Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative way of monetizing your business. Unlike drop shipping or being a supplier, you don’t have to worry about shipping and customs costs. You don’t have to take on the responsibilities of a fulfillment company, especially if you are the only person working in your business. With affiliate marketing, all you need to worry about is getting people to purchase the item they want from your website.
With affiliate marketing, you have a lot of advantages available to you. First, you’re not limited to one type of product. You can literally sell anything as an affiliate. The best part about this is all the marketing is done for you. You won’t have to convince a person about the quality of a certain brand. You can offer all types of brands, provided you give people a reason to buy via your affiliate link specifically.
Caution: Affiliate marketing is challenging
Now, while it seems that affiliate marketing is as easy as 1-2-3, in practice, it’s far more complicated than that. While it’s easy to make $10 from your promotional activities, trying to make more than $1,000+ from affiliate marketing requires more work, patience, and perseverance.
If you’re ready to make more than $1,000 from your affiliate marketing activities, then you need to answer these three questions:
1. Do your potential customers have a reason to buy from you?
If you want to make sales with affiliate marketing then you need to focus on giving people a reason to buy from you. The best way to do this is by making valuable content. Not just any content, but quality ones.
You can’t just make content that reviews the product you want to sell and makes it sound like the greatest thing ever. Your content should be a combination of real insights and giving some value to your readers, this way they will trust your site and be more inclined to buy.
Don’t focus on writing content that will get you sales. Gary Vaynerchuk, a prolific entrepreneur, investor and social media guru, once said that you should guilt people into buying from you. Meaning, you need to give so much value to your potential customers, in such a way that they have no other choice than buying from you.
Create content that is actually solve people’s problem and you will see the results.
2. Are you genuine in your intention?
Another thing to be aware of with affiliate marketing is transparency. You don’t want people to feel cheated by you or your website. Although the price is the same, some people will feel misled if they find out you made a commission off of the sale.
It’s important to have a good relationship with your audience and make them aware of this. Communication is key to maintaining a good relationship with your audience.
Try putting a piece of text on your sidebar that lets people know that your articles contain affiliate links. Disclosing this is part of FTC regulations and may be required by the company you are an affiliate for.
By being transparent, you don’t have to worry about getting yourself into any legal troubles.
3. Do you have your sales funnel ready?
Sales channels play an important role in your success. While selling on your website is quite possible, but without creating a ‘funnel’, you’re limiting your revenue.
Just like a physical funnel, you should imagine your sales funnel as a ‘container’ to gather leads and convert them into buyers at the end of the funnel. It’s resource-intensive to build a sales funnel, but if it’s done right, you’ll eventually see results.
There are many sales funnel models to choose from, but to illustrate, there is a particular way to create a sales funnel: Build several niche websites that are purposed to deliver leads to your main sites, in which you convert leads into affiliate product sales. Your niche websites should each focus on a certain target market, and offer value through your content to that particular audience.
Takeaway
Affiliate marketing is straightforward, but it isn’t the easiest thing to do. You need to treat it like a real business and make sure you value your customers. Building a relationship and audience is key to having a successful affiliate site.
Remember to be transparent and always try and give your audience as much value as possible. With these tips, you’ll be running an affiliate empire in no time (or at least reach your first $1,000/month milestone!)