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Some make affiliate marketing out to be this big scary thing that you can’t possibly be successful at while others make it sound like all you need to do is show up, add a link and you’ll make millions. Somewhere in the middle is the truth about affiliate marketing.
For those who are not really familiar with affiliate marketing. This is a way to generate income while selling the product of someone else. While there are a number of things you can do to make sure that you are successful, here are some important affiliate marketing tips that you should know about.
Done right you can definitely generate an excellent income through affiliate marketing and the beauty is you don’t tie up any of your own money on stocking products.
1. Choose Good Products
There are millions of products on the market for sale and a good majority run affiliate programs so take the time to find a good affiliate product. When researching products, you want to look for good reviews and a company that has been around for a while so that you have a chance to be able to continue to promote the product with confidence for a long time.
Find a product that you believe in, you need to be confident in the product if you plan to sell it to other people. Do you believe the product you are selling is worthy of promotion, that it is something that others should know about and use? If you answered yes then it’s a product worth selling.
2. Do Not Sell the Product Directly
Don’t sell the product directly like it’s yours. Rather promote the product based on your experiences. For example, rather than selling the product directly, talk about it in terms of ‘My experience,’ ‘I used and liked,’ ‘This product helped me…’ You get the idea. By attacking the product in this manner, you help to build trust with your visitors who see you as being helpful rather than someone selling something. The pressure disappears and the visitors are far more likely to make a purchase.
Honest affiliate marketing is a great way to make a solid income. Internet users are tired of being fed lies and being offered products that are inferior or useless.
Visitors are demanding more! By offering an affiliate marketing product that is of great quality and usable you significantly increase the likelihood of selling your product(s).
Affiliate marketing is a great way to enjoy an income stream. Done right, it can offer you a significant income supplement. Done wrong it can be a time suck and leave you wondering what happened.
3. Cloak Your Affiliate Links
You want to eliminate those long ugly affiliate links. You can do this with a link cloaker, which will create affiliate links that are short and more pleasant to look at. It will also increase your click through rate.
Let’s look at an example. Here’s an affiliate link for a shareasale.com affiliate program. http://www.shareasale.com/t.cfm?A=223794&U=243855&M=17541&urllink= and samplelink.com/recommending/this-products/ – with the use of a link cloaker it would look something like this http://yourdomain.com/this-product or something similar.
There are several ways and sites to do this, one is Linkly.
4. Write Numerous Reviews
Using written reviews is an excellent working strategy. With your review you will talk about the product on a page. One product to one page. You will tell the readers about the product you are reviewing both pros and cons to provide your readers with insight. You might also compare products.
You can get the most out of your reviews by creating a category strictly for reviews. Make sure it’s visible to your visitors. Use a rating plugin to rate the products you review. The stars indicate the quality of the product. The more visible your reviews the more likely your sales are to increase.
5. Promote Only Products That Can Make You Money
There’s an endless array of products on the market that you could review, but stick to those that can actually make you a decent commission and forget those that don’t pay well. This doesn’t mean to avoid the low ticket items. A $10 item might have a 20% commission and a $100 item might have a 10% commission. It’s easier to sell cheap products. But what it does mean is you should avoid the $10 item that pays $1 commission or the $100 item that pays you a couple dollars.
Choose your affiliate products wisely. Your goal is to build a profitable income stream. Keep that in mind. You can also test products to see how well they do in the marketplace. Sometimes those products you think will do well, don’t actually do well but you won’t know this unless you test. So test, test, test and test some more.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to add an income stream to your bottom line. Not every person who chooses to become an affiliate does well, so the more you learn the more likely you are to be successful. This next tip is probably one of the most important tips of all to create and keep your affiliate marketing income.
6. Email Marketing
You may not yet be aware of this but the real key to making an affiliate income and continuing to make money is in your email list. Your email marketing list should always be growing.
The best way to do this is to have an opt in form on your site or blog. If you are not ready to have a blog or a full on website, you can make landing pages. I have two different ways that I make landing pages Flodesk and Systeme.io. Both of these are low to no cost to start our with.
I use Flodesk to create a simple landing page to capture emails for my list. Flodesk is very easy to use and has many pre-made landing pages, which makes it very easy to get up and running.
When I am looking to do something with more details and possibly a checkout page, to purchase one of my digital products I use Systeme.io. Systeme.io is another user friendly site to build landing pages, build email lists and even have a way for others to purchase directly from you.
I won’t lie, email list building is something that has held me back for a long time, it can be intimidating. But it is necessary to build and continue to have a thriving affiliate marketing business. Systeme.io and Flodesk are so easy to use that there really is no reason to have the intimidation of getting started with email marketing.
The goal with email marketing is that you want to have people to sign up to be on your list. By offering them a free e-book, a webinar, a monthly newsletter, etc. making them want to give you their e-mail addresses.
As you grow your list you will have more potential customers at your fingertips and these customers are already targeted.
Don’t however make the mistake of overwhelming your subscribers with products that you are selling.
You need to minimize the selling, build trust, and offer value. Giving your subscribers more value will make your buyers more likely to check out the products you offer.
7. Build a Tools Page
This is a special page that you build where you list all of the tools you use. In other words, all the products or services you sell. This makes it easy for your customers and visitors to quickly see at a glance what you have available but without it appearing to be a shopping page. You’ll list the item with a link and then a brief review about what it does. For a reference you can check out my Tools Page on my blog.
8. Add a bonus
If you really want to draw your potential customers in, offer them your affiliate item and then offer them something special from you after they complete the purchase. It might be a discount, a free e-book, or money off their next purchase.
Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Many affiliate products have a nice commission payout so that gives you plenty of wiggle room to come up with something that will please your customer and work for you.
9. Take advantage of banners
Make use of banners on your website or blog. Place them in the footer, above the header, in the sidebar, or in your content. Affiliate products almost always have at least a couple of banner ads you can choose from to promote the product. Banners get the highest click through rate of all ads, so keep this in mind.
10. Choose Only a Few Products
With the thousands of products on a market it can be hard to choose products and one of the most common mistakes is to decide to sell too many products. Too many products can become difficult to manage down the road and it can make your followers tired and overwhelmed.
Instead, choose one or two products that there is currently a market demand for and promote those. Start with these products, in the future as market needs change you can add or remove related products.
Once you have built your following you should stay on target so that you always have targeted traffic that’s interested in what you have to offer and that can translate to a higher conversion rate.
11. Use a Number of Traffic Sources for Promotion
Many affiliate marketers simply put ads on websites. That’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, the more traffic sources you have the more potential customers you can reach.
The better job you do of targeting your audience the better your success will be. Try using Google Ads or Facebook ads to drive traffic to your landing page. Make sure you follow your stats so you know if your ads are successful.
12. Test Your Affiliate Campaign – Measure & Track
You need to know whether your affiliate campaign is actually working. You don’t want to be wasting your time and money. Be ready to tweak your ads as needed.
Most affiliate programs usually provide you with some basic stats but you should use conversion tracking software to get in-depth information. There are different conversion traffic options online. Find the one that most meets your needs.
By running ads that target your product you will do a much better job of targeting your market and that translates to a higher conversion rate.
13. Research Product Demand
If you are going to sell a product through an affiliate program you need to know whether there is a demand for that product. You should determine this before you put effort into selling the product. There are different ways to achieve this.
One is to run a survey on your website or other social media platforms. This can be very effective if you have a large amount of traffic that comes to your site.
Nothing is nicer than having a stream of income that arrives monthly with very little effort on your part. But not all affiliate marketers have this outcome.
I believe that there is the misconception that affiliate marketing is a money maker upfront. The truth is you have to put in time and effort at the beginning to set things up and to get all your tools and systems in place. It also takes time to build an audience.
Stick to it and build on your efforts and you will see results.
Here are some tips on how to have staying power in affiliate marketing.
14. Stay on Top of New Methods & Techniques
Make no mistake, affiliate marketing is highly competitive, so if you are going to play with the ‘big boys’ you need to stay on top of the new methods and techniques. That’s the only way you’ll be able to keep your income stream growing and producing.
15. Make Sure You Treat Your Visitors Right
You want to make sure that you are treating your visitors right when they come to your site. Don’t treat them like they are stupid. They know what affiliate ads look like. If you are endorsing a product that you don’t believe in, your visitors will figure it out and you’ll lose them.
If you run excessive ads you’ll annoy your visitors and they will go elsewhere. Treat your visitors with respect and give them an experience that’s good and makes them want to come back for more.
16. Make Sure You Choose the Best Merchant
You are going to promote a product and so you want to make sure it’s backed by a top-notch merchant that’s honest and reputable. After all, the minute you start promoting their product your reputation is also on the line.
You want your visitors to be happy with the product and to come back to buy other related items from your site. When you choose the best merchants’ you get the best products and when your customers are satisfied, your business grows.
17. Use Tools to Help You
If you are serious about earning an income stream through affiliate marketing then you want to find the right tools to help you. There are a ton of extremely helpful tools that you should take advantage of, like the Flodesk & Systeme.io.
If you are using WordPress then think about using plugins that help you to manage your affiliate links. Don’t just hope you’ll get the right visitors to your site, make sure it is set up for that to happen.
If you think that visitors will automatically click the link because it’s there, you would be wrong. You need to have a plan in place and the best way to do that is using solid tools.
If you decided to commit and become involved in affiliate marketing to generate a steady income stream, good for you!
I hope these tips and tools will help you to create and continue to have a successful affiliate marketing career.
Remember this is not a get rich quick scheme, affiliate marketing takes time to build, time to improve and time to make passive income. Stick to it!
Want more info on how to start take a look at a Beginners Guide to Affiliate Marketing.