How to be an Affiliate Marketer | Your Guide to Affiliate Marketing

In my recent blog post, What is Affiliate Marketing, I discussed the definition of affiliate marketing and how you can start and earn your first commission through your blog.  This time, I would like to walk you through the process of how to be an affiliate marketer.

What do you need to do to become an affiliate marketer? What are the ways or channels to promote a product or service? How long will it take to be a a sucessful affiliate marketer?

These are just among the countless questions that you might have in mind as a beginner. I believe that understanding affiliate marketing will take a lot of time, hard work, and financial investment. This is why I wrote these series of blog posts to help you learn how to be an affiliate marketer.

How to be an Affiliate Marketer: Finding the Right Niche

The first thing you really have to consider before you dive into affiliate marketing is to choose a niche that you are going to focus on. The reason behind this is that the products or services that you are going to promote will most likely represent your blog niche.

For instance, you are into food blogging, then the product that you might want to promote may be kitchen wares. If you have a photography blog, you may write a comprehensive review of a particular photography gear that you are using. Simply put, the product you will promote must be relevant to the topic that you blog about.

There are instances that the niche you choose is not something that you already know, but rather something that you find interesting to learn more about. That is perfectly fine. Once you have decided on what niche you want to pursue, it’s time to get started with your affiliate marketing venture.

What You Need to Do to Become an Affiliate Marketer

Below are the things you should learn on how to be an affiliate marketer:

Research products that will most likely generate sales.

Let’s say that the product that is relevant to your niche is a beauty product, particularly a brand of make-up. Before you make a review of that product, you have to make sure that it is in high demand. If so, it will increase your chances of generating sales.

Look for a merchant with a good reputation.

Aside from a good product, a merchant with a great record is another thing to consider. Do a research and read more about these merchants before recommending them to your readers.  Read testimonials from verified consumers to help you out.

Prioritize your audience.

Trying to convince your readers to buy a product just so you can earn a commission does not make you a good affiliate marketer. You must first gain their trust and always be honest. Make sure the products and services you opt to promote are of good quality. Recommend the product if it deserves so. This will be a great help to your readers.

Create good contents.

To be an effective affiliate marketer, you must have good copywriting and content marketing skills. Your content must be engaging starting from the meta description, title, to the body of the post. Of course, you don’t need to be an expert writer to do so. You can always enhance your copywriting skills while you practice doing such. There are a lot of free and paid online services that offer lessons on content marketing strategies.

In the Blogging 101.1 Online Course, I made this as one of the modules because I know how important it is in blogging. You will learn how to write compelling headlines, grammar checked contents, search engine optimized meta descriptions, and plagiarism checked blog posts.

Establish solid relationships with your subscribers.

Show your readers how much you want to help by constantly updating them with relevant contents. Connect to everyone from your blog post readers, social media followers, to e-mail list subscribers.

Employ various traffic sources to promote products.

Writing and publishing contents on your blog is not the only way to promote your affiliate products. You can run tests with pay-per-click, display ads or banners, social media, and guest blogging. You may also join forums, do mobile advertising and other free or paid traffic sources relevant to your affiliate marketing business.

Keep abreast of the latest trends.

Affiliate marketing is continuously evolving, so you have to watch out for the current marketing trends. For instance, advertisers these days are heavily relying on social media influencers. You can take advantage of this strategy if you are a merchant. If you are an affiliate marketer, create your own social media accounts, grow your followers, and aim to be an influencer.

Join branded affiliate programs.

One of the most popular branded affiliate programs to join is Amazon Associates. Through this program, you can search your favorite companies and brands and register with their affiliate program to promote their products and services.

If you want to know how to be an affiliate marketer for this program, read their guidelines. Most brands have a link in their site, either in the sidebar or footer area.

Join an affiliate marketing network.

Advertisers sign up on affiliate marketing networks to find publishers who can promote their products. On the other hand, publishers sign up to join programs and get links to promote. An affiliate marketing network serves as a middleman between the advertisers (merchants) and publishers (affiliates). Some of the most popular affiliate marketing networks include ClickBank, ShareASale, CJ Affiliate, eBay Partner Network, and Rakuten Linkshare.

As an affiliate marketer, you can sign up for several programs. You will often find relevant brands in one place. These networks have helpful tools to let you track your clicks, commissions, and more.

Contact your favorite brands directly.

If you can’t find information about an affiliate program for relevant brands in your niche, you can reach out to them directly. You might be able to set up a contract with the brand that highlights your commissions for promoting its products and services.

Marketing Affiliate Offers

An offer is an agreement from a merchant stating to pay its affiliates commissions for referring their business. Before the Internet existed, affiliate marketing is known as referral marketing. In the context of online marketing, an affiliate earns when someone they referred purchases the merchant’s product or signs up to their email list.

In other words, before you can earn a referral commission as an affiliate marketer, you need to attract your audience to the offers you promote. First of all, it must be items or services that they will actually want or need.

How to Promote as an Affiliate Marketer

Depending on the site you’ve built and on the product you are selling, you can promote your offers in several ways. It can be in the form of:

Product reviews

Your readers rely on your opinion, especially if you already gained their trust. Write honest and real reviews about the products. Insert compelling and high-quality graphics and mention the benefits, how it can solve someone’s problems, the product features, specifications, and others. Add your unique affiliate link inside your blog posts so your audience can click on it to go to the merchant’s main page.

Banner Ads

You can put these ads on your site to promote your merchant’s products. All you need to do is to insert the banner on a highly trafficked page (your affiliate tracking is usually embedded within the code). Banner ads in the right locations can do a great job of driving sales.

In-text content links

You will often see underlined texts inside a blog post which links to certain products or services. You may notice this inside my blog posts. If the reader clicks through and makes a purchase, the blog owner will earn a commission. These in-text links can also be a great way of promoting an offer within your content.

Email promotions

You can also promote affiliate offers through your email list. Send emails that contain your unique affiliate links so when your subscribers click through, the sale is attributed to you.

Discounts and giveaways

This is a great way to promote your offers while also providing good value to your audience. An example of this is when an affiliate program like Amazon offers a Holiday Sale or discount on selected items. If you’re an Amazon Associate, you can grab this opportunity to attract your readers to click on your links or banner ads.

When promoting affiliate offers, be mindful of all the terms and conditions attached to your affiliate program. Read it carefully because not all programs offer the same advantage. Some programs have stringent rules in promoting their products.

For example, some may limit you to banner ads and links only, while others will allow you to use paid advertising, and some would only allow email marketing.

Also, as a basic courtesy to your visitors, it is important to have a disclaimer on your blog or website that advises them that you may have links that promote affiliate offers. This is necessary if you want your audience to trust you.

How long will it take to become an affiliate marketer?

There really isn’t a right answer to this. But for me personally, becoming a successful affiliate marketer doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of time, patience, hard work, and the right attitude to become a successful one. Check out Pat Flynn’s blog to learn more how he journeyed to becoming one of the most known affiliate marketer.

To become an affiliate marketer, you must be fully dedicated to honing your skills and be willing to learn all the ropes of affiliate marketing. After all, it isn’t particularly difficult to learn. All you need to do is to invest a significant amount of time to understand how to do it all correctly so that you can maximize your profit. Soon, you’ll be on your way to earning your profitable commission as an affiliate marketer!

Do you still have questiins on how to be an affiliate marketer? Please leave them.in the comments section so we can discuss on the next blog post. Thank you!😊