How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Business
May 6, 2021
Before you start your affiliate marketing business, you should ask yourself if you want to build websites to grow or sell. Selling a website can be very profitable, but so is growing one.
Either way, you will need to improve upon any website in the affiliate model if you want to see success. The more money the site is making, the more you can sell it for. The same goes for sites that you want to keep. If you keep adding content and building your backlink profile, your site will move up the search engines.
Not all Affiliate Marketing Businesses are the Same
However, there are different ways to approach the affiliate marketing model.
For those who are unaware, affiliate marketing is simply a way of making money online by promoting other people’s products. You get a unique link to use, and if someone makes a purchase from that link, you will get a commission.
But how do you go about this? There are a number of ways to start an affiliate marketing business, which is what this article will discuss.
Building an Authority Website
This is the most common way to get started with affiliate marketing.
You will create a website or blog in a specific niche. This is generally something that you are familiar with, or at least have some interest in.
It’s important to like the subject because that makes it easier to write about. If your interests somehow aren’t marketable, you could outsource the content to someone who is knowledgeable in that field. Finding writers is easy because there are many content services available.
The first thing to do before writing is to establish whether there is an audience for your niche. Using online tools like Ahrefs can help you determine if there’s demand and how much competition you need to deal with.
Once you have established that you do have an audience, you need to make sure that there are affiliate products to promote. One is not enough.
There should be several products that you can promote for your niche. These affiliate programs should have a good payout. Shoot for 20% or more.
You might want to consider other programs outside of Amazon Associates, though, because the payout may be lower. Shoot for products found on ClickBank, JVZoo, and other networks with high payouts.
Once you have established that you have a good niche and there are plenty of products to promote—it’s time to start writing.
Pro Tip: If you’re good at editing, you can save a lot of money by choosing lower cost writers. Be prepared to do some extra work, but this strategy can save you a lot.
Paid Advertising
With this method, you technically do not need to build a website. You would simply create a landing page, which is essentially a presell page.
There are many funnel builders online that can help you do this. You would then create an ad to place on Facebook, Google Ads, or other networks.
The idea here is to capture the attention of your audience, get them to click on your ad, and offer a freebie on your landing page for the exchange of their email. You would then send them follow-up email campaigns telling them why they should buy the affiliate product you are promoting.
You need to be cautious with this method because without the proper affiliate marketing training, you could end up eating a considerable amount of your budget.
You could also do a hybrid model where you send paid traffic to a blog post on your blog, which would act as your landing page. There are some affiliate marketing courses that only teach this method and some that include it in the training.
If you’re “all in” with paid advertising, choose a course that specializes in it. However if you are unsure, you’d want to get a course that discusses a wide range of traffic-generating ideas.
Email Marketing
This strategy is similar to paid advertising because you’re still using email, but the method is different.
Here, you would be using something called solo ads. You will still create a landing page, as described above, but this time for the sole purpose of building an email list.
With solo ads, you are essentially buying clicks from people with large email lists. You would need to search for solo ad providers that are in your niche and have them send out an email that links to your landing page. What’s good about this model is that clicks to your landing page are guaranteed. You can purchase a package of as little as 100 clicks or up to 1,000.
If you don’t get any sales, it’s not a loss because you are building up your list. You would then be able to do follow-up emails for other offers. This will cost you nothing except the monthly cost of your autoresponder.
Course Reviews Matter
With so many choices when it comes to affiliate marketing courses, it’s no wonder people sometimes feel overwhelmed.
I created my review site with the goal of shortening the learning curve for people to achieve success. When I started my affiliate marketing journey many years ago, I would always chase the next shiny object that came along and really bought into the hype of these courses. Sound familiar?
I couldn’t tell the good courses from the bad, but after a while, I noticed that many of these course creators were just in it for the money.
No surprise there.
After many failures, I started to focus on “gurus” who were putting out courses, and I made sure that they had real world experience. Selling hype was something that I was no longer going to fall for.
I wanted to get the word out on what to look for in a course and what to avoid. One of the most fulfilling experiences I have had is when people thank me for pointing them in the right direction. Many of these people were poised to invest thousands in a course, and I was able to provide a better alternative for hundreds of dollars less, and in some cases, thousands.
Since I buy or get review access for almost all the courses I review, I am able to spend time researching the course and either give it a thumbs up or down. Not only am I helping readers to make decisions, but a lot of courses have even helped me with my own business. So it’s a win-win really.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. You now realize that affiliate marketing can be approached in many different ways. Before you consider buying any course, you need to really understand what methods are being taught. It should be one of the strategies mentioned above that you are most interested in.
There are many different affiliate marketing courses out there, but most people don’t realize that the method taught may not work for them. Some people would prefer to build a website asset rather than get into paid advertising. It’s important to do what appeals to you most without being misled by a tactic that doesn’t interest you.
