Have you decided to make your foray into affiliate marketing? Are you looking to up your affiliate marketing game after a few months in the business? Or do you consider yourself an old pro hoping to take some refresher courses on affiliate marketing?
No matter what situation you find yourself in, I always recommend videos as an effective form of instruction. It’s a useful way to learn, especially if you find yourself able to learn better in a more traditional classroom setting. I’ve fWealthy Affiliate has some of the best courses out there, so I wanted to highlight a few that would be the most helpful to affiliate marketers everywhere. The best part about these courses? It’s hard to say—either the fact that they’re completely free or that they offer incredibly valuable information.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Great for: Beginners
If you have little to no understanding of affiliate marketing, this course will break it down for you. As a handy introduction, you’ll understand exactly what affiliate marketing means and why it’s a business that people are interested in getting into.
The course certainly encourages you to become an affiliate, but if you get past the push towards starting your own online business, there’s a lot of useful information here. Wealthy Affiliate does an excellent job of delivering honest opinions here—primarily in letting you know that what you put into your work is what you’ll get out of it.
A lot of people hear that they can make easy money online with affiliate marketing, and that’s what interests them most. While the payoff for an affiliate business can be great eventually, it is not a get-rich-quick kind of job. This course will be honest with you about how it works but also emphasize some of the great perks of being an affiliate, like:
- Low start-up costs. Unlike other businesses where you need thousands of dollars just to get started, affiliates can get started with very little.
- No employees or product necessary. You can simply work for yourself and not have to worry about employees or following traditional business protocol. Additionally, affiliate marketing means you don’t need your own product. This is a way for you to promote things that already exist and you don’t have to invent something yourself.
- No expert knowledge needed. While it’s recommended you get into affiliate marketing with an interest in the particular field you focus on, you don’t need to be a pro. No four-year degree or PhD needed here!
- Earn passive income. Passive income is money that comes in even though you’re not technically working at that moment. So, for example, you share a link on Facebook and two weeks later someone clicks on it and buys something. In that moment, you’ve earned passive income because you weren’t really hard at work at that time. In small amounts, passive income doesn’t seem impressive, but it adds up quickly.
- You are your own boss. Determine when and where you want to work.
Affiliate Marketing Without A Website
Great for: Beginners, Intermediate, Advanced
Obviously, the first thing people think of when they hear affiliate marketing is an affiliate website. But you actually don’t need to have a website to be a successful affiliate! This course covers how you can earn income from affiliate sales without ever having to set up your own URL.
The video goes into great detail, and you’ll find that the most common ways to be an affiliate marketer without a website are:
- Posting on blogs and forums. As long as you follow the guidelines and don’t become overly promotional or spammy, this can leverage the audience numbers from other sites to see the products or services you’re promoting.
- Creating a product. If you can create something like an e-book and include affiliate links, you can then earn commission on every sale. Your product doesn’t even need to be a paid product! Consider making a small 3-page PDF for anyone who signs up for your email list.
- YouTube. If you have some great ideas and enthusiasm in front of the camera, you can try doing unboxing videos or reviews on YouTube. You don’t need fancy equipment for this—a webcam or a smartphone will do.
- Write ads or reviews. Include affiliate links in the body of your content and post them on classifieds websites.
- Build a hub. Although it’s similar, this is not the same as building a website. It’s hosted on HubPages and allows you to post content and ads without knowing about website setup.
- Buy ads. When done correctly, you can place ads on search engines or even on social media for wider coverage.
Customize Your WordPress Blog With Essential Plugins
Great for: Intermediate, Advanced
With all the plugins available to you, it can be hard to choose which ones to go with. Before you activate one on your site, do a little research—when was it last updated and what are the reviews? But even that can’t give you all the information you might need. The next thing you should do is refer to other sites for recommendations, and Wealthy Affiliate has some great ones for you.
The course will not only cover installing a plugin, but they share their favorite one: All In One SEO Pack. This plugin will:
- Help you avoid duplicate content on other blogs.
- Optimizes titles for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
- Let you override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want, which can then help with SEO.
- Automatically generate META tags for you.
Not only that, it’s backward-compatible with many other plugins that you might want to install. Check out the entire course for more information on plugins and the best ones to install on your site.
