Let’s make this very simple and break down Affiliate Marketing to it’s core. I know how challenging it can be to get the grasp on how to use this concept for one’s own success. “Just doing it” can be a powerful strategy to overcome procrastination or limiting beliefs, but it’s not always the right approach if you don’t know what you’re doing. So if you’re ready to understand how to learn Affiliate Marketing for beginners, let’s jump right in!
You Have To Know What You’re Doing To Be Successful Faster!
If you want to learn something new – whatever it is – you’ll do good to start out with a general idea in mind of how it works and what you’re supposed to do so that you can start doing the right things from the start. After all, doing something successfully means doing the right things the right way.
When it comes to learning Affiliate Marketing, there are a lot videos and blogs out there that are actually pretty useless. They get the general idea but fail to tell you what you have to actually do to make Affiliate Marketing work for you. Instead, we’ll look at a model of how Affiliate Marketing works so you can better understand what to do.
1. The Customer
Actually, the whole process starts with the ‘customer’. It’s a person who’s doing a search or visits a website through social media. It’s the person like you and me who is interested in something that’s been on his mind. He does a search to find out more about it. That could be anything really. We’ll call that the customer’s niche. If you never heard this word before, you can learn what a niche is here. Ideally it’s something that’s interesting to you as a person! That way you can make money doing what you love.
2. Your Site (or other channel)
Through SEO (Search Engine Optimization), think Google, or social media, the user now lands on your website and gets presented with for example a blog post you wrote that helps them to understand more about the thing the were looking for or answers their question. That actually is such an important part that so many people misunderstand in Affiliate Marketing. It’s not really about making a lot of money, it’s about HELPING people to get what they want. That’s one of the big ‘secrets’.
On your helpful blog post now the user may click on a recommendation you made which leads him to a product’s website that you can be an affiliate for.
I wrote ‘your site’. You could also have a YouTube channel, a social media page or use other channels as well. The reason I refer to a website is because with social media, your content will quickly be forgotten as other people create new content. It’s just how the algorythm works. With a website however, people doing searches on Google can easily find you and with the right keyword strategy (you can learn all that easily), you can start ranking on those searches and get free traffic to your website every day.
3. Customer Buys Product
So when the user decides that the product you recommended is helpful to them, they buy the product. That can be anything really. Today almost every bigger company on earth has an affiliate program, so you can recommend the things that have helped you in your journey and let other people benefit from that as well.
4. You Make Money!
Here comes the money part. When the customer came to your website, found enough value in your content (blog post, video etc.), they may click on the product that you recommended and if this product now in turn seems valuable enough to them they may buy it. And when the user buys, you get a commission of about 1-75%, which depends on the affiliate offer. As I said, there are a lot of very good affiliate offers out there, that are also generally free to start.
That’s how Affiliate Marketing works. Now on to what you’ll have to do to succeed in Affiliate Marketing.
How To Do Affiliate Marketing Successfully: The Four Steps Of Affiliate Marketing Broken Down
Step 1: Choose an Interest (Find Your Niche).
So before you go out and start your website, first decide on what you want to talk about. The beautiful thing about Affiliate Marketing is that you can choose virtually any one of your interests! There are currently over 4.5 BILLION people that have access to the internet. You only need a tiny part of those people that visit your website for you to start making money. Also keep in mind that ideally you find something that you’re interested in and won’t get bored of in the next few years.
You don’t have to be an expert in this field because you’ll become an expert on your journey. Just find something that’s fun and interesting to you.
An important question that I want to address: Why is it so important so find a niche?
Let’s go away from the internet and online presences for a moment, let’s think about the physical world. What kinds of shops do you know where you can buy just about anything? Home appliances, skin care, gardening equipment, electronic devices etc.? Think about that for a moment … it’s a discounter, right? How much money do people want to pay in an discounter? As least as possible!
And where do people go if they want high quality products? Where they might not get all the things but a nicely curated selection of what they’re interested in? A boutique! Is a boutique expensive? You bet it is! Do people love spending their money there? Absolutely! So should you start a virtual shop, blog, community, … that offers everything or niche down? I’d say at this point it’s quite obvious.
Step 2: Build a Website.
Then you build a website around it. And don’t worry! Even if you’ve never done that before or are not ‘good’ with computers, there are platforms out there that make building a website incredibly easy!
I previously spent days to buy a domain, install WordPress (the world’s most popular Content Management System), choose and customize a theme before I could start to write content for my website. Now all of that actually is done in about 30 seconds to 1 minute since I started using WealthyAffiliate’s SiteRubix platform.
Step 3: Attract Visitors.
You’ll start filling your website with keyword optimized blog posts so that that can be found by users asking questions on Google. You can also use other marketing methods like Pinterest Marketing or Social Media Marketing to attract visitors to your website. So after you published your first few blog posts or pieces of content, you’ll start seeing more interest in your website because the different search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! show it to their users.
Keep in mind that the content you write should be as helpful as possible so that visitors to your post get as much value out of it as possible.
Step 4: Earn Revenue.
When your blog is up and running, you can now start to monetise your traffic with affiliate offers. There are affiliate offers for virtually everything out there. Just search for “[your interest] + affiliate program” on Google and you’ll find what you’re looking for.
Model The Success Of Those Who Came Before You
Trial and error. Ever heard of that before? It’s how a lot of us learn and to a degree it’s necessary for new inventions or to really understand how something works. But to be honest, it’s not the best way to learn. Let’s take the plane as an example. The idea of flying wasn’t new. And the plane has been designed after a model that’s been successful for ages: Birds.
Modeling what works for others how are successful is the best way to really learn how affiliate marketing works. Know why? Because there’s no better way than to learn from REAL teachers. People who already achieved what you want to achieve. That way you can skip years of trial and error, years of failing and years of not knowing why something doesn’t work. Learning from real teachers is a time machine. You get years smarter without getting years older. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. When it came to affiliate marketing, I learned from some of the best in the industry through their free online course.
I actually had to spend all those years of research, failing and feeling overwhelmed before I got to any level of success. So now I share my expertise here on this blog to help people like you to become successful much faster.
Conclusion: What Should You Do Next?
You now have learned how Affiliate Marketing actually works and which steps to follow in general to be on your way to become a successful Affiliate Marketer. To really learn the nitty gritty, you should only listen to teachers who already achieved what you want to achieve. For me, everything changed when I found the course and high-performing platform of WealthyAffiliate.com. It’s a clear step-by-step course and a huge resource of knowledge in the affiliate marketing space. I learned everything I need to know to succeed in the Affiliate Marketing space through their easy to follow guides and courses. I highly recommend checking them out. You can start with a free Starter Membership here.
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