There’s no question about it… Affiliate marketing is an AMAZING lifestyle. I know from experience. The online affiliate marketer lifestyle has enabled me to live out one of my biggest dreams in life. I get to travel the country in a camper and work from wherever I want, when I want, as long as I want and as hard as I want. If that wasn’t awesome enough, since my main business model is affiliate marketing, that means I sell other peoples stuff. When you sell other peoples stuff in exchange for a commission, that means you don’t have to deal with any customer service, payment processing systems, hire any employees, or do any of the things most other business owners consider to be a headache. And, since affiliate businesses are based entirely on the internet, it operates 24/7/365. After some initial time and effort, your online business can earn you a 100% passive income.
Unfortunately, most new affiliate marketers never even receive a single paycheck. Even fewer receive more than $100 per month and those of us who ACTUALLY earn a full-time living online are few and far between. That’s why I always recommend people use the same exact training course I used to get started with my online business.
If you’re just too busy to go through my free course, here are some quick pointers and affiliate marketing best practices. The rest of this article will focus on the top 5 affiliate marketing best practices, especially for you newbies out there.
#5 – Be Laser Focused With A Sustained Effort
I see it happen all the time. People go through an affiliate marketer training course, start doing some work, and 6 months later…. nothing. Everything is abandoned. But why? Because they don’t have a great understanding of the basic affiliate marketing best practices.
Here’s the thing guys… No matter what affiliate marketing tactics you decide to go with, you absolutely must give a sustained and long-term effort. So many affiliate marketers tend to use the “hail Mary” approach to affiliate marketing. That is, people will attempt one get-rich-quick method, get discouraged after a few weeks, then try another get-rich-quick method. They are always going after that big play that will pay off. Unfortunately, that hardly ever works.
In order to succeed online, you must treat affiliate marketing like a marathon, not a sprint. Long-term sustained and laser focused effort is the best way to succeed. Whether you decide to build a blog, create a video blog on YouTube, utilize social media, paid advertising, or any other method – it’s going to take you some time. Even if some online guru gives you the best step-by-step tutorial in existence, you’ll still need to learn some things on your own and add your own ingredients into the mix and this can only be done through time, effort, trial and error. No mistake is a waste of time – all mistakes are simply learning experiences. As you may or may not know, it took Thomas Edison 10,000 attempts to create the lightbulb and I think he said it best…
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
- Free Video Series About Affiliate Marketing Best Practices (No Email Required): How To Grow An Affiliate Business From The Ground Up
#4 – Perform Proper Market Research BEFORE Investing Your Time
In this training program, they spend the first several lessons teaching new internet marketers how to perform proper market research. Just like any other legitimate business, you need to have a plan. Most offline business owners must develop a clear plan, including financial plans, so they can obtain a business loan from a bank. Without a plan, they will never get a loan from anyone.
Now, with an online business, this step can be easily skipped. Since it is so cheap to start a business online, no loans are required and thus, many new affiliate marketers never actually develop a strategic business plan. They don’t know what they will promote, how they will promote it, if what they are promoting can actually be profitable, how they will reach enough people to earn a living from what they are promoting, etc.
Affiliate marketing is a time-intensive business in the beginning. Before you spend time building out a business, you better be darn sure it can be profitable. Otherwise, according to the affiliate marketing best practices, it’s just not worth the time and effort.
#3 – Develop A Blog Or Website With Fresh Content Added Regularly
I like to preach what I practice about affiliate marketing best practices and this is the absolute #1 way I gain thousands upon thousands of fresh leads each and every day… for FREE. Sure, I have some social media accounts and every so often I’ll toy around with paid advertising, but adding fresh content regularly to my blogs and websites is my bread and butter. It’s so important that I use this method for all of the affiliate products and services I promote. Every last one of them.
The more fresh and valuable content you provide, the more search engines will like your site, which means more free traffic. That’s why creating high quality and regular content is the one of the most important affiliate marketing best practices. In addition, the more content you have, the more likely someone will stumble upon your content and decide to share it on social media where it can go viral. You can’t do anything without high quality content. If you only have time to focus on ONE promotional task each day, creating high value and unique content on your website or blog is it. All of the other affiliate marketing best practices pale in comparison.
#2 – Re-Invest Your Initial Earnings
It always drives me NUTS when new affiliate marketers say things like, “I just went on vacation thanks to the money I’ve earned from affiliate marketing!” Or, “my affiliate marketing income pays my mortgage each month!” If you’ve said that, you are not following the affiliate marketing best practices!
Don’t get me wrong, those are great things to have happen, but so many new affiliate marketers are missing a goldmine that is right in front of their faces! In the beginning, when you first start earning a profit, SAVE THE MONEY!! Don’t do anything with it. Just put it into a savings account. Once you have enough saved up or are earning enough income regularly, you can outsource. This is when the magic happens.
When you outsource, you’re able to expand at an exponential rate. If you can make money from one website, there’s no reason you can’t make money from two (or simply expand your existing money site). So have other people do that for you! Just tell them what to do!
There are plenty of ways you can outsource your work and still not break the affiliate marketing best practices. For example, you can find an expert web developer with decades of experience on Elance.com. Or, you could find a full time off-shore virtual assistant who can do almost anything at less than minimum wage. For example, I use a service called BDhire.com. You can hire a part-time assistant for just $600 per month (20hrs per week) or a full-time assistant at $1,200 per month (40hrs per week). I’ve had them help me with web design, social media promotions, keyword research, image gathering / editing, and much more. I also use services such as constant-content.com for content creation on some of my sites.
I’m not saying you can NEVER keep any of the profits. What I’m saying is to take your initial profits and re-invest it into outsourcing. That way, you can grow even faster. I generally reinvest about 50% of my profits and am still putting more money in my personal bank account than I have ever seen before and it just keeps going higher. Without re-investing into your business, you business can never be long-term and sustainable. You just can’t do this yourself and with so many reasonably priced outsourcing resources available to you, there’s no reason you have to. You can still follow these affiliate marketing best practices even if you outsource.
#1 – Duplicate What Works!
Remember, reinventing the wheel is not a part of these affiliate marketing best practices, because quite frankly, wheels do a pretty darn good job at what they are meant to do. These affiliate marketing best practices are based off of techniques that are already working. There are people out there, right now, earning a substantial living online through affiliate marketing. I’m one of them. All you have to do is follow those who are truly successful.
But be careful here, because people will flat out lie to you online, so you really need to use your best judgement. Heck, I could be lying to you right now and there’s really no way for you to verify if what I’m telling you is truth or not. But take a deeper, closer look. Some guys will tell you that you can get rich quick through affiliate marketing and make a ton of dough online by next week if you just follow their “simple” method. Does that really sound like one of the top affiliate marketing best practices? To follow get rich quick strategies? Other guys, such as myself, will tell you that making money online is possible but only IF you have a great plan and dedicated time and effort into your business. Whoever you decide to believe is up to you, but I strongly suggest you give this affiliate marketing e-course a try. Once you go through that course, I think you’ll see the light. 🙂