12 steps to make money as affiliate marketing

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12 steps to make money by
affiliate marketing
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Overview
Affiliate marketing is one way to make money online for those who want to derive an
income from their web use. An affiliate marketer promotes specific products or
websites in exchange for a cut of the profits or commissions from the web traffic she
generates. Any time the recommendation/web traffic from an internet affiliate leads to
a sale, the affiliate earns money. In other words, the products or services are provided
by others, while you provide a sales or marketing outlet. While there are no successful
get-rich-quick schemes, many people have found success doing internet marketing as
an affiliate. Learning how to work as a successful affiliate marketer can help you
determine whether a career in this potentially lucrative field might be right for you.

CONTENT TABLE:
Part I: Steps to make money by affiliate marketing
1. Decide on a business model.
2. Study and learn from other affiliates.
3. Create a website.
4. Select a niche.
5. Choose products and services.
6 – Find potential keywords using Google’s keyword tool
7 – Evaluate the competition for SEO
8. Create content that your competition can’t compete with
9. Build a brand that adds value to the consumer
10. Find and work with affiliates.
11. Drive traffic to your affiliate program.
12. Build a foundation of recurring affiliate revenue
Part II: Affiliate marketing tips
Part III: Big Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers Make

USEFUL MATERIALS:
1 TOP AFFILIATE MARKETING ONLINE COURSES
http://www.businesstips247.com/2016/04/top-affiliate-marketing-online-
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Part I: Steps to make money by affiliate
marketing
1. Decide on a business model.
There are two primary business models that prospective affiliate marketers
choose between. The first is a resource site, and the second is a review site.
Which model you choose will depend on your familiarity with the products or
services you advertise.
 Resource sites typically embed a merchant partner's website in an affiliate
link or banner advertisement within how-to articles and posts. This
business model requires frequent updates and fresh content to ensure that
customers return to the marketer's website on a regular basis.
 Review sites feature reviews of products/services that the marketer has
tried and can attest for. Each product/service review includes a link or
banner ad that will take customers to the merchant partner's website. The
advantage of review sites is that they require less frequent updates.
Marketers simply have to make minor tweaks to their websites to ensure
that search engines continue to list the website in their search results.
You can make money by affiliate marketing with/without a website
2. Study and learn from other affiliates.
A quick and easy way to gain experience and familiarity as an affiliate marketer
is by joining an online community or forum. These online resources are free to
join and can offer invaluable advice to marketers at all experience levels.
 Digital Point, aBestWeb, and Warrior Forum are excellent and free
resources for affiliate marketers. In addition to advice from more

experienced marketers, these forums also offer networking opportunities
to connect with other marketers.
Build relationships. Affiliate marketing takes a lot of work and patience before
any real money is made. Affiliate marketing programs drive traffic to the
affiliate marketer's website, but the marketer is responsible for building lasting
professional relationships with the affiliate partners out of that web traffic. The
marketer must also continually seek out better partnerships with other affiliates.
 Learn how your affiliate partners prefer to communicate. Every partner
will have a different work schedule and communication preferences, and
it falls on you to respect those preferences.
 Know what your affiliates need and expect from you
 Brainstorm new ideas to pitch to your affiliates. You should do a
substantial amount of research on your affiliates' websites, and know how
they can improve their websites and services.
 Seek feedback from your affiliates on how you can improve your own
platform.
3. Create a website.
In order to work as an affiliate marketer, you'll need your own platform (a
personal website or blog) on which to post links and advertise for your chosen
products or services. If you already have a website or blog, you can use that
platform to begin earning additional income as an affiliate marketer. If you do
not yet have a website or blog, you will need to create one.
 The advantage of a blog, such as Blogger, is that it's free to operate,
whereas some websites require a fee to operate. However, sites like
GoDaddy.com and Hostgator offer website services that are relatively
inexpensive to operate, and may look more professional than a personal
blog.
 Consider joining up with an affiliated marketing company. One easy way
to enter the field of affiliate marketing is to join a company that
specializes in online marketing. Though you'll ultimately work
independently, companies like MoreNiche allow aspiring affiliate

marketers to join for free to have a platform for advertising
products/services.
 Some websites allow you to engage in pay-per-click affiliate marketing
without running your own website or blog. Direct links through outside
merchant websites allow you to create and make money off of ads
without having to post them to your own website. For instance, you might
make an ad for a dating website and advertise on Facebook; when
someone clicks on your ad, they go straight to the dating site, instead of a
website or landing page you have created.Some affiliate networks that
specialize in direct linking include Associate Programs, Affiliates
Directory, E-commerce Guide, and Link Share.
I recommend you using Wordpress platform:
a. It’s the most popular CMS in the world
WordPress is used by 73 million websites as of May 2012 (WordPress Stats)
and it holds the largest market share in the CMS market. Many users are already
familiar with the WordPress CMS and so it requires less training for staff.
Breakdown of websites with a clearly identifiable CMS
Breakdown of websites with a clearly identifiable CMS, according to W3Tech’s
survey of the top 1 million domains. (Image Source: Smashing Magazine)
b. It’s Open Source with room for expansion
WordPress can be self-hosted so there are no cost associated with downloading,
installing, and upgrading. There are more than 20,000 WordPress plugins (often
free) available to install such as slideshows, contact form, SEO optimization,
etc. Fresh Consulting has licenses of premium plugins we deploy on your
website at no cost such as video manuals of WordPress and easy website
backup & restore functions.
c. Highly customizable
WordPress is popular because it meets the demand of many users with its
flexible framework to allow designers and developers to create and modify

layouts and applications. Coupled with user-generated extensions, your website
is no longer limited by extensions created by enterprises.
Our team have experiences extending the WordPress functionality as well as
plugins developed by others in order to meet unique demand of our clients.
d. Designed for anyone, not just developers
Before WordPress became a popular CMS for website development, it was
developed for non-tech savvy bloggers. So most of user-interface components
are user-friendly for many users and there are written and recorded manuals
available for you to easily learn how to use WordPress. Our team will handle all
the complexities of setting up and customizing your website so all you have to
do is to update the content on pages, posts, widgets, etc.
One of the premium plugins we provide to our client include written and video
user manual for WordPress to ensure you have easy entry point with the CMS.
e. Lower setup and maintenance cost
According to DeviousMedia, WordPress incurs less setup, customization, and
maintenance cost in comparison to other Open Source CMS such as Drupal and
Joomla. Additionally, it is relatively easier to find designers and developers of
WordPress if further customization or development is necessary in the future.
You are no longer locked down with static website or proprietary CMS that are
costly to tweak after initial development.
4. Select a niche.
Most affiliate marketers choose a niche, or area of specialization. Before you
begin marketing products or services, you'll need to find an area you can easily
work within to advertise.
 Your niche doesn't necessarily need to be an area you're already an expert
in. You can also choose a specialized area which you're enthusiastic or
interested in learning more about.

 The initial startup work can be very intensive, so it's important to choose
a niche in which you won't mind working for prolonged periods. This can
help set you up for success as you get your new career off the ground.
So how do you Get Started Finding a Niche?
Follow these 4 straightforward steps:
a. Brainstorm an audience. You can do this in a few ways:
b.
 Choose an audience that you represent yourself (for example, male
university student between 18 – 25 years old, or middle-aged professional
male)
 Choose an audience that you gravitate toward (in other words, people you
like hanging around with).
 Work backwards, and choose an audience by first picking a niche topic
that interests you. This could involve picking a niche like “hangover
cures”, then doing research on sites like Quantcast to figure out the
dominant groups of people that are looking for a cure for hangovers.
b. Identify the problems your niche audience has. This involves doing
research into the problems, challenges, pain points, aspirations, and desires that
your niche audience has. There are many places online that you can find this
information, including niche forums, how-to websites, popular blogs, and
“trend” websites.
c. Pick out the most profitable problems. Not all problems are created equal.
Some problems your audience will gladly pay to solve; others will be a hard
sell. You need to understand the difference, and you can do so using “filters”
such as:
 The number of monthly searches related to a problem
 The number of searches that imply intent to solve that problem
 The stability of search terms related to that problem
 The amount of good-quality, free information on the Web

d. Understand profitable problems deeply. It’s not enough to simply know
that, for example, males between 18 and 25 are looking for hangover cures. You
need to find out what exactly they want in a hangover cure, and the problems
they have with current hangover cures. There’s more to it then simply finding
your niche, however. You also need to understand the language they use in
describing their ideal solution, so you can echo that language back to them in
your ad copy, sales page copy, etc.
5. Choose products and services.
Once you've chosen a niche in which to work, you're ready to start finding
products and services to promote on your platform. The products/services you
choose to promote, as well as how much work you'll have to put in, will vary
depending on your chosen niche.
 A company like Commission Junction is ideal for marketers who want to
promote more traditional products/services. Commission Junction is
involved in a diverse range of potential advertising opportunities, which
may be ideal for newcomers to the field who haven't narrowed down their
niche yet.
 Marketers interested in digital content, like e-books and software, may
enjoy working with companies like Amazon, Clickbank, E-junkie, and
PayDotCom.
 Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing models like Google AdSense may appeal
to some marketers. PPC models pay considerably less than other
marketing models, but the advantage is that they require less active work
of the marketer. The marketer's pay is determined by how much web
traffic is directed to the target site.

The Best Affiliate Networks
1. Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates is perhaps the web’s most popular affiliate program.
And you know the reason? Yes, that’s right!
Amazon is the biggest online retailer in the U.S. and is one of the most popular
company in the U.S. (and world too).
Amazon is so huge that it’s got over a million products that you can promote on
your website or blog and make money.
Amazon pays up to 10% commission for all affiliate sales. Since the inventory
on Amazon is so diversified, the commission rate changes frequently.
You can link to any web page on Amazon and get paid for all purchases made
by your referral
 Alexa Rank: 6
 Minimum Payment Amount: $10 (for Direct Deposits & Gift
Certificates); $100 (for Check payments)
 Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, Amazon.com Gift Certificate

2. ClickBank
ClickBank is the most popular marketplace for digital products with over 6
million products and 200 million customers. In other words, ClickBank is the
Amazon for digital products.
So if you are looking for a guide (or an ebook) then you can search
the ClickBank marketplace and if it’s there then you can instantly purchase
and download it — there’s no need to wait.
And if you’re a digital product creator, then it’s super-easy (and cheap too) to
sell your products on ClickBank. And that makes the ClickBank Affiliate
Program one of the best around.
As a ClickBank affiliate, you can get up to 75% commission on all sales
(including recurring payments).
 Alexa Rank: 1,584
 Minimum Payment Amount: $10
 Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, Wire Transfer
 Referral Program: Yes

3. CJ Affiliate
CJ Affiliate was formerly known as Commission Junction (or simply CJ) and
it’s the most popular affiliate network (and also my personal favorite).
It’s one of the oldest affiliate network and that’s why it’s the preferred affiliate
network of Fortune 500 companies and major online retailers.
Commission Junction is my personal favorite as they have an unmatched pool
of advertisers that we can’t find elsewhere. Also, I’m very much happy with
their user interface, payment system and the customer support.
And what’s more exciting about CJ is that advertisers often pay premium
commission rates for CJ publishers when compared to other affiliate networks
or even their own in-house affiliate program.
 Minimum Payment Amount: $100 (Check); $50 (Direct Deposit)
 Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit
 Programs Offered: CPA, CPL, CPS, CPC
 Referral Program: No
4. ShareASale

ShareASale is perhaps the most admired affiliate network with over 4,000
affiliate programs. There are so many affiliate programs on the web that are
exclusive to ShareASale. So if you are unable to find an advertiser in CJ then
most probably it’s there at ShareASale.
And ShareASale also has a lot of similarities with CJ like user experience,
payment, dormant account policy, and affiliate program types. So yes, all
inactive ShareASale accounts will be deactivated if its balance is less than $25.
Or, you will be charged $25 per month (if the account balance is over $25) until
it becomes zero and is then closed.
And if there is something that I particularly like about ShareASale then it’s their
tracking system. It’s real-time and the payment system is also very reliable (just
like CJ).
 Alexa Rank: 707
 Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit
5. Rakuten Affiliate Network

Rakuten Affiliate Network was formerly known as LinkShare and is
dubbed as the number one affiliate network — for several years now — in
affiliate surveys.
Anyway, it doesn’t make much sense to me as the number of advertisers on
LinkShare is far less when compared to CJ (or even ShareASale).
However, there are few hundred brands who prefer LinkShare and they do not
have an affiliate program elsewhere.

 Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, PayPal
 Referral Program: No
6. Affiliate Window
Affiliate Window is one of the best affiliate network in Europe with an
advertiser and publisher base of over 1,500 and 75,000 respectively. It’s got a
user-friendly interface with real-time reporting.
Affiliate Window even supports deep linking so that you can link to any web
page on the advertiser’s website using your affiliate link.

Also, they pay publishers twice every month and the minimum payment amount
is also low (when compared to other ad networks).
 Minimum Payment Amount: $20/£20
7. eBay Enterprise Affiliate Network
eBay Enterprise Affiliate Network was formerly known as Pepperjam
Network and now it’s got over 1,500 advertisers and 200,000 publishers.
 Payment Method(s): PayPal
 Programs Offered: CPA, CPL, CPS
 Referral Program: Unknown
8. Tradedoubler
Tradedoubler is perhaps the most popular affiliate network in Europe with
over 2,000 advertisers. If you live in U.S. then I guess you can focus on the
above networks itself as they are more popular in the U.S.

Because there’s a very good chance that you won’t find an American retailer
in Tradedoubler and likewise if you live in Europe then your favorite
retailer could be there in Tradedoubler (and not in any of those American
networks).
 Minimum Payment Amount: €70
 Payment Method(s): Direct Deposit
 Programs Offered: CPA, CPL, CPS
9. Zanox
Zanox is another affiliate network popular in Europe with over 4,000
advertisers. Some of these European affiliate networks becomes important when
they have an exclusive relationship with a brand.
For instance, the super-popular handmade marketplace Etsy.com’s affiliate
program is powered by Zanox. So you will need a Zanox publisher account to
become an affiliate of Etsy.
 Minimum Payment Amount: €25

10. MaxBounty
 Payment Method(s): Check, Direct Deposit, Wire Transfer, PayPal,
Payoneer, Bitcoin
Continue reading top 18 affiliate marketing networks at: minterest.org/best-
affiliate-programs-and-networks
6 – Find potential keywords using Google’s keyword tool
 Go to Google’s external keyword tool.
 For each product you picked in Step 1, enter the most generic keyword that
applies to your product. For example, if you’re promoting a product on how
to cure tinnitus, use the keyword “tinnitus” and click the Get Keyword Ideas
button.
 Go over to the Match Type drop down box and select Phrase Match.
 Sort the list in descending order of global search volume by clicking on the
column Title.
 Make a list of any keyword that is between 10000 and 30000 global monthly
searches, and that has something to do with your product.
 At the end of this step, you’ll have 10 lists. Some of these lists may be
empty, as it’s possible that there won’t be any keywords that meet our

criteria. We’re being very careful about selecting only the ones that will
work for us, so have patience and don’t get discouraged.
7 – Evaluate the competition for SEO
 Now we need to see if it would be possible for us to actually rank in Google
for terms that would drive traffic to the product we’re going to market. For
each keyword identified in Step 2, head over to Google and type the
keyword in quotes. For example, if the keyword phrase was “cure tinnitus,”
you’d type “cure tinnitus” into Google.
 You’ll see the search results and the words “Results 1-10 of about xx,xxx”
on the right hand side. If the xx,xxx number is less than 100,000, move on to
the next step. Otherwise, discard this keyword.
 Do another Google search by typing inurl:”keyword phrase”. For example,
for our keyword above it would be inurl:”cure tinnitus”. Take a look at the
number of results again. If that number is below 1,250, this keyword is a
winner. Make a note of it.
8. Create content that your competition can’t compete
with
One of the biggest challenges facing affiliate marketers right now is the need to
prove their value as middlemen in the value chain.
One of the biggest advantages affiliates have over established brands, and one
of the greatest opportunities to add value, is the ability to be agile and act
quickly with content marketing.
While brands spend months approving their content strategy and holding
fruitless meetings, affiliates can be creating content of such a high standard, that
competitors simply won’t have the resources to compete with, and Google
would be foolish not to drive traffic to.
This is the strategy that we’ve adopted for most of our affiliate marketing sites
at Venture Harbour.
Take Qosy for example. Every 4-6 weeks, Qosy publishes a 3,000 – 8,000 word
guide educating readers on tough buying decisions, such as how to choose the
best scotch or an engagement ring. While not all of these posts contain affiliate

links, affiliate links are often added if a site we’d be recommending anyway has
an affiliate program.
It’d be hard for Google to argue with this content not adding value. After all,
some of the guides have received close to 10,000 shares and have been used by
the brands themselves to educate their own customers. Generally speaking, each
guide takes about 40-50 hours to produce, and is benchmarked to beat the best
existing piece of content on the topic in virtually every aspect (from design and
share-ability, to page speed and on-page SEO).
Over the next year I think we’ll see more and more affiliates adopt this kind of
strategy.
9. Build a brand that adds value to the consumer
It’s no surprise that Google’s brand-bias is strengthening. For many affiliates,
this is quite a concern, as affiliates haven’t traditionally had to concern
themselves with building a strong brand.
When you look at the leading sites in insurance, travel, property, personal
finance, and homeware, it’s interesting to note that many of these sites are
affiliate sites. They’re also strong brands.

Moneysupermarket, Agoda, Houzz, Which, LastMinute.com, and Compare.com
are all ultra-successful affiliate sites due to the strength of their brands, their
editorial integrity, and the value they offer consumers.
Over time, affiliate marketers will find it increasingly difficult to succeed
without a brand that user’s trust, so consider what you’re doing to develop the
brand of your affiliate website.
10. Find and work with affiliates.
Affiliates will help grow your business and help you tap into web traffic. There
are many ways to meet and engage with affiliates, but the best way to access
desirable affiliates is by building a reputation for yourself. You can do this by
developing a popular blog or otherwise earning a large online following, or by
becoming a published author of a book or article. There are other ways of
meeting affiliates, of course, and each method will vary in its success and
required effort. Generally speaking, the basic course of action for acquiring
affiliates typically involves one of the following methods:
 Emailing or otherwise contacting other bloggers and online marketers
who share a common niche and asking them to either promote your
product, or engaging in a mutually-beneficial cross-promotion wherein
both you and the other blogger promote one another's products

 Finding successful affiliates online, either through forums, mutual
contacts, or affiliate networks (such as Clickbank or Commission
Junction) that you can join online
11. Drive traffic to your affiliate program.
Once you've built a popular platform and secured affiliates to work with, you'll
need to drive traffic to your affiliate program. There are a number of ways to
accomplish this, but one of the easiest and most successful methods involves
writing a blog post or web article and using your email newsletter to invite your
subscribers to join the affiliate program of your choosing. Other methods
include:
 Giving away free content to other websites (which may drive traffic to
your links)
 Using viral marketing, like a link at the end of newsletters that allows
readers to pass the newsletter on to other readers quickly and easily[
 Securing free links on websites that already drive a lot of traffic
Ways to promote your affiliate marketing
Write Quality Content
A lot of your traffic as an affiliate will come through organic search traffic, if
your site is focused enough, you have a high enough level of quality, you’ve
avoided black hat techniques and you earn your ranking.
To earn your ranking, or at least make ranking easier, you should be writing and
maintaining a blog. You can do this by buying ghostwritten content or by
writing it yourself, just so long as the quality of that content is at least above
average. You can’t use duplicated or copied content, you can’t use spun content
– at least not for long – and you can’t use low quality content without earning a
Google penalty.
You don’t need to post frequently; once per week is enough. Just enough to
show that your site is alive and active. You can post more often if you’re

focusing a lot of energy on one site, or you can keep it low and spread out
through multiple niches on multiple sites.
Google PPC
Google’s PPC advertising through AdWords gives you access to their massive
display network. Write ads that point to your site, not to your affiliate links
directly. Google doesn’t like displaying affiliate ads directly unless they’re the
affiliate. Write and test different ads for different keywords, study the results,
optimize, iterate and build advertising schemes. Try to avoid dumping money
into fruitless keywords, but don’t be afraid to explore.
Facebook PPC
Facebook’s PPC is the social counterpart to Google’s ads. Through Facebook,
you can bring in an incredible amount of targeted traffic. What’s more, you can
study the demographics and interests of those users, to learn deeper insights into
how your ideal audience ticks. You can use this information in a number of
ways, some of which will be discussed later.
Stick to Small Product Niches
If your niche is narrow, you can focus like an arrow to punch through the
competition and pull ahead of the rest. If you spread out and keep your site too
unfocused, you’ll have all the penetrating power of a pillow. If you find
yourself wanting to brand out to unrelated products, develop a new site in a new
niche instead.
Include Testimonials
Whenever you sell affiliate products, send a follow-up message a few days later
to the people who made the purchase, and ask them about their experiences. If
they have glowing praise, ask them if you can use their testimonial on your site
to help educate others in the benefits of the products you sell. You can, of
course, make up your own testimonials. The problem is, you’d be surprised how
hard it is to convince people that a fake testimonial is real.

Write Product Guides
Unless all you’re selling are ebooks, you can probably find some way to create
a tutorial in using the products you sell. Even if it’s as simple as using a dietary
supplement in conjunction with diet and exercise; just write diet guides and
exercise plans. You can always find supplemental material to write and post,
which will serve as evergreen guides to attract people who might not even
initially want to buy, but who can be convinced to purchase later.
Write Supplementary Material
This is the other side of the coin from evergreen guides. When you’re running a
niche site, you need to keep your content utterly focused on the topic at hand.
Thankfully, pretty much any topic has a lot of depth. You can cover everything
from past controversies, histories of the product development or ingredients,
technology behind how it all works, the sky is the limit. Rather than broadening
your content base, you’re digging deep to cover every potential angle.
Promote in Industry Communities
Your product is part of an industry, and that industry has communities online.
There are blogs, web forums, LinkedIn groups, Facebook pages and Twitter
accounts dedicated to that industry. Identify those communities and participate
in their discussions. Post your link in your profile, in your signature if they
allow it, and occasionally in discussions when possible. In general, try to post
links to helpful blog posts rather than your product pages; it comes across less
as advertising and more as trying to help.
Use Social Media
Just use it. Even if you’re a narrow affiliate niche, you can find some benefit on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or Google+. Facebook in particular is
essential because of the audience information you gain through Insights. Use a
lookalike audience for your PPC to draw in more people.

Rent Email List Space
You can find other industry businesses and partner with them. Pay them for a
space in their newsletter, essentially a promoted post. You can’t do this with
blog posts, because Google considers it black hat, but you can do it in private
email communication, which Google neither indexes nor controls.
Use BuySellAds
BuySellAds in this case is a stand-in for any form of non-Google, non-
Facebook off-site advertising. Just buy ad space on related sites and funnel
traffic to yours.
Build a Mailing List
That bit above about how Google doesn’t monitor or control your email
communication? That’s one great reason why an email list is perfect. You can
also use a mailing list for more promotions, returning customers, Facebook
growth and a dozen other reasons.
Write Promotional Ebooks
Just because you’re selling an affiliate product doesn’t mean you can’t sell a
product of your own as well. Writing ebooks to sell is easy, just expand on the
content you’re writing for your blog.
Make Video Offers
Video is criminally underrated amongst affiliate marketing. It’s easy to produce
a quick, basic video and post it to the major video hosts, YouTube, Facebook,
Vimeo and so forth. Get users to watch your videos, which compel them to
investigate your products, which you sell through your landing pages and
support through your blog. Working together, your site becomes a conversion
machine.

12. Build a foundation of recurring affiliate revenue
With affiliate marketing, there is no assurance that your current strategy will
work in a month’s time. Whether it’s due to Google updating their ranking
algorithm, your favourite affiliate program shutting down, or media buying
costs increasing, you’d be wise to mitigate against the possibility of major
changes.
There are two very effective ways to do this: diversification and by building
your recurring revenue.
I’ll talk about traffic diversification in a moment, but let’s first talk about
recurring revenue.
Most affiliate marketers focus on one-time payouts, which is generally smart as,
due to inflation and the ability to earn interest, $100 today is worth more than
$10 per month over 10 months.
The problem is that one-time payouts don’t protect you against major changes
in your strategy. That’s why I recommend building up a portion of your affiliate
revenue in recurring revenue.
Obviously, the feasibility of this approach depends on your niche and what
products are available to promote. If the option is available, I’d highly
recommend building a foundation of recurring affiliate income so that you
peace of mind that no matter what happens you still receive a certain amount
per month for the foreseeable future.
Part II: Affiliate marketing tips

Affiliate marketing is the practice of a merchant rewarding their affiliates for
each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Examples
include sites where they pay you a commission for referring a sale. This is
usually accomplished by the affiliate putting a merchant’s banner or text link on
their website, blog, newsletter or placing links in social media sites such as
Twitter and Facebook. When someone clicks on a banner, it places a cookie in
his or her computer that allows the merchant to track where the sale came from.
Most merchants pay their affiliates monthly. Some of the web’s largest
companies have affiliate programs including eBay, Amazon and Yahoo.
With most affiliate marketing programs the buyer must purchase something to
generate a commission, but there are merchants who will pay you for a sales
lead. This usually requires a person who clicks from your link to the merchant
to fill out a lead form with their contact information.
OK – so lets get started with the tips:
#1 – Select Your Merchants Carefully: A lot of affiliates select their
merchants on the basis of who pays the highest commission, but like to select
based on who has the best reputation and quality product. The next factor I look
at is the sell-through rate –which merchants convert better.
#2 -- Integrity Matters: Never recommend something you wouldn’t buy
yourself. Whether you promote from a blog, email or a website, it has your
name on it and you don’t want to promote anything you would not buy or use
yourself or something you would not recommend to your mother or your sister.
There are plenty of excellent affiliate merchants out there, so you can afford to
be very selective.
#3 – The Niche is Everything: You can’t earn money with affiliate marketing
if you can’t get traffic to your website or blog. Competition on the Internet is
fierce. Someone –or many others cover almost any topic or specialized area you
can think of. Some competition is OK. In fact if you pick a niche that has a few
competitors, that tells you that the niche is probably viable. But you don’t want
to pick a product or a niche that is dominated by large professional affiliate
marketers. Some examples of this would include mortgages, credit cards,
lawyers, cancer treatments and so on. These areas have affiliate deals that pay
huge commissions, but therefore they attract much more competition.
You are much better off with a smaller niche. So what’s a small niche? Well
one of my in-laws has lived and traveled extensively to Spain. Whereas travel is
a huge and highly competitive area, by narrowing it down to one country to
write about you would have far less competition. If you really wanted to narrow
it further, then you could even specialize in travel to the Costa del Sol region of
Spain.

#4 – Relevance: To be a successful affiliate the product you are promoting
should be relevant to the content of the site you are promoting from. For
example, if you write a blog about Bass fishing then your affiliate links and
banners should appeal to bass fishermen. If you have banners for food and wine
companies or cruise lines on your bass fishing blog, you may accidently get the
occasional click and purchase –but it will be very occasional. Whereas if your
links and banners were to a company that sells bass boats, rods and reels and
bass fishing guides, they you will see a lot of potential earnings.
#5 – Avoid Overcrowding: If success at affiliate marketing could be achieved
from throwing up pages of banners - then the world would have lots of
millionaires. A site with pages of banners or rows banners stuffed under content
has the opposite effect on people. It also has the added bonus of making your
site look pretty ugly.
#6 -- A Personal Recommendation Works the Best: I do use banners on my
website and blog and they have their place. But nothing converts to sales better
than when I make a personal recommendation. I only do this on products and
services that I completely believe in and that I have tried myself. This goes back
to the previous tip.
#7 – Track Results: There are literally thousands of merchants with affiliate
programs out there. So why would you work with one that isn’t performing? Let
me give you an example. I am a big believer in home business owners
incorporating their business. So in my books and on my website, I used to
recommend Legal Zoom. Two things happened: Sales were slow and after a few
months I received a couple of complaints from readers I had referred. Ok – so I
looked around and found My Corporation.com. Affiliate commissions from My
Corporation.com are running double what I earned from Legal Zoom and I
haven’t had any complaints. In fact, a few weeks after recommending them, I
got an email from a reader praising them and thanking me for recommending
them.
#8 – Use Multiple Merchants for Your Niche: You don’t want to overdo this,
but don’t put all your eggs into one basket –or merchant. You can get away with
three or four merchants and it is easy to spread these all around your site
without overcrowding and pestering your readers with offers.
#9 – Create Original Content: There are a lot of article sites where you can
get free content to use on your website or blog. There are free articles out there
on almost any topic. But beware. Google looks for duplicate content. If they see
an article on your website or blog that is identical to the content on others, they

will penalize your site in the search results ranking. So always try for original
content.
#10 – Change is good: Search engines are always looking for sites with new or
changing content. You can build a static site and load it with content and it will
get traffic for a time. But after a while, if Google visits your site and does not
see any changes, it will not visit very often and eventually you will rank lower.
Part III: Big Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers
Make
1) Selling Rather Than Helping
Yes, the word “marketing” is part of the phrase affiliate marketing, but for the
most part, our job as an affiliate is not to sell — that is the job of the sales page
our affiliate links lead the reader to.
When I first started, my overwhelming (and totally naive) impulse was to fill
my pages with words and links that screamed “BUY THIS NOW!”. I didn’t
help the reader learn why they should have this product. I only wanted them to
click a link which would hopefully lead to a commission for me.
People want to hear from other people when making a decision to buy a product
or not — that’s why the reviews on Amazon products are so powerful. Those
reviews are genuine feedback from people who (usually) have absolutely
nothing to gain if someone buys that product or not.
When we talk more like an unbiased reviewer rather than a high-pressure
salesperson, we will find we make more sales and people will come back for
advice on other products in the future.
2) Too Many!

This is another big mistake I made when starting out — joining any and every
affiliate program I came across. While I absolutely do believe in cultivating
multiple streams of income when working online, there is a point where you
have too much to deal with and it becomes unmanageable.
Choose your affiliate programs wisely and don’t overload yourself.
3) Not Testing
Whenever I choose to promote a Clickbank offer (for example), I put myself in
the shoes of a potential customer and opt in to test the vendors’ follow up
sequence.
I learned this the hard way.
Nothing breaks a reader’s trust more than being led to a promotion that will
blow up their inbox. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer and see
what will happen if they follow your advice.
4) Not Tracking
This was a BIG mistake I made when I first started out. I began my affiliate
marketing career using free-to-make web pages on a site called Squidoo (and I
still do this to this day).
I am fond of promoting Amazon products on these pages, but would forget to
use unique tracking affiliate links on each page.
Why is this a mistake? Very simple — when you make a sale, you want to
know WHERE the sale came from. This enables you to know which pages are
converting well so you can grow and scale that campaign.
Creating a unique tracking ID for an Amazon link is easy. Simply log in to your
Amazon affiliate dashboard, click “Account Settings” at the very top on the
right, then click “Manage Tracking IDs”. From there you can make a new
tracking ID so you can track which web page/campaign sold what. You can
learn more about using Amazon’s Tracking IDs here.
Yes, making any commission is cool, but knowing where and how you made
that commission is what makes you a better marketer. It lets you grow and scale
your campaigns — as opposed to working blindly.

5) Not Comparing
One of the best converting tactics I use to sell affiliate products online
(especially physical products from Amazon) is to compare the “main” product
with two other similar products.
When people are in buying mode for a physical product, they tend to have their
options narrowed down to 2 or 3 and need help making the choice that is best
for them.
By comparing the “3 Best Widgets For _______”, I not only help my readers
make a choice, but I also have my affiliate links there for THREE products
instead on only one.
Over time, when I track that web page, I will be able to see which product is
most interesting to readers and move the best converting product to the top of
the page for better CTR.
Comparison web pages are not only very popular and helpful for readers, they
are also very profitable for you.
6) Make Money Online Products
Perhaps you’ve seen this before. You’re in a “learn online marketing” type
forum. A person publishes a post complaining that they can’t make a dime
online. But in their signature line they have something along the lines of “I
Made 50 Million Dollars with This” followed by their affiliate link.
It happens all the time. Please, don’t be that person.
If you’re new and you want to promote products in the Make Money Online
arena, don’t make false claims that it made you money. In fact, don’t make false
claims at all!
Sure, talk about the benefits of the product/training — maybe even why it
sounds awesome to you — but don’t try to trick people. You will ruin your
credibility.
7) “Oh Look! A Butterfly!”

This is the biggest downfall for any new affiliate marketer. In fact, it can cause
really big issues for seasoned affiliate marketers as well.
It is all too common to be working on one thing when all of a sudden,
something “shiny” comes through your inbox or is mentioned in a forum you
frequent. Then off you go chasing some new idea to make money online.
Ignore the “butterflies” that are sure to fly by on a constant basis. They will just
distract you from your project/campaign at hand. One completed and profitable
campaign is worth so much more than 50 almost half-finished campaigns or
projects.
Affiliate marketing is a business that requires self-motivation and focus. For
many of us, these are learned skills. Once you are aware of the the mistakes that
can cause a lack of profits and productivity, you will be better able to grow your
business and be profitable long-term.

12 steps to make money as affiliate marketing

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12 steps to make money as affiliate marketing