Getting Started With Affiliate Marketing

Getting started can be really tough. There's so much information out there about Affiliate Marketing, that it can be confusing to know what to do first.

But, have no fear! We’re here to help you and guide you to getting started in the Affiliate Marketing field as soon as today. Let’s just jump straight in.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Let’s first start off by defining what exactly Affiliate Marketing is. Basically, an affiliate is a partner to a product or service.

When you partner with a product or service you usually get something in exchange, the most common being commision (part of the purchase, or a set amount of money), for sending people over to buy the product or service.

Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing

Okay, with all the basics out of the way, let’s just jump right in and figure out a good way to get started with affiliate marketing.

Step 1: Niche Selection

First things first, we need to figure out a good Niche to start out with. By that I mean, we need to find a good section of products or services to focus on; Starting with a small subsection will help you get familiar with the landscape, people, and products so that you can sell and refer people easier.

First start with a larger category: Health, Financial, Sports, Advertising, Business, etc. etc.

Then break those large categories into subcategories. For example, if you choose health, break it into something like Diet or Exercise.

From there we want to break it down a third time. So Dieting might turn into Keto Diet, Vegetarian Diet, or something along those lines.

There we go! Now we have a potential niche to advertise in. Repeat this step a couple times until you have a few niches. Out of those niches you want to select one that interests you most, because it’s far easier to write and talk about, if you’re actually excited about the topic.

Step 2: Find your Traffic Method

Alright, you’ve found a good niche to start with, the next step is to figure out where you’re going to be targeting people. After all, we need people to see the product or service you’re advertising if we want to refer them!

There are multiple traffic method, but here are the most common:

  • Organic Traffic (Google, Bing, and other Search Engines)
  • Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
  • Video Media (Youtube)
  • Email

All these traffic sources are great for reaching a targeted audience that you will want to advertise to. You’ll definitely want to focus on only one of these avenues and become an expert in that field. This will help you overcome a big obstacle, competition.

Step 3: Building up an Audience

Once you’ve selected the way you want to get traffic, it’s time to start building an audience.

This is by far the most important step of affiliate marketing. If you cannot get people, you won’t make any money, no matter how good the product is; Where as vice versa, having a lot of people, even with a bad product, will make you money.

Let’s jump into a couple examples of what I mean by building an audience.

  1. Social Media - This is the easiest example, for twitter, facebook, and instagram you want to amass quality followers. Keep building up your following as much as possible.
  2. Organic Traffic - This is a longer term more steady traffic source. In this case you want to create a website and start ranking for Google and Bing, people will come to you site and you will start to build a daily audience of website viewers.
  3. Video media - On YouTube, you would want to get more subscribers and more views for your videos.
  4. Email - Your email list would be your audience, grow this list as much as possible.

Each of these different avenues may be a bit different, but it all comes down to one thing… Reaching people. Once you’re able to reach an engaged audience, you will be able to move on to Step #4, which is where you will start to make your money.

Step 4: Finding a Product and Showing Your Audience

Now that you have a decently sized Audience, in a niche, you can now start pitching a product or service to that said audience.

You can find many different products or services with affiliate partnerships available. Some popular options are:

  • Amazon (Most products available)
  • Clickbank (Lots of Services)
  • MaxBounty

Or you can go straight to some product distributors, for example searching “Keto Diet Affiliate” in Google will bring up quite a few results for product partnerships you could join.

Usually you will need to go through a signup process of some sort, and sometimes even show your method of advertising (Your audience -- Whether that be youtube, social media, website, or email list).

Once completed, you should receive a special link to the product or service, this link is your key to making commission from your audience.

Now that you have an engaged audience, a worthwhile product/service, and a link to said product or service, it’s time to send it out to your audience. Whether that be through a video, if you’re on YouTube, a post on your social media account or website, or an email to your email list.

Promote the product through the link you received and whenever someone purchases the product or service, you will get a commission.

Conclusion

Once it’s broken down, it seems kind of simple eh?

Well…. It may seem fairly simple on the surface, there are many nuances to the world of affiliate marketing.

I would highly suggest mapping out a rough draft plan, from the steps outlined above, and then doing a TON of research into both the niche and marketing plans in the field you choose. (Hopefully, you can find quite a bit, right here on BoundLeap).

Hopefully this guide helped you out, even if it’s just a rough outline!

Have any questions or comments about getting started with Affiliate Marketing? Leave them down below, and we’ll be sure to help answer anything we can.






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