How To Start Affiliate Marketing Step By Step
This step by step guide to starting affiliate marketing will show you exactly how you can get involved with affiliate marketing no matter what your skill level is. If you are just thinking about affiliate marketing for the first time and wondering how to get started then this step-by-step guide we hope to share with you will help you get going with affiliate marketing.
- Choosing A Niche
- Finding Affiliate Programs To Join
- Creating A Website Or Blog
- Creating Quality Content
- How To Drive Traffic To Your Content
Can anyone do affiliate marketing
Yes anyone can do affiliate marketing, that is the nice thing about affiliate marketing you can join any affiliate marketing program without having to know anyone to get you in and you can join without being sponsored into the program like other forms of marketing like MLM programs.
How much does it cost to join any affiliate marketing program
Usually, most affiliate marketing programs are free to join that is another great thing about affiliate marketing programs you can join without any money out of your pocket.
When you join any affiliate marketing program does it take long before you can promote it
No, when you join affiliate marketing, and once you verify your name and email address you are most likely able to promote it right away with most affiliate marketing programs that you join.
Choosing A Niche
This is the first start in doing any affiliate marketing program and what will work best for you so you will truly enjoy affiliate marketing for the long term and making a really great income doing so.
Choosing your niche is what will be the affiliate programs you’re looking to join and promote now and into the future of your affiliate marketing business.
There are literally thousands of affiliate marketing programs that you can join today and your sure to find something that you’re going to love to join and promote to others online or in person.
If you are into the health and wellness industry then your not going to have to go very far in looking for any affiliate marketing programs in that niche.
Maybe you’re into the home and garden niche again you won’t have to go very far to join any of those programs.
You just have to go to google and start searching for any niche that you want to join and you are sure to find it I can tell you.
The reason why I’m telling you to chose a niche first is so you can continue with the next steps in getting your affiliate marketing business going.
Your going to want to build your very own brand online with a website or blog.
Having your own brand for your affiliate marketing business you’re going to want to build your website or blog around the niche your going to promote.
So now this is only for those who are going to take the time in building a website or blog.
For those of you who are not going to build a website or blog, you can very well advertise your affiliate links also just keep reading on for those of you who are going to not build a website or blog.
Now for those of you who are going to do so and you’re going to choose health and wellness as your niche, then having a website domain or blog around the health and wellness segment and 1 year down the road you switch gears to home and garden your not having to be running out building another website or blog from scratch again.
With affiliate marketing, you can join affiliate marketing programs that have actual physical products and there are also digital products that you can join and promote to earning an income.
Finding the right affiliate programs for you is key to your success in earning an income with affiliate marketing programs just don’t join every program that you can join just to say you’re doing affiliate marketing.
Join the programs that you have a true passion for, do your research, and see if that affiliate marketing program has a good track record and has a long future ahead for that affiliate marketing program your joining.
The next thing I want you to understand before you join an affiliate marketing program make sure the commission payout for your affiliate program is worth doing.
Some affiliate marketing programs pay very nicely and some are not worth joining and advertising some of those cheaper programs may cost you money and I will get into that later in this post.
My best advice for you when joining any affiliate marketing program is to pick a niche that you will truly love and enjoy promoting and this will help you also with not getting bored or tired of promoting it in the future.
Creating A Website Or Blog
Ok, for those of you folks who are eager to get your own website or blog if you don’t already have one then this will be for you on knowing the power of having a website or blog work for you in affiliate marketing.
Creating your very own website or blog gives you the power of also not only you having control over your promotions, but gives you control over the content you create and the content you’re going to want to promote on your website or blog.
The one advantage of having to own your own website or blog, and there are plenty more advantages is, let’s say you only use for example social media to advertise your affiliate marketing business links.
Now you wake up one day and for some reason that social media site decides to close your account with some kind of product violation to their terms of use, or they decide to sell to another company and that company closes your account or whatever.
With your own website or blog you own the domain name, you own the content, and you are in full control of what and how that content your promoting is pushed out to the public.
So having your own website or blog is something that you should have and do for your promotion of the affiliate links you have and creating content for your business as you are in control of your site, not another company.
If it was us creating content, we would go with the blog first and foremost, as you can add so many blog post to a blog site, like literally if you can come up with content you can write hundreds if not thousands of content articles on a blog site if you have the time to do it.
If your looking for a simpler way of just having a place online then creating a website to promote your affiliate marketing business is another way to offer your programs as well.
Ok, let’s say you start with a website first, so you just go to a domain provider like BlueHost or Godaddy and get a domain picked out for your liking.
You pick out a hosting package for your website to be hosted with them and they can range from for example $5.00 a month hosting up to $25.99 a month hosting but here’s something you should consider when picking a hosting package.
With the cheaper hosting package you’re looking at sharing your website on a server with others on that server and it can sometimes run a little slower than having to pay for the bigger hosting like a managed hosting plan.
Now, since your just starting out with a hosting plan your not really going to get lots of traffic yet so you shouldn’t really be concerned with this as your website traffic won’t be a factor at this time anyway.
Ok, if you have the budget and you can afford the higher price of hosting like a managed plan which is roughly about $25.00 a month you will be on a server with other websites but here’s the big difference.
It’s like having a condo for a website your condo is in the same building but it’s your very own space so your website will be fast as if it’s on a dedicated space on the server so think about that as well.
The same goes with a blog you can again pick the hosting plan you want to start with and go from there as you build your business.
The time has come now that you have your website online or blog and you’re wanting some other tips on knowing what you need to make it the best blog or website people can come and visit right.
I would make sure you have these steps in place for your website or blog.
- Easy Navigation
- Original Content
- Good Design
- Website Speed
- Search Engine Optimization
- Secure SSL
- Mobile Friendly
Good Design
Creating your website or blog is something that is going to have to be something you will have to do in making sure people love what they see so the visitor keeps coming back to your site or blog over and over again.
Now I don’t mean going out there and buying a template design for your website or blog so it can be the best-looking site online, what I mean is when your first starting out with your site keep it as neat and clutter-free from everything so when visitors come to your site they can easily find what they are looking for.
When your first starting out with a website or blog just go with the basics with your site until you are getting lots of traffic then think about changing the design as this should be the last thing on your mind right now, just focus on getting the content on your site first and foremost.
Easy Navigation
Easy Navigation is the next step in making sure your website or blog has a great experience for your visitors to your site.
If you are able to have your website or blog easy to navigate to your visitors and customers and they access everything like your home page, blog pages, about page, contact page, and category pages like new products, etc then having this is key to making sure your site will stand out and it helps with CTR as well.
Original Content
Having original content is also a major key to having a very successful website or blog and having lots of returning visitors.
If you are creating original content and you not creating content that is already on the internet and just making it better, you’re going to get a lot more organic visitors from the search engines if you can create great original content.
When your creating original content over time the search engines will recognize original content and the search engines will start ranking your content over time higher and higher on the rankings for your content, but it’s not a guarantee with some search engines so be aware of that.
Now your probably asking what is original content, well original content is content that you have taken the time in creating for example a blog post that you created around the subject that your writing about for that content people are searching for.
For example, you’re into the health and wellness niche you can go to google for example, and look at all the other blog post about the health and wellness niche, then you can research what they are talking about on their blogs and you can take some of those ideas and make them better on your blog post.
Now, this can be done, but it’s really not original content your using in your own words.
Everyone is searching for the same things your researching for and they are getting the same results over and over again on the search engines.
So creating your own original content in your words and images will help you in getting better indexing and rankings on the search engines.
If you can narrow it down to content that you’re talking about and keep on the topic of the content that the searcher is looking for, and make it your very own content not just taking something else and making it better.
Website Speed
Website Speed is going to be a major player for those websites and blogs this year that are being updated or created for the new google web vitals that is going to be rolling out this year.
If your website or blog is not going to load fast on desktop or mobile your probably not going to do very well in getting indexed or ranked on the search engines this year and here’s why.
The search engines are trying to provide their visitors with the best browsing experience they can offer the visitor and if your website is going to load slowly on desktop or mobile, they the visitor are probably going to exit out of your website and go back to the search engines and this will, in turn, tell the search engines your website gave them a bad experience.
So if the search engines are getting a lot of people exiting your site a lot they eventually will be showing another website to their visitors and then your rankings will eventually fall off and before you know it you’re on the last page of the SERPs, and that is just as bad as being on the second page of the SERPs as most searchers don’t even go to the second page anymore.
For website speed make sure you are using a theme design that works fast and mobile-friendly also learn about how you can stay up to date with it as well, for checking your website speed you can do that at Google Page Speed Insights.
Secure SSL
Having a website or blog with a Secure SSL is another one of those things you have to have installed to your website or blog this year as this is another one of those google web vitals they are looking at in your site being indexed and ranked.
If your going to create a website or blog to promote your affiliate marketing programs then having a secure SSL certificate is something you should do and get done right away.
Most of the hosting providers will supply you with a Secure SSL certificate for a yearly price of roughly $99.00 a year and some also even offer it for free with their hosting for example if you take the managed hosting its usually included in the price of your hosting and it’s free for you to get it installed when you take the managed hosting as well.
With what I said above you will need a Secure SSL certificate added to your site with the new google web vitals so if you’re looking to get indexed and ranked well then get this one added to your site.
Mobile Friendly
Now like I said above having a website or blog that is mobile-friendly will be another one of those google web vitals that will be rolling out this year and if your website is not mobile-friendly I can tell you that your competition is making sure their website is.
So if you want to be able to offer affiliate marketing programs on your website or blog then you must make sure your site is mobile-friendly so when the major search engines start crawling your site that it’s going to tell them it’s mobile-friendly to help you get indexed and ranked well over time.
Studies have shown that more and more people are using mobile now to surf the web so not having a mobile-friendly website or blog is going to mean you’re going to lose business with those visitors or even worst give the visitor a really bad experience visiting your site and they will have a tough time buying from you online with not being up to date with the web vitals.
You can check this with Google on their website with Google Mobile Friendly Test.
Creating Quality Content
This one is something you have got to really do right if you’re looking to get traffic to your website or blog.
Creating original content is something that will pay you over and over again with organic traffic from the search engines if you can create very good or even great original content, so you can promote your affiliate marketing programs on your website or blog.
I know I touched a little about his subject early in this post but if you want to be successful with any affiliate marketing program and you want your website or blog to get you lots of traffic then creating original great content is a key factor in doing so.
The difference in creating quality content is knowing how to answer what the searcher intent is for them as to what they are looking for on the search engines.
If you want to be able to promote your affiliate marketing offers on your website or blog then creating original content will pay you over and over again.
Now you’re probably asking me how do you go about doing this and how can it work to your advantage on your site.
This is where most people fail when it comes to creating original content and the first thing you have got to do and do it right is this.
When you know the niche you’re going to promote for your affiliate marketing business this is what you have got to be able to do to get organic traffic with original content.
When the user is looking for something online and they are asking a question on the search engines and if you can create the content that is answering their questions with great quality content, then you have just been able to solve what they are looking to accomplish.
Now creating great content just doesn’t mean writing content on a blog post with a bunch of words and hoping to see lots of visitors to your blog post for example.
Creating quality content means creating a blog post that is answering their question and staying on the topic of what the user is asking, if you can solve their answer with a 1500 word blog post or a 500-word blog post, then knowing how to create a blog post that satisfies their intent is going to reward you with lots of organic traffic.
Some bloggers believe that putting a huge blog post online or lots of texts on their website will be better than those who are putting a smaller blog post on their site to getting traffic.
Well, that was one of the major traffic advantages one time and before google and the other search engines believe that the more content you can put on a blog post the better to satisfy the user intent of their searches.
Now that is still the case to some extent, but now the search engines like google are now moving away from that theory and believe now if your blog post is only 500 words long or 1500 words long if you can satisfy the user intent the best no matter how many words you can do it in, they are going to give you great organic traffic today for those who can satisfy what the user is searching for.
My advice to you when you’re creating original content if you can deliver the results to the user with 500 words or 2500 words the longer the blog post today no longer matters as it is now becoming who can satisfy the user intent the best with the topics that are being asked online.
Ok, my other advice when creating original content for your website or blog to get traffic to your affiliate marketing business is to create the content as evergreen content and what that means is content that will never go out of date or the trend will never stop that is evergreen content.
How To Drive Traffic To Your Content
Driving traffic to your content is going to take a little work on your part and it’s not going to happen overnight but with these steps, I think you will be getting traffic in no time to your affiliate marketing programs and website or blog.
Once your website or blog is created or for those who are just going to advertise the affiliate links that are given to them when they join then here’s what you can do to get traffic to your offers for your affiliate marketing business.
Start with social media, head over to your favorite social media site that you are already using whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram to just name a few, and go and create a business page with those social media accounts to start promoting your affiliate marketing business.
Depending on what niche you’re going to be promoting some social media sites work better than others.
If your into the health and wellness niche then Pinterest is perfect for you to advertise on that platform as most of the visitors on Pinterest are female and that would be a perfect place for you to start in that niche to promote.
Maybe your into the network marketing and affiliate marketing niche then I would suggest you create a business page on Linkedin for that market to advertise on that platform.
My next advice for you when creating those social media accounts to advertise your affiliate marketing links and for those of you who are going to have a website or blog.
I would use the same names if you can as the website or blog is called so, for example, your domain name is 123healthandwellness then try your best to call your social media accounts the same name.
The reason why you want to do this is if you don’t want others to take your name and use it on social media and have your domain name in jeopardy of people thinking it’s you when it’s not on social media.
Another reason why I suggest this of getting the same name if you can is so that you can link those social media account back to your website or blog and that will give the search engines a way to verify who the business is linked to when it comes to building trust with the search engines, as that will be another one of those core web vitals that is coming into play this year as well.
My next step to getting you to drive traffic to your content is you can advertise on the search engines with a paid campaign if you have the budget to do so.
For those of you who are not wanting to wait for organic traffic to come your way as it does take time to get organic traffic, then you can set up advertising with pay per click on the search engines to get traffic.
You can set up a paid advertising campaign with for example google and advertise your website or blog to start promoting your affiliate marketing business that way.
With that type of advertising, your paying the search engines so much per click when someone types in a keyword that you use in the campaign, and every time someone clicks on your ad on the search engine you pay a fee for that click could be 0.10 cents a click and up to $3.00 a click just depends on how competitive that keyword is.
When it comes to paying search engines for pay per click you better make sure you know what your doing as that kind of advertising can be very expensive if you don’t know how to target the niche you’re going to be promoting.
As I said above when it comes to what will be the payouts to you for your affiliate marketing programs if you’re going to be doing pay per click advertising and your only getting paid a 3 percent commission for each sale then doing pay per click advertising might cost you more to advertise then the reward you’re going to get in return so be careful on this one and join affiliate marketing programs that pay at least 20 percent.
Long Tail Keywords is something that you should really learn about when it comes to creating content for your website or blog and knowing how to use keywords to your advantage of getting traffic to your affiliate marketing business organically.
When you create a blog post for example on your blog or creating content on your website to get traffic to it if you use long-tail keywords you have a better chance of getting indexed and ranked then using just a keyword or two keywords as it can be very competitive with the niche your promoting.
For example, your into say the Keto Diet, if you use the keyword Keto Diet for the keyword to your blog post or content for your website your going to get crushed by the competition with using just that keyword as that will be a very competitive keyword for you.
Now let’s turn the table around to your advantage for that keyword and use How To Lose Weight With The Keto Diet as the long tail keyword to give you a better chance of getting indexed and ranked for that keyword.
So using long-tail keywords will get you better chances of getting traffic than just using a keyword that everyone else is using, so until you can make your website or blog a very authoritative site then you have no choice but to use the long tail keyword aspect first to get traffic.
Writing quality Headlines that get results is something else you got to know how to do effectively when looking to get that traffic to your content for promoting your affiliate marketing programs.
I would start with answer the public to knowing what people are asking on the search engines to give you quality ideas of using headlines that will get searched for on the search engines.
When you’re trying to figure out what people are looking for tools like answer the public will help you to find the right headlines to write a blog post about for creating content to get people to visit your blog post and click on your affiliate marketing links and offers.
Once you have created some quality content on your website or blog then learning how to do SEO can also be a great benefit for you when it comes to getting organic traffic to your affiliate marketing business.
We created these articles a little while ago on how you can learn some of the basics of SEO and we highly encourage you to review some of the aspects of learning SEO and how valuable it can be for you here they are SEO For Beginners and Content Marketing And SEO What You Need To Know
Of you don’t have the time in learning SEO then hire a professional company to do it for you as having SEO on your website done correctly will pay you over and over again with organic traffic to get you the traffic to your content for months and years to come in the future.
You can also try doing email marketing as well, and I would also try to get traffic to your content so you can advertise your affiliate marketing business online.
With email marketing, you can hire a professional company to send out a newsletter for you to their subscribers so you can get your website or blog and even your affiliate links out there to the masses they have that are subscribed to their list.
Email marketing is still today the best way to promote any website, blog, or affiliate marketing program.
Once your site gets pretty popular I would add a place on your website or blog for your visitors to subscribe to your email list so you can capitalize on email marketing your self and if you can I would do this right away of getting that function up and running on your website or blog so people can join your email list.
The best way to get people to add their email to your list and subscribe to your offers is to offer them some kind of incentive in return for their email address, this could be a free course or a free e-book that they can receive from you so doing this is a great way to get their email addresses.
CONCLUSION
How to start affiliate marketing all starts with the first step of choosing a niche to join and having a passion for being successful at affiliate marketing.
What are you passionate about or what do you love to talk about all the time than finding a niche that you will enjoy is something that will make affiliate marketing really enjoyable to you.
Once you find the niche you love and have a passion for it will be a very rewarding experience for you, and you’re more than likely to not get bored with your affiliate marketing business.
Next, you want a way to promote your affiliate marketing business, and having a website or blog is a great tool in doing this for your affiliate marketing programs to get visitors and customers to see your affiliate marketing business.
Ok now you have your website or blog done and now you’re looking to add content to it then having great quality content to your website or blog will not only get your sales and customers but it will help you really well in the organic traffic over time.
If you can provide great quality traffic you can be rest assured that over time you will notice a good steady climb in organic traffic over and over again and not have to worry about spending a lot of money to get traffic if done right.
If your not looking forward to the long wait of getting organic traffic to your website or blog or affiliate links you can go with driving traffic to your affiliate marketing business with the search engines with paid campaigns, create social media business pages to drive traffic, and learning how to do SEO can benefit you in gaining traffic as well.
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Cheers,
Jim Morrison
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I hope you enjoyed this post on How To Start Affiliate Marketing Step By Step and come back for my next post.
