Now let’s move on to an action plan for profiting as an affiliate marketer. Having the right plan vastly increases your chances of success.
This plan isn't just about earning commissions, but you can use it to build a long-term sustainable business!
Essentially, the plan as outlined below are the steps you’ll want to take.
STEP #1 - Get Into the Right Mind-Set
Yes, I know... I spoke about this before... but it's that important. You will never be successful at affiliate marketing (or any type of online marketing) if you approach it with a half-hearted attitude.
Think about providing solutions to people... Think about solving problems. Find out what problems people want to solve… find a product that provides a solution to those problems. The product and offers you promote must align with what your target market wants in order to get sales that result in commissions.
STEP#2 - Pick a Niche Market That You Like
A niche market is a group of people with similar interests in a particular topic. For example, people interested in learning about golf or in forex trading are markets.
Most affiliate marketers succeed at promoting something they are interested in and/or have knowledge in.
Picking a niche you like will also make it easier to do research on the topic in question to improve your knowledge of the target market and the product offers. Evaluate what gets you excited, what you talk about often with others, etc.
This is the niche you should be focused on and products in this niche are what you should be promoting if you plan to succeed at affiliate marketing.
Step #3 - Research and Find Quality Products to Promote
There are several sites on which you can locate products to promote as an affiliate. Three very common sites are:
- JVZoo.com which offer digital products
- ClickBank.com offers digital and physical products
- ShareASale.com offers both digital and physical products as well.
You can use the advance search features on each site to narrow down the category and subcategory that matches or closely matches your preferred niche.
When choosing products:
- Take a look at the products’ websites… does it look professional?
- Choose quality products… don’t just go for the products with the largest commissions.
STEP #4 - Create a Website around Your Niche
Choose a domain name that relates to the niche you’ve chosen for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts and for consumers to remember the name of your site more easily.
Use the search tools at domain name registrars such as GoDaddy.com and Namecheap.com to find out what domain names are available and to register your preferred name.
Select a quality Web host, such as SiteGround.com to host your site. A quality Web host is one with good uptime of your site, good customer support, and good reviews.
You will want to use WordPress to build your website… it’s free, very popular, easy to use and extremely versatile. And to get the best for creating a professional looking WordPress websites the content builder, themes and plug-ins from ThriveThemes is highly recommended.
Next, you’ll need to add useful content to your site.
There are three main types of content to provide on your site to convince people that an offer is worth their purchase through your affiliate link:
- Product reviews
- How-To’s
- Comparisons
You can use a combination of text, audios, videos and photos to show people what a product offer is like and why they should purchase it.
Step #5 – Get Visitors to Your Site and Build a Mailing List
If you build a wonderful website, but nobody in your target market knows about it, then you are not going to make any money. You have to find ways to get visitors to your site. But not just any visitors; you want visitors (traffic) that are very much interested in the topic that your site is about… In other words, you want targeted visitors.
There are numerous ways you can get traffic to your site, including:
- Setting up a blog and using content marketing and search engine optimization.
- Setting up social media pages (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Using video marketing (Use sites like Vimeo.com and YouTube.com to distribute the videos.)
- Guest blogging.
- Doing content swaps or ad swaps with other affiliate marketers in your niche.
- Paying for ads using Facebook and Google AdWords.
Always strive to build your email list with any of your affiliate marketing niches.
Research has shown that it takes an average of seven interactions for most people to buy anything from you online. This makes it vital to add these visitors to your opt-in list so you can follow up with them, build a relationship so they purchase products from your affiliate links.
Use opt-in boxes on your site/blog, including review pages, etc., to get people to subscribe to your list.
Get people to opt-in by offering useful lead magnets.