When I became an affiliate marketer I had a marketing background and I thought I knew a lot about marketing. I had no idea what a good affiliate marketer had to know.
An affiliate marketing for dummies guide will teach you how to make ad campaigns that convert. The guide will teach you how to create sales funnels that lead to your affiliate offers. With an affiliate marketing guide for dummies, anyone can learn how to make money online.
Affiliate marketing is growing because more and more people are shopping from home. Amazon has made 5.2 billion dollars in 2020, and the year is not over yet. The pandemic hit and Amazon has made double what they made the year before. Source
Online shopping is recession-proof and while millions of brick-and-mortar stores close their doors you can start a business from your home and make a lot of money.
Affiliate marketing has been growing at a fast rate but now it’s exploding. You do not have to make 5.2 billion dollars like Amazon did but a tiny portion of this income would completely change your life.
We are going to break down affiliate marketing for anyone who is interested in making money online with affiliate marketing.
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Further down we will review the following topics (click on the link to skip down):
- What is affiliate marketing?
- How to get approved for affiliate programs?
- What affiliate programs should you apply for?
- What affiliate offers should you promote?
- What type of affiliate offers payout the most?
- How to become an affiliate marketer?
- How to make money with affiliate marketing?
- Is affiliate marketing passive income?
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when you promote products for other companies and you get a commission for each sale that you do. You essentially are a freelance salesperson for the product. You have to be approved and given an affiliate link and then you will be able to promote the link.
This is a good business model because you are not committed to a product. You do not have to spend a lot of time promoting an affiliate offer.
It is similar to recommending a product that you like to a friend. Except with affiliate marketing you are getting paid for the recommendation if the person buys.
This works just the same if someone was to ask you what stocks do you like. If you tell them that you like Apple stock, you just promoted Apple stock to this person.
You gave this recommendation because you have made money from this stock and or you expect the stock to do well in the future.
When you tell someone about a product that you like you are promoting it. If you get a commission if that person goes and buys apple stock, you now are an affiliate marketer.
Typically your friends and family will ask you your opinion on products that you have more knowledge about than they may have.
This is exactly how affiliate marketing works. You will have knowledge of a subject that the average person may not have and you can become a source of information.
For example, if you are into golf and if you have a friend that wants to get into golf, they will ask you what clubs do you recommend for a beginner.
You then tell them what golf clubs you recommend and they can make a decision from the different clubs you recommend.
Once they click on your link and buy you get a commission.
That is what affiliate marketing is.
You are essentially a salesperson for items on the internet.
The advantage you have is that being an affiliate marketer gives you the ability to promote any product in any location in the world you want.
Affiliate marketing is not easy and does take skill. Take a look at a few skills that you will need to learn.
How to get approved for affiliate programs?
To get approved for affiliate programs you will most likely have a website. A website that is in the same niche as the affiliate network is in will increase your chances of getting approved. The more traffic you have on your website the higher your chances are of being approved by the affiliate network.
Every affiliate network has its own guild lines when it comes to approving affiliates.
Some are stricter than others. Amazon’s affiliate program is easy to be approved for.
You may come across another affiliate network that may not approve of you. This more than likely is because the traffic to your website is low.
There are some affiliate networks that will approve you with no website but most will require a website.
I have seen that if you apply to an offer that is in a different vertical than what your website is in that you will not be approved. This can be frustrating when you want to test out a new vertical.
Also if your traffic is low they will also decline your application.
The best thing to do is to get free traffic over to your website. Make sure that your website is in one vertical and that it is in a topic that you have knowledge of and enjoy.
This will take a lot of time and effort and you actually enjoying the subject will help you get through the long journey to success.
Affiliate marketing is not easy and is definitely not a get rich quick solution to your financial issues.
You need to find what is your favorite vertical and focus on that. Once you have a website that has some traffic you will be approved for any affiliate offers that are in your vertical.
Another solution to being accepted to affiliate networks or programs is to pay for traffic.
When you buy traffic you do not have to wait for your website to build up traffic. It takes new websites months or maybe even years before it has enough authority in the vertical that Google will rank it on page one.
There are different traffic sources when it comes to buying traffic.
For an in-depth view of the best traffic sources for affiliate offers click here. In this post, I review the best and easiest traffic sources for any new affiliate marketer.
What affiliate programs should you apply for?
When applying to an affiliate program you should choose programs that have offers for products that are in the vertical that you are working in. Any affiliate network that is trustworthy will have you fill out a form for tax purposes. To warning sign to look out for is an affiliate program that does not require this form to be filled out before sending you your commission check.
Affiliate marketing has a bad rap for people being ripped off. This unfortunately can be true if you are not careful.
If the deal is too good to be true then it probably is.
Find a good reputable affiliate program to deal with. You do not want to invest your time and effort into an offer that will never pay you your commissions.
You can find a list of affiliate offers/programs by clicking here.
However, when starting out I recommend Clickbank.
Clickbank is the easiest affiliate program that you can join. They are easy to be approved by and they have many offers in different verticals.
They also have good offers that have high payouts.
Clickbank has many offers that are software programs and these types of offers tend to have a higher payout.
The most expensive affiliate offer that I promote is John Crestani’s affiliate course. This offer has a payout of $500-$600.
Click here to discover these types of affiliate offers.
For more information about Clickbank click here.
They have a larger selection of affiliate offers that can make you begin your journey to financial independence.
What affiliate offers should you promote?
Affiliate offers that are for products that you own and are intimately familiar with will be the best type of offer that you should promote as an affiliate marketer. This is because when you are recommending the product to someone else you will be able to explain every benefit possible to the person.
If you do not know about all the benefits of a specific product as you will not be able to convince someone that the product is worth the investment.
Your chances of convincing this person that they should buy this product greatly increases when you are able to describe to the person every possible benefit and feature.
When you have a first-hand view of how the product works and why it is a good product to have you will be able to explain these details to the audience. This will increase your conversions by a lot.
For example, I do not know anything about lipstick. If I were to choose to offer an affiliate offer for a lipstick my ad copy would be very generic and I would not know how to capture the person’s attention.
If this lipstick offer was to be done by someone who knows a lot about lipstick they will be able to create good ad copy and creatives that will capture the viewer’s attention.
They may possibly say that the lipstick lasts 4x longer than the competition and it will make your lips look fuller.
I do not know much about lipstick to even give good examples of the ad copy but you get the point.
I know about video games and when it comes to MMORPG type of games I know these types of games very well because when I was younger I spent years playing them.
I have run ad campaigns for new MMORPG games and they were successful because I knew exactly what to say in my ad copy to convert.
The affiliate offer was for a software download. I would get paid for every download of the game I got through my affiliate link.
The payout was about $5 per download. They did not have to buy the game, all they had to do was download the game and play the free trial game.
My ad title was:
“Tired of Raiding and grinding for gear just to have it become obsolete in a few weeks?”
My ad description was:
“Be the first to get epic drops on this rewarding new MMORPG that will change the genre, discover a new adventure today”
This worked well because the ad copy targets a pion point that MMORPG players all have after playing a game for a long time. The game gets to be repetitive and boring, and people are looking for a new experience.
In these types of games, people are addicted to collecting virtual gear, and the ad copy target that.
If you have never played this type of game then you would not be able to write something that connects with the perfect person.
This goes for every type of offer that you will find. When you know the product, you will be able to connect with the viewer and capture their attention for the conversion.
Attention is everything, get their attention, and lead them to your sales funnel for the conversion.
What type of affiliate offers payout the most?
Affiliate offers that are for non-physical products have the highest payouts. This is because there is no shipping involved and there is no production cost. Software and or digital courses are the type of affiliate offers that have the highest payouts.
Clickbank has many different types of digital offers for you to choose from. They may be challenging to start your affiliate business in but they have nice payouts.
I would recommend starting with CPA offers for sweepstake types of offers but these payouts are anywhere from $1-$10.
The payouts a low but typically are a lot easier to get the conversion.
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