How to Start Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is an agreement between a online merchant (selling producta or services) and an affiliate website (owner), during which the affiliate earns a commission for generating sales, leads and/or clicks for the merchant's site .

Affiliate marketing works during a win-win situation for the merchant and the affiliate.

The online merchant company gains opportunities to advertise his products for free and reach a bigger market which can increase sales. More hard-working affiliates translate into more sales.

By using affiliates for selling products and services, a business manages to reach a much larger audience, advertise its products more prominently and drive sales. All of it would have cost a huge amount of money for the company if it had went the advertising route.

When a client clicks on an affiliate link and purchases the merchandise, this manner the merchant leverage his chances of earning.

For affiliates promoting products, its a great income opportunity. The affiliate marketer get a commission for each agreed action, which could be traffic, sales or sign-ups. The affiliate earns a reward / compensation for each customer who clicks on the link in his website and makes a purchase from the merchant.

Usually, an affiliate earns a commission per sale, which may be a percentage or a fixed amount. Sometimes, the compensation is also linked to performance.

How to start affiliate marketing?

If you would to be an affiliate marketer and make money, you can follow these three steps to start out your effective affiliate marketing campaign.

1. Find a good niche for your affiliate marketing

As the first step of affiliate marketing, you need to find a good niche where lots of people are interested, have some purchase intent and is evergreen. Your own preferences should also be taken into account so that you keep enjoying the work.

You can find products and services on affiliate marketing networks or directly with the sellers. Here are a couple of places you can research – ClickBank Marketplace, AssociatePrograms.com, LinkShare.com, and CJ.com.

2. Find good products & merchants to work with

In the step two, you need to find great products and reputed merchants with whom you can work. You need an affiliate program that pays well and also converts well. Make an inventory of excellent paying and high converting affiliate programs for your chosen niche.

There are affiliate networks which offer you info on the most profitable products and best-paying merchants. Also, you might get better affiliate commission by joining a program through an affiliate network instead of going directly.

3. Create your website & grow with SEO

Now that you have found the products to promote, start creating your own website or a blog. You should get a website domain name and reliable hosting. Don't rely on free hosting, and always keep away from FREE WORDPRESS.COM platform for affiliate marketing.

Create content for keywords that are easy to rank. Focus on long tail keywords with purchase intent. Your content should be great. It should be persuasive enough to make people buy products. Try to engage your visitors by holding them to your website till they are ready to buy. Do NOT place any advertisements on your affiliate websites.

It's time to work hard on website SEO. Promote your website with links and other signals.

In affiliate marketing, it's possible to earn large sums of cash during a short span of your time if you employ the proper strategies and methods. Learn more about SEO and affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing requires diligence and persistence. You also need to be creative and versatile. Most affiliate marketers don't understand the need for creative thinking and clever sales pitches. They don't make sales and quickly lose interest.

When you work on affiliate marketing, stay focused. Be creative with your content planning. Target the easiest keywords and don't be a fool chasing the most competitive keywords as a newbie. Figure out clever ways to encourage sales. Try persuasion strategies to make your readers buy the product you are promoting.