Earning On the Side With Affiliate Marketing

These days there are all sorts of ways to make money online. One of the best ways to make money by blogging or posting videos is through affiliate marketing. In fact, one influencer made $7 million in retail sales in just a year.

But, before you can climb the ranks as a top-notch affiliate marketer, you’ll need to understand the fundamentals of this type of marketing.

Here are the 5 things you’ll want to know before joining an affiliate program.

1. Find a Niche Market

Today there’s an endless amount of people looking to become affiliate marketers. So, in order for your name to stand out in the crowd, you’ll need to find a niche market that’s in demand.

Look at a niche as a small market that’s able to solve a problem for a certain subset of people.

But, the niche you choose should be something you can relate to. You don’t want to promote a product that you’ve never tried. The key to being a successful affiliate marketer is to believe in the product that you’re advertising.

Being honest about the products you’re promoting builds your reputation as someone who is credible, reliable, and trustworthy.

Take the time to find the right niche market. Look around at what pain points you’re experiencing in your day-to-day life and find ways to turn them into profit.

2. Research

After you’ve decided on your niche, you’ll, of course, need to find products that you can promote so that you can make money. You can choose to advertise physical products that are sold on Amazon or other popular e-commerce stores. You can also promote digital products like e-Books.

Once you have a few products in mind, you’ll need to take things a little further to figure out what keywords make sense for your website content as well as for directing users to the product you’re promoting.

You can use all sorts of tools for finding top keywords including Google Trends, Google AdWords, Moz Keyword Explorer, and Wordtracker.

With the right keywords, you can start to create content that includes those keywords. This will bring visitors to your website in hopes of making a sale.

3. Create a Website

Once you’ve determined your niche and done some research, the next step is to create your online presence. The best platform to use for content management is WordPress.

Not only is the platform extremely easy and intuitive to use, but it also offers all sorts of features through plugins.

In fact, you’ll find that there are all sorts of WordPress plugins for affiliate marketing that can make the startup process even easier.

With a website in tow, you’ve made a huge step towards starting your venture with affiliate marketing. The next step is to get traffic.

4. Drive Traffic

Building a website without using traffic-driving techniques is like building a home but never living in it.

Once you have your website set up with a nice design and all of the bells and whistles you think website visitors will enjoy, you’ll have to put a heavy emphasis on driving traffic to your website.

There are all sorts of ways to do this, but the simplest and most effective thing you can do is to create website content.

Aside from creating blogs and informational videos, you’ll also want to create social media pages. This gives you access to thousands if not millions of potential customers. The more buzz and interest you can build around your content, the more likely you are to land a sale.

When creating content, always be honest. Consumers want to know that they can trust your recommendation and that you aren’t looking at them just to make money.

5. Make Sales & Changes

Once you’ve completed the steps above, you can start making sales. As sales start to roll in, you’ll want to take time to look over any metrics that you’re collecting such as time on page, number of email opt-ins, and so on.

By analyzing these metrics, you can pinpoint any issues with your current campaign and find ways to drive more traffic or to encourage more people to sign up for your emails.

Conclusion

With the fundamentals of affiliate marketing under your belt, you can start your quest to becoming a money-making affiliate. Here’s to turning the Internet into your own marketplace!