Affiliate Marketing seems to be on everybody’s lips, this has attracted a lot of people to join the space, but as many get disappointed after a bit, probably because it ends up being almost the opposite of the notion that’s being circulated. People expect to rack up their first $500 in the first week, because they heard what others made in a short space of time. This isn’t what I’m here to share with you, I’m going to share the proven but not easy steps you have to take, but I promise it will be much easier than people who had to figure out the whole process out on their own.

Steps To Get Started with Affiliate Marketing as a Beginner

This will be broken down to little bits so you can always come back to reference it. I have a post where I talked about The Truth About Affiliate Marketing, so I’m going to try not to repeat myself so much you can check it out.

Choosing a Niche:

This is likely the most important step because you don’t want to get into the wrong niche, as you’d apply to affiliate programs around your niche. You’d have to choose either an easy to scale niche that is profiting or a niche that you are passionate about and would actually scale with passion and dedication. Some niche make more per referral but are hard to scale because they are technical and has to be done with passion, someone who studied Language will only scale the Insurance niche with good level of focus and dedication but someone with the background in Insurance wouldn’t need that much dedication as they understand most concepts by heart. I won’t suggest niches for you but at least you have an idea how to choose one.

Creating an online presence:

This could be a blog, social media following, a community, building a solid email list. A blog is essential for the Affiliate market, this is because many affiliate programs want to see something concrete and there’s nothing better than the traffic to your blog and for your own good it is easier to build an email list through your blog than the social media (Twitter, Facebook). After creating your blog and start directing organic traffic through SEO (Search Engine Optimization), backlinking your blog, running ads, you can suggest for readers of your blog to sign up to your email list. This is also possible with social platforms, so nothing stops you from asking your dedicated followers to sign up to your email list. Building a community is different, as the name implies you’d have to really care about members of your community because if easier to lose a great percentage of the community if one or two members are convinced that you are all about the money. A community will help but you have to actually provide value at all times in the beginning for free.

Understanding conversion:

This stage is quite broad, so I’m going to say as much as you’d need for a start. it is definitely not enough to create an audience because you’d have to convert your audience to customers for your affiliate programs. Being able to convince new visitors is also a needed skill, this can be done by strategically posting ads to the products on your blogs. You should be able convince the users that you are helping them not you, because that’s why you have to choose products that you are confident in and understand, you don’t want to refer your dedicated users to a product that will rip them off or under deliver as this will gently ruin your reputation. You don’t want to fill your blog pages with ads, this puts you in the image of desperate and nobody trusts a desperate sales man. Too much ads is very negative, it reduces view time for both old and new visitors, reducing conversion. You should be able to write a good copy for your email list, watch your email subject, so it isn’t spammy the more spammy it looks the more your open rate reduces. This is possible by avoiding spam words, like free, 100% off etc.

Websites Where You Can Find Affiliate Program

Click Bank: This is among the most popular active in over 200 countries and a good profit rate.

shareAsale: over 1 million Affiliates, almost 4000 products.

CJ Affiliates: Reaches over a billion consumers monthly, with a wide range of products.

Rakuten Advertising: This company dates back to 1999, and are quite verified.

These are the ones I have confirmed and will recommend.