This guide presents the top, tried-and-tested steps for achieving success with affiliate marketing, a marketing strategy that has proven to be effective in boosting sales, brand recognition, and overall credibility.
A lot of people aspire to earn through affiliate marketing, a strategy that involves selling other people’s products online, without the requirement of creating or storing products, delivery, or customer service. However, only about 5% of beginners are successful, while the majority fail to generate any income.
Affiliate websites are ubiquitous on the internet, but frequently, they utilise their affiliate earnings to oversell products with the sole aim of squandering the funds. Consequently, it’s commonplace for them to vanish from the media shortly after a couple of months.
Moreover, many other affiliate websites specializing in product assessments that yield financial gains also exist. These websites recognize the importance of promoting third-party products while simultaneously offering valuable insights.
Steps to Affiliate Marketing Success In 2023
Similar to a commission-based salesman, this marketing tactic operates similarly by providing a range of affiliate income from a few cents to hundreds of dollars based on the number of referrals you make.
1. Choose The Perfect Platform For You
Although affiliate marketing can be initiated from any platform, including Instagram, it may not be the best fit for your marketing needs. Depending on your skills and preference, creating video content may be more suitable for you. For optimal audience cultivation and increased affiliate revenue, it’s recommended that you establish a YouTube channel or blog.
Beginning a blog nowadays is incredibly easy and inexpensive. Nevertheless, without any readers, it will hold no value, which is why you should start optimizing your website for search engines immediately after launching it.
Having a website and a YouTube channel can give you an edge over your rivals. Your affiliate website conversions can be significantly improved by incorporating videos. In case you’re a beginner, it might be best to consider a blog-centered affiliate marketing organization.
Consider the type of content you wish to produce and the target audience before deciding on a platform. Conduct research on the various platforms and their marketing strategies, and then make a selection that aligns with your objectives.
2. Research Thoroughly And Choose a Niche
Conducting extensive market research is essential for securing the long-term financial stability of your affiliate company. Before embarking on your own affiliate marketing venture, it’s crucial to narrow down potential niches.
It is crucial to concentrate on a field you have expertise in while also considering an area of personal interest. This will enable you to create a content strategy and plan for the future. Understanding your target audience and their desired products is essential for successful marketing.
Numerous affiliate marketing tools focused on niche research are available for free, such as Answer Socrates, Google Trends, and Exploding Topics, which can aid you in your search for fresh concepts. Google Trends can be used to confirm whether the niches you have identified are not just temporary trends. It is advisable to opt for an evergreen specialty that generates revenue throughout the year.
Prior to entering a new market, it is essential to identify your competitors. Explore potential niches where you can maximize benefits from a smaller target market and establish unique distinguishing factors prior to expanding your reach.
To start with, consider teaching rather than selling. By doing so, you can create a robust brand community and gain an advantage in search engine rankings if you opt for specialization from the outset.
3. Become a Member of an Affiliate Program
During the process of brainstorming or exploring affiliate networks, it is imperative to prioritize your current or prospective audience. Initiate by concentrating on affiliate schemes providing substantial commissions, remarkable conversion rates, and a consistent flow of customers.
Affiliate marketing programs can be classified into three distinct categories.
Affiliate schemes that are tailored to niche markets and offer substantial payouts are referred to as low-volume, high-paying programs. However, high commission programs are extremely competitive, making it challenging for beginners to compete against established marketers with substantial budgets.
Although they offer low payouts, affiliate programs with a high volume of sales attract a diverse range of customers. The advantage of these programs is the abundance of products they offer. Amazon is one example of such programs, however, significant traffic is required to earn a reasonable income through them.
Affiliate programs that offer high volume and high pay – These programs offer lucrative commissions for promoting popular products to a large market, such as credit cards. They seek out experienced and affluent affiliates. It can be extremely challenging to compete with certain individuals’ spamming tactics.
4. Create SEO Affiliate Content
If you simply insert affiliate links into a pre-existing blog post and consider it affiliate marketing, you are mistaken. Without valuable and relevant content, the mentioned techniques will not benefit you. The sustainability of your affiliate site relies on top-notch content that complements your affiliate links.
Don’t restrict your wish list to only the popular items on Amazon. Go the extra mile to confirm that the details you include satisfy the requirements of your website’s users. Prior to composing a product review, it’s necessary to try out the product being discussed. If monetary constraints are a factor, you may begin with what you already possess.
Encourage your creativity to flourish by exploring various types of content such as product reviews, roundups, comparisons, tutorials, resource pages, and eBooks. Utilize imaginative language and captivating designs to help your audience make informed decisions about purchasing products or services from your website.
Once you’ve produced your content, the next step is to enhance your page for conversion. You can accomplish the following activities without needing an array of complicated plugins:
- Button placement
- Callouts
- Banners
- Graphs
- Charts
- Comparison tables
- Images
- Pop-Ups
5. Niche Evaluation
Evergreen vs. Trending
If you’re an affiliate marketer, it’s wise to construct an affiliate website that can produce consistent revenue for years to come. Therefore, it’s advisable to choose a long-term affiliate income potential subject, rather than a passing trend.
Can you envision creating an affiliate marketing website about fidget spinners during their peak popularity, only to witness their sudden decline in demand? The predicament raises the question of how to predict if something will lose its appeal.
Pose a question to yourself: “Does it address an issue or satisfy a requirement?”
The items listed such as satisfying hunger and thirst, seeking sexual satisfaction, expanding knowledge, shedding pounds, finding companionship, purchasing a musical instrument and caring for a pet all fulfill needs or solve problems, but a fidget spinner does not accomplish either.
It is also advisable to verify your niche concept on Google Trends.
Between April and May 2017, there was a significant increase in interest regarding fidget spinners. However, shortly after, there was a steep decline.
On the contrary, dogs are a specialized field that is gaining more and more popularity as time goes on.
In brief, opting for evergreen niches is typically a superior choice for an affiliate marketing website.
Evaluating Niche Profit Potential
It is necessary to assess whether your concept has the capacity to generate income, which will entail conducting additional research. However, the effort is definitely worthwhile. There are several methods to evaluate the potential profitability of a particular affiliate marketing niche.
Affiliate Marketing Networks
Suppose you plan to launch a beauty blog and wish to ascertain its monetary potential. Access your preferred affiliate network, such as Commission Junction, and select the leading category for your specific area of interest.
After clicking on ‘Search’, select ‘Network Earnings – High to Low’ from the dropdown menu located in the left-hand corner. This will display a result similar to the one below:
EPC is an acronym for ‘Earnings Per Hundred Clicks’ and provides an estimated value of the potential earnings one can receive from a particular affiliate marketing program.
Assuming your website receives 30,000 organic visitors each month, with the capability to direct 10% of the traffic to an EPC offer worth $27, you can estimate your earnings by dividing 3,000 visitors by 100, and then multiplying that number by 27.
3,000 / 100 = 30 * $27 = $810It’s important to note that although these calculations are not very detailed, they can still provide a rough estimate of whether or not the beauty industry can provide a satisfactory income.
If becoming an affiliate marketer is a priority for you, it is essential to join a few of these networks.
Website Marketplaces
I like to discover lucrative niches by seeking out website owners who are selling their sites in that particular area. Flippa is an excellent platform to accomplish this, as it does not require any monetary investment. Simply register, login, and navigate to Browse -> Websites -> Content -> Blog.
This shall provide:
A list of websites that focus on content is available for purchase. However, we need to refine the search further. To do this, navigate to the ‘Status’ section and select ‘Recently Sold’ by scrolling down.
Return to the ‘Keyword’ section and input your niche, which is ‘Beauty’ for this instance.
Last but not least, sort the outcomes based on the criteria of ‘Highest Price’.
You currently possess a roster of lucrative beauty websites to evaluate, including information on their monetization methods and Ahrefs URLs to examine for keyword analysis. These sites can serve as inspiration for your own niche website, or as a basis for creating an enhanced version of a recently sold site.
In any case, you are aware that you are striving for profitability without any uncertain assumptions.
Identify Competitors in Your Niche
It’s important to search for contenders in your potential area of interest because if there aren’t any competing websites appearing on the top pages of SERPs, this means:
- Hundreds of others already tried and failed
- Affiliates never bothered because there’s no money to be made
- Nobody has discovered this niche – you’ve struck gold!
New marketers often have the misconception that if they can’t find any rival websites, then they’ve stumbled upon a great opportunity to create an affiliate marketing site. However, by the ninth month, they usually come to the disappointing conclusion that the niche is not worthwhile and their affiliate marketing venture is far from a success story.
If there are no other sites competing within the niche, it might be best to reconsider pursuing it.
Keep reading because there is a shortcut for accomplishing this task that will be discussed soon.
Passion vs. Profit Niches
As an affiliate marketer, you may feel inclined to select a niche that aligns with your personal interests initially. However, pursuing a passion that is too niche, such as creating miniature knitwear for ants, may not always yield profitable results.
The idea being conveyed is that focusing on a highly specific area means having a limited amount of potential followers or search traffic in terms of your affiliate enterprise. Therefore, while being passionate about niche markets can be enjoyable to work with, it may not lead to significant affiliate revenue.
On the other hand, being involved in a lucrative market that you dislike is also not desirable.
6. Niche Down
By minimizing your efforts and investment, it is possible to become an “authority” in your particular domain without incurring excessive financial risk or time investment. Although authority websites are capable of generating a significant amount of revenue, this only occurs after a significant amount of time and money has been invested in search engine optimization.
Many new affiliates fail to realize that if their domain name is relatively general, such as “cat toy,” they can eventually incorporate other areas such as “cat furniture” and “cat food,” making their niche website just one aspect of their broader business plan.
