How to start with Affiliate Marketing?

If you are looking to earn a few bucks you can just put up some banners or text links on your website and then wait for what happens.... (but don't expect too much).

If you are serious about making money you must tackle it right from the beginning:

In all cases you should make a plan and pay attention to the following:

  • The choice of your product/service: Why did you choose this particular product or service?
  • What kind of knowledge do you have of it?
  • Who is your target audience
  • Who is your competition
  • What affiliate program are there for these products and how to choose the best
  • How are you going to tackle the marketing and promotion
Consider what kind of product or which service you want to promote.

Think of products and services for which you yourself have at least some interest or even better, a passion. In stead of thinking about products and services you can also think about an area where you have an interest in, such as music, cooking, gaming, making money, dating, animals, freebies, traveling or whatever..

If you already have a website, it makes sense to look for products and services that fit well into it. People come to your website because they are interested in the subject of it so if the products you market are something totally different, it won't work.

For example: if you run a website on music, you could look to promote cd's, dvd's or electronic gadgets. If your website is related to a certain country or area, you could look for travel affiliate programs. These are just some simple examples to make it more clear.

The best opportunity you have to make money, is to find a niche market or product of your interest but where the competition is not yet so big. You can research this by doing keyword research at Overture Just type in a keyword of your choice and see how many people searched for this. Overture is just one of the search engines, but it gives you an idea.

What kind of knowledge do you have of it?

Explore what your knowledge is of the product or service and what the gaps are. Try to fill the gaps by reading books, exploring the internet or whatever is needed. Thanks to the internet, lots of information is for free these days.

Consider who your target audience is.

When promoting a product or service you have to know who your audience is and where to find them, so for example:
  • young people
  • woman
  • people with children
  • people with handicaps
  • seniors
  • gamers
  • etc.
In the next chapters we will present some opportunities and businesses but you can also look for a specific product or service and a company that offers an affiliate program for it. Just perform a search on Google or another search engine and look for "your product or service" and "affiliate program".

If you don't have a website, then you have to make a choice if you want one. If not, you could promote affiliate programs trough Google AdWords or Yahoo Publisher, as explained in one of the former chapters.

Personally I think the best way is to have a website because it gives you a lot more control and you can make it more personal.

Who is your competition?

Look at your competition. Who offer the product already and how do they do that? How many are there that already promote the product or service. Is the market not overloaded?

What affiliate programs are there to choose from and how to find the best?

Do research on what companies offer an affiliate program for the products that you want to offer and how reliable are they. Try to get as much information about the company as possible, for example:
  • How long does the company exist?
  • How are the results?
  • How reliable is the company if it concerns the pay-out and handling of its affiliates?
  • What is the percentage they offer to you as their promotor?
  • What are the compensations which the company pays; do they pay for leads, clicks or only for realised sales?
  • How much do you earn when you realise a sale?

How are you going tho handle the marketing?

Do you already have a suitable website where the product or service fits in or are you going to built one? In most cases it won't do to just load up some banners onto your site. You have to make it personal or at least create the interest of the visitors of your website for the product you market.

How are you going to tackle promotion?

Promoting affiliate programs is not easy but is very important. Many sites on which could you advertise, don't permit affiliates to promote affiliate programs. This because they don't want loads of the same advertisements on their site.

With an own Internet site, you don't have this problem because then you can advertise the link to your website in stead of the program.

We will add more on promotion later onto this course.


Last modified: Thursday, 24 July 2014, 2:54 PM