achieve this goal.
1. Pick a Niche Market Segment
Why do people become successful affiliate marketers?
To answer this question, we need to take a look at the most basic thing, namely niche selecting. You can’t just sign up to promote some random stuff since this approach will not buy you the ticket to success. You need a strategy and you need an audience.
For example, if you want to advertise electronics, you will need to find individuals who are interested in this kind of stuff. It is also important to build an audience that likes and trusts you.
Remember that consumers tend to purchase more actively from companies they have an emotional bond with. The same is relevant to affiliate marketers. If consumers do not feel emotionally attached to you, your efforts are unlikely to translate into a purchase decision.
So here we are, building an audience that likes and trusts you. The easiest way to achieve this goal is to pick up a niche market segment and stay true to it.
Some would argue that by focusing on several market segments, affiliate marketers can build a stronger audience and hence, make more money. However, we believe that focusing on a single market segment is more beneficial in the long run. You can’t be passionate about and proficient in everything. So pick up one niche you are really interested in.
But, also remember that this niche should be profitable. By following this piece of advice, you can firmly establish yourself in the selected market segment and hit really impressive revenue numbers.
2. Build Your Audience
While building your audience may sound like some trivial task, there are many more challenges and obstacles than meets the eye. Capturing and holding others’ attention is in the heart of this process.
Anyone can capture one’s attention for a short period. But the trick is that if you are going to sell the goods you advertise, you will need to hold the audience’s attention for as long as possible: weeks, months, or even years.
There are many ways how you can build your audience. For example, you could use the so-called list building method, which allows you to get consumers onto an email list so you could keep communicating with them.
You could also employ some digital marketing strategies (e.g. content marketing, social media marketing, and paid online advertising) to drive traffic to your website and then convert it to your email list.
If you don’t have a website – no worries. While some believe that it is impossible to do affiliate marketing without a website, many examples prove this statement wrong.
For example, pretty much all product reviewers on YouTube are actual affiliate marketers. Once they grow to a certain point, companies get interested in their advertising services as they have access to a large audience of potential buyers.
Affiliate marketing on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social networking services has become an important source of revenue not only for affiliate marketers, but also for companies.
Do all successful reviewers have a website? No, they don’t. But it does not mean they don’t make money by reviewing the goods they are passionate about. It is forecasted that affiliate marketing spending will reach as much as $8.2 billion by 2022 in the US only.
After a second thought, however, having a website is not a bad idea if you want to strategically approach your business as an affiliate marketer. Building something on land you don’t own can be a risky avenue. If your profile on social media gets shut down or search algorithms change for any reason, where would your audience go? This is a crucial point in your ability to hold the audience’s interest and become less dependent on third-party services.
3. Choose Wisely!
Once you have established your audience and managed to hold their attention for long enough, it’s time to make some money!
The biggest challenge at this stage, however, is to decide what products to advertise. You should be very careful in your selection since wrong choices can be detrimental and even ‘fatal’ to your career as an affiliate marketer.
Responsibility is the first word that should pop up in your mind when you select what you are selling to and sharing with your audience. You would not want to affiliate for some product or service that you don’t like. Besides, your audience could turn on you if the product you advertised was of poor quality. Yes, this tactic can bring you some fast money. But, wouldn’t you feel out of alignment and awkward by promoting such products?
Furthermore, think about your credibility as an affiliate marketer in the long term. If you keep promoting products that do not make sense, your audience will likely leave you and you will not be able to generate any significant income numbers.
Perhaps, one of the best strategies in this regard is to have personal experience with the good or service, testing it out, and asking yourself whether it is worth to be recommended to your audience.
And remember, the more you like the product you advertise, the more your audience cares about it and wants to buy or try it. If your main goal is to sell it and you are in it for the money, your audience will know that.
By following this strategy, you would come at the risk of promoting scams and goods of poor quality, which is not good for your reputation and credibility. However, if the product you are talking about has brought you joy, helped to solve some problem, or has turned out to be very useful, it will feel like you are serving people. This is, in our opinion, the winning strategy for each and every successful affiliate marketer out there.
4. Have a Plan
If you are considering turning affiliate marketing into a full-time gig, you need to treat it like a job.
This means that you need to create a full-fledged, detailed plan around how you are going to market this or that product and share information about it with your audience. Believe us when we tell you that building just a ‘business’ around your plan will not do any good in a long-term perspective.
What you really need is to create a true brand by using your own personal stories and experiences and bringing each post or video back to these experiences. In this case, you can show people that your motives are not purely self-serving and you can be trusted.
Remember that your audience is interested in you in the first place, not the goods and services you advertise. Besides, there are numerous individuals who advertise the same or similar products so turning your feed into a big sales pitch would not add any value to your content. By contrast, who has your story? That is why sharing your own experiences and stories is essential for your success as an affiliate marketer.
5. Learn from the Market Leaders
Last, but not the least tip we can give you is to learn from the market leaders.
Visiting the websites/webpages of the most influential affiliate markets in your niche is an effective strategy that can help you leave no stone unturned. You can learn from these individuals as they are likely to be more experienced than you. So you can see what goods and services they are promoting as an affiliate.
This strategy is so important because it helps you identify what affiliate programs are effective and successful at the example of the biggest affiliate marketers out there. If an affiliate marketer is sticking to specific products and advertising them from time to time, you can tell that these affiliate programs are working well and you can use them too.
By contrast, if some company is trying to promote its products using you as an affiliate, check if the most reputable affiliate marketers promote these goods first. This strategy can allow you not only to identify whether a product is worth promoting (in case you don’t have any previous experience of using it) but, will also help you avoid becoming an affiliate of scammers or low-quality products.
Just remember that while learning from the market leaders is a useful and effective strategy, it is the personal experience and stories that drive people’s interest in you. So stay true to yourself and advertise only those products and services you have tried out yourself.
Bonus Tip: Don’ts of Affiliate Marketing
While affiliate marketing can be a life-changing opportunity, you can easily miss it by making silly mistakes you could have totally avoided.
For example, putting your affiliate link everywhere is the silliest yet most common mistake new affiliate marketers make. People often use social media to drop their affiliate links on users’ threads or creating some trickery-style groups or threads to attract people’s attention. Don’t try this nonsense at home! It will damage your brand as well as your ability to build audience trust.
Affiliate marketing can be your ticket to Successville for so many reasons. It provides you with an opportunity to create large cash flows just by sharing the goods and services you already like.
By following the do’s and don’ts from this article, you can make sure your affiliate marketing plane takes off successfully. Of course, these tips do not guarantee success since too many factors can either facilitate or hamper your progress as an affiliate marketer. Nonetheless, it is always worth sticking to the very best practice in any field and this is what this article is all about. If you are passionate about anything and you like sharing your thoughts and feelings with others, affiliate marketing can become a source of 6-digit income for you.
About the Author
Ellie Richards is an online Marketing Manager for PhD Writing company Original PhD. She specializes in research, content and article writing on various topics, including Education, Marketing, and Technology.
