Affiliate Marketing Overview

Affiliate Marketing Overview Basics

Affiliate Marketing is where advertisers pay affiliates a commission for promoting products or services. Affiliates are expected to drive traffic to their business or products. Read on for a thorough Affiliate Marketing Overview.

Shared methods are used in both Affiliate and Internet Marketing. Both marketers often use the same type of advertising methods. Examples of those methods would be:

• Content Writing which is organic
• Paid advertising
• Email marketing
• Writing reviews
• Social Media including Video sites

There are three parts to Affiliate Marketing; Advertiser, Publisher and Consumer. As an affiliate, you would be the Publisher. The Advertiser is the one that created or has control of the product or service. The Consumer is the person buying the product or service.

The Basics of Affiliate Marketing

It is best to promote a product or service that you have some knowledge, experience and or even passion about. This would be promoting your “Niche”, which is the topic or genre of what you want to be an expert in.

The process would be to pick and refine a niche. Example, sports can be a niche, but you would need to refine that. Pick a specific sport such as golf, then pick something more specific about golf.

Once you figure out what you want to promote, you’ll need to advertise it. This is where the challenge is, because there are multitudes of ways of advertising. Here is a small list of methods you can use to promote something:

Affiliate Link

A specific URL is supplied by an advertiser or network. If a product or service is purchased through this link, a commission is awarded.

Blog

The most common method is to buy a domain name and create a website. However you can use free website builders in which you can use part of their domain name but that makes finding your blog harder in searches. Forums and guest blogs are another method, but again, this is even harder to find in searches.

How bloggers make money is first by gaining loyal followers and their trust. This builds authority in your niche. Once you start posting affiliate links and small relevant ads on your blog, commissions will start to come in.

Paid Advertising

You can pay companies for an ad spots, where you can write something short along with your affiliate link. This method can get faster results but is also more risky. Your ad has to convince others to click your affiliate link and hopefully buy.

Email Marketing

This method usually requires an “Autoresponder”. You can buy “Solo Ads“, which are services to advertise your ad on their email list. To manage your own Autoresponder, you will need an “Email List”.

List are obtained through capture pages or you can purchase list. Again, you can pay companies that already have list, but these type of services can get expensive. Having an Autoresponder and your own list is the more common and less expensive way of email marketing.

Social Media

An Inexpensive way to promote is through social media such as Facebook or Twitter. Writing small post, advertising products and services is easy, fun and free. Other media’s are Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, Plag and much more. Additionally, utilizing tools like FlexClip video editor can enhance your social media marketing strategies

Amazon and Like Companies

You can join companies like Amazon where they offer an affiliate program. Products are already available and you don’t manage shipping. A consumer purchases an item that you direct them to and you collect a commission. However, for Amazon, the commission rates are 4 to 6%. This means you will have to sell a lot or sell higher priced products.

Traffic

This is the secret ingredient for marketing success. Paid Advertising is one form of getting traffic, even with free social media, you can pay them to boost your post. The Free Traffic method usually works better in the long run, but it takes longer.

If you are not clear on how traffic works, imagine trying to sell hotdogs. Would you sell hotdogs better out on an empty highway or on a busy street corner during lunch hour? It is a matter of learning how to get yourself in front of the right audience.

Branding

In order to be successful, you need to brand yourself as someone others can trust. Companies like eBay and Amazon are highly known and trusted. In order to get reputably branded, you have to offer good value and stay away from spamming. Always “Under-Promise and Over Deliver”.

Does Affiliate Marketing Really Work?

Affiliate Marketing is a real legitimate form of marketing. With any business however, you make as much as you put in. There are people who make $50 to $100 a week with affiliate marketing. However, there are those who are making $1000 to $10000 a week.

These figures are based on what you are promoting, how hard and how much time you put in it. Affiliate newbies more than likely will not see the high figures for some time.

Affiliate Marketing doesn’t require a college degree or a high degree of training. The attributes that make the difference between success or failure is determination and consistency.

What Are You Really Doing?

Basically you are paid through commissions for selling or promoting someone else’s stuff. The process is really basic. You recommend a product or service, then some people purchase the product or service based on your recommendation. Commissions are made from these transactions. It requires belief in what you are doing and not giving up.

Example: Say your passion is golf, you know a lot about the game. You like a certain brand of gloves, enough you stand by them. Now you tell your other golf friends about the gloves. Before you know it, your friends and others are coming to you wanting to know where you can get those gloves.

Now imagine, every time you point someone where to buy that glove, you get a percentage of the sale. The process is the exact same, except you are doing it online and spreading the word to a much larger audience.

How To Get Started

When I first started looking into how to make money online, there was very little out there to help me. I found a lot of scams and misinformation. What information I could find, either overwhelmed me or made me lost all together.

I want to help others get a better start than what I had. By providing  some direction, should help get you up and running faster and easier.

There is a free community that helped me get straightened out on how to make all this work. Not only is the training thorough but having the community to help is priceless. The community consist of people who are newbies and experts. The nice thing about joining is, you would no longer alone.

Finding Help

Check out the WA group and get a broader scope of affiliate marketing overview. The group offers free membership, but you can upgrade to a paid membership. As a free member, you get 2 websites and hosting, as a paid member you get up to 50 websites, more tools and endless support.

Always check back as I will always have other recommendations for training, courses and groups in new post. I highly recommend these training resources listed below:

Wealthy Affiliate

Powerhouse Affiliate

Affilorama

TAO (Taking Action Online)

Solo Build It

Systeme.io

What To Expect Starting Out

You can make money with affiliate marketing, just be patient and consistent. Avoid all the hypes and scams out there. The more involved you become and sign up to networks to promote products, you will start getting on other affiliate’s email list.

Your inbox will start to explode with offers claiming you can start making $10000 in your first week. This is possible, however most unlikely for someone just starting out. These hyped email offers will misdirect you and cause you to lose focus.

The keys to making this or any business venture work are: Focus, Determination, Being Consistent, Believing In Yourself and Not Giving Up.

The beginning will be frustrating as you have to take on a new mindset. Self-discipline will be a challenge. There will be new tools and methods you will have to learn. If you join any of the above-mentioned courses, you will get the proper direction and help.

Things To Watch For

With all the emails you will be getting, claiming high payments in short time frames. The ones that claim you have a limited time to take advantage of their offer. These are most likely scams or unrealistic hype to get your money. Anything real and legitimate will be there for a long time.

Unethical marketers know that people like you are out there. They know there are those trying to figure out how to make a living from home. To them this means you are desperate or really in the need. These degenerates are counting on your desire to just take your money with products that will not work.

NOTE: There may be terms and acronyms that are foreign to you or just not clear. Visit my page, Internet Marketing Acronym Glossary for clarification.

In Conclusion

Always influence people with ethics, treat people as you would want to be treated. This is a business and your goal should be to build a great reputation. Do not treat this type of business as a hobby. What you put in will determine what comes out.

The biggest way to succeed in any business is to offer what people need. This means give them free information to build trust. If they trust you, they will come back and even better, they will buy from you. Care about your customers, it will show and build a brand.

eBay and Amazon are highly trusted, use them as a guide. The support these two businesses offer is the selling point. If you are wronged on their sites, there team will make it right. So think about that when you are starting your business.