So, you may be wondering – how to succeed with affiliate marketing.
Well, I decided to ask some of my affiliate friends to help you with that, and this is the answer many of them gave me on what it takes to be successful with an affiliate marketing business.
There are several ways in which you can succeed with affiliate marketing. One of the best ways to actually succeed with affiliate marketing is to find a marketplace that has a need and fill the needs with genuine, valuable, and high-quality content, and then focus on building an email list.
Affiliate marketing is a value game – your success in affiliate marketing will depend on the amount of effort you put into providing value to the marketplace (your audience, followed, or visitors).
To put it simply – the more people you help, the more money you’re likely to make.
You need to focus on creating consistent, relevant, and HIGH-QUALITY content that helps solve people’s problems or pain points if you want to see any sort of success with affiliate marketing.
Table of Contents
How Can I Succeed In Affiliate Marketing?
- Content Is Always King
- Build An Email List And Harness The Power Of Email Marketing
- Pick Affiliate Products That Solve Real Problems
- Learn Marketing
- Focus On Building Quality Targeted Traffic
- Find An Expert Or Mentor To Learn From
- Build a resource page
- Always Be Honest About Your Recommendations
- Be Transparent about Your Affiliate Relationships
- Make Use Of Tracking Tools
What Is Affiliate Marketing
Upon running some research here is a great definition I found online:
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Source
My definition:
In simple terms, affiliate marketing is when you promote or market someone else’s product (whether an individual or company product or service) and get paid a commission for it.
People with problems need a solution and being an affiliate marketer means connecting a problem with a solution.
- PS: You can learn more here on What Affiliate Marketing Is And How It Actually Works
10 Tips On How To Succeed With Affiliate Marketing
To succeed with affiliate marketing, you need to first build an audience that knows, likes, and trusts you and you do that by providing useful VALUE for people.
I don’t mean spamming people with your affiliate link, I mean providing real value that helps solve problems.
If you get into affiliate marketing simply to make money without helping people.
Well, you’re missing out on steps.
The thing is, online people hate to be sold to and people do business with people they know, like, and trust.
If you start by selling to your readers or viewers right away, they’ll probably stop engaging with you.
And the vast majority of them will not trust you, they’ll think you’re just some kind of scam person who’s trying to make money from them.
So, always try to first provide relevant, valuable, high-quality to your target audience to build trust with them before trying to sell to them.
1. Content Is Always King
Online content is always the first thing you should focus on as your number one priority.
I know you already know this but it’s important I mention it again just in case you forget.
You can’t become successful with affiliate marketing, without first doing the work, and online that work is creating solid content that helps solve another individual problem.
Why?
TRUST is one of the most vital or I should important aspects of your affiliate marketing success.
Your audience or ideal customers, need to TRUST that you’re a reliable source before buying what you’re recommending.
And…
One of the quickest ways I find is by adding VALUE to their lives.
So…
Whatever platform you may be growing your business, being a blog, YouTube, Forum, social media, etc.
Your main goal is to be creating fresh, interesting, relevant, and valuable content for your visitors on a daily basis.
PRO TIP:
Make sure your content is search engine optimized (SEO). Optimizing your content for search engines can bring loads and loads of targeted quality traffic to your site, which you can convert into potential buyers over time.
Let’s look at some benefits of content marketing:
But first…
What then is content marketing? Content marketing is a strategic or marketing method used to attract a target audience to an offer by producing useful content in order to convert them into buyers. It’s also used to enhance brand awareness, increase sales, and grow a brand.
Here Are Some Benefits Of Content marketing:
It Helps You Generate Leads
If you provide useful content that helps people in one way or the other, there’s a probability that they would want to leave their email addresses.
Simply to get more helpful information from you.
And this can help you follow up with them and market your product to them through email marketing.
It Helps You Build A Community Of Raven Or Loyal Fans.
Constantly delivering useful information to the marketplace can help you build a trusted community of target customers.
Or attract effective followers, grow your brand, and also entice readers to return to your website.
To Increase Awareness and Fame
Creating genuine and high-quality content on a topic that addresses people’s needs can give you the advantage to become a famous, authority figure, and the go-to person for help.
And this can help you increase awareness in your industry.
2. Build An Email List And Harness The Power Of Email Marketing
To run a successful affiliate marketing business, you need to have an email list. Building an email list is very crucial for your success.
Why?
Well, the thing is…
When you promote a product as an affiliate, it’s not likely that your audience will purchase that offer at their first exposure or I should the first time seeing it.
Even if they get exposure to that product SEVEN TIMES.
The vast majority of them are not going to buy simply because they don’t TRUST you.
So… This is where building TRUST and RELATIONSHIPS with them has to come into play.
And that can only be established or done successfully when you have them on your email list.
So, how can I get my audience to sign up for my email list so I can build TRUST with them? Great question!
You do this simply by giving them something of value for FREE in exchange for their email address.
This freebie can be in the form of:
- A downloadable PDF
- Training course
- Checklist… etc.
Now… This freebie has to be of real value that will help solve a specific problem, pain, or challenge they’re facing.
Okay… Now, that you have them on your list. Don’t stop there.
Follow up with them with helpful, valuable, educational emails using AUTORESPONDER, to further build strong Trust and Relationships with them.
And as you continue adding those valuable content to their lives on a daily basis.
Overtime…
They will begin to Know, Like, and TRUST you.
And even start to see you as an EXPERT, an authority figure in the niche, and a go-to person for help.
And now, this is where they will begin to purchase whatever you recommended to them.
You can even create your own product in the future and sell it to them.
As the saying goes… The money is on the list.
If you’re not building an email list and you’re just sending people to a direct affiliate link.
Guess what?
You’re leaving huge money on the table.
Now, to build an email list… You’re going to need an email service provider.
There are many email software out there that can allow you to build your own email list such as:
- ConvertKit
- LeadPage
- Aweber
- Getresponse… etc.
The above-mentioned are all good email software. But if you want my recommendation – I recommend Getesponse.
Why?
Getresponse is the world’s best email software out there. It is an all-in-one marketing tool, meaning it has both a landing page and an effective autoresponder that allows you to build your email list and sell your products.
It also has amazing features such as webinar hosting, CRM (customer-related management), and many helpful marketing tools.
At the time of writing this post, I still use GetResponse and my experience with them was awesome.
You can get started with Getresponse here.
That being said
I want us to look at a few benefits of email marketing.
Benefits Of Email Marketing
In my opinion, I think Email Marketing is one of the best ways of running an effective long-term affiliate marketing business.
Below are some benefits of email marketing:
Low budget.
Most email services don’t cost that much to get started with and that’s one of the great advantages of email marketing.
High engagement
A customer who subscribes to your blog or list is already interested and has given you permission to send them additional information.
This can help get a higher conversion rate because the user has already given you permission to send them information.
Send targeted emails
You can send emails or promotional emails to a specific type of people who are more likely or willing to buy a product from you.
Successful marketers ensure they are focusing on targeting the right kind of audience who are interested in their business.
Easy to share
With just a push of a button, you can send an email or promote a product to tens of thousands of people who may be interested in your offer.
In my opinion, I think there is no other form of marketing like email marketing that can allow you to share instant messages which can turn subscribers into loyal customers or potential buyers.
It Helps Build Trust And Relationships With An Audience
Email marketing is by far one of the best ways to build trust and relationships with an ideal customer in an intimate way for the long term.
Also… It helps you grow your brand.
When you write valuable emails that educate and teach people, people normally share them with other people, which can help you grow your brand.
- PS. I have another post where I share with you more details on the benefits of email marketing for affiliate marketers. You can check it out here.
3. Pick Affiliate Products That Solve Real Problems
Business is about helping people and if your affiliate product doesn’t help people achieve their desired goals then you don’t have a business.
Now… There are tons of good and bad affiliate products out there on the internet.
So… Before you start promoting one to your audience.
I will advise you to take your time to do thorough RESEARCH before promoting it to your audience.
Select an excellent product that your visitors are in need of.
One that will add value to their lives and they will thank you for recommending it to them.
IMPORTANT: Don’t focus on the commission you’re going to earn and ignore the NEED of your audience.
So, how do I know if an affiliate product is of good quality and it’s going to help my audience?
Well, in my opinion, I strongly believe that the best way to go about that is to first buy the product yourself and use it and if it helps you, then probably is going to help your customers.
However… If the product isn’t good enough for you, then there’s no chance of promoting it to your customers.
But… If you go ahead and do so.
Well, they are going to purchase it for the first time because they don’t know but after using it, they’ll find out.
And guess what? They will not trust YOU and your RECOMMENDATIONS again and that can literally hurt you and your business.
So… To avoid all that focus on promoting only products that you think will help your visitors.
- PS. I have another post Where I share with you how to know if an affiliate product is legit, safe, or not… You can check it out here.
That said, I want us to take a look at some of the benefits of promoting good affiliate products.
Benefit Of Promoting Good Affiliate Products
- It Helps You Build Trust With Your Audience: Promoting good affiliate products that help solve problems and challenges people are facing can help you build the know, like, and trust factor with your audience. Which will result in them buying more products from you in the future.
- To Build Authority: You can become an authority figure and a go-to person in your industry (niche)in the eye of your target audience just by sharing value products that are useful to people.
- It Increases Your Income: People will be willing to buy more and more products from you simply because you promote good products.
4. Learn Marketing
Out of the billions of dollars generated in affiliate marketing every year, that only comes from 3% of affiliates.
Why?
That’s simply because people don’t know how to convert a visitor into a buying customer. Or maybe I should say they fail to learn marketing.
What I see a lot of people (especially beginners) do is that…
They think they can just throw their affiliate links all across social media, and blog posts, write a bunch of product reviews, or place ads every on their site and they’ll automatically start to generate sales or income.
This is incorrect.
Most visitors didn’t come to your website or blog with the intention of buying.
In fact…
They might find those affiliate links and ad banners spammy and bounce back.
So…
Instead, place them in the right place on your site so people can read your CONTENT. Because people’s desire is what drives everything.
PRO TIP:
Write a very good product (s) review, showing both the good and bad sides and what the product can and can not do.
Taking this approach, people will feel more comfortable with you.
Let’s look at the four layers of marketing and types of marketing.
The 4 layers of marketing
- Action – You need to have a plan of action on how you are going to market your affiliate product. Eg set up a social media account or a blog to promote your product.
- Strategy – To get results or I should say to be successful in what you are doing, you need to focus on one marketing strategy until you master it and you’re getting enough attraction using it before moving to another one.
- Tactics – The more eyeballs (traffic) you drive to your website or content the more income you’re likely to make. So you need to learn the tactics for optimizing your website and content for search (SEO).
- Learn – You don’t know everything about marketing, so reach out to other people who are already successful with what you are doing and learn from them.
Now, let’s take a look at the different types of marketing we have.
Different Types Of Marketing
There are various forms of marketing:
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a process of sharing and distributing helpful information in the form of written text, video, images, etc which add value to your readers, followers, or viewers’ lives.
Email Marketing
Some marketers say email marketing is old school, well, in my opinion, I think they don’t understand its power of it. Email marketing is not dead it still remains the #1 way of growing and scaling an online business.
In the internet age, we live in now, day in, and day out people are constantly massaging, so email marketing is still profitable.
A study shows that people spend 6.4 hours each day reading their emails.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that is based on influencing an audience or followers by providing relevant, high-quality content and building a relationship in order to sell a product.
Influencers normally use platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, etc, to promote a product to their audience.
Their followers or fans normally trust their recommendations.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc…
Is also another whole new dimension of interacting with real people one on one and listening to what they’re in need of or want to say, instead of broadcasting to a mass audience.
Social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are all great platforms for marketing your product.
You can join groups related to your niche and start posting helpful articles, and stories, and engage with people more in an intimate way.
5. Focus On Building Quality Targeted Traffic
Traffic in affiliate marketing is extremely important for your success.
The more eyeballs (traffic) you drive to your website or offer, the higher the chances of you getting a click on your affiliate link which might result in big sales.
So…
I don’t want you to focus more on content alone but on traffic as well. This can change the whole course of your business.
Work hard to drive targeted traffic to your site.
6. Find An Expert Or Mentor To Learn From
As an affiliate marketer myself, I think one of the best and easiest ways to succeed with affiliate marketing fast is to learn from other people’s mistakes.
Learning from other people’s mistakes helps you know what action to take and which one not to take.
And this can accelerate your success way quicker than you trying to do everything by yourself.
There are tons and tons of successful and well-established affiliates in the niche you’re in.
Why not learn from them?
Sing up to their email newsletter, blogs, and YouTube channels.
And learn their techniques as much as you can to develop your skillset over time.
Taking this approach, I think will eventually help you boost your affiliate revenue
- PS. I have another post where I share with you some of the best affiliate marketing mentors to follow and learn from… You can check it out here.
7. Build a resources page
In this age of fast-growing digital marketing, one of the best ways to make a visitor or customers easily see all the products, services, or tools you use and recommend is to build a product page.
You need to build a special page where you can list all the items you use and sell.
This can help get visitors to remain on your page and learn more about your business.
IMPORTANT: List all the tools, services, and products you use with a link, and then write a brief sentence reviewing them. What it does and how it’s used.
8. Always Be Honest About Your Recommendation
Your readers are not stupid, they’re smarter than you may think. They know what’s good and what’s not good.
If you take advantage of their visit by promoting a CRAPPY product you don’t believe in or haven’t used before.
Simply because you want to make money from them.
Well, the thing is they’ll notice that and they’ll leave and never come back.
And this can break the TRUST you spend years building with them.
However… This is what I want you to do instead.
Be honest about a product you are promoting. Tell your reader or audience about the product: What it can do and what it cannot do for them.
Don’t lie to them.
Taking this approach is the KEY that will unlock your income.
9. Be Transparent About Your Affiliate Relationships
Disclose your affiliations: Always make sure you state clearly you are an affiliate for the product you are promoting and you will get a commission if they decide to buy through you.
Stating that your readers will appreciate your honesty and would want to contribute to your earnings simply for being honest.
However…
Failure to state that they’ll sense you’re being less honest about your affiliate and just trying to trick them.
And they’ll bypass your link and go directly to the merchant or vendor site and purchase the product from there instead.
This is just something people do, so I’d advise you to be careful with that.
Furthermore…
Stating a full disclaimer is also part of building TRUST with your readers.
Also, it’s a law in the internet marketing world and FAILURE to abide by might get you into serious trouble (you might end up in jail which is not a nice place to be).
10. Make Use Of Tracking Tools
A lot of people set up their affiliate links and forget them. Well, In my opinion, I think that’s the wrong way of going about your affiliate business.
Success requires effective insights as to what’s working and what’s not working.
Making use of tools like ‘Analytics’ is a great tool to help you know how your affiliate links or ads are doing and what changes you should make to get the most out of your business.
- Recommended Reading: 5 Best Affiliate Marketing Tips Beginners
How Long Does It Take To Be Successful With Affiliate Marketing
Becoming successful with affiliate marketing actually takes time.
It will take you at least 6 months to a year or more to start making any decent income with affiliate marketing and probably 2-3 years if you want to make a living off affiliate marketing.
But if you use paid marketing this can happen very quickly.
However, your overall success depends on so many factors like your skillset, the quality of your content, your niche, your general marketing skills, and the product you’re promoting.
Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick business model.
It takes a lot of skills, effort, time, knowledge, and above patience, and money to be successful at
Is It Hard To Be Successful In Affiliate Marketing
Honestly, it is very difficult to make money from affiliate marketing today because the competition level is very HIGH. However, there are some crucial steps you can take to succeed.
The most important step is to invest in a training course or mentor that will walk you step-by-step and make everything clear to you if not you get lost in the competition and overwhelm yourself.
However, if you’re determined and willing to put in the necessary work and effort, you’re already on your way to success.
- Recommended Reading: 12 Effective Affiliate Marketing Strategies
What Percentage Of Affiliates Succeed
The percentage of affiliate marketers that succeed in affiliate marketing is very few. Based on a study only 3% of people end up earning well-decent income every month from their affiliate business.
The reason behind that is that a lot of affiliate marketers (especially beginners) are not willing to persevere through the tough time.
The vast majority of them give up too soon before seeing any sort of success.
And for some, they don’t treat affiliate marketing like a real business. If you treat it like a hobby you’ll get a hobby result.
Furthermore…
A lot of new affiliates approach affiliate marketing as a quick way of making money online and don’t want to put in any effort.
In affiliate marketing, there’s nothing like a get-rich-quick rich quick kind of thing.
It takes real work to become successful with affiliate marketing.
Recommended Reading: Steps To Start A Successful Affiliate Marketing Business.
FAQs
How can I succeed with affiliate marketing?
To be successful in affiliate marketing, you need to make yourself more valuable to the marketplace. If you can provide more value to the marketplace there’s no limit to how much you can earn from affiliate marketing.
That said in order to make yourself valuable to the marketplace, you need to work on yourself.
What do I mean by that?
Well, I mean you need to invest in yourself (invest in knowledge, courses).
Commit to learning all you can about your niche and then immediately share with people what you learn. That’s how you win in affiliate marketing.
Can I Really Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
It’s harder to make money in the affiliate marketing industry today. However, I’ll say yes, but it going to take a lot of work, effort, time, and learning. There is no shortcut. If you don’t spend time and energy building relevant and high-quality on your site and you don’t learn the right way to market a product, you’re not going to make it.
How Much Does A Successful Affiliate Marketer Make?
Speaking of affiliate marketing ‘traffic’ is the most important factor that will determine how much you’ll make. The more traffic you get, the more money you’ll make. However, as I research a beginning affiliate can earn somewhere from $50 – $100 per month, an average affiliate $1,000 – $50,000, and top affiliates $ 75,00 – $100,000 and more per month.
- Recommended Reading: How Much Money Do Affiliates Make
CONCLUSION!
Affiliate marketing is a business model and to succeed at it, it requires dedication, commitment, massive action, and above all patience.
So…
Work hard, commit to learning all that you can, and be patient, success only comes after a year or more of being in the business.
There you have it folks on how to succeed with affiliate marketing. I hope you enjoy it.
