In this article, I am going to show you how it is possible to build a sustainable affiliate marketing business for yourself and how to do affiliate marketing on a blog.
Now more than ever is the best time to do this sort of marketing and earn an income for yourself that can give you the freedom to do what you want to do in life.
The Early Days Of Affiliate Marketing
In the early days of the internet, selling online was very basic. You could compare it to riding a bike instead of flying a plane.
The Internet was brand new and novel and people had never seen anything like it. It was a lot easier to capture people’s attention, as just about anything that was put up would draw their attention.
If you set up a website with some flashing graphics and maybe some music playing, you would probably attract lots of visitors who thought that your website was the best thing since sliced ham.
But the one thing that we forget is that selling on the internet was slow to mature, as very few people would buy online as they were afraid of scams and especially of giving out their credit card information.
Nowadays, people are more than willing to whip out a credit card and buy something online. Or use PayPal, or use a debit card, or even pay in other ways.
Although that is not a problem anymore, the next problem is that now internet shoppers and buyers have become much more sophisticated.
No more are they impressed by flashing graphics and way out websites. People are looking for substance now, and they are in a rush to find the right product.
- They want to be able to find exactly what they’re shopping for, without having to spend much time looking.
- They want to comparison shop with a few mouse clicks.
- They want the entire process to be convenient.
- They usually want to find bargains.
- Safety is a given for them—they simply assume online buying is safe.
So internet marketers have had to grow with their customers if they wanted to stay in the game.
The most obvious change is that the largest retailers on the Internet today are focusing like a laser beam on customized product searches, because that’s what gets the attention of their savvier prospects.
Amazon
You don’t have to look much further than the Internet’s number one retailer – Amazon.
If you look at Amazon’s home page, you’ll see obvious evidence of what I’m talking about.
There is a huge amount of products to choose from on Amazon, but the filtering process is so specific that the customer can find exactly what he is looking for in a few minutes.
This priceless marketing intelligence that is built into the Amazon platform attracts people who want to shop and then allows those prospects to tell Amazon what they want to buy.
This is an internet retail revolution in itself and this also represents an unprecedented opportunity for you to cash in.
Amazon has an affiliate program that one can sign up to to promote their products. If you are unsure what affiliate marketing is, then read this.
If you promote one of Amazon’s products and somebody buys through your link, you get a commission of the sale.
Most people trying affiliate marketing tend to sell mostly digital products, and usually, the commissions are higher with digital products.
However, don’t completely overlook the retail products opportunity.
There is nothing wrong with promoting digital products from ClickBank or elsewhere, as many people love these and nice incomes can be made from promoting downloadable products like ebooks and software.
Retail marketing, although I earn less commission, I actually make a lot more, as I get a lot more sales.
You have probably shopped at Amazon, but never actually thought about promoting products to other Amazon shoppers.
Let’s look at what you are missing…..
Amazon is the world’s largest internet retailer and it is definitely HUGE. They sold over $34.2 billion worth of products last year alone.
Affiliate Marketing Has Gotten Personalized
Any affiliate marketer who does not understand the above statement is doomed.
Personalization is the next big internet retail wave. You either ride that wave or you drown, it’s as simple as that.
If you can figure out how to ride the wave, you’ll be shocked at how much retail affiliate income you can rack up pretty quickly.
Now, it’s obvious that you won’t make $34 billion in a year by promoting Amazon products.
But the point is, the money to be made is so huge that there’s plenty of room for you to take even a tiny sliver of that pie and still make out like a bandit.
We’re talking about serious affiliate commission checks.
But promoting products at some of the largest retail web sites makes all of that seem like a drop in the bucket.
The markets are so much larger.
The shoppers are so much hungrier to buy.
The seasonal shopping spikes can be so much bigger.
It’s such a fantastic opportunity that your eyeballs ought to be bulging out of your head just thinking about it.
And it doesn’t matter too much what product or product category you want to promote. You can make affiliate earnings all over the place.
Consider just one market, the market for computers and electronics.
This is where people are looking for iPhone accessories, video game consoles, cell phones, laptops and other products like that…
That one market category alone accounts for…
$26,475,151,006
And that was in just one year.
The income potential from sales of that magnitude is shocking. You can dive right in as an affiliate and cash in.
But here’s the sad truth. As massive as the income potential is, and as big of an opportunity it represents for affiliates, even the ones just getting started…most affiliates will never be able to own a share of the billions people spend at retail web sites every year.
The reason is simple…they’re simply doing it WRONG.
Most people who try to promote any product as an affiliate use online ads to do it, at least some of the time if not most of the time.
This is not a bad approach, but if you place ads online, you have to continuously pay for them.
Wouldn’t you prefer customers to come looking for you and see what you have to offer? Well, this is why it is essential in this day and age to have your own blog or website.
How To Do Affiliate Marketing On A Blog Or Website
Nowadays if you want to know how to do affiliate marketing on a blog, you must know that it is no longer good enough just to slap a site up in any old niche, even if it looks pretty, and expect today’s sophisticated shoppers to click on your affiliate links.
Unfortunately, the days of ‘build it and they will come’ are over.
Instead, you have to:
- Attract the right kinds of prospects, specifically the people who want to shop interactively.
- Give them the information that they want, which means information that they are searching for answers for. (this is where keyword research comes in)
You need to know how to set up an SEO optimized website that will draw traffic from all over the world, and to do this you will need to get yourself some training.
Here are the steps to take if you want to know how to do affiliate marketing on a blog:
- Choose a niche topic (preferably something you know something about and enjoy).
- Do some market research to find out if people are actually looking for information about your chosen niche.
- Build a WordPress Website.
- Do keyword research and then write good content centered around the keywords that have high searches and low competition.
- Find good products to sell at Amazon or any other retailer of your choice.
- Write reviews and helpful advice on the products in question and then use the affiliate links that are provided to you by the merchant to direct customers to the place that they need to purchase the mentioned product.
- Keep expanding your blog by writing more engaging content. The more content you have on your blog the more visitors you are going to get in time, especially if each post is keyword optimized.
This is not rocket science, and if you know how, the process is pretty simple.
If you want to get the best training available today on how to do affiliate marketing on a blog, then you can read about the platform I use by clicking here.
You will be able to set up your blog in less than five minutes using their hosting. You will be trained how to go about filling your website with content and best of all you can stay a free member as long as you like.
So for anyone who wants to know how to do affiliate marketing on a blog, I strongly recommend you read this article or click on the banner below.
Please feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.
Hi Michel,
Great article Michel.
I totally agree with everything you are saying. I was into affiliate marketing like 10 years ago,
and I just built a nice landing page with some keyword injections all over it and it was enough.
Today the people and the search engines also will not like that at all, it got so much more sophisticated, I am trying again with affiliate marketing and it’s so much harder, but I think it is all for the better, people getting more value and getting exactly what they need when they search for something online.
Thanks for the content I really liked reading your article.
Best Regards,
Alex.
It’s great that things have evolved, but just think how rich we would have all been if we got in at the beginning.
You’re right in what you say about just how much affiliate marketing has matured in relation to how the internet itself has evolved. I remember well in the ‘old days’ of the early 2000s how the look of a website could be a key factor in making a sale. Not so now. I shop online a lot, not just from Amazon, and I like to research before I buy.
I prefer to read a proper review of a product or service before I buy it and the best way to do this is on a blog post specific to that product or service like you say. If the information is well presented, it creates trust far more so than a simple sales page on a retailers website does.
Affiliate marketing has opened up a huge opportunity for ordinary people to do this from their own home. I wonder how many people who shop online actually realize that they are probably buying from an affiliate, rather than direct from a manufacturer or an online shop and that the affiliate will be rewarded with a commission? And how they could be doing it too? If they love the product they’re buying, I wonder if they know they could also profit from it by selling it simply by writing a blog post about it in a way that shows not only their true life experience of the product but also a degree of passion for it too?
It’s also obvious, though, that many of those who are doing it aren’t doing it properly and that’s simply because they don’t have the training to do it properly. Good quality training and support is out there at an easily affordable price too. Like you, I’m a member of Wealthy Affiliate and I can certainly vouch for the quality of the training and support you get. I’ve been involved with a few programmes over the years, and it’s by far the best.