Affiliate Marketing Introduction
What is affiliate marketing?
In the broad sense of the term it’s earning commission for recommending a product or service. Now this can be for anything imaginable these days and when I say that I’m not exaggerating!
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Yes, affiliate marketing is a huge huge business and fortunately for you, one of the easiest to get into.
The idea behind affiliate marketing is that you promote products, through an affiliate network, earning a commission if your audience buys thanks to your marketing efforts via your affiliate link.
The end result is you earn a commission based on a percentage set by the vendor. This percentage solely depends on the amount set by the vendor and can range from 1% to 100%
The ultimate goal is to make money while you sleep and buy time. A phrase once coined by Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income, is the ‘Work hard now and reap the rewards for years to come’.
What does this mean?
Most marketers either started or have a fork of their business in affiliate marketing. It’s simple to setup and can earn a great income.
So, when you hear ‘work hard now’ this simply means build your affiliate income stream now and the benefits will reward you for years to come as long as you drive traffic or ad revenue (which we will get to).
So what is an affiliate?
An affiliate is sometimes also known as the publisher. Affiliates can range from single individuals (more focus on this in this book) to entire companies. Some of these companies you may have heard of such as Go Compare, Compare The Market, Biz Rate etc. These are all comparison sites which turn over millions in revenue per month/year for advertising services created by other companies.
These monster size businesses use one location to promote what is essentially a service provided by another business for a commission. E.g. Let’s say you want insurance and search for a comparison site to get a great deal on your next insurance. When you find the deal you like you are then passed to the insurance company who gave you the best deal.
The recommendation is now complete. You receive the best deal, the insurance company receives your money, the comparison site receives a commission for bringing you the buyer into the insurance company. Simple...
As an individual or small business, the focus on affiliate marketing is practically the same, simply on a smaller scale with more niche focus surrounding your own business or if you are just starting out, your choice of niche to build focus around.
The process of earning an affiliate income is the same. You promote a service or product for a set commission.The product vendor deals with the customer and you earn an income as a commission.
Right now, you may be thinking, this is cool, so how do I get started? There are multiple ways to get started and in the coming chapters we will look at all the elements surrounding affiliate marketing and how you build your affiliate marketing business.
5 Types of Online affiliate marketing and what is right for you?
There are 3 main channels for affiliate marketing and the affiliate (you) will try to market to the consumer on whatever channel works for them. This could be 1 main channel or all 3 channels. These 3 channels can be broken down into subcategories of channels, so realistically there isn’t exactly 3 channels, but subsets of channels. So what are the 3 main channels of affiliate marketing?
1. Websites, blogs and dedicated marketing sites for individual or niche products
2. Social Media sites such as Facebook and Instagram and Youtube. (Some of the biggest affiliate revenue is made here).
3. Search engine ads
So now we have established the channels, let’s break this down into subcategories:
1. Websites, blogs and dedicated marketing sites for individual or niche products a. Websites and blogs allow for email address collection. This brings direct email marketing via affiliate links into play.
2. Social Media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. (Some of the biggest affiliate revenue is made here). a. If you work social media only (social media influence inrs spring to mind) 1 video can be repurposed across multiple platforms. Remember, 1 piece of review content can be split between all social media sites.
3. Search engine ads a. Search engines ads can link back to websites and squeeze pages where you can again build your mailing list and incorporate email marketing offers.
So what is right for you?
Let’s start off with what you are interested in? This really helps when it comes to deciding on what you want to promote.
Here’s a story - I have a friend and she loves being a mom. Starting as a stay at home mom, she decided she wanted to create a revenue stream in affiliate marketing. Page | 6 So, she built a website which advertises mom stuff, things to do with kids and the surrounding area activities. It’s a highly useful and informative site used by local people only. (think geographically small)
Within the info she provides she advertises mom stuff on the side bar of her blog, such as baby clothes, pushchairs, high chairs, travel systems etc and grabs a decent return from the info she is providing by way of an affiliate income.
As we discussed earlier, it depends on the commissions, but 10% of a $600 travel system sold to 4 people is $240 commission and she doesn’t have to deal with admin, questions, distribution or anything... and this is only 1 product from her site. Multiple products sold from her site making only small commissions to large commissions mounts up to a great revenue stream.
However, this is not the end...
She now decides to diversify to social media. She is already alerting people when her site is updated and new info is online via Facebook, but now she can see the potential for growth. Not in her site but in her business as a whole.
So, she creates 3 more channels
1. A Facebook page which discusses mom issues and is used for alerts for her websites and product releases
2. A landing page on her website which provides mom info. She offers a free mom guide and a monthly newsletter in exchange for an email address
3. She starts an ad campaign via Facebook and Instagram for the most successful buys from her websites, based on the most successful commissions. e.g. Travel systems are crushing it, so she creates a Facebook and Instagram ad to promote the travel system via her affiliate link.
So now, she has all channels in play:
1. A websites offering info and affiliate products
2. A squeeze/landing page to gather email addresses to email market to
3. A Facebook page and Instagram chanel to provide info and deals from her pages and feeds
4. An ad campaign to promote products outside her regular traffic circle and beyond What else can she do?
Since she already has a Facebook page, insta pages, she now creates a YouTube channel to repurpose her efforts across all social media sites. Remember when we said 1 video can be repurposed? This is exactly what she did.
So, now she has a YouTube review site affiliated with each product she reviews, linking back to her Facebook page, Instagram page, website and landing page. She is now getting more visitors, more subscribers and earning 10x compared to where she started with her first websites!
This is a true story and a great example of how to start an affiliate marketing business and go from newbie to pro in a short space of time. Plus this isn’t hard to set up if you take it one step at a time.
Give it a try...
Using Leverage to Setup Your Affiliate Marketing Business
You don’t have to go alone in the business. It’s 2021, so it’s not like you have to think of everything! A little investment can go a long way to helping you get your own business off the ground very easily.
Take a look at these services below:
● Fiverr
● Any Task
● Facebook Ads
● BuzzSprout (podcasting services)
● Blue Host (start your own blog for under $10 PM)
● Youtube using (Youtube to setup and find tutorials)
● Wordpress blog (free blog services)
● Optimize press (landing pages and squeeze pages for signups an free offers)
Let’s break each service down to see what they can provide you with?
Fiverr
“Where There's Fiverr, There's A Way. Expert Freelancers For Every Need Are Waiting To Help. Need To Get To That Finish Line? Get There Faster With Talented Freelancers By Your Side.”
So what is Fiverr?
Fiverr is a freelancing service that pretty much covers everything digital for a minimum cost of $5 called gigs.
You can hire people to create a gig for you for pretty much anything, from building websites, to graphics, explainer videos, intro video clips, voice over, talking head reviews. There is literally anything available to buy on this site to help you build your business.
AnyTask
“AnyTask is a fairer freelance marketplace, offering zero seller fees and no reliance on sellers having a bank account. For the very first time, thousands of new freelancers are now selling their digital services with AnyTask, who previously were unable to on other platforms.”
So what is AnyTask?
Any task is a little like Fiverr, but cooler. Freelancers offer similar services, but they are also gearing up for the introduction of digital integration of NFT’s, gaming services and more.
Whatever you need can be found on Anytask.
Freelancer
“We've Got You Covered. From Designers, Developers and Writers to Admins and Accountants”
FreeLancer is a well established do it all freelancing website. You can hire anything from writers to accountants and more. Any job you need doing you can find a professional to do it for you on this site.
BuzzSprout
“The best way to host, promote, and track your podcast. Start your podcast today! The best way to host, promote, and track your podcast. Free for 90-days! Satisfaction Guaranteed. World class support. Connect on any device. Helpful Support. Easy to Use. No contracts.”
Podcasting has been around for a while and the growth rate has been extraordinary. From pop stars, to scientists , you can now listen-in to almost anything you like, wherever you like, whenever you like.
And yes, podcasts can be monetised with affiliate services and sponsors.
Blue Host
“Powering Over 2 Million Websites Worldwide. Bluehost® Gives You The Best Hosting Options. Optimize With Design Freedom, Marketing Tools, Insightful Analytics and Scalable Growth. All-In-One Platform.”
If you require web hosting for your new affiliate marketing biz look no further. They offer a free domain, free SSL Certificate, 1-Click WordPress Install plus 24/7 Support.
Remember, as BlueHost's packages are unlimited (unlimited space on SSD storage, unlimited domains and unlimited bandwidth) you can add as many websites, review sites, squeeze pages and download pages as you like, no need to keep buying more hosting!
This is the one-stop-shop to hosting your entire biz.
YouTube
“YouTube is an online video sharing and social media platform launched by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim in February 2005. Its users watch more than one billion hours of videos each day.”
We all know what YouTube is right? YouTube can provide you with so many opportunities for learning, some people say the need for conventional school could be challenged.
Not only will YouTube serve as a platform for affiliate reviews and making an income from views and ads. YouTube will also serve you as a learning platform, and a free one at that!
Use YouTube to your advantage and pick-up some free affiliate marketing courses, graphics courses, Blogging courses and much much more to help you build your business.
Wordpress
“WordPress is a free and open-source content management system written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database. Features include a plugin architecture and a template system, referred to within WordPress as Themes”
Essentially a blog is a website. That’s it, nothing more than a simple-to-setup website with some very powerful features to make web-mastery very easy and usable
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