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Affiliate Marketing For Beginners
4 Traffic Generation Tips For Affiliate Marketers
4 Traffic Generation Tips For Affiliate Marketers
So you are interested in affiliate marketing. That’s great because it is a relatively quick, virtually risk-free way to start making money online.
Let’s quickly explain affiliate marketing for beginners in case you are unsure of how it works.
Basically, affiliate marketing is when you promote someone else’s products and when someone buys through your affiliate links, you get paid an affiliate commission.
As an affiliate marketer, you’re acting like a salesperson for the company. You sign up for their affiliate program, help to make a sale, and then the company rewards you.
The best thing about affiliate marketing is that it is incredibly scalable. A typical salesperson will only sell products from one company, or their own products and services. As an affiliate marketer, you can promote products from many different sources and earn commissions from all of them.
Many people try to start with Amazon affiliate marketing because Amazon is such a large, household name. The problem is that their affiliate commissions are tiny compared to other affiliate programs. Don’t rule Amazon out but you need to have realistic expectations when using it.
How much money can you make as an affiliate marketer? Well, the possibilities are endless, and the top performers are easily making 6-7 figure incomes online, and best of all, they don’t have to create or support their own products.
There are many affiliate platforms and programs that you can apply to join depending on your niche.
But if a product or service looks like a good fit for you and they don’t offer an official affiliate program, you can reach out to them and see if they would be willing for you to promote it to your audience in return for a commission. Many companies will agree because it is a win-win for them, After all, you are sending traffic to their offers so it’s not costing them any time or effort unless they make a sale.
And on the topic of traffic…
As an affiliate marketer, it’s crucial that you know how to drive traffic to your offers. This is a skill that will make or break you. So, you’ll to need to devote a huge chunk of your time in the beginning to learning how to drive traffic. While simple in concept, it’s not entirely easy and will require effort on your part.
Unlike product creators who can rely on affiliates to drive traffic, as an affiliate, you can only count on yourself. The traffic you generate can either be from free methods or paid traffic.
If you have the budget for it, you can use paid traffic. It’s faster and you get feedback much quicker. You have complete control of targeting so you will know who sees your ads and if you get your targeting right, you should be able to break even on your ad spend on your front end offers.
This effectively means you are building a buyers list for free and this is a crucial part of any online business as these buyers can be put in front of more offers.
However, if you’re a beginner and short on funds, there are many free methods of traffic generation that are effective too. The term ‘free’ is deceptive because you’ll be paying for it in time and effort, and you must be patient before you see any noticeable results; this may be frustrating, but you need to understand this from the beginning!
Nevertheless, you can drive free traffic and still make sales if you know what to do. Below you’ll find a few tips that you should always bear in mind when driving traffic.
Know Where Your Audience Hangs Out
You must know where your niche audience hangs out. If it’s a bodybuilding crowd you’re targeting, they’ll probably be on bodybuilding forums, fan pages for bodybuilders, YouTube channels featuring fitness experts and so on. So, you can go into these places and start siphoning traffic from there to your sites.
It is important to know who your target market is and what they are looking for. This is so often overlooked by marketers of all persuasions because it isn’t the most interesting thing to do, but it is one of the most important!
Create an ideal customer avatar and refer to it whenever you are writing sales copy, blog posts or creating videos to promote your affiliate offers.
If you know who they are, what they want and their specific pain points, you will be much more successful in gaining the sale.
Start With One Method
The reason so many marketers never do well with traffic is because they never focus their efforts on one method. If you’re going with video marketing, create a good channel and keep making videos till you have a following. Learn how to optimize your channel and videos so that you rank.
If you’re using Facebook groups, learn how to get more members in your group and post stuff that they like, and which can be linked to your web properties.
If you are blogging, learn to write interesting and engaging posts that are crammed with helpful information that your readers will enjoy and appreciate. Be consistent and write often. Don’t write short posts but instead go for longer posts that can go into more detail (a 1000 word minimum is a good benchmark to aim for). Learn about SEO so you can get your blog posts ranked in the search engines.
Pick one traffic method and strive to master it until you have an avalanche of traffic coming to your sites, etc. Once that’s successful, you can move on to the next traffic method while maintaining the current one.
Repeated And Relentless Effort
Driving traffic is a continuous process. Keep repeating your efforts and never give up. Even if your first few videos have only 10 or 20 views, keep going. Over time you will get more views and a bigger audience.
It takes time for things to snowball. remember what I said earlier; patience is key with free traffic methods.
The same applies to most traffic methods. The more videos you have, the more traffic you’ll get. The more people in your Facebook group, the more comments and engagement you’ll get. The more blog posts you write, the more visitors will come to your website. The more paid ads you create, the higher your chances of finding winning campaigns. It’s all a matter of time and repeated effort.
Engagement
This is another important factor. Engage with your traffic. Reply to comments on your videos. Like and respond to comments in your Facebook groups and ads. If you have commenting enabled on your blog and someone takes the time to comment, reply to them and thank them for taking the time to comment.
The more you engage, the better your relationship with your audience will be. They’ll grow to like you, trust you and will eventually buy through you.
Remember these pointers when driving traffic. It’s not as difficult as most marketers make it out to be. Once you understand how it works and you’re consistent, you will see results. The key to traffic generation is consistency. That’s where most marketers fail.
Get this right and you’ll have all the traffic you want.
Once you have started to make progress you can rinse and repeat with another traffic method.
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5 Effective Affiliate Marketing Strategies
There are a plethora of affiliate marketing strategies and tactics employed by many successful affiliate marketers to ramp up their sales and commissions.
While some strategies may seem advanced, they are all usually based on the fundamentals of affiliate marketing.
You need content. You need traffic… and you need to position the right offer in front of the right audience. The goal is to help and also gently guide the reader towards a purchase.
As an affiliate marketer your job is to be a ‘conduit’ that takes an interested visitor to the sales page which will go on to sell the product.
That’s really all there is to it. All other intricacies can be boiled down to this goal. Let’s look at a few highly effective strategies employed by thousands of affiliate marketers all over the world.
Niche Sites
This is without a doubt the most popular strategy. To promote a variety of products you need a niche site. The content that’s interspersed with your affiliate links will make you sales if you do it right.
You’ll need to learn the basics of setting up a site, optimizing it, creating content that converts and a few other things. Once you get a grasp of the fundamentals, the sky is the limit.
As long as you grow your site, your earnings will increase exponentially. Some of the large authority sites make 5 to 6 figures a month in affiliate commissions. That’s how powerful this method is.
Facebook Groups/Pinterest Boards
Everyone is on social media these days. Having Facebook groups and Pinterest boards dedicated to your niche, will allow you to tap into existing hotbeds of traffic while targeting and audience that is interested in your niche.
Through the links in your posts and pictures, traffic will trickle to your site and you’ll get sales. Some affiliates prefer to direct link the pictures in Pinterest to the affiliate products.
That’s fine too. What matters is that you hang out where your audience hangs out.
YouTube Channels
If you’re shy to be on camera, you can still do unboxing videos or PowerPoint presentations with a voiceover. YouTube is an excellent source of free traffic.
You just need to invest your time in creating interesting videos that are optimized to rank well.
Links in your video descriptions can either go to a landing page or your website. While some affiliates prefer to directly link to the product, it’s wiser to try and capture the lead.
BTW, for an excellent course on video marketing, I highly recommend Video Marketing Insider
Email Lists
As mentioned earlier, always strive to build your list. Have a pop up on your site with a freebie that encourages the visitor to opt in.
Have your links in your social media sites pointing to your landing pages. Do whatever you can to build your list.
Once you have a list and you build a relationship with them, you can promote products that will be well-received. A list will be your greatest asset.
Paid Ads
Many marketers stay away from paid advertising because it’s almost inevitable that you lose money during the testing phase. However, you should give it a try when your budget allows for it. You’re not losing money – you’re buying data.
Once you make this mindset shift, you’ll be encouraged to keep trying till you find a few winning ad campaigns. A winning campaign can restore your losses within days and yield you an attractive profit. Such is the power of paid advertising.
Give these 5 strategies a try and watch your affiliate commissions soar. They will take you some time to do, but if you’re consistent and stick to the plan, your future self will thank you for it. These strategies will work wonders for your affiliate marketing.
Of course, a major part of affiliate marketing is knowing which products to promote, so how do you decide which to promote and which to leave aside?
What Should You Look For When Choosing Products To Promote?
As an affiliate marketer, when you choose a niche to market in, ideally it should have a wide variety of products to promote. There should be a mix of tangible and digital products to cater to a wide variety of customers within the same niche.
There are several pointers you should bear in mind when choosing products to promote to your niche. Sometimes, things can get tricky and what may be snapped up quickly by some people within the niche may be ignored by others.
So, it’s important to put right product in front of the right person at the right time to get maximum sales. Below you will find a few tips to guide you.
Does It Fit Your Niche?
This is a very important point. You need to know what your audience is looking for. If you’re in the golf niche, promoting bodybuilding supplements such as mass gainers might be a flop. However, an eBook about improving one’s shoulder strength may be a hit for people hoping to improve their golf swing.
You must be aware of the needs and problems your audience is facing. A busy mom looking to lose weight will quickly buy a guide that shows how one can shed the fat with 15-minute interval workouts.
However, that same guide will not be as eagerly bought by women looking to lose weight with an easier program like yoga.
As you can see, even though the problem is the same, the products that’ll interest your audience will be different. So, you must really understand your niche and expect a period of testing.
Vendor
Another factor that you should look at is the vendor. If you’re promoting products on Amazon, you don’t have to worry too much.
Everybody trusts Amazon and they do a great job at selling.
However, if you’re promoting a weight loss guide from another site, the credentials of the author will be important. An overweight person selling a weight loss eBook, or a bald guy selling a hair restoration formula will not inspire confidence in anyone.
Always check the vendor’s credibility.
Sales Page
Is the sales copy for the product convincing?
This is applicable to both tangible and intangible items. Does the gadget on Amazon come in different colors?
Is the description accurate and convincing? Read the sales copy and ask yourself if you’d buy the item. If you would, your site visitor or subscriber might probably buy it too.
Does It Solve A Problem?
Products that solve problems will always sell better than those that are just for satisfying wants.
Nobody thinks twice about buying aspirin when they have a splitting headache… but the cool pair of sunglasses that cost $180 may require much more persuasion on your part.
You need to supply people with what they want, not necessarily what they need. This is just the way of business and marketing; hopefully they will eventually find what they need through you.
Reviews
Look at the testimonials and customer reviews on the site. Amazon makes this easy by providing ratings and reviews from verified customers. Promote products with a high rating and many positive reviews.
The same applies to digital products. You may even wish to ask the vendor to email you a review copy.
Send them a link to your site and mention that you’d like to promote their product, but you wish to review it first.
Many vendors will gladly accede to your request. If they don’t, just move on and find another product.
Trends
Last but not least, check on Google Trends to see if the product is in demand. Sometimes, products are very popular because of a craze, but then it all suddenly dies down.
Think fidget spinners and Pokemon Go… now you get an idea of how fast crazes can start and end. Stick to promoting evergreen products which are popular but have stable trends.
These are the pointers to look out for when choosing products to promote. Exercise due diligence in your research and only recommend proven and profitable products to your audience. This will ensure that they trust you and your reputation remains intact.
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