Affiliate Marketing -- 3 Steps
"Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts." -- cited from Wikipedia.
An affiliate is a bridge that links the vendor and customer. As an internet affiliate, you help the vendors develop the market; at the same time, you help the customers find the products they need - you have double tasks in affiliate marketing; you cannot ignore one of them.
There are more and more people getting started to make money online with affiliate marketing everyday, however, most of them lose money or cannot make considerable money. In the affiliate market, 10% of the successful affiliates earn 90% of the money. In fact, to become the 10% successful affiliates is not very hard, you just need 3 steps: 1) find some profitable products, 2) build a highly efficient affiliating website, and 3) drive quality traffic to your website.
However, it is not very easy to do a good job on all the 3 steps - ignorance of one of them will cause your failure. That is why most people cannot really make money by affiliate marketing. In this article, I will tell you how to do the right things in these 3 steps and become a successful affiliate like me.
An affiliate is a bridge that links the vendor and customer. As an internet affiliate, you help the vendors develop the market; at the same time, you help the customers find the products they need - you have double tasks in affiliate marketing; you cannot ignore one of them.
There are more and more people getting started to make money online with affiliate marketing everyday, however, most of them lose money or cannot make considerable money. In the affiliate market, 10% of the successful affiliates earn 90% of the money. In fact, to become the 10% successful affiliates is not very hard, you just need 3 steps: 1) find some profitable products, 2) build a highly efficient affiliating website, and 3) drive quality traffic to your website.
However, it is not very easy to do a good job on all the 3 steps - ignorance of one of them will cause your failure. That is why most people cannot really make money by affiliate marketing. In this article, I will tell you how to do the right things in these 3 steps and become a successful affiliate like me.
Step1 -- Find a Product
How to find profitable products? Do market research. Affiliate marketing is a kind of business. Like all the businesses, market research is important. You should do this work before you get started. Many factors determine the profitable potential of a product, including the demand, the quality, the competition, the price, some limitation, etc. These factors interact with each other and there are many trade-offs, e.g., normally a product in high demand faces a fierce competition; a product in high quality normally has a high price. Therefore, to make a wise decision is not very easy - you must consider all the factors together. So what kind of products should I choose? Here I would like to give some suggestions to beginners.
First, avoid promoting the "make money online" programs in Clickbank or PayDotCom. Clickbank is the biggest marketplace for affiliating programs, more than half of the products are about "how to make money online". Doubtlessly it is a huge niche, but it is too competitive for beginners. There are too many similar programs, with similar price, similar content and even similar website design. I have tried to promote some of the most popular programs, including ProfitLance, AutoPilot Profit, Six Figure Yearly, but I made money from none of them. If you target to the "make money online" niche, you'd better promote some special products. Moreover, your potential costumers are totally able to buy the products from their own affiliate links; even they don't have a Clickbank account, they will definitely have one after buy your product, then most them will request a refund; if they still want keep the product, they can make a refund and buy it from their own links. The system of PayDotCom can inhibit this kind of case but almost all the programs on PayDotCom have a replicate on Clickbank. So they are same.
Second, avoid any gamedownloading, mp3 downloading or movie downloading service. .There are too many free sources on the internet, few people will cost money on them. Moreover, a big part of this niche are kids, they don't have credit card to buy them.
Thirdly, be careful the limitation of some products. For example, you'd better avoid the gambling programs, because you can't publish the ads on search engines. I once tried to promote a PC TV on Google; the consequence is my account was banned.
Anyway, to evaluate the profitable potential of a product, you must know enough information of it. Some time you need buy it and try it first.
First, avoid promoting the "make money online" programs in Clickbank or PayDotCom. Clickbank is the biggest marketplace for affiliating programs, more than half of the products are about "how to make money online". Doubtlessly it is a huge niche, but it is too competitive for beginners. There are too many similar programs, with similar price, similar content and even similar website design. I have tried to promote some of the most popular programs, including ProfitLance, AutoPilot Profit, Six Figure Yearly, but I made money from none of them. If you target to the "make money online" niche, you'd better promote some special products. Moreover, your potential costumers are totally able to buy the products from their own affiliate links; even they don't have a Clickbank account, they will definitely have one after buy your product, then most them will request a refund; if they still want keep the product, they can make a refund and buy it from their own links. The system of PayDotCom can inhibit this kind of case but almost all the programs on PayDotCom have a replicate on Clickbank. So they are same.
Second, avoid any gamedownloading, mp3 downloading or movie downloading service. .There are too many free sources on the internet, few people will cost money on them. Moreover, a big part of this niche are kids, they don't have credit card to buy them.
Thirdly, be careful the limitation of some products. For example, you'd better avoid the gambling programs, because you can't publish the ads on search engines. I once tried to promote a PC TV on Google; the consequence is my account was banned.
Anyway, to evaluate the profitable potential of a product, you must know enough information of it. Some time you need buy it and try it first.
Step2 -- Buid Affliate Website
A lot of beginners tend to directly promote the affiliate links, which is why most people failed in affiliate marketing. I made the same mistake, too. An affiliating website is necessary. First, a good affiliating website could enhance the conversion rate dramatically. Please notice hear, I say a good website. Conversely, a bad affiliating website will reduce the conversion rate. A good affiliate website should be both informative and attractive. Remember one of your task, you are helping the costumers find what they need, so you should tell them why the products you are promoting is what they need. To do that, you must give them enough information. The purchase websites normally include a lot of information, but most people won't cost a lot of time on one website - they need compare different vendors. So what you should do is summarizing the best features and rending them to the visitors in a neat way. To make your website attractive, do not hype the value of the products as the vendors do, the objective comments are much more persuasive. Another important reason for building your own affiliate website is that by this way, you can put multiple products on one website. Obviously it is a good way to save your ads cost. In addition, different people have different preference, so you should put different products of different features on your website.
To build a good affiliate website, you'd better design it by yourself, try to make it informative, attractive and unique, and then find an affordable but reliable website hosting company to host it. If you don't have enough IT knowledge to build a website, you can buy a prebuilt website. There are many prebuilt affiliating website services; normally they are not very expensive. However, please remember, you must be able to optimize the website; none of the original pre-built website has a good conversion rate. Moreover, your website should be as unique as possible In the end of this article, you can find my affiliating website based on a prebuilt website. I am a dummy in website building.
To build a good affiliate website, you'd better design it by yourself, try to make it informative, attractive and unique, and then find an affordable but reliable website hosting company to host it. If you don't have enough IT knowledge to build a website, you can buy a prebuilt website. There are many prebuilt affiliating website services; normally they are not very expensive. However, please remember, you must be able to optimize the website; none of the original pre-built website has a good conversion rate. Moreover, your website should be as unique as possible In the end of this article, you can find my affiliating website based on a prebuilt website. I am a dummy in website building.
Step3 -- Drive Traffic
There are many methods for driving the traffic. However, you need only quality traffic. Garbage traffic will only cost your money or your time. As a well known fact, PPC is the most efficient way to drive the quality traffic. Google is the most powerful marketing tools, but I don't suggest beginners start with it, because it can be costy and it needs some skills. If you are a beginner, I suggest you use second tier search engines first, such as MIVA or Search123, then Yahoo. When you have mastered the basic skills in PPC marketing, then start to use Google. There are numberless course about PPC marketing, I don't need say too much. For most products, do not use traffic exchange, because people doing traffic exchange have their own business to promote. The only exception is the traffic-generating products. However, it is still extremely time-costing; for those time, you can totally do some more profitable work or just have a rest.
Conclusion
In conclusion, any average person has the potential to become a successful affiliate marketer. However, online business is business; you must put enough investment to it: money, time, intelligence and even courage. Maybe at the beginning you will find to make money online is not so easy as you expected, but I believe you will find a right track if you don't give up.
In fact, affiliate marketing is not the only way to make money online; there is a more efficient and much more profitable way - running your own online business with your own products.You can read this comparison review