If you want to learn about how to start affiliate marketing, you’ve come to the right place. This article will walk you through the process step-by-step so you can get started right away.
Hi, my name is Johnny. I started affiliate marketing in 2015, after trying for years and making a lot of mistakes. I finally know how to be successful in affiliate marketing, and I’ll share it here.
In this guide, I’ll tell you all that you need to know:
- What is affiliate marketing exactly?
- How much money can you make as an affiliate marketer?
- What is the process of affiliate marketing?
- Where can you get affiliate links?
- Affiliate terminology you should be familiar with before getting started
- How do you get started with affiliate marketing in six simple steps?
Then let’s get started.
What Exactly Is Affiliate Marketing?
As an affiliate marketer, you don’t need to have a product to make money. Instead, you promote other people’s products and make money by sending people to them.
You can do this by adding tracking links or affiliate links to your website or other media.
When someone clicks on one of your affiliate links and buys something, you earn a commission.
The commission you get can be either a flat fee or a percentage of what they sell.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Before we begin, you may be wondering if affiliate marketing is worth your time.
How much do affiliate marketers earn?
Affiliate marketing allows you to generate an unlimited amount of passive income. As you know, successful affiliate marketers can earn five figures per month.
If you build an affiliate site and then sell it after getting traffic and making money, you can make as much as seven figures.
But I can’t promise anything. Your income from affiliate marketing depends on the hard work and sacrifices you put in.
Many people do it as a side job and only make a few hundred dollars a month.
But not all affiliate marketers make money, and you can’t expect to see results right away.
You can build a successful affiliate marketing business in a few years if you work hard and have discipline. But don’t believe anyone who tells you this is a quick way to get rich.
Affiliate marketing involves 3 parties.
Advertisers, affiliates, and affiliate networks are the three parties involved in affiliate marketing. By collaborating, affiliate marketing benefits all parties involved.
Sometimes advertisers have their own affiliate programs and work directly with affiliate marketers.
But affiliate networks are almost always a part of affiliate marketing. Affiliate networks bring together affiliate marketers with businesses from various industries.
I will explain each party’s role below:
Product and service owners (advertisers/merchants)
The “product owner” is the individual who owns the product we promote.
Affiliate Networks
In affiliate marketing, we often use affiliate networks. Their job is to bring advertisers and you together. The network serves as an intermediary.
They offer several services, including:
- Offers affiliate programs to advertisers and affiliates.
- Advertisers can list their goods and services there.
- Affiliates can promote thousands of products from a single dashboard.
- Affiliates receive personalized affiliate links to promote advertisers’ products.
- Track every click-through from the affiliate link to the advertiser’s website.
- They track sales and leads and share revenue with advertisers and affiliates.
- They provide Affiliate reports that show your performance, such as clicks and sales commissions.
There are many affiliate networks available, including well-known names like Clickbank and Maxbounty.
Big affiliate networks have good reputations, so it’s less likely that they’ll try to scam you and more likely that you’ll get paid.
This network may promote the products and services of multiple advertisers.
Affiliates (publishers) who promote products and services
Affiliates are people like you and me who promote products that belong to other people.
Promotional methods include:
- On your website about any topic.
- Forums with links and ads.
- By sending an email to the list you have.
- Advertising such as Google Ads, Bing Ads, and other media buying.
- Marketing on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.
Combine the promotion methods above to get better results.
How To Get Affiliate Links
Join Affiliate Programs and Networks
Affiliate marketing is the practice of promoting products or services through affiliate links.
So, how do you get these links?
We have two straightforward approaches:
- Find affiliate programs related to the product you want to promote.
- Search affiliate networks with hundreds or thousands of affiliate programs.
How can I locate and join an affiliate program or network? Here are two easy steps:
- Google it. Finding affiliate programs are simple. If you want to promote mattresses, Google “buy mattresses” and take note of the websites that come up.
Then you go through each website you wrote down and add “affiliate.” For example, type “mattresses affiliate” into Google and see what comes up on the first page. You should be able to find an affiliate network or program for mattresses.
- You want to be a part of affiliate networks. The majority of affiliate networks are completely free to join. Once they have approved your account, you can request product offer approval if necessary.
Before you sign up for any affiliate program, you must first learn how to join it. Simply visit their website.
Merchants that have affiliate program typically have a link on their website. It says “become an affiliate” or “join affiliate program”. You can also contact the merchant directly through their contact pages if they do not have the link.
Create an affiliate link
To get started, you must register with your affiliate program or advertiser network. Sometimes you have to wait for approval from advertisers before you can create affiliate links.
As a publisher, the affiliate program or network that you are a part of will generate personalized affiliate links for you to use.
So, the advertiser knows who directed visitors to their website. If the visitors you refer make a purchase, the advertiser can pay you a commission.
How do affiliate marketers get paid, and what are their revenue models?
Affiliate marketing pays you for every sale or lead (desired event) you bring in.
Most of the time, an affiliate program or network pays for the following:
- Clicks: Pay-per-click affiliate programs, such as Google AdSense, pay a (small) commission for each link click.
- Leads: An affiliate program or network will pay you for every lead you bring in, like when someone fills out a form or downloads software. Maxbounty has many affiliate offers that pay you per lead or CPA (cost per Action).
- Sales: For each confirmed sale or subscription, affiliate programs pay a flat commission or a percentage. Some affiliate programs will even pay you on a recurring basis. One of my favorite affiliate networks is Clickbank.
Most affiliate networks and programs pay out after you generate a certain number of actions or commissions.
There are affiliate programs that pay weekly if you don’t want to wait a month (or more). Maxbounty and Clickbank offer weekly and biweekly payments.
Affiliate Terms You Should Know Before You Begin
Affiliate marketing is full of jargon, just like any other form of digital marketing.
You’ll need to know these terms if you want to build a successful affiliate business. Some examples are:
Affiliate link
Each affiliate has a unique link that proves a click, lead, or sale came from their website.
You would not earn a commission or be compensated for your actions if you did not use affiliate links. Affiliate networks and programs can help you generate affiliate links.
Average order value (AOV)
This e-commerce term describes the average amount spent by a customer per transaction.
Conversion rate
To figure out the conversion rate, you divide the number of conversions by the total number of site visitors in the same time period. 100 conversions out of 1,000 visits equal a 10% conversion rate.
Cookies
A cookie is a small file that is used to identify website visitors. They track referrals in affiliate marketing.
Because most affiliate programs have a cookie window of 30 days, sales made on the 31st day will not be paid out.
Cost per action (CPA)
The fee an advertiser pays to affiliate marketers for a specific action, such as a form submission or software download.
Cost per click (CPC)
Cost per affiliate link click. Advertisers pay publishers when web visitors click their ads. Because advertisers only pay when a customer clicks, it is cost-effective.
Cost per sale (CPS)
The amount a merchant pays affiliate marketers for each sale conversion generated by affiliate links.
Earnings per click (EPC)
Average amount you make from affiliate links when someone clicks on one. Total earnings for the time period divided by the number of clicks.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing
Now that you know what affiliate marketing is and how it works, you are ready to start doing it.
Here are six steps you can take to start an affiliate marketing business from scratch and make passive income.
1. Brainstorm & Qualify A Niche
There are two main approaches to creating affiliate marketing websites:
- You will create the content/write the articles yourself or
- Hire an expert to create the content for you (outsource).
If you choose the first option, here is what you will do:
Determine a niche
First, choose the niche or topic you want to grow in.
How well you do will depend on the niche you choose. If you want to be successful with affiliate marketing, you need to be careful with this step.
We will ask you questions that will help you choose a niche. By answering these questions, you should be able to figure out what niches you might want to go after.
What are your passions?
What do you do for a living? What are you studying? What are your hobbies? These answers could be potential affiliate marketing niches. Choose a broad topic rather than one that is too specific.
Following is a list of broad topics that you may find interesting.
- Cooking
- Sport
- Pets
- Nutrition
- Gaming
- traveling
- Gardening
- Parenting
What is your area of expertise?
You can like a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean you’re good at or know everything. You may love food but don’t know how to make it.
Choose a niche that you really know. You’ll be glad you did it later. You’ll find it easier to create content, have more fun doing affiliate marketing, and see results faster.
Can’t think of a hobby or skill to share? Everything is fine! You can also choose a niche you are interested in and learn as you go. The internet gives you access to a lot of information, and if you have the money to get started, you can always pay someone else to create content for you.
Pick a niche
Now, narrow your niche. Make sure your niche is not too broad so you can provide in-depth information to readers and website visitors.
As an example, you’ve selected “pets” as your niche, Dogs are in the “Pets” niche. This reduces the size of a larger market.
A narrow niche allows you to create relevant and targeted content. You can add more value by digging deeper into the niche.
But not too narrow. “Labrador Retriever” (dog breed) is another niche, but “Labrador Retriever training” is too specific.
You can’t generate enough income if there aren’t enough people. Find the “sweet spot” This article will go into more detail.
Here are a few more good niche examples:
Self-help
- Time Management
- Dating Guide
- Personal Finance
- Survival Guide
Pets
- Dog
- Cat
- Fish
Nutrition
- Healthy Food
- Food Supplement
- Weight-Loss
Gaming
- Strategy Guides
- Console Guides
- Console Repair
Sports
- Cycling
- Martial Arts
- Golf
- Automotive
The second approach is to hire an expert or outsource content.
If you plan on paying someone else to write your content, you have more freedom in choosing a niche. Because you don’t have to think about your skills or what you’re passionate about.
Instead, you just need to do a thorough market study to find out who else is in your niche and how profitable it is.
Market research
You should have picked a niche. Now it’s time to do some market research. This means you will be looking into the market and prospects of the niche.
Even if your website isn’t great, a good niche can make you money, but a bad niche will make you little or no money.
I will ask you a few questions to see if your niche has a market.
Putting in enough time for market research will save you time and effort in the long run. Nothing bothers me more than a niche that leads nowhere.
The target audience
Before doing market research, we need to figure out who our “target audience” is. You produce content for your target audience. You want to find out about this group so you can make your content more relevant to them.
Who is your audience, and what are they having trouble with? How many people is this problem affecting? We’ll see if your topic is good for affiliate marketing by how you answer these questions.
Examine your target audience.
You can learn a lot about your affiliate marketing customers by looking at your target audience. This information is very valuable and will help you a lot.
Who is your target audience?
Your target audience should have some things in common. Think about their gender, age, family, income, where they come from, and how much education they have.
Write down what everyone in your target audience has in common. The more similarities, the better. This will help you get your message across more clearly.
What are your target audience’s pains or issues?
Once you know what your target audience has in common, look for “shared pain.”
“Pain” refers to the problem or question the group is facing.
Consider the needs of your target audience. Join a Facebook group where your ideal customers hang out to make this process easier.
Listen to what people are saying and what they are asking. Write it down and keep an eye on it if the topic comes up again.
You can also use Google to find out if someone has written about a certain subject. If there is, this means that people need an answer
Here are some pain points from different niches:
cars
- When should I change the engine oil?
- Should I buy a new car or a used car?
- How much does it cost to maintain my car?
- Which cars are electrically powered?
Sport
- What is a red card mean in soccer?
- How long does a baseball match last?
- What are the best running shoes right now?
Pets
- Which dogs are easy to pet?
- Which fish do kids love?
- How to make my aquarium?
Nutrition
- How many calories are in a banana?
- How do you lose 5 pounds in a week?
- What is the best cookware?
How large is your target audience?
It’s also important to know how big your target audience is. how? There is a free tool available to help you.
Ubersuggest is a completely free service. Free keyword research tool for search volume. You can find out how often a search keyword is used. This data will help you determine the size of your target audience.
If your niche in weight loss. Enter “weight loss” in the ubbersuggest search field.
We may know how many people are searching for “weight loss,” but it’s a broad term. People who need to lose weight will use more keywords related to weight loss.
Ubersuggest provides keyword ideas related to “weight loss”
Don’t just look for “weight loss”. Your target audience will use more keywords. like the “keto diet”.
You need to be more creative in researching search phrases for your target audience. Search terms with at least 30 monthly searches. Several “small” search phrases make up a large search group.
Does your target group have 5,000 to 10,000 shared searches per month? If the number of searches your target group is not sufficient? should expand your niche as an alternative.
Is your target group profitable?
In general, this is an easy question to answer. Use your Logic to answer.
For example, let’s say you’re making a website for dogs. What do people with dogs buy?
- feed
- food bowl
- Toys
- Brush
- Veterinarians
The message is clear. When you have one or more dogs, you need to buy a lot of stuff.
You need to know if the people you want to reach have enough money to buy things.
Price is another important thing to think about. Affiliate marketing can be profitable if your niche has a few high-priced products.
Who’s your competition?
Competitive analysis is very important. You want to know how many opportunities remain or if you can outperform your competitors. The majority of niches have been well covered, but that doesn’t mean you can’t contribute.
By looking at your competitors, you can find out what they are focused on and what their advantages are.
Below is a concise step-by-step approach to quickly gathering key competitive information.
To find out your competitors, pay attention to the search results on the first page for the keywords you are targeting. all websites that appear are competitors that we have to face
Examine your competitors’ content: what topics do they cover, and is there anything they haven’t thoroughly covered? Make a list of anything you think you can improve or expand on.
Check your competitors’ revenue models to see if your target market has enough money to spend. Examine your competitors’ marketing strategies to see if you can outperform them.
Use Flippa for market research
Flippa is an online marketplace where people can buy and sell online businesses. There, you can find niches for affiliate marketing.
You are not required to make any purchases; just look for examples of affiliate websites.
Signing up for Flippa (which is free and easy) and then narrow your search to:
- Websites
- online business
- Blogs
- review website
- digital product
This is what we will do with the search results.
Count how many articles they have. If a website has a lot of articles, that means there are more affiliate opportunities in that niche.
Do they make a lot of money despite having little content? If this is true, it means that the niche has high-paying affiliate programs.
What types of articles do they produce? Look for websites that publish review content.
What keywords are they trying to target? Some websites provide a keyword list. check to see if they are ranking for affiliate-related content
What kind of affiliate programs do they have? Keep an eye out for their affiliate programs. If it works for them, it might work for you.
Is there anything else that jumps out at you? Is the traffic volume seasonal? Are there any other methods of monetization? What are the traffic sources? Search engines, advertising, email marketing, Facebook and social media, or somewhere else?
Validating the niche
Once you’ve completed the other steps, you need to confirm your niche. You will decide if the niche is good enough for an affiliate marketing business.
To help you, we’ve compiled a list of relevant questions.
- Does your target group have the same problem or pain?
- Is your target audience large enough?
- Is your target audience profitable?
- Is there enough room to outperform the competition and improve?
If you answered yes to all the above questions, then you’ve found the right niche and can move on.
2. Research Affiliate Programs
You will have a better chance of being successful if you choose a good affiliate program.
If you’re just getting started, I recommend starting with Amazon Associates. Everyone knows they can trust Amazon, and they sell everything.
Even if the commissions aren’t great, it’s a simple way to get started as an affiliate.
Besides Amazon, there are a lot of other affiliate programs.
One way to find affiliate programs is to look at your competitors’ websites and see what they promote.
3. Choose a medium
To get your affiliate business off the ground, you will choose a way to promote the affiliate program. Your personal taste will determine which medium you like best.
Which do you like better: making videos or writing articles? Affiliate marketing can be done with both.
What do you do well? If you like talking in front of a camera, make a video. If you like writing, make an affiliate website. No matter what you do, be real. Use your strengths to get your business off the ground.
You can start affiliate marketing even if you have no money. You can use social media platforms like Facebook groups or YouTube channels.
Social media
You can start with social media for your affiliate marketing business. I don’t like it much, but you can make some money from it. There are many benefits to using social media, such as:
There is no upfront cost. Almost all forms of social media are free.
User friendly. Social media is easy to use because it is free and doesn’t need technical skills. Anyone can begin.
Start making money as soon as possible. You can start making money right now through social media. This is possible but difficult to achieve.
The problem with social media sites like Facebook and Instagram is that your posts only last a short time and they don’t like affiliate links.
Website
The best way to start with affiliate marketing is by making an affiliate website.
A website gets a steady stream of visitors, which allows you to generate passive income. If your website has relevant, high-quality content, people will want to visit it again and again. Every new visitor means a new source of income.
People visit your website to learn something or find a solution to a problem. If you can help them, they will click on your affiliate link.
Website is easier to analyze and improve. You are in charge of all the data. There are many ways to keep track of which affiliate links are clicked and from where. You can use this data to improve the conversion rate of your website.
The downside is that you have to pay for it. A domain name and hosting for a website cost a few dollars per year. we host our website on Linode. A.com domains cost $11.00 per year and shared hosting starts at $2.49 per month.
Since it only costs a small amount of money, there is no reason not to start your affiliate website. If you are serious, you will be able to cover the costs quickly.
Making a website is not as hard as it used to be. You can watch a YouTube video or look online for step-by-step instructions on how to make a website.
4. Plan & Setup Your Site
Domain and hosting
You’ll need a website and a domain name as a first step. Choose a domain name that stands out. When choosing a domain name, it is best to think about relevance and keywords. You can also buy an expired domain name at namecheap.com or godaddy.com.
Choose a hosting service. Where you put your website is called web hosting. You can use a cheap web hosting service, but there are some things you need to make sure it has:
- SSL certificates for free
- cPanel and WordPress one-click installer
- Minimum SSD storage of 20GB
- Guaranteed uptime and unlimited data traffic
- Live Help is available 24/7.
At namecheap.com, godaddy.com, and bluehost.com, you can find options that won’t break the bank.
You can buy your domain and hosting from the same company, but I suggest getting them from different places.
If something goes wrong with your hosting, it’s easy to switch to a different one.
WordPress setup & theme selection
Most affiliate websites are powered by WordPress, so you’ll need a hosting plan that includes a WordPress one-click installer and cPanel.
Just click one button to install WordPress and then follow the steps in your cPanel. You are all set to go.
Next, you’ll need a theme for WordPress. You can use a free WordPress theme or you can buy a professional one from ThemeForest or GeneratePress.
You should use a professional theme if you want to make a beautiful website. a professional theme is fast and easy to customize.
Planning search engine-friendly website
Your website is the most important marketing platform you have. But it needs traffic, especially from search engines like Google. If your website isn’t search engine friendly, Google won’t send traffic to it.
And you can’t make money with affiliate marketing if you don’t get traffic to your site. If you want search engines to like your website, you need to plan it well.
Even so, most affiliates start building websites without a clear plan. It’s the same as trying to build a house without a plan. That means they were always going to fail. So, what’s the right way to make an affiliate website?
Step one is to make a list of possible competitors. Why? We want to figure out how their website works so we can make something similar.
You’ve probably already found a few possible competitors while researching the market and affiliate programs. Start adding them to your list.
Once you have a list of your competitors, look at how their websites are set up and organized. Restoreprivacy.com, for example, is a website in the online privacy niche.
On the home page, you’ll see that the website’s content is split into six major categories:
- Privacy tools
- Email Privacy
- VPN
- Password Manager
- Privacy Enhance Cloud Storage
- Online Messenger Review
Each category contains both commercial and non-commercial content. The VPN category, for example, has an informational page titled “What is VPN,” and commercial content is divided into six subcategories:
- Comparisons
- Reviews
- Best VPN
- Coupon
- Guides
- By Country
This website has a good structure that you can replicate.
Start by making a site map with a free tool like Dynalist. Add all the obvious and necessary pages first, like:
- Homepage
- About
- Privacy Policy
- Contact
Then we’ll get to your content categories, which is the fun part.
I’m assuming you want to keep your informational and commercial content separate.
To start, you need to give your information content category a good name. This will depend on what your niche is, but it could be:
- Tips and Guides
- Dog Training Guides
- Weigh loss Tips
- gardening Tips
Put all your categories under your homepage on Dynalist, and then use the keyword research you’ve already done to fill it with articles.
You should choose keywords that are directly related to your chosen niche. This will help you build your website’s authority.
Each of those keywords is linked to an article that you will write and publish in your informational content category.
There are no hard and fast rules about how many keywords you should put in this section. If you look into your competitors, you should be able to figure this out.
In any case, you should put each keyword into Dynalist under the name of the information content category.
The same process will then be repeated for your commercial content category. Again, start naming the category, such as:
- VPN review
- Cloud storage
- Camera
- Computers
It’s fine to have more than one main category or to add more down the road. Based on your keyword research and analysis of your competitors, you can start nesting product-related subcategories.
Again, each keyword will become an article eventually. This section doesn’t have to have a certain number of sub-categories. Instead, let your research into your competitors tell you how many to add. Then, go through each subcategory and put a variety of keywords in it.
Yes, it does take a lot of time. However, a clear research-backed picture of how your website will look, ensures that different pages or categories don’t compete for the same keywords.
That’s good news for SEO. But what if you don’t have enough commercial keywords with a high level of intent and low levels of competition?
If that’s the case, you might want to think about making your list of commercial keywords bigger. Use keywords that show people want to buy, like “best” and “reviews,” along with your niche keyword. For example, “best dog training,” “best dog food,” and “best camera reviews” are all keywords that show people want to buy.
Keep doing this until you have a long list of commercial keywords.
5. Start Creating Content
Start with your first article.
You did a great job making your first affiliate website. Now you can start adding good content to it to help your affiliate business grow.
Quality is the key word. You have to write a few articles before you can join an affiliate network. Start with 5–10 pieces. Advertisers will look at how your website looks, how reliable it is, and how relevant it is.
Set up a clear structure right away. Put everything in the right categories and subcategories. Make it easy to find things on your website.
As Affiliates, we make money by giving visitors useful and interesting content. Answers their questions and suggests products they can trust.
Find out what the search is for
Before creating content, find out what users are looking for. Every keyword typed into Google has a different reason for being there. Here are a few reasons why search intent is so important. It can be unexpected.
- Someone searched for “Paypal” on Google. You might think that visitors want to know how PayPal works. When you think about what the search is for, you’ll see that it’s not what you think it is. Visitors want to quickly log into PayPal. They type “Paypal” in the search box and click on the first result (Paypal.com).
- Someone is looking for “Goldfish”. You can write about how Goldfish look and where they come from. But it looks like people will want to buy Goldfish. So you can write about how to care for goldfish, common goldfish diseases, and where to buy goldfish. This will help you better serve your visitors.
It’s important to think about what users want to find. Your content will be more relevant and better than your competitors’ content.
Always Add Value
Write your own original articles if you want to stay ahead of the competition. Google places a lot of value on content that tells something new.
Telling your readers about your own thoughts and experiences can give your article a unique perspective. Choose something you already know a lot about.
Create content that earns you money
We use info content to build backlinks. Commercial content to promote products and earn affiliate commissions.
It is important to know which content can make money.
You get paid when you use your content to promote a product or service. Buyers want to learn more about a particular product or service. Apart from promoting, you have to offer something of value.
There are three types of commercial content for affiliate marketing:
Reviews
People talk about what they like and don’t like about a product or service in review articles. They also list what the product does or how much it costs.
You can also talk about more than one product or service in your article and decide which is the best based on what you know.
Reviews should be useful and help people decide whether they want to buy the product or not. If you do it right, you can make a lot of money from affiliate commissions.
Comparison articles
This type of content compares two products, such as Aweber and GetResponse (Two big players in the email marketing software niche).
You can compare any product that fits your niche. Tell your readers what you like and don’t like about each product and why you think one is better than the other, or let them decide for themselves.
Alternatives
This kind of article has high commercial intent and could be a gold mine for you (ready to buy).
When someone is looking for product alternatives, it means they are desperate to find a product that will meet their needs.
This could be because the main product is no longer available or they want something cheaper or better.
Writing more texts (content is king)
It’s not how many articles, but how good the articles are. Find keywords that have a lot of searches but not much competition. Use those keywords in your articles. You should use as many keywords as possible in your articles, but they must appear naturally.
A good article will rank well on Google, which will bring in a lot of free traffic. Be consistent in adding good content to your website regularly. You can do it every day or once a week, consistency is the key to success.
Promoting affiliate link
The first rule of promoting affiliate links is that you shouldn’t do it until you already have people coming to your site. If you don’t have any visitors yet, you should work on creating better content.
You should also promote offers that are relevant to your audience. For example, don’t promote dog training in articles about gardening. People who love gardening may have dogs and want to learn how to train them, but this is still irrelevant.
You don’t need to put too many affiliate links in your articles. More affiliate links don’t mean more money.
People tend to buy from people they trust today, so you need to earn their trust in your articles before promoting affiliate links to them.
Placing lots of affiliate links in your articles can annoy your readers and make them leave your site.
Your article needs to give your readers something of value and help them solve their pain or problem.
Optimize your content
Before you optimize your article, you should ask yourself if you could get better results and, if so, what you should change or improve.
Is there something I missed? This is where you have to start looking at things and making chan
Collect data
To make changes, you need data, and Google Analytics is the best way to collect data. Google provides free, easy-to-use software.
If your website is built with WordPress, you can use one of several plugins to add Google Analytics code
Analyze results
You can learn a lot about how people use your site from the data you get from Google Analytics. For example, if you have a lot of traffic but no one clicks on your affiliate link, you should find out why.
Write down anything that looks odd and check to see if anything is wrong. Is your affiliate link broken?
Hotjar heatmap is another tool you can use to analyze your website. It shows you how people interact with your web page over time.
As a beginner, it will be difficult for you to know how to see all the data. But don’t worry, you can learn as you go.
Make improvement
If you find any errors or weak points in your articles or website, you should fix them immediately. Make changes to your content and make it better.
But if you are a perfectionist, you will keep changing your articles and website even though there is nothing wrong with them.
It’s a waste of your time and money.
Affiliate income can sometimes drop, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your website. It could be because the market changes or because the product you choose as an affiliate is seasonal.
6. Bring Traffic to the Website
Build a following
When you create great content, people will eventually come to your site. People will get what they want from your content.
Your article may not be perfect, and you may not answer all of your audience’s questions.
If the same question keeps popping up in the comments section of your article, you may want to update it or write a new one to answer it.
This will make your affiliate marketing website have more content.
If you do a good job for your audience, they will start following you. They will share, comment, and even provide suggestions for content.
Here are some ideas for engaging your audience:
Create social media channels
You can get more followers faster by using social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. If you are active on the social media channels that people in your niche use, you can earn their trust and turn them into loyal customers.
Your social media channels will be a valuable source of traffic for your affiliate marketing website as they grow.
Make use of email marketing
Email marketing is a great way to reach your target audience, and you can also use it to promote affiliate products.
You can get your audience’s email addresses by starting a newsletter or giving them a gift tailored to their needs, such as an ebook or spreadsheet.
When you are good at email marketing, it will be your best source of traffic, and all you have to do to get traffic is send emails.
This is the only type of traffic that doesn’t rely on third parties like social media sites or search engines like Google.
SEO and Build Backlinks
After putting in the effort to create great content, it would be a shame if there was no traffic. There are two ways to drive traffic to your website: free and paid.
With the paid method, you can get traffic right away, but to make money, you need a good budget and a high conversion rate.
But if you are just starting and have a small budget, you will not be able to make money from paid advertising like Google ads.
So, I think you should start with a free traffic strategy rather than a paid method. I know it takes time and work.
SEO (search engine optimization) is a free way to get traffic which we will talk about here. You can use Yoast SEO or Rank Math plugins to improve your on-page SEO optimization on your WordPress site.
Aside from on-page SEO optimization, link building is another important thing to think about.
Google and other search engines value backlinks. If your website or page has a lot of high-quality backlinks, Google will see that as a sign that your page is reliable and move it up in its search results.
But you shouldn’t build a lot of backlinks in a short time, because Google will see it as spam and unnatural.
This will hurt your search engine rankings in this case. So, one thing to keep in mind when creating a link-building plan is to make it look as natural as possible.
Let me give you an example: If 100 people visit your website and discover wonderful content they enjoy, maybe 10 of them will share it on social networking sites like Facebook and maybe 1 will start a blog and link to your website.
As a result, your website will receive more visitors than backlinks, and more backlinks will come from social media than from other websites.
Buying backlinks from other companies or people who offer link-building services is also not a good way to build backlinks.
But don’t worry, I’ll show you three link-building strategies that you can use for free.
1. Haro (help a reporter out)
HARO is a well-known platform for journalists and bloggers. You can help journalists answer questions on this platform in exchange for backlinks
To use HARO, you must first create a free account and create an attractive profile so journalists will see you as a credible source.
If you select the “HARO master” option, you will get more requests, and HARO will send you questions daily by email.
Choose questions about your niche or, if you are knowledgeable, you can answer questions that are outside your niche..
Don’t ignore questions from anonymous sources; if you can answer them, take it. Sometimes anonymous sources are big media companies that don’t want people to know because they’re afraid someone will steal their idea. But remember that you shouldn’t answer questions if you don’t think you’re qualified.
2. Guest blogging
You look for websites that accept guest posting and write great articles that the website owner cannot refuse. You will also receive backlinks from the websites.
3. The “Skyscraper Technique”
This is a link-building method that requires finding high-quality, niche-relevant content with lots of backlinks, then generating new content and asking those who link to the original to link to the new one.
The new content you create must be better and exploit the flaws of the original content.
Bottom line
Now that I’ve talked about the basics of affiliate marketing, it’s your turn to learn and get started right away. Do it now, while it’s still fresh in your mind.
I won’t say it will be easy, because it won’t be. Along the way, you will face problems and challenges.
At first, you’ll have to do a lot of work, like finding niches and getting people to visit your affiliate website. and you won’t get rich right away.
But if you do it anyway, you will be glad you did because the reward is there.
