Affiliate marketing might be the fastest and easiest way to start an online business. You’ll have the advantage of getting passive income, no need to hire anyone and live independently. However, to succeed as an affiliate, you need to be acquainted with the affiliate business model. By this means, you should work promoting products from well-known companies, such as Amazon and Apple. Working as an affiliate marketer, all you need to do is build and grow a website, build a community using social media, and find affiliate programs. Also, have in mind that most affiliates earn just additional revenue because steady income could be difficult and takes more time. Determination and effort are the core requirements, as well as willingness to put some time growing your online business.
So, what is the idea behind affiliate marketing? It is a business model based on revenue sharing. It could be described as a process of earning a commission by promoting other peoples’ or companies’ products. An affiliate marketing system has two sides, the product creator as a merchant and the affiliate marketer as a referrer. The merchants are interested in affiliate partnerships because they need help to sell their products and the individuals or the companies acting as affiliates are interested in the commissions each month they get from the merchants for the successful deals closed trough their referral links.
All you need, indeed, to start an affiliate business is a laptop, internet connection and a simple website. The centerpiece is that affiliates, like you, could work from all around the world and market to global or customers located in any targeted country.
The next step? Show your courage and be brave enough to start an online marketing career. Anyway, the most important thing is to know the fundamentals to launch your online business. That’s why I’m going to walk you step by step to prepare you for what’s ahead. It works really simple and let’s get you started to make your first commission.
Step 1: Choose your niche business idea
To start with, choose your favorite industry. There are tons of other factors to consider, like competition. Quickly, you might get drown facing a ton of rivalry. But, choose wisely, and especially a topic you’re most passionate about. Eventually, you’re not going to be an expert, but you’ll learn a lot and you’ll be ready to cope with your topic really soon.
For even better results, you might need to narrow your niche. Go for a specific category. Narrowing down your topic is a chance to boost your audience or either to rank higher in search engines. Another thing you should definitely consider when choosing your topic is whether there is money in this niche. It’s logical and rational that you’re building it for money and do a little research if your chosen niche is profitable and worthy.
When choosing a niche and your audience, a crucial factor to consider is whether your customers are interested in your niche’s products. Also, the last factor to consider is obviously your core interest in success. Are there any affiliate programs for your niche? If no, think about a more valuable niche.
You can follow the Step 2 from our Guide to find the right online business idea.
Step 2: Do Research about Affiliate Programs
Have you decided on your niche? Well, then it’s time to find out if there are some and which affiliate programs are the right ones for you. Simply, you need to be sure that your chosen niche a lot of product vendors.
Depending on the programs, different commissions are paid. Furthermore, some commissions are as a percentage of a product, like 20%, while others may vary between the product and the program. For example, when you promote a physical product, look for commissions over 50$.
Besides, make sure you believe in the trustworthiness of the products you associate with because remember, this is how you build your trust with your audience. Another thing you need to verify is if there is a customer/affiliate support from your affiliate program. Would you need to wait for a response for days, or get your answers really quick? As a beginner, you need to make sure that everything is correctly set.
Step 3: Build a Website
Once you’re done with all the research about the preferred niche and the right affiliate programs corresponding to your interests, the next step is to build a website.
To set up your website requires following some easy steps (if you’re a newbie, otherwise you may be familiar with building a site):
- Purchase a domain: You need to make sure that you provide an address for your site. Simply, you need to think about your business’s name. Your name should be unique and don’t be disappointed if most of your name ideas are taken by others. Many sites could help you find your perfect name, like Shopify or Namelix. However, you could buy your name on GoDaddy or other platforms that are domain registrars.
- Set up your hosting: You could either buy your domain and hosting on the same place or separately. If you buy them from different companies, you will need to link them together. Usually, people are buying hosting on the most reliable and reputable provider rather than an untrustworthy hosting provider. This is so important since your online affiliate business depends on it.
- Install your website builder and theme: The next step is installing a content management system(CMS). The most accessible and easy for beginners is definitely WordPress. Also, don’t forget to buy a theme, which prices range from 20$-70$, or to use a free theme depending on your budget.
In the Step 3 you can find details how to build your website from scratch.
Step 4: Create Content for your Site
Probably the most important part of creating your online affiliate business is creating some high-value content. Indeed, you need to make it worthwhile so you could build and boost your engagement with your audience.
Primarily, choose if your content will be educational, personal storytelling, tips, advice, tutorials, etc. Focusing on one or two types of content could be your mission to establish your authority and domination over other sites.
It’s essential to decide what kind of content will work best for you affiliate business. You choose how you do your writing. It could be diversified as:
- Blog Posts: Blogging may be the functional and practical way to create content on your site. Imagine how striking and instructional could your blog feed be. It’s definitely worth a try since you could research the most used keywords in your industry and grant you place upper in google’s rankings.
- Product Reviews: This type of content is focused on writing reviews about products you promote. It’s very common among affiliates and it could be very engaging and helpful to assist your readers about products they want to buy.
- Emails: The best practice is doing all, blogging or product reviews and emails. Emails are best to remind and inform your audience about your new post or moreover, what’s coming next. They’re really popular and beneficial for you, regarding your site’s traffic.
Step 5: Grow your Business with SEO and Paid Advertising
SEO refers more to the technical stuff to optimize your page for a good reason, rank higher in the search engines, such as Google. At the basic SEO level, you could start with optimizing your pages, heading, meta descriptions, etc. Targeting keywords is another useful practice for you to be acknowledged by Google.
If you’re good with your website’s budgeting, another thing to consider is paid traffic. With this strategy, chances are much bigger, firstly, to drive more traffic to your site and, secondly to convince your audience to buy a product you promote and win a commission.
Okay, are you ready to start your online affiliate business? Just focus on applying these essentials and you’re ready to rock. And, don’t look forward to making your passive income to fall from the sky. As for any other business, affiliate marketing requires working hard too.
Be sure that our Online Business Startup Guide could be very handy in your journey. Try your best!
Related: Online Business Models and Revenue Sources
Sources (4)
1. How to Start Affiliate Marketing: A Dead-Simple Guide (convertkit.com)
2. Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: How to Make Your First Affiliate Marketing Sale in 7 Steps (affilorama.com)
3. Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: 7 Steps to Success (ahrefs.com)
4. What to Do Before Becoming an Affiliate Marketer (oberlo.com)
