If you want to earn a passive income from home, you may have already heard about affiliate marketing. But, what is affiliate marketing and what do you need to do to make money from it? We’ve covered all the basics of getting set up as an affiliate marketer.
#1. Choosing a Niche:
You will need to think of a type of product or service to promote as an affiliate marketer. If you’re stuck on choosing, then consider the evergreen niches of romance and relationships, hobbies and interests, travel and finance. You may then wish to consider a sub-niche. For example, if you are passionate about saving money, you could create a site that helps others do the same.
#2. Design Your Brand:
Although affiliate marketers do not sell any products or services that they own, it’s still important to have strong branding. The most successful affiliate marketers have a brand that people recognise and trust. For example, think about your go-to energy, insurance or financial comparison site. This is an example of affiliate marketing done well.
#3. Get Online:
Although there are some affiliate marketers who promote products offline, there’s no denying that e-commerce is the easiest and cheapest way to start out. Before you can start marketing affiliate products, you’ll need to develop and publish a website, where you will display affiliate links and promotions. Some affiliate marketers prefer to work in a similar way to an online store, whilst others offer reviews, comparisons, information or a combination of each.
#4. Show Off Your Knowledge:
As an affiliate marketer, it’s your job to convince your target audience to purchase a product through you, rather than going directly to the retailer. The best way to do this is to gain their trust: provide them with an online space where they can find genuinely helpful information on the products they are considering purchasing.
#5. Good SEO:
Whilst informative content marketing is an important requirement for a successful affiliate website, it’s a wise idea to market to and optimise for search engines. Consider link building to improve your online presence and reach a wider target audience. Bear in mind that good SEO today means a strong focus on the user experience including the website’s mobile responsiveness, ease of navigation and page loading time. Consider the pay monthly website design from MonthlyWeb to stay on top of on-site upkeep to ensure you keep up with the constant changes search engines make.
#6. Partner with Strong Brands:
Trusted online brands will help to strengthen your affiliate website. For example, Amazon Associates is one of the most-used affiliate marketing programs, simply because Amazon is one of the world’s most trusted brands. If you are promoting products that are sold on Amazon, you will automatically gain the trust of users who are well used to shopping on this site. Associating with ‘household name’ brands will help you gain audience trust when starting out.
Building up a successful affiliate website takes time and effort, so don’t be afraid to keep trying if you don’t make it straight away. The best strategy is to be prepared to work hard to reap your reward.
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
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