If you are a single parent looking to start a side hustle to supplement your income or an entrepreneur looking to start an affiliate marketing business, you have come to the right place. In this internet age when many look to the internet as a way to start their businesses or have a side hustle. Affiliate marketing is often on the top ten list of businesses to start on a shoestring budget with a minimum staff of one.
I will cover the top ten things you need to know when starting an affiliate marketing business in this ten best affiliate marketing tips for beginners. Whether you are an expert in your field or a youth looking to explore the opportunities available on the internet, we have you covered.
Understand what it takes to be a successful affiliate marketer
Affiliate marketing is still marketing. The end game is to get a product in front of interested customers who make purchases.
Unlike other types of advertising, however, affiliate marketers only get paid when the customer engages with the product. In this instance, engagement may be by clicking on it and visiting the product page or purchasing. It all depends on the type of ad you are running on your page.
So here are the best affiliate marketing tips, you need to know:
- Know your target audience
- What are they interested in
- Where do they hang out
- What are the they looking for online
- How to best meet their needs
- Become the authority in your niche
- Help
- Work with products you know and trust
- Know the terms used by people in your niche
- How to get your website in front of your target audience
- Have more than one source of traffic
How to choose your target audience
We do not just wake up one day and decide that we would like to sell carpets to old age pensioners. No, we first need to know who are the people interested in our product. This is extremely important. This is how we choose our target audience. What you will learn is that typically there will be a wide cross section of persons who are interested. They will vary in age and interest. However you will learn who the group that is most interested are. You will learn their ages, their other interests and so forth.
We then choose a section, the largest group and market to them. We will write content suited to this group of persons.
To learn about how to find the people interested in your niche, their ages and interests, join my free two week affiliate marketing course for beginners.
One of the simple ways to lean all you need to know is by joining groups and forums such as Quora or Facebook groups. Simply find and join the groups related to your topic of interest. Read what everyone is talking about to learn more about their interests and the jargon used in your niche.
Become the expert in your niche
As you begin an affiliate marketing business it is best to go into a field that you are both interested in and are knowledgeable about. If you are not confident in your knowledge, buy books and magazines on the topic and educate yourself. You need to be seen as the expert or go to person in your niche.
As you dive into the world of your target audience you should also engage with them. Answer their questions and let them get to know you too. The idea is to ensure that they know that you are the expert and can help them. Do not attempt to fake it. This is the quickest way to kill your business. Instead take time to learn all you can about your niche. A business is a long term investment so invest in your education.
It is better to market to a small section of the population and address their needs thoroughly than to try marketing to everyone. This will do two very important things:
- It makes it possible for you to become an expert in your niche very quickly.
- It will help you to develop a relationship with your target audience
Be Helpful
Your site visitors come for their own interest. They come to satisfy their needs. As such if they visit your site you know they are in the market for something. Your job is to help them. You provide answers in the form of engaging reliable content that satisfy their needs. Do not attempt to sell to them. Rather you are to help them by sharing information. Your information may also lead them to products that satisfy their needs. When this happen they will make purchases and you earn a commission.
Promote products you know and trust
Affiliate marketers make money by promoting other people’s products. However a good affiliate marketer knows to work with products they know and trust. This is because developing a reliable customer base takes trust. When you are developing a long term business you will need to protect your brand by always providing reliable and helpful information. As such providing accurate information is a must. You can only do this by providing products you have intimate knowledge of.
Know and use the jargons related to your niche
Every type of business has terms that are related to that niche. For instance in the exercise niche you may encounter terms such as —. It is your job to both know and use these terms correctly to connect with your target audience. This is how you will be able to speak their language and connect with them. Additionally it helps you improve your chances of showing up in searches when people look for those terms.
Get your website in front of your target audience
As with any other type of business you will want to have as many people as possible who are interested in your content visit your site. There are several ways you can do this. You may simply study and use SEO to have search engines drive traffic to your website free of cost, or use email marketing to develop a list of persons interested in your niche and market to them over and over again. If these are not to your liking you may use YouTube and/or social media channels to drive traffic to your website.
The easiest and most reliable is email marketing. However many top marketers use all three of these strategies.
Use multiple sources of traffic
As mentioned above there are multiple sources of traffic that may be used to drive traffic to your website. While there is nothing stopping you from using one it is better to use more than one at all times. This is because sometimes a traffic source can cease to work for a business. For instance whenever the Google algorithm changes site owners often find themselves having to make adjustments to ensure their sites remain competitive. Businesses have also been affected when social media sites penalize them for some infraction.
When this happens the site owner risk losing their income, or at the very least suffers a great loss in the short term.
This is why you should always use multiple streams of traffic.
Candy Benn