With the right training, anyone can be successful in affiliate marketing. When I first started affiliate marketing back in 2009, I had no idea the type of life affiliate marketing would end up giving me. If you want to read my full story, you can read my affiliate marketing success story here as well as what the affiliate marketing lifestyle is like.
Affiliate marketing helps both the marketer and the business being promoted, and with the right type of relationship, you can create your own successful affiliate marketing business right from the comfort of your own home and on your own time.
Affiliate marketing works when an online retailer pays commission to your external website for referring others to visit their website to buy their products. This relationship helps you to gain commission by referring audiences to quality products, and benefits the business by helping them to get more organic leads interested in what they have to offer. If you’d like more information, check out my article on how affiliate marketing works.
Know Your Product And Audience First
The most important thing you’ll need to do to be successful in affiliate marketing is getting to know your product first, then your audience. If this is a product you’re selling and putting your time in to, you should be an expert on the product at hand, because this gives you the ability to create real trust between you and your audience base. Not to mention, I also feel it’s important to remember that you’re putting your own reputation on your product, and you want it to reflect that type of quality. When building your first affiliate marketing website, make sure to include plenty of informative content that really teaches your audience about the products you’re referring them to, and allows them to have all questions answered in one place. When your audience trusts you, they’re like to keep coming back to you for more.
Once you have your product figured out, you’ll then want to focus on what audience will best benefit or be interested in what you have to offer. What do those who need your product need it for? How can they use it? What will they get out of it? What do they need to know? These are all questions you need to ask yourself when hosting your own website or blog. Find out what your audience is really looking for, and give it to them with solutions in the form of your affiliate marketing products.
One of the essential “formulas” I use when creating any new website is the CTPM process, which I highly recommend you read about here.
Spread Out Your Opportunities
Being locked in with one company or one single product might seem like the easy streamlined route to how to be successful in affiliate marketing, but you’re actually doing yourself a great disservice by doing so. I feel that the best way to approach your affiliate marketing business is to expand your possibilities and horizons by not putting your eggs in one basket, but having many baskets open to attract different referrals and give you more opportunities. This way, if you have problems with one business you’re doing affiliate marketing for, it won’t be such a large hit to your success, and you can focus on other products your audiences will like more.
In order to keep those opportunities open, I cannot stress enough how important it is to avoid exclusivity agreements that allow you to only focus on one product or one brand unless you’ve had exceptionally positive experiences with this brand in the past. These agreements with a brand you’re unfamiliar with can leave you in a position where you’re trapped in an affiliate marketing program with a brand you work for but doesn’t work for you back.
Embrace Change And Look For The New Opportunities
The internet is ever changing, and you should be, too, if you want to know how to be successful in affiliate marketing. If you want to stay on top of your audiences, and you want to keep reeling them in to take interest in the products you’re marketing, you’ll need to research and keep up with all the current trends. Our community is a great way to approach how to be successful in affiliate marketing by staying on top of trends as you learn of new trends and what’s working in real time. Rather than having to research trends and learn about them after they’ve peaked, you’ll keep up with the ebb and flow of different affiliate marketing tactics or strategies as they’re happening in real-time.
By keeping your affiliate marketing strategies fresh and new, your audiences won’t get bored, and they’ll continue to seek you out as a trendsetter in the field.
Trial And Error Your Way To Success
Giving up is the number one reason people find trouble trying to learn how to be successful in affiliate marketing. You expect immediate results, and when you don’t get them, you throw in the towel and write off affiliate marketing as something that doesn’t work for you. If I could extend one single tip on how to be successful in affiliate marketing, it’s to embrace trial and error and to study what works and what doesn’t before deciding if this is the route for you. From the start, monitor your statistics and see what’s working for you and what’s not, and use this information to continue to market your products in the future.
Persistence is also key in how to be successful in affiliate marketing, and you should be promoting your websites, your blogs, and your marketing content at least once per day every day to attract visitors and statistics you can study to your content.
Find Your Affiliate Marketing Niche
An affiliate marketing website or blog filled with all different types of products in various categories is one without much direction, and one that won’t keep potential leads coming back. This approach to affiliate marketing is messy, and it won’t lead your desired audience to your content as you won’t have a specific desired audience to focus on. Rather than taking a “more is more” approach, focus on one type of niche market, and review, link to and create content surrounding that particular market instead of two, or three, or a whole bevy of different markets of products. If you offer baby products, for instance, don’t sprinkle in car parts, or if you’re focusing on GPS technologies, don’t add in body care products. You want your visitors to look to you as a trusted resource on a product, not a general resource for many.
Serious about becoming an affilaite marketer? Let's set up your website! It's not as hard as you might think! Just follow these simple step-by-step instructions, and for $2.95 per month, you'll have your own domain name on a WordPress website with discounted Bluehost web hosting. Ready to get started? Let's go!
Step 1: Visit Bluehost.com
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Click the "get started now" button and let’s get started! (see above). Select a hosting plan that fits your needs. (Normally, if you are just starting out I recommend the basic plan but, if you are really serious about this and want more resources & power go with their Prime or Pro plan). Keep in mind, you can always upgrade your plan as you grow.
Step 2: Pick Your Domain Name
Search for a domain with the domain name search tool below. Don’t spend a ton of time on this step, you can always change the domain name later. If you already have a domain name, type it in the "I have a domain name" box. Bluehost is generous enough to throw in a FREE domain name with every new hosting account created.
The next step is to fill out your account and billing information.
Review the package information below and decide what term/add-ons are desired. The biggest bang for your buck is on the 60 month term, but you can choose 36 months, 24 months or 12 months. Please note that Bluehost will charge you upfront for the entire term.
Insert payment information and accept the terms.
Congrats, your hosting account has been created! Bluehost will send you a welcome email.
Create your password. Make sure to review the requirements for creating the password. If you need help you can always click the “Suggest Password” option. Regardless, I recommend notating it just to be safe. You’ll end up needing it later on.
Go ahead and login to start getting familiar with your new Bluehost account.
Step 3: Install Your WordPress Website
Thanks to Bluehost, after your hosting account has been created WordPress will automatically install. Start off by picking a theme, these are all free themes from WordPress.org. You can always update or customize your theme later.
Now that you’ve picked your theme, let’s jump into WordPress and get you even closer to constructing that first blog post.
Decide whether this site will be for business or personal use.
On this step, you’ll see an overview of Bluehost+WordPress integration. You can manage WordPress plugins and blog posts or pages here.
Here’s a revamped dashboard of the Bluehost control panel.
Now you can make your site look how you want! Since you are using WordPress the sky's the limit! If you're looking for a great tutorial on how to build a great looking WordPress site, check out this video.
Start Publishing!
You now have a fully functional WordPress website with a great hosting company! That wasn't so hard, was it!? From this point on, your main task is to publish as much content as possible. This site has tons of tutorials and articles on how to grow your affilaite marketing business, but in order for you to fully understand how to publish content and make money with your affiliate marketing blog, check out this article. Best of luck to you as you grow your business! :) Want even more help? Check out this incredible affiliate marketer training program and community of people growing an affiliate business just like you!
