9 Tips of How to Become A Successful Affiliate Marketer

In today’s world, it is increasingly risky to rely on only one income stream. You need an additional source of income if you want to have financial security and freedom. One of the best ways to achieve this goal is through affiliate marketing.

 

Affiliate marketing is a wonderful passive income generation opportunity because it is cheap to set up and almost entirely risk-free. Everyone who wants to make some additional cash needs to consider it as a potential income stream.

 

If this describes you, and you feel that having some extra income source would go a long way in improving your overall quality of life, then this article has been written for you. Here are a few tips of how to become a successful affiliate marketer.

 

Before we dive in, here is a quick introduction to affiliate marketing.

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WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING AND WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

 

Affiliate marketing is a business model that allows you to earn a commission for promoting someone else’s products. You get paid to help someone else make a sale. Here are some of its benefits:

 

• You get to be your own boss. Affiliate marketing promises a level of freedom that few other business models can match. Work when you want, as much as you want, selling the products you want.

• It is easy and cheap to set up and run. There are literally no barriers to entry, meaning anyone interested can become an affiliate marketer. As long as you know which niche you want to promote a product on, you are set. Simply sign up for the program of your choice and start selling! Once you start, as long as you have a device that can connect to the internet, there are almost zero operational costs for your business, which means all the money you make is 100% profit.

• It needs no prior expertise or experience. Affiliate marketing actually encourages you to learn on the job and fine tune your skills as you make money. Ironically, most jobs out there that require several years of experience as a prerequisite can only make you a fraction of the sort of income you can earn from affiliate marketing. Which brings us to the next point.

• It has an uncapped earning potential. There is no limit to the amount of money you can make as an affiliate marketer. You can literally make a fortune in a very short time if you want to. It all depends on your hard work, because the more you sell, the more you earn. The sky is the limit!

• It promises security. You no longer have to worry about how you will survive if you got fired tomorrow. Your job is yours until you choose to quit. Plus, the extra income that comes with affiliate marketing offers an added layer of security. You do not have to depend on a single source of income anymore.

• It minimizes risk. Affiliate marketing does not require you to have any stock in storage or invest your money in renting business premises. You do not have to worry about carrying dead stock or shipping or customer support. There is almost zero risk to you and your business.

Now that we are all caught up, here are some specific tips that you can implement in your affiliate marketing business if you want to reap more success. I will have a neat infographic at the end to summarize it all.

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1. CATER TO A SPECIFIC NICHE

 

One common mistake that most new affiliate marketers make is that they try to sell everything the can in order to maximize their chances of making a profit. They try to dominate as many niches as they can lay their hands on. Do not fall for this trap. Pick a niche and focus on it. Focus your efforts on promoting to it specifically and selling to it well. If you target too many niches with your affiliate marketing business, you end up losing.

 

Here is an article I wrote on selecting a niche

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2. SEO

 

Search Engine Optimization is an essential tool in promoting your affiliate marketing business. Organic search engine results are the best kinds of results, and you can only get them by making sure you optimize your site. Most affiliate marketers end up spending a lot of money on ads that only take money out of their pockets without converting as they would expect. Only pay for ads if you know what you are doing, and even then, make sure your SEO is in order if you want to maximize earning potential.

 

When you do your SEO, keep in mind that search engines are moving away from individual keyword targeting. Instead, the focus is on long tail keywords. More descriptive phrases yield a higher conversion rate and SEO juice. Plus, as Google continues to focus on improving the understanding of similar terms, it is now smarter to write more in-depth articles that add value to your readers than to stuff keywords inside your article that search engines will read as spam.

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3. KNOW YOUR PRODUCT

 

First of all, if you want to build a reputation as an affiliate site that can be trusted, you need to be honest with your audience. A big part of building this trust comes from selling a product you have tried and tested yourself, and you personally believe in. Knowing your product boosts your credibility, which in turn converts to more sales.

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4. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

 

 

A deep understanding of who your audience is and what they expect from you will place you at an advantage over your competition. Being able to anticipate their needs and to cater to their problems will turn you into the go-to resource center for your niche.

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5. DIVERSIFY

 

 

When promoting your products, whenever possible, make sure to get products from different merchants. Diversifying like this further minimizes your risk. For example, if there are delays in payment from one merchant, your business would not be crippled if income is coming from several sources. Remember, anything can happen, and you need to protect yourself in case something goes wrong.

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6. BE PERSISTENT

 

 

Giving up on the way is the number one reason why most affiliate marketing businesses fail. Affiliate marketing is not easy. There will be some months that will feel like nothing is working. Do not give up. Keep an eye on your metrics and statistics, and try to figure out what is working and what is not. Patience is the name of the game in this industry, so if you come in thinking you will be raking in six figures within a few weeks, you are lying to yourself.

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7. DO NOT IGNORE MOBILE

 

 

Mobile is fast becoming a major traffic source in the affiliate marketing space. In 2013, mobile accounted for 18% of all affiliate sales. The number rose to 26% in 2014. By 2016, more than 30% of affiliate sales originated from mobile devices.

 

Your website needs to be mobile friendly, and the websites you are directing your readers to need to also meet these standards. We all remember the changes in the industry that came with Google’s Panda update in 2011 and the Penguin update in 2012.

 

Well, change is in the air once more, with clear signs from Google that sites that are more mobile friendly will benefit more. In November 2017, they launched a mobile friendliness checker and started to beta test displaying the mobile-friendliness of a page in search results. If this is not sufficient warning, I don’t know what is.

 

As an affiliate marketing business, you need to make sure your website is mobile friendly if you want to easily outrank most of your competition. Plus, since more people access the internet from mobile devices today than ever before, it is simply just smart to take advantage of the huge potential customer base the platform offers.

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8. UNDERSTAND THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW EVERYTHING

 

 

In this industry, things change rapidly. Just like most things on the internet, what is effective today may be obsolete tomorrow. You need to keep abreast of developments in the affiliate marketing space and be open to learning new things. Embrace change and see it as an opportunity you need to take advantage of instead of an obstacle you need to surpass. Watch trends and make a conscious decision to learn something new about affiliate marketing every day.

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9. CREATE QUALITY CONTENT

 

 

Affiliate marketing is about more than just simply selling. You need to provide value for your audience. The best way to do this is by creating quality content that adds value to their lives. Most affiliate marketing businesses completely ignore this fact. Use this to your advantage. Create content that your competition simply cannot compete with, and your target market will be quick to notice and respond.

 

Whenever you create your content, try to make sure you publish long posts that are packed full of useful information. Check out the best existing piece of content on the web on that topic, and strive to beat it. Search engines will definitely notice, and your content will always rank higher than that of your competition.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

 

 

Here are a few pro tips to take your business to the next level:

 

Follow trends. Smart affiliate marketers know how to anticipate trends and take advantage of them. Trends can be seasonal trends, which are predictable spikes in the popularity of a product that you can plan and prepare for. Check out Google Trends to see what trends to expect in your niche.

Trends can also be breakout trends, which are harder to predict, but you’ll know them when you see them. Often, the experts in your industry can predict breakout trends to some degree of accuracy. You can also search queries like “Best Fishing Rods 2019” to see some more popular predictions and plan around them.

Grow: To take your site from making you $1k a month to $10k, you need to do one of three things: sell more product, sell higher commission products, or sell to more people. Know your product, know your audience, and know that true business growth comes from high commission sales.

 

 

 

Experiment: It is easy to fall into a pattern as an affiliate marketer. For example, if you write a review of the best products in your niche and add your affiliate links, then find that this particular article performs really well, it is easy to keep churning the same type of content to capitalize on that success.

 

What if you took a different route? Trying something different might yield some surprising results. You can create a quiz on your site to direct readers to the products that suit them. You can offer bonuses tailor-made bonuses on every product you promote. You can create a calculator that promotes a particular product with the results, or even an app with your affiliate links. The point is, be creative and think outside the box.

 

Build an email list: Start doing it as soon as you can, from day one if possible. Then focus on helping your subscribers solve their problems.

 

Here is the infographic I promised earlier:

 

Affiliate marketing can be a very lucrative source of passive income, but you need to be patient, persistent and smart about it. You need to make reading widely about the topic a regular habit, and strive to learn something new about the industry every day. Combine that with these tips and you will be well on your way to becoming a successful marketer.

 

If you need help with your affiliate marketing business, I want to recommend the same program that helped me launch my successful affiliate marketing career. It offers in=depth training (with step-by-step videos) as well as amazing tools that make your tasks easier and quicker.  Check out this video on using a tool called Site Builder that will create your site in under a minute!

 

 

I wrote an extensive review outlining the benefits of joining this program. The best thing is that you can do so for absolutely FREE.

 

CLICK HERE NOW TO CHECK OUT MY #1 RECOMMENDED AFFILIATE MARKETING PROGRAM!

 

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I hope you give it a try!

 

Please leave me your comments and thoughts in the comments section below. I love to hear from you!

 

To your affiliate success!

 

 

Mike