The moment has come and you’ve decided to start your own affiliate business. Way to go! Alas, you have no idea where to start. Hmmm, how hard can it be? You should just build a website and upload attractive photos of the products you’d like to sell, right? Ta-da!
In reality, it doesn’t work that way and there’s much more to understanding affiliate business than meets the eye. So, check out the ultimate beginner’s guide on affiliate marketing to start making your dreams come true. Ready?
His Majesty, the Product
First things first: what are you going to advertise? Chances are you’ll be selling a product or a service. So, what is it that you have to do before doing anything else?
Precisely – you need to choose which product or service you’re planning to promote. To do so, you’ll have to perform research on the product or service.
Simply pick a niche where you believe you’ll feel comfortable and investigate the market. You could go for a small-size market or try to expand your product base to offer a large variety of products.
Some of the most well-known affiliates today started off with a very limited product offer but most importantly it was suitable for their targeted audience.
Pay attention not to bite off more than you can chew and offer a couple of items that are relevant to your niche.
Reliable Affiliate Network is everything
Basically, the concept of affiliate marketing means that you, the affiliate, earn a commission for the sale of products and services you previously promoted on your website providing you have a hotlink on which customers and readers have to click.
Why do you need that referral tracking URL? To know that it was your website that sent the customers to the product.
Choosing an adequate affiliate network will be one of the steps you should follow. You’ll realize that different affiliate networks focus on different products. Find the one that suits your needs best.
For example, affiliate networks differ in their compensation and payment methods so make sure to dive deep into those facts prior to making the final call.
Purchase the Products
You’ve chosen the products to promote and your initial cooperation with the network seems to be working just fine. What then?
This is when you need to buy the product. The reason for standing behind it is that your customers want information on the product.
That is why they visit your site in the first place. Unless you provide that information, your user will probably leave and never come back.
Buying the item is therefore the best solution for you because that is how you’ll be able to describe the good, the bad, and the ugly side of the product you’re trying to promote and sell.
And if possible and within budget, make sure to produce unique visual materials for each product.
Building an audience
One of the critical things to consider after setting which products and affiliate networks to use is developing an idea about what type of audience is needed.
Tapping into their interests, learning more about their online habits, and finding out what age groups they belong could certainly help in focusing our marketing campaigns better and targeting only the groups we feel are a good fit.
Photo & Video
Authentic product pictures are a must for any affiliate out there, but producing video materials can also prove to be well worth the investment.
According to available statistics, 89% of video marketers claim that video gives them good ROI and increases traffic to their website.
Depending on what you’re advertising decent video material production could be well within your budget even for a startup.
And nowadays having to promote products without YT videos is getting harder by the day.
Create Trustworthy, Unbiased Reviews
Giving trustworthy, unbiased reviews and descriptions of the product is directly connected to the previous key point. Whether you like or dislike something about the product, share that with your readers.
Feel free to insert a personal touch into those reviews, for that way you’ll stand out from tons of other reviews based strictly on the features of products.
Let’s say you’d like to become a casino affiliate reviewer. According to the gambling affiliate, askgamblers.com creating trust is what it’s all about. If your customers realize that your reviews are honest and useful, they will come back to your website and your business will bloom.
Nurturing authentic user reviews must be one of the primary goals of your affiliate site to succeed. Depending on the site platform this should be relatively easy to implement if using WP.
If not, then you signed your death sentence. Therefore, cover both the pros and cons of your product and you’ll earn your readers’ trust.
Use Viral Media
Like it or not, we live in the time of viral media. Social networks are an important part of our lives and they present a powerful advertising tool. Use it. Build your brand awareness by sending traffic to your website or blog.
Be active, share your content, and get followers. Insert photos and infographics. Above all, use video marketing.
People tend to react more to videos compared to any other type of content on the Web. The best thing regarding viral media is that you can get awesome results for free.
Of course, you’ll get better exposure by including paid advertising, but carefully structured and wisely created SEO-optimized content and organic strategy will bring you better results in the long run.
Develop a visual language for your campaigns
To unify all your marketing channels and become recognizable you should put in a lot of effort to develop a unique visual language that will be used for all your campaigns.
Maintaining a consistent look will prove to be very beneficial in building a brand.
And after all, a good brand is what it takes to separate you from the competition and help your affiliate business enter the top affiliate group in your niche.
