I decided to do an article on affiliate marketing tips for beginners because when I started out with affiliate marketing, I made tons of mistakes and it wasn’t until I started training just how to go about doing affiliate marketing that I learned what worked and what didn’t.
Mostly everything that I have learned about affiliate marketing and building websites I have learned through this company.
I have been learning and earning with them for the last five years, and I think it is the most comprehensive platform online for anybody who wants to build an online business.
Affiliate Marketing Tips For Beginners
If you are not sure what affiliate marketing actually is, it is a marketing arrangement by which an online retailer pays commission to an external website for traffic or sales generated from its referrals.
In other words, you recommend products and if your customer buys, you get a commission.
So let’s look at a few dos and don’ts for beginners.
When you first start affiliate marketing, your goal seems to be just to make money. So if you go in every direction trying anything and everything that’s recommended with no real clue about the mistakes you are making that could affect your chances for long-term success.
You Focus On Selling Rather Than Helping
As an affiliate marketer, your job is ultimately to sell. The sale takes place on the sales page after your reader has clicked on the affiliate link that appears on your page.
So it is actually not your job to sell the product as the sales page is there to do that. You should instead be teaching the reader why they need a product or helping them with questions they may have in relation to the product.
People generally love to hear what other people have to say about a product, and this helps them decide whether or not to buy a product.
This is why reviews on Amazon are so powerful. These reviews are created by people and those giving the feedback have nothing to gain from what they say about a product. This helps consumers make choices about products that they are thinking about buying.
If you give an unbiased review about a product rather than playing the high-pressure sales card you will find that your sales increase because people will begin to trust the advice you give on products and they will be much more willing to make a purchase of a product you recommend.
Do You Test The Products You Are Trying To Sell?
When you choose to promote a product as an affiliate you should be putting yourself in the shoes of your potential customer. You need to test a product and learn whether what the vendor says about the product is true.
Nothing will send people away from your site faster than you promoting something as being wonderful and a must-own and then your customer discovering it’s crap and doesn’t do what it promised.
If it was you, how would you feel?
Before you offer any product or sale as an affiliate you need to buy that product test the product and make sure that you really want your name or your company name behind that product. If you sell things like cars, that could be a little difficult, but at least do your due diligence and take one for a test drive so that you can give an honest review.
Watch Where You Put Your Affiliate Links
It’s a good idea to use multiple strategies when you are building up your affiliate income. Don’t place your affiliate links all in the same place. By mixing it up a bit and getting creative, you are going to have a better chance of boosting your affiliate income.
Let’s look at two important places to put your affiliate links that will ensure you the most success:
If you own a website it is a good idea to have a page where you promote your main product. This needs to be a very detailed page listing all the pros and cons, as well as your experiences with the product.
Now, whenever you write an article on your website you should have a link back to that particular page, provided of course it is related to your content. Over time the search engines will recognize that page as important on your site, as there are many links leading to it.
It is a good idea to create a call to action button at the bottom of your article that leads to your main page.
Make sure that this page is one that is connected and related to the brand that you are trying to create.
It’s important to make this process very smooth and create cohesiveness between visiting one site and buying on another in order for the visitor to complete the purchase. Everything must be relevant.
Another great place you can place your affiliate links is on a resource page.
Your resource page can be your top earning affiliate page when done correctly. A resource page is simply a page that lists resources that you recommend, and each resource will have a brief description attached to it. In that list is going to be your link to your affiliate marketing programs.
There is a high likelihood that your visitor will click that link, and buy the product your affiliate link offers. This is a win-win for everyone. You make a commission, your visitor gets a product they want, and your affiliate vendor sells their product. A resource page is easy to create and one of the most valuable tools you’ll ever place on your blog or website.
Find Great Affiliate Programs
There are thousands of excellent products associated with affiliate programs, but that doesn’t mean you should sign up for all of them. Signing up for a handful, five maximum is a good starting point.
When you first decide to make affiliate marketing part of your income it’s easy to be too zealous and grab too many affiliate links. It is much better to start small set up your funnel for these products first and then add more as you get better at understanding how affiliate marketing works.
Taking on too many products will mean you won’t be able to market any of them effectively and you will feel overwhelmed before you even start.
Don’t Waste Your Time With Low Converting Products
There are millions of products that have an affiliate program associated with them. Just because there is an affiliate program for a product doesn’t mean you should be the one promoting it. Conversion rates are very important in choosing which products to promote because if you promote products that have a low conversion rate you aren’t going to make a lot of money.
Seek out products that match your niche, that you have tried and liked, and that pay a decent commission along with having a good conversion rate.
In the beginning, you need to spend time going through the many affiliate programs that might match your needs and doing the research to determine which are the right choice for your website or blog. Don’t be too hasty, because the time you spend now will be rewarded with a better income stream in the future.
Have Realistic Expectations
Even though there are tons of people that are making impressive incomes every year thanks to affiliate marketing, what most new affiliate marketers don’t realize is that in the beginning, it’s going to take you a lot of time and effort before you see any returns.
There is also a learning curve, just like learning to do anything, and you’ll be building your level of expertise over time. Once you master the art of affiliate marketing, and this could take a few years, will you be able to enjoy the level of income that these other people are enjoying? They didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to be an affiliate marketer and make $1 million the next day. The successful ones worked hard, learned hard, and became who they are today.
Make Sure To Do A Good Job Of Describing The Product You Are Promoting
Putting up a banner ad on your website won’t cut it as you aren’t telling your visitor anything about the product. So they will more than likely ignore the banner.
When you actively promote a product, it shows your visitor that you have not only used the product but that you actually know something about it. This builds confidence with your audience, and thus makes them more likely to click on the link.
Sharing your experience with the product will also help your visitor to understand better what you are offering. When you believe in the product that you are selling, you are far more likely to have success selling that product. The more information that you provide, the more likely the visitor is to click the link and make a purchase.
Don’t Promote More Than Two Of The Same Type Of Products
If you promote too many of the same types of products, your visitor will have a tough time believing that you think all of these products are wonderful, especially when they are all similar. The more products you are promoting the less believable you become. If today you are recommending product B, and tomorrow you are recommending product C, then a week from now you are recommending product D, and all of these products are very similar, your visitor is going to have trouble trusting in you that all of these products are so wonderful.
The more products you are promoting, the harder it is for you to choose between them as to which you will promote. When you stick with the same couple of products, over time your visitors begin to realize that there is something special about these products since you keep recommending them and using them. That’s the way to create customer loyalty!
Track Your Results
Not tracking results is a big mistake that many new affiliate marketers make and one of the key affiliate marketing tips for beginners that I am going to give you. If you go about promoting the product that you are choosing to market but fail to create a unique tracking affiliate link that’s either provided to you by the affiliate program or that you need to create yourself.
Why is this so important?
Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, it is this unique identifier that insurers are you are paid your commission by the affiliate because it’s what distinguishes you from another affiliate.
The second reason is that without this unique tracking affiliate link you have no idea when you’ve made a sale, where the sale came from, the time and day of the sale, the amount of the sale, etc. – you have no conversion information available to you relating to this product, without the unique tracking link.
This information also allows you to know which pages are converting well, so that you make the right choice about which campaign to continue to run, which links to continue to use, which campaigns to drop or change, and even which pages to continue to promote on.
Amazon is one affiliate vendor that makes creating a unique tracking ID very easy. You just log into your affiliate account at Amazon go to the dashboard, account settings, and at the top on the right, you’ll see manage tracking IDs, which you click. From there you can make a new tracking ID, which will allow you to track your affiliate campaigns so you know what has sold. Amazon help offers a great deal of information on how to make the most of Amazon tracking IDs.
All affiliates either assign a unique identifier or allow you to create your own unique identifier. Yes, earning a commission is great, but if you do not know where or how you earned that commission, you are unable to replicate that sale repeatedly.
You want to be a successful marketer, and you want to grow your campaigns and your income stream, and tracking is a key component to your continued success.
Steps To Becoming An Affiliate Marketer
Here are the steps to becoming an affiliate marketer in a nutshell as part of this article about affiliate marketing tips for beginners:
Step 1:
Do your research. Find a great niche and something that you enjoy or know a lot about.
There are plenty of different affiliate programs online and you want to find one that fits with your brand, has a good conversion rate, and a decent commission.
Experts agree that a five percent conversion rate is reasonable. Translated, this means for every 100 people that your link sends to the merchant’s site, 5 people will buy.
Step 2:
Once you have decided on the affiliate program that is right for you, you need to join the affiliate program. In some cases, you will need to wait to be accepted.
Step 3:
Now it is time to begin to promote the affiliate program on your website or blog. Many merchants will have tutorials and plenty of information on how to get the most out of your links.
Please note that having your own website is one of the top affiliate marketing tips for beginners. Without a website, you will never gain any traction.
Step 4:
Make sure that your site’s content is relevant and valuable to your visitors. If you create a sales page that offers nothing more than a promotion for the affiliate product, you will be sadly disappointed.
Step 5:
Drive targeted traffic to your site or blog.
If you want to earn commissions, you need to drive traffic to your site, and that traffic needs to be targeted. The more traffic that your website gets the greater the likelihood that you are going to generate sales. There are a number of ways that you can get traffic to your site.
Article Marketing: Write an article on a topic that is related to your affiliate product and then include a link to your site in the article’s resource box. Submit the article to credible article directories. This is a strategy that worked a lot better a few years ago, and I wouldn’t put too much time into this strategy in 2021. Content Marketing is much more effective in this day and age.
Pay-per-click (PPC) Advertising: PPC advertising programs can generate a lot of traffic. The two most effective and popular PPC advertising programs are Yahoo Search Marketing and Google Adwords. I suggest you get some training on how to use these types of platforms first, or you could lose more than you make.
Post Messages to a Forum: You can post messages on related community forums and then place a link to your site in the signature line of the message.
Use Social Media: Don’t hesitate to use social media. Post links to your articles there as often as you as this is a great long-term strategy to get yourself noticed by the search engines, as well as your followers.
Post videos: Create videos that are related to your product. This is the quickest and most effective way to create trust with your visitors. You can then provide an affiliate link under the video to the product.
Affiliate marketing is a bit like losing weight – it’s simple but it’s not easy. To be successful with affiliate marketing requires an incredible amount of work – that’s the truth.
Affiliate marketing offers an exciting future for those who want to invest the time and energy to be successful. Think about it having an ongoing income stream allows you the flexibility to create the lifestyle you’ve always wanted. So what are you waiting for?
Go Grab The Best Affiliate Marketing Tips For Beginners.
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