How to Start Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a wonderful way to make some side money in addition to your current income, or given enough time and effort, is even a way that you can replace your income with something that requires a minimal amount of work.
However, before I began making a profit from affiliate marketing, I first understood what affiliate marketing is and how I needed to get started. The same applies to anyone who has an interest in affiliate marketing. Once you understand a little bit more about the fundamentals of affiliate marketing, you will be able to begin learning about how to dip your toes into the vast waters of this type of marketing.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
To put it simply, affiliate marketing is a form of passive income, where you can make money online with a minimal amount of work on your end, even working as little as a few hours a week. Generally, affiliate marketing works because you first connect yourself to an affiliate program of sorts, and then you begin adding affiliate links to what you share.
When a viewer clicks on these affiliate links and purchases the product, you will get a commission from it. With a large enough following of more than willing to purchase what you advertise, you can make a sizeable profit from affiliate marketing. That is, as long as you know how to start affiliate marketing.
In this guide, I will explain some of the simple steps of starting affiliate marketing so that you can begin making some more money. The truth is, getting into affiliate marketing is actually pretty easy when you don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by all the things you have to consider.
Finding Your Place in the World of Online Marketing
Before I could get anywhere in affiliate marketing, I first had to decide what exactly I would focus on. The best way to determine what you want to focus on is to choose something you are interested in. Once you have found something you are interested in and would be more than happy to review one way or another, you can begin looking at affiliate marketing.
After you have determined what you will be focusing on, you will then need to think about how you are going to handle things. Most people go with reviews, as this is one of the most versatile ways of recommending a product, and it gives you the most room to add your own voice to things.
I also had the option to choose whether I wanted to do a video review or if I wanted to write reviews in blog posts and post them online for people who had like-minded interests to see. Each way has its own benefits.
With videos, you can add your own voice to the mix, quite literally, and you can show the product you are reviewing in action, allowing your viewers to get a vivid second-hand experience in seeing the product.
On the other hand, when you choose to go for blog posts, not only can you relax a little bit more about how clean your workspace is, but you also won’t have to worry if you are sick or not good at speaking.
If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can combine making your own videos with creating your own blog posts. All you will have to do is type out what you think about your reviewing product. Also, you can include your own pictures of the products in a blog post, meaning that your following can still see how everything works.
Once you have decided what you want to review, how you want to review it, and have gotten the materials necessary to make this happen, you will be ready to move onto the next area of affiliate marketing.
Creating the Affiliate Link
Here is an example of an affiliate link
Affiliate links are a core concept for affiliate marketing. When a potential customer clicks on an affiliate link and purchases an item through it, this is where you will be getting your commissions from. Countless places offer this, but there is one company that anyone stepping their toes in affiliate marketing will need to look at.
Amazon offers an Amazon Associate program to get an Amazon Affiliate link to just about any product on Amazon. This is one of the best ways to get started in affiliate marketing. Amazon has one of the widest selections of products available for you to start experiencing affiliate marketing firsthand.
When you are working with affiliate links, there is one thing that you will need to keep in mind. You will only make as much money as people who click on your link. What I mean by this is that if you put next to no effort in sharing this affiliate link around, next to nobody will click on the link, which means that you will get next to no income.
As long as you do not go overboard and flood everyone with the affiliate link, choosing to direct some notice to the affiliate link in your reviews will do you and your wallet well in the long run. However, if you are still in the process of building up an audience, there are some things that you can do to increase the number of people who notice the affiliate links.
Spreading the Word About the Affiliate Links
This process won’t work quite well for people who are primarily making video reviews and nothing else, so take care when you think of doing this. One of the best ways that I found that I could share my affiliate links was by setting up an email list.
You can easily prompt people to join an email list for exclusive offers or news about what you plan to do on your own website. If you aren’t sure how to create an email list, there are countless ways that you can integrate it into your website.
You can choose to have a bar at the top that offers something special when a customer signs up for the email list. Depending on the program you choose to set up your website with, this bar will usually redirect people to a page to sign up for your email list. However, if you do not want to clutter your website with a bar on the top, you can consider a few other options.
You can consider a pop-up that appears when visitors are about to leave the website. While not everybody is fond of these pop-ups, I cannot deny that it is a way to get a customer’s attention. If you are willing to take the risk of using this type of pop-up, there are plenty of ways that you can integrate this into your website.
Finally, you can have a sidebar widget. I find that this is generally the best way to go about making sure that your customers know that they have the option to sign up for an email list. For one, you can include the option on the widget, meaning that anyone interested enough can click on that and be redirected.
Many widgets also have several options to add, such as recent posts, ways that your customers can follow and contact you, and ways to organize your website. Having one of these features on your website will increase your customers’ chances of seeing the affiliate links, which means that they will be more likely to click and purchase the items, netting you some income.
How Much Can You Profit From Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing has the potential to provide a significant amount of money for you to live off of. However, many caveats go along with it. I have found that getting into the deeper end of affiliate marketing can be exhausting for people who only thought that it was a way to make a simple pocket change for minimal work. This means that if you are not fully dedicated to making a significant amount of money through affiliate marketing, there’s a good chance that you won’t be making too much money.
With that being said, I do believe that hard work, dedication, and even integrating other marketing methods, such as paid advertisements, can make affiliate marketing a wonderful way to add some money to your income.
It is possible that you could one day become rich from affiliate marketing, depending on how much work you put into it. From finding what you want to do and finding a way to get your voice out, there is a lot to consider when choosing to take on affiliate marketing.
Ultimately, what you have to consider when you are planning to dip your toes in the water of marketing is that you need to know what you want from it. You need to know what you are going to do and how you are going to present yourself for your following.
You also need to have patience and motivation because there might be some days where you might not want to do a review, but you also know that you will make some money if you do. In the end, putting work into affiliate marketing is something that will pay off in the long run, literally.
