How to Become an Affiliate Marketer
Hi! My name is Ishay, and I’m an affiliate marketer!
Today I’m going to break my usual routine. I’m going to share my point of view on how to become an affiliate marketer. This article is the first in the series of my affiliate marketing articles on strategy.
What is affiliate marketing exactly? What do we really do? How do we do it?
In addition to that, I will talk about the main affiliate marketing techniques and how affiliate marketing and blogging go together for best results.
How to become an affiliate marketer
STEP 1
What Is affiliate marketing?
This step is to help you understand the full meaning of being an affiliate. Before we dive in I want to tell you up front that this job requires a good amount of dedication.
In contrast to what you see on shady Facebook posts and scammy ads offering to get rich fast, THERE IS NO QUICK BUCK TO BE GAINED. Affiliate marketing isn’t suited for people who think its dark magic and they will get rich fast. Being an affiliate marketer is a tough job.
Now that we got that out of the way let’s dive in and understand the job description.
I’m going to quote WIKI here:
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
Simply put, you’re in charge of marketing, meaning you also pay for it with time, money, hard work and effort. Any sale generating from your hard work will be rewarded.
Sale = $
Pretty simple to understand the concept, right?
Structure
The industry has four core players:
- the merchant – also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’ will be the one that pays you the sale money
- the network – the system that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments. (For instance: ShareaSale or Impact)
- the publisher – also known as the affiliate or partner is you
- the customer – the end customer or your lead to convert
STEP 2
Approach and Mindset
There are a lot of approaches when it comes to being an affiliate marketer.
Honestly, this part is very crucial. At the end of the day, this is one of the main reasons new affiliate marketers fail and quit. Due to the fact they simply don’t have the right approach and mindset.
Affiliating is actually hard work. You need to understand you are in charge of your own fate. There are literally millions of affiliates out there. Affiliating has a huge range of products and services. Some are private people like you and me, However, some are larger companies. They exist and do only that.
Sound scary? It is. No matter the niche you pick, you will be competing with tons of other affiliates in that field. Don’t worry, if you put in hard work with the proper tools you can rise.
My Approach
I’m going to share my key point of approach. Keep in mind this is me. Every person is different but I do suggest you take them into consideration and see where you are at in regards to these points.
A healthy affiliate mindset :
– Affiliate with products you believe in
• Cooperate with others (without harming your own practice – yes this can be done)
In my opinion, these are some key things you should stand by when affiliating.
STEP 3
How are you going to accomplish this?
This is the “money time”. It’s all swell, you joined an affiliation program, what now?
This is why its step 3 and not 4. Before you partner up with a merchant and become an official affiliate you need to figure out the ways of marketing suitable for you. Meaning, ways you can effectively market your service or product.
Furthermore, you need a certain environment and basic tools to get acquainted with before you start.
Tools and services you may need are:
Keep in mind not all tools are mandatory. It all depends on what and where.
Affiliate Marketing Techniques
There are a lot of methods and ways to promote your product or service.
I’m going to point out the main ones. However, keep in mind that you should go on the path that suits you best. Some affiliates use a trial and error process here to see what works best with their products or service.
Affiliate Marketing And Blogging
There’s a reason this one is first. Blogging is one of the most powerful if not the most powerful tool in your arsenal.
A website with good unique content is a great way of promoting a product or service. Keep in mind if you run a website you also need a way of generating user traffic to it. This can be done in various ways. The most powerful one is ORGANIC TRAFFIC. This is generated and gained by SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
In addition to organic traffic, you have paid traffic like Google Ads and social media ads.
Email Marketing
I personally don’t practice this technique. But you should know it. You have experienced this in your lifetime. When you left your details on a contact form somewhere. Get my drift? When you leave your email somewhere in most cases it is saved to a mailing list (to keep sending you promotions). Thus, generating leads by email.
Social Media Marketing
This method uses a social media page as a marketing platform. Meaning, You create your page with the chosen social platform and promote your product or service with that platforms audience and paid ads.
Product/Service Landing Page
Personally, I don’t use this method in my field. However, there are a lot of fields this method is practiced at with huge usage statistic. The general idea is to create a landing page focused on the service or product. Then, you drive traffic to this landing page with the use of paid ads in most cases.
So, What Do We Really Do?
Well, it depends on your ways of work. Most work is concentrated on creating unique content. Yeah, you heard it right. UNIQUE CONTENT. The successful affiliate will also focus on partnerships in his/her field with other affiliates and digital agencies.
Most of us run our own testing to the product or service before recommending it. However, I won’t lie. There are some affiliates who don’t even know what they are affiliating and never even tried the product.
How can you tell? Don’t worry, you can tell 🙂 In most cases, you will know it when you will see it.
DO:
DONT:
In Conclusion
This has been fun! We learned the do’s and dont’s of affiliate marketing, strategies and the mindset behind.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Keep in mind, its hard work but it pays if you stay true and keep to the points. If you were considering becoming an affiliate marketer I hope this article has helped you to make some sense of things. Good Luck!
Be sure to check out our article on understanding your target audience here: Know Your Audience.
If you need help with setting up an affiliate marketing program, reach out to the A is for Affiliate team!
