For many people looking to start a career in online marketing, one of the first places they naturally gravitate is towards affiliate marketing.
This is an easy step to take, and in a lot of ways makes sense. Affiliate marketing is a great way to monetize a website, and is incredibly easy to get approved to a few affiliate networks and start promoting products. Even just taking random shots in the dark, you’re likely to make more money than you could with other easy methods, like Adsense or Display Ads.
But, there’s also a lot to it. Here are a few things to know before you start that first affiliate marketing blog.
Affiliate Marketing is Really Just Blog Marketing
The first thing to keep in mind is that affiliate marketing is really just blog marketing, except instead of using the blog as a platform to promote your own offers, you’re using it as a platform to promote other people’s products.
That makes sense if you’re just starting out and you don’t have any products for yourself, but you should always keep in mind whether you’d be better off on the other end of the equation, promoting your own services or products AND recruiting other affiliates to promote them for you.
But, this also means that all of the same basic principles of blog marketing apply to affiliate marketing, and it can be a tough, even cutthroat world, where the winners win big, a lot of people limp along, but most never see a dime.
The Best Marketers Create Brands
The second thing to keep in my is that the best online marketers develop their own brands.
It doesn’t matter if they’re promoting their own products or working as an affiliate, developing a clear audience and building a website that stands out as a leader to that audience is key. This means that the best sites aren’t usually: somerandomexactmatchkeywordphrase.com, but something that’s easy to remember and, well…brandable.
This also means that you’re better off building a website (and even a community) around a topic, rather than a product. You should always pick your audience and niche first, and develop the site for that audience to begin with, and only then should you promote products to them.
Make sense? The product offer follows the audience, not the other way around.
Get Smart About It
Finally, you need to make sure that you know what you’re doing. Like I mentioned, affiliate marketing can be an extremely competitive world, so make sure you find a good affiliate training to help your along. Affilorama 3 is legit and a good option, as is Wealthy Affiliate.
If you’re wondering if Wealthy Affiliate is a scam or legit, as many people do when they’re first starting out, my recommendation is to simply try the free version and then decide for yourself. The reality is that there are very few Wealthy Affiliate complaints that I know of, and tons of examples of success. You can read more about making this choice over at Knolpad, or learn about What is Wealthy Affiliate from the users themselves!
Checkout the video below for more info:
