In this post, step by step affiliate marketing for beginners, I will explain the affiliate marketing process in a way that will make sense to you, I am aware that for beginners, affiliate marketing can seem like a total mystery.

I will set out in a simple and easy to understand, step by step way the complete affiliate marketing business model for you and the massive opportunities currently available, to start your own online business from home.

Introduction To, Step By Step Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

Affiliate marketing is the most successful business model in the world because it benefits both the product owners and the product affiliates (the sellers).

 

The internet has opened up massive opportunities for anybody with an internet connection to make a full time living online. In very simple terms affiliate marketing involves promoting other peoples products and receiving a commission for any sales made.

 

With 3.7 Billion people online buying products and services round the clock the opportunities for anyone who wants to create an online business from home are massive and growing exponentially.

 

The affiliate marketer is really just a middle man that brings products and buyers together in one place, i.e their website. The mainstay of affiliate marketing is writing product reviews to help buyers decide if they want to purchase the said product. Writing product reviews is the best way of adding value and building trust with the visitors to your website.

 

When people shop online they are always looking for information and reviews about the products they wish to purchase, so as an affiliate marketer there are no ends of opportunities for you to get your web content in front of potential buyers.

 

 

The affiliate marketer can promote products without having to own, ship or deal with the customer in any way, all customer services are undertaken by the product owner, therefore affiliate marketing is by far the cheapest and quickest way anybody can set up an online business from home.

 

This means the product owners can employ and army of affiliates to promote their products for them but only have to pay the said affiliates if they make a sale, this saves them spending a great deal of money on advertising.

Essentially, affiliate marketing is a win, win for both parties and hence why this business model is so successful and popular online.

 

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Step 1. The Types Of Products You Can Promote As An Affiliate Marketer

 

As an affiliate you can promote four main types of products.

 

1. Information or training products including membership sites
2. Physical Products
3. Software Products
4. Cost Per Action (CPA) Offers

 

Opportunities For Promoting Information Products As An Affiliate Marketer

 

Information products – These are very popular online as the owner can store their product on a server, which can be downloaded as many times as is needed. The owner can create one product and get paid multiple times without any need for storage or shipping. The main benefit to the affiliate is that the commissions on information products are very high, as much as 75%, this is very lucrative for the affiliate marketer.

 

Information products come in the form of PDF’s and videos courses, delivered to the customer online through the cloud or direct downloads to their PC. They fall into the “How To Niche category” and provide training on all manner of subjects, over the past decade more and more people are turning to the Internet to learn new skills, as the old world of institutional learning is dying, as it has become financially prohibitive, so the opportunities as an affiliate marketer continue to grow exponentially and don’t look like stopping any time soon.

 

 

University and colleges, teach long-winded and sometimes outdated material, where students end up in a mass of debt with a piece of paper that is often not valued by employers anymore, the online world offers direct learning and people just want to get straight to the skill and learn something specific without having to enrol in colleges and spend a fortune on tuition fees.

 

Learning can now be done online very cheaply, there are literally millions of information and training products owners who have affiliate programs that let you can promote their products.

 

Information products can be very lucrative for both the affiliate and the product owner, as in the image below, it’s in your interest to find the best affiliate programs available as every affiliate program is unique, the image below is not typical, so you need to make sure what terms the relevant affiliate program is offering before you choose to promote it.

 

This is an example of a sales funnel for an information product that you can send prospects to, once you send the prospect to the front end offer, your job is done and the product owner does the rest, you do not have to sell anything it’s done for you, this is the reason that affiliate marketing can be such a great way to start an online business from home.

 

 

Tip for promoting information products – Some information products have membership programs included in the sales funnels, if you promote products with memberships you can earn monthly recurring commissions as long as your prospect stays in the membership program.

 

Opportunities For Promoting Physical Products As An Affiliate Marketer

 

Physical Products – There are millions of physical products online, these types of websites are called e-commerce sites, the most popular being Amazon. You can become an Amazon associate and promote products on your websites of which you will earn a commission somewhere between 6% and 10% and the main thrust of this business for affiliates is through product reviews.

 

People who shop online are always looking for reviews of products before they buy and this is where you come in as an affiliate marketer. Website product reviews are the main thrust of affiliate marketing for all types of products. Commissions are lower for physical products because there is a cost to store and ship them to customers.

TIP for promoting physical products. To make a decent profit promoting physical products you need to promote items at $100.0 and above, the higher the price of the product the fewer units you have to sell to make a tidy profit.

 

Software Products. There are literally millions of software products available for sale, almost everybody uses software, the modern world could not function without it and so there are ample opportunities to promote and earn commissions with software products, as an affiliate marketer you will also need to become familiar with various software products and online tools to help you build your online business.

 

Software products often charge monthly fees, so there exist plenty of opportunities for earning ongoing monthly commissions from promoting software products.

 

Cost Per Action (CPA) offers – These types of offers are very popular with affiliate marketers because no one has to buy anything for you to get paid, they simply need to take an action, like filling in a form or signing up for a free promotion. Companies all over the world use this business model to get clients, such as credit card companies for example, they will pay the affiliate very high commissions because the long term value of every client is worth a lot of money to them.

 

To promote CPA offers you will need to be accepted into one of the many and varied CPA networks, where they have thousands of different offers available.

 

The Most Important Thing I Can Teach You As An Aspiring Affiliate Marketer.

 

People Love To Spend Money But They Hate Being Sold To!!!!

 

 

Your job is not to sell to people it’s to help people, be a helper and not a seller, add value to their lives by giving really honest reviews about products, be helpful to them, do you ever remember being in a store and one of the sales assistance would not leave you alone, how did that make you feel?

 

People will resist the more you push, so let them decide if the product you’re promoting is right for them, you will get more sales the less you sell. Leave the selling to the product page, that’s what they are good at. Promoting and selling are not the same, they are different skill sets.

 

The product owner will go to great lengths to sell their product, so you don’t have to. Your job is to send people to the product page through your affiliate link.

 

The most important skill you need is to be able to make people feel comfortable with your marketing!!!

 

Training And Support 

 

The next most important thing is that so many people try to go it alone and become frustrated when they don’t succeed the first time they try to build an affiliate marketing business, there is no other industry in the world where people would enter without the right training except the online business one. The main purpose of my website, is to do just that.

 

>>>Get the skills you need for FREE and get your affiliate marketing business off the ground.

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Step 2 How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid

 

In order to become an affiliate you will need to join a relevant affiliate program, which should always be free to join and once you are accepted you will be given access to your own personal account, this will come with your individual affiliate links and in most programs, there will be promotional materials such as banners and marketing information to help you promote their products and services .

 

One way to tell if an affiliate program is going to be profitable is the lengths the product owner will go to help their affiliates with banners, images and information about their products and services. It’s in the product owners best interest to make their affiliates as successful as possible.

 

Once you have your affiliate link, you can place this piece of code on your site and if someone clicks the link they are taken to the product vendor and your affiliate link will be tracked by cookies, if someone buys the product on offer you will earn a commission.

 

Cookies are small pieces of code that tracks the people on your site, they connect your website with the affiliate website, it’s very important to understand the time the cookie is live, what this means is, if someone clicks your link and goes to the product site and does not buy straight away the cookie still remains live for a certain period.

 

Example – Cookie live time = 30 days. Someone clicks your link and goes to the product site but does not buy the product that day, they return however 3 days later and purchase the product, you will still get a commission for the sale, so make sure you find out from the relevant affiliate program, how long the cookies stay live, as each affiliate program will be different.

 

How you actually get paid will depend on the relevant affiliate program, most programs pay monthly and you will need to make sure you check out all the facts before you decide to promote as an affiliate. The affiliate program website should give you all the information you need to promote and get paid as an affiliate marketer.

 

 

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Step 3 Choosing Your Niche Or Direction

This is the most important step you are going to have to take, and so before we begin I will define the meaning of a niche in affiliate marketing.

A Niche is a group of people that have a problem and are willing to pay for the solution.

Niche = Child Car Seats

 

Example 1

Parents with young children – Group of people

Required by law to have a child seat fitted in their car – First problem

Not sure which one to buy or where to buy the best child car seat – Problem 2

They go online and look for information on the best car seats available – Problem 3

 

They look for information such as

• What type of car seat to buy
• The best place to buy
• The best price
• Car seat accessories

In comes the affiliate marketer – You have a website called, carseatreviews.com

Your website is full of helpful information about child car seats.

People visit your website and get the information they need, you have solved their problem, they are now armed with valuable information that they can trust and become willing to buy a car seat for their child, they click your link that goes to Amazon for example and buy the car seat, you get paid a commission.

Why Is This A Profitable Niche For Affiliate Marketers?

 

1. Child car seats are not a luxury item, they are a necessity so people will spend money on them.
2. Child car seats are not cheap and you will get a good commission
3. People buy accessories for the car seat, more commissions for you
4. When shopping on Amazon people rarely buy one item, you get commissions for any other items sold
5. Extremely large audience, almost every parent in the world needs one of these
6. Lots of different car seats to review
7. Lots of other information to write about, like legislation on car seats
8. This niche is tightly focused its not hard to become an expert at one subject

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Finding The Right Affiliate Program For Your Niche 

 

Finding an affiliate program for the niche you have decided to target can and often is quite a challenge, if don’t want to become an  amazon associate or a Clickbank Affiliate , then there are many others out there. It can be difficult however the find the best one for you. One of the main reasons of wealthy affiliate is that it provides everything thing I need under one roof. A recent addition to the ever increasing list of affiliate tools is the affiliate program search function.

The Affiliate Program Search Function

 

This feature is invaluable for any affiliate marketer as it allows you to search for thousands of different affiliate programs in a wealth of niches. Search by category, keywords or trending opportunities.

 

In addition to this you can set your own unique filters 

 

 

Search By Commission 

 

 

 

Search By High Percentage 

 

 

Search By Top Rated Affiliate Programs

 

Easy To Access Any Affiliate Program.

 

Simply click on any affiliate program and all the details are displayed as well as feed back from other users, you can also give your feedback, this is the power of community as you will be able to see real reviews from other users of any program.

 

 

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Step 4 Building Your Own Traffic Producing Niche Website.

 

You are very fortunate, there has never been a better time to become an affiliate marketer, so your next step is to build your own website, in a niche of your choice, I will list the basic components needed to build a website and the cheapest and most effective way to do this.

1. Domain Name
2. Web Hosting
3. WordPress (Content Management System)

Domain Name – The address of your website.

Web Hosting – A place to host your website

WordPress – Website Building Software.

Your domain will need to reflect your niche, to achieve this you will need to do some keywords research to see what people are searching for online with reference to your specific niche.

Example = childcarseatreviews.com

I would strongly suggest you use wordpress to build your website for the following reasons;

1. Its 100% Free
2. Its available on all the major web hosts
3. It is installed with one click
4. It can be personalised to your niche with thousands of free themes
5. There are thousands of free plugins (Apps for wordpress) which enhance its functionality
6. Its user-friendly
7. It was built for blogging which is exactly what you want

wp beginner is one of my favourite website for learning all things wordpress

 

Your Guide To Affiliate Linking Strategy

 

Affiliate links are provided by your affiliate program, they will provide you a piece of code that you will need to incorporate into your website, they can be linked to text, images and banners that you display on your own blog. The other word for these are hop links which is just another word for affiliate links.

 

Your own affiliate link will have a unique piece of code withing the main link that will identify you specifically, wordpress has within its editor the function to add affiliate links or any other links to your content, its very simple to do and its another reason that using wordpress is in my opinion the best website building solution for affiliate marketers. Its built for blogging which is what you will be doing.

 

The Best Strategy For Using Affiliate Links On Your Website 

 

What ever you do, don’t flood every page and post with your affiliate links, Google will notice this and class your website as a bridging site, which means they have classed your website as having no value and just used to send people to the product to buy things. Both Google and your readers will be turned off by your site.

 

A much better strategy is to build pillar content first, which is a really comprehensive review of the product or service you are promoting and then write related articles and ink them to your main review. Place your affiliate links within your main review and now your website looks more natural to Google and your readers will be able to enjoy your content, without being bombard by sales pitches and offers.

 

 

Linking Strategy  

 

Its tempting to flood your website with banners, but I would advice you to use them sparingly and put your affiliate links and links to your main review into your text. Known as text links they have been proved to convert higher than banners.

 

The main problem with banners is that most people know that if they click on a banner they are going to be sold to. However this is not the case with text links as they look and feel more natural. They are a much more effective way of getting people to your main review.

 

Website Building Strategy For The Aspiring Affiliate Marketer

To succeed at affiliate marketing you need to build the foundation of your website first, don’t think about money for at least 3 months, to succeed at online marketing you need to have a website that adds value to your readers.

• Research Your Audience
• Create Content That Solves Their Problems
• Help People Don’t sell To Them
• Less Is More

 

The Truth About Marketing 

People Only Buy From People They Know Like And Trust 

 

 

Your website needs to make people feel comfortable with what your marketing, remember the golden rule.

• Everybody Likes To Spend Money But No One Likes To Be Sold To 

 

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Step 5 Getting The Skills You Need To Become An Affiliate Marketer

 

Skill Sets Required For The Aspiring Affiliate Marketer

• Writing and producing content that converts
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
• Using WordPress
• Keyword Research
• Paid and Free traffic techniques
• Social Media

 

 

 

The good news, is there is one place where you can get started for FREE as well as have all the technical stuff taken care of for you. You can build a fully functional, traffic generating website for FREE and get the FREE training you need to get your affiliate marketing business off the ground.

 

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In Conclusion

 

1. The biggest lessons I have learned over the years, is to realise that affiliate marketing is a skill and like all skills you need to obtain them over time.
2. Affiliate Marketing For Beginners can get frustrating without the right guidance and training, there are lots of people out there who will try to sell the “get-rich-quick types of products”. I can only recommend that chasing the quick buck is both frustrating, expensive and time-consuming. If you get good training and guidance from like-minded people your chances of success will increase dramatically.

 

I built this website to help people succeed in the online business world, so please feel free to ask any questions you have about affiliate marketing. I will always respond to your questions.