Affiliate Marketing Simplified: Best Approach to Starting an Affiliate Marketing and doing it successful; Quick Guide to Help You Master Affiliate Marketing and Increase Your Revenue

Basic Step-by-Step Guide to Implement Successful Affiliate Marketing 

The online journey of an internet entrepreneur is not complete without business networking. That is why affiliating to or with other related businesses cannot be out ruled as it provides lots that make the affiliate marketing business a profitable and functional internet business model. Affiliate marketing gives room to potential internet entrepreneurs to earn passive income base on commission by selling products or services offered by other companies. Meaning it’s could be another income funnel to supplement your earning from the convenience of your leisure/free time if you have the tech know to do affiliate marketing; of which it is not something hard to do.

Making Money while I Sleep’ Doing Affiliate Marketing

Many young internet entrepreneurs out their living large embrace this profitable business model (affiliate marketing) as one of the ways they get started making money online after building their website. There is simple idea behind it, and it can be done by anybody from any background or discipline. Even without a website it can be done through email marketing, it something you can learn and start doing.

Affiliate Marketing Scope

The scope in it is that you find other peoples product or service through an affiliate network, promote it by digital means and if you generate lead of potential buyers who end up buying the product or service promoted by you, you receive a commission as a way of saying thanks to your marketing effort. Fact is it’s based on revenue sharing. 
As it is to a promoter, a merchant, manufacturer or a retailer who has lots of product and want to sell more, you can offer incentive to promoters through affiliate programs to boost up sales through digital advertising and marketing on the internet. Anybody that has a website for an online business but has no product and want to make money, promoting other people product that you feel has added value to your kind of business can chose affiliate marketing as one of the best option to generate revenue online. In this publication I am going to dive deeper into what Affiliate marketing actually means, the side to its operations, how you can get started and do it yourself successfully. If you ready, pick your writing pad, jot out important information you will find herein. 

What is Affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing as define in Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn’s is one of the best way to define it; and in simple interpretation Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. That is, find a product that you like, do promote it to potential buyers and you earn a piece of the profit for each sales that you make through your marketing effort; else if you make no sale then no pay (commission).

Parties Involved In Affiliate Marketing

The online encyclopedia “Wikipedia” further tell us that there are four major parties that are involved in this business model “Affiliate marketing” and this parties include the Merchant, Network, Publisher and the Customer. However, only 3 describes are the parties involved that share in revenue generated. 
Let’s see what stuff parties involve quickly and this will open our mind to understanding of this subject matter that when affiliate marketing graduates to point whence marketing take place it actually involve two basic sides of the parties which is either the product/service creator or the sellers which could be the affiliate marketer, promoters(that is where the process involved spreading of product or service creation through product or service marketing across diverse parties involve for the benefit of revenue sharing according to the measure of contribution made through sales). 
Have it in mind that not just about promotions of products created that define the affiliates marketer but there is always a room to be both creator and marketer to benefit more from profit sharing. In fact most creators are also marketers’ good at controlling cost of promotions by getting involve in affiliate marketing.

View on 4 parties involved in affiliate marketing system.

Merchant

Generic names simply termed the product or service creator, seller, brand, vendor, manufacturer or the retailers. Good’ this is the origin or the product creator. Most likely to be a big company who manufacture products or it can be an individual who create information products or service. To be candid anyone can be a merchant driving affiliate marketing program so far they have huge sum of products to sell to meet the demand of affiliate marketers and potential buyers and are willing to involve paid promoters to help spread the gospel of the product and the more sales the more profit generated.

 Affiliates

This are the publishers or so called promoters, which can also be a single individual, a group of people or an organization which role solely is marketing. For affiliates, marketing business is a good idea in that it could make them income from commission every single month.
More so, in that an affiliate can promote more than one merchants product to diverse range of customers online. This can be achieved by either running a review blog on a merchant’s products, or it could also be an entire site dedicated to finding cool products related to certain topic or niche and promoting the affiliate products. Its’ give room to make many more few bucks that comes from sales by a convinced customers that actually end up buying the product. And only through sales generated can an affiliate get commission from purchase made by customers though it attract no stipend from the customer. 
Its’ good to let customer be aware that they are part of the affiliate system. Some affiliate chooses to let their consumers know and more affiliates tend to be transparent about their marketing being incentive financially, while others do not but allow tracking system work in the background, where the customer can follow the purchase process just as usual and the affiliate still ends up being paid a commission though the consumer don’t pay additional price to affiliate marketer at the cost of the affiliate network, sure it is already included in the retail price.

Consumers

Yes, this are the customers, the online users they are the sole of the business they enhance the functionality of the affiliate system. Its’ through sales or customers purchase that revenue is generated and from whence commission is paid. Therefor it is good to meet customer where they are which is online through local search in search engine, in forums, through email list, on apps, digital bill board using contents marketing etc. The affiliate’s marketers will endeavor to reach out to consumers on whatever channel, platform that they have handy. The customers really forms part of the affiliate network system in that it’s through their purchase of product will commission be made by an affiliate marketer therefore they has the potential of helping to promote a product that is good or decline from products that are bad. To be transparent affiliate is good in order to keep good dignity. It will not be advisable to promote product for the sake of making money only but it should be value added in the area of the customer who going to purchase same else if otherwise such affiliate can lose its reputation for live.  

 Network

They serve as an intermediary between affiliate and merchant. It’s the platform that houses many merchants programs where potential affiliates have to go through to be able to promote a choice product. Meaning some merchant goes through some existing affiliate network to handle their affiliate program. Therefore, the affiliate network also serves as a database of lots of products, out there of which the affiliate marketer can choose which to promote by signing up or registered with the network. 
The room also exist to sign up affiliates marketer to promote digital product like online course someone has created from which a direct revenue share  can be generated simply by handing it over to network such as Click Bank, Commission Junction or whichever good network capable of  handling the payment and product delivery which the publisher (affiliate marketer) puts more serious effort in direction of making more sales by means of your affiliate marketing effort.

Intense Emphasis: The three out of the four parties to belong to share affiliate marketing revenue

Having known and clarified the parties involve in affiliate marketing, you realize that this parties are basics components which are interactive elements you can work with and start generating passive income, solve income inequalities and eradicate poverty. You see reason for example “Click bank” mentioned as a functional affiliate network that houses wide range of affiliate merchants products to include consumer products, like tools, books, toys and household items and as well the biggest affiliate network; Amazon. Amazon associates affiliate program lets you promote items that can be sold on their platform by affiliate marketers who sign up. After which you can generate a custom affiliate link to Amazon products. If someone purchases through your link, you earn a small commission. In Africa also is Jumia J Force program.  Read on to have better insight on how best you can get started with building your online business after this profitable business model called affiliate marketing.

Getting started to build your Affiliate marketing business

Good! while setting out you have to first look in direction of the parties involve in affiliate marketing, the merchant, affiliate, consumers and network to realize the current place you belong amidst plus the products inclusive to know the relations it has in  compliment to your niche. You as well begin to think on the best marketing tool and do not forget it’s good to have handy a responsive website or blog to enhance contents marketing. Most likely you will want to be a merchant, network or affiliates; in good notion I will agree herein that you are a novice, who don’t know much and you do not belong to any of the above category in order to make the whole process simple and easy to understand.

In affiliate marketing business model there are three side out of the four existing parties to which you can belong to share in revenue generated. If you are not going to build an affiliate network such as Commission Junction, click bank or any of the network; then you can decide to become a merchant directly involve in product creation and have others promote your products in exchange for a giving commission to compensate them on each sales that they make; Or, you can become an affiliate marketer that is the publisher or promoters  for one or several products that you’d like to promote and market those to  potential consumers through the means of digital marketing and generate income by so doing. However, majority begins affiliate marketing starts from being affiliate marketer. Sure it’s the very simple path to start with by first building enough traffic. To make a meaningful income just from affiliate sales isn’t a get rich quick or easy, and knowing how to go about belonging to any of the three out of four parties will I’ll walk you through the basic steps that you can take to get started on becoming any of the three that benefit from the revenue sharing of affiliate marketing industry.

How to become an Affiliate Merchant

If you want to become an affiliate program merchant who makes money by having affiliates sell your products or services, there are few simple, yet not easy steps that you can take.

Steps  to become a merchant

First, you need to have a product idea. Idea in general occurs too many often time but most people find it hard to conceive it rightly. I’ll elaborate on how you can conceive ideas rightly and bring it to reality.

·         Coming up with Idea (product or service)

Often time ideas seldom flows through imagination through deep thinking, despite people always say they find it hard to conceive or come up with an idea. I tell you it is very easy in that Ideas are simple thoughts you generate in direction of solving a particular problem, meeting a specific challenge or something alike that shows up during meditation. It may come in direction of riddles that need to be solved, and you coming up with one two or more solutions of same is an idea towards finding lasting solution. It may show up like puzzles in an individual mind that gear up in tiny impulses respect to how the puzzles can be solved. Most time Idea is easy to forget by who conceive it. Idea does not have to be supernatural, anybody can come up with an idea in suggestion mode which is most common when trying to solve problem.   

To come up with an idea, look at your immediate environment meaning around you; see if you can find a particular problem people are facing that required urgent solution. Then go ahead and start brainstorming on how best to solve such problem, definitely why you think, lots of ways to solve same start coming up into your mind and this are ideas. To make money with an affiliate marketing business as a merchant, start by conceiving idea on how to take on an existing products or services that is already out there appealing to you and start brainstorming on how you can improve upon them to further solve a particular problems with those products or meet a specific needs or meet an existing demand in a region where the product market supply is unmet. You can further read “Idea! Just where to begin online business” better understand. However, an idea is only good if the person who conceived it actually want it to come to reality by further working towards bringing it to physical manifestation. So therefore while thinking on developing on an idea you as well need to think of people who will want to buy in on whatever the product or service you brainstorming on.

·         Make reality of your idea; get in touch with potential customers

Test runs your idea to validate the authenticity of what you are venturing into by reaching out to people. How? Go out and speak to potential customers who the product or service is meant for. Reach out to them where they are; either online/offline through the medium they use. Online they can be on social media platforms, forums, group chat etc. and Offline may be in public places; market, worship center, parties etc. to do the reaching out. That is kind of pre marketing. Realize that you must practice marketing if you venturing into becoming a merchant, affiliate network or marketer. Marketing is one of the great tools of entrepreneur. If you want to be successful in business you have to embrace good marketing ethics. How best to find potential customers of your product/service idea? Look for them through the search engine; you can equally use Google trends, herein take for example: open your web browser, type into search engine or other social marketing tool like BuzzSumo you will be surprised to see how potential customers online interact with keyword or phrase, how engaging it is on social media, links and many other related information you need to know. However this all depends on the monitoring tools you are using. Note: creating a physical product usually comes with huge investment and risks unlike digital and informational products, Go here to learn about how you can create digital products that sell. Easy ways to get started if you have time and little or no money.

·         Creating the product or Service

From the idea you conceived, you can begin to evaluate what is best. It is likely you need to create a products or service; however, service most time are easy if you got what it takes like time, skills, knowledge or experience and little capital  that is required. It may also require you have handy tools and equipment where necessary and it may cost little or nothing to start a particular digital product or service e.g. a person who is good at teaching a particular subject can visit teachable.com to start on a fast track. But physical product creation seldom required you get huge capital which is one of the factor of production in direction of you creating a physical product that is not already in existence or modifying an existing one.

For sake of time and cost factor, digital products are less capital intensive to create and alike are information products too. And depending on what the nature of the problem you trying to solve. Unlike physical product that is capital intensive, you may not be chance to produce it locally if resources to do so are rear to get, but you can look into the world market place to see if you can outsource from a potential manufacturer elsewhere in the world who you can partner with to help produce the product and you thereafter import it to your local country that is if you are engaging on producing physical product. There are steps to make this happen; though the steps involved are, this will be a full blown topic and not for the context of this write up. I will take my time to write on it in our subsequent publication. How you can partner with manufacturer to produce a product to your desired specification. As for digital products or information products I am going to take my time to enlighten us more on how to go about producing some different example I will mention herein, instead of wasting precious time and money on creating a physical product and you still need to find affiliates network direct or indirect to promote your product.

·         Outsourcing affiliate networks programs to promote your product/service

Lots of them out there, you can reach out to them on internet using the online system tech medium already in existence, for example, business advertising tools like Gumroad or Digital Product Delivery and platforms like offer vault, flex offers are places where you can easily set up affiliate program partners, sure they will collect commissions. However, finding affiliate partners who actually have the potential audience interested in your product may be rear to get, and it also niche dependent. Like people will patronize more in relationship niche, health nice, money making niche as compared to others. To outsource your affiliate networks program, type into search engine the subject and hit search, view through several list of sites that pops up. List them out with key note on their contacts. Start to contact them to cooperate on a sale together respect to your product. A niche focused product is easier to be pitched to fellow merchants. Simply send them an email, introduce yourself and your product and ask them if they want to partner on a sale together, where you’ll share revenue many other enjoy direct phone conversation, give them room to test run your product where necessary.

Intense Emphasis: Products Promotion that add value to audience

Promoting products that add value to your audience really matter; however digital products seldom offers affiliate commission higher because you have no cost of replication. To enhance promoters split the pot evenly embrace both side win.  Just try finding one person to partner up with and start your first affiliate promotion. You can adjust commissions and details later, the important part is to get started. You can also search online for reviewers having “toy review blog” they can also give you good results. Further on your search at YouTube channels who review specific categories of toys. You may be lucky to find one that reviews kids’ toys, they’d probably also be a good fit for your affiliate product promotion. And you could also start the journey to just become an affiliate yourself promote your products and promote others appealing to you.

How to become an Affiliate marketer

Similarly to becoming an affiliate in few steps that you can take to start your journey as an affiliate marketer. Going by the way of researching into a business model and narrow down your search to a particular niche you can outsource products to promote follow this below steps to become an affiliate marketer (Publisher or promoter)

Steps to become an affiliate marketer

First, research into your choice niche to take on a particular product of your choice you can start reviewing. That can be done on a YouTube channel, on a blog or even just using live streams on periscope and begin by signing up or join an affiliate network program.

·         Signup with affiliate network or directly with a merchant to Review products in your niche

Starting as an affiliate marketer is easier because you privilege to skip the brainstorming to ‘have an idea’ or ‘creating a product” parts of becoming a merchant. You can simply sign up with any affiliate network program e.g. Jumia J Force, Amazon Associates, click bank or any other out there, thereafter you make relevant search required. Kindly understand their terms and condition, call to speak to the affiliate manager of the network you using to get clear views and I am sure they have one or two information to enhance you with. Proceed to get your own affiliate link, banners etc. of your choice product, Just by going to the product page and click on (Short link to copy this page).  Already made there are link with coupons that’ll give you a commission if people purchase through your marketing efforts. Having to rely on traffic coming to your website or blog whence you embed affiliate links if review is what tool you use, it is not a gold mine. 
You will really need lots of traffic visiting your website before you can make serious money. Other way round is to look out for a means to contact your audience directly. This gives room to market to them whenever and whenever and not just when they visit your website. Using one two or more tool is good. In whichever niche you pitch it’s less important likewise whatever product you want to promote; most important is try to use any product you want to promote to have clear understanding of the product. Thereafter you know the pros and cons you can go about to promote it with best of your advertising tools publicly.

Next is to build an email list for easier communication to your potential customers. It is very vital to collect emails from people visiting your website so that you can connect with your audience at any time you want and don’t have to hope for them to visit your site to see your contents or latest happenings.

·         Build an email list for communications

Email has been proven to be one of the best marketing channels trending, been an effective communication tool and flexible enough to use as it can accommodate different files format and links. How to go about collecting email addresses from your website visitor? You can use tool like plug in called Hello Bar, ConvertKits etc.

Hello Bar:

Hello Bar is a plugin that can be used on your WordPress site; it can pop a call to action on top of your website that can be seen by your website visitors. It appears like bar at the top carrying an informative call to action phrase that entice people emotion. It is a simple but powerful tool. If clicked, it redirects people to page where they can enter their email in exchange for informational contents respect to promotions, updates, reviews etc.

Widget:

A sidebar widget is other vital tools despite many still yet don’t get good look into using this sidebar as a very vital tool in advertising, collecting email among the rest. Keeping one or two call to action of your side bar is good and not to clutter it as it is very possible that if it is over clutter people may skip the important thing while browsing through your website. Do not hesitate to give fringe that is offer people something in exchange for their email address. The token you giving out goes long way to build loyalist. Compensating them for their time and energy reading on your content with a value added informative product can make them stay forever and also they can become a good referral.  

Exit Gate to Your Site:

Other tools exist like lead magnet, mail chimp etc. that you can use to create call to action when someone is about leaving your website and as well Hello Bar can be used to create an exit gate to create a popup message that overlay on the screen any time a visitors is moving cursor to click the X (about to leave) tab at the top area of the browser on your web page.

Intense Emphasis: Creating subscriber Email list

Email list you are collecting should not be a sales avenue; but a way to keep your audience engaged sending them updates on a specific topic, products, brand, information etc. that are interested in and want to be updated on. Good having lots of subscriber though a few hundreds in your email list worth your time. You can make significant sales by keeping your audience informed.  Reach out to them when you have a new review up. Give them hints on new articles you create relevant to their interest a two minute excerpt read is not bad with a link to the main post for whoever wish to read further, you can strategically send them a specific call to action to buy a product, be smart about it. 

Educate your audience in a way they will want to come back and learn more. For example, you just found a new useful product better as compared to an existing one and you find it’s really great after testing it. Go ahead and update your audience about it in email; however a life webinar is a good tool to tell about your findings, tell the reasons why you had change of mind, your recommendations and that they free to switch to that product also. Try hands on webinar, you find out that using tools like LeadPage, Slack, Google hangout you can create webinar to further educate your audience and get good conversion.

·         Educate your audience and keep them engage

Live webinar is a vital tool for educating people across far regions “Webinars”. Google hangout makes this possible. It’s completely free. You can easily learn how to do it yourself. Seen is believing and so far you cannot take products from one location to another for display and show casing, then Imagine you creating it on live show in your media lab through webinar. Sure, you can arouse your audience emotions by staging it in a live 30 mins to 1 hr webinar where they can see all of the features and cool things that your product will enable them with. Share out your affiliate link once during a break point and at the end of the webinar is a soft selling point that doesn’t looks you are compelling but your consumers can still take all of the time to make up their mind on whether they’ll make a purchase.

Other Tools that can be used to create webinar to educate your audience

Lead page: this tool go further than just using it to create an engaging landing page that can easily convert potential customer to buyer, it can as well be uses to create call to action where people can sign up for your webinar. 

·         Start growing your business with the right business tools kit.

It is very possible that you get your merchant on conversational dialogue to give you a special deal for your audience. If you can get their product in front of a couple hundred or thousands of potential buyers, kindly be truthful. If you can, go ahead and I am sure they will be glad to hear this and give you a discount to further incentive people to buy.

·         Grow your business’ How?

Using Paid Per Click (PPC) is one of the right tool you can use to promote sales when you start experience growth in your business seeing traffic flowing into you web page. PPC is a paid advertising that can be used to draw potentials affiliate marketers to affiliate network program. Go here to Read on How to Use Social Media Advertising(Facebook, Twitter, Google etc.) as Business Tools Kit to grow your business. As this process is advisable to be implemented when you sure to have ROI in as much that the more conversion you have the better your share in the revenue pool of affiliate marketing. PPC also have some other advantages which include using it to get people to join or sign up for any program you offer as well as it can be used to grow your email list, a plus to grow your audience. It is not enough to drive traffic for selling other people products.

Try as much as well to build your business too, teach others what you do, create a learning page for your followers on how they can get best out of your programs. Come up with a digital product that others can use to solve a challenge and you can also teach others. Let not your website be pass by links to other website else your website may be losing some credibility in Google ranking. Do blogs on review of the products you promoting.

Do SEO of your site and also your review page to further enhance ranking on Google search engine. Else the percentage of people visiting is high compare to people using your link to buy the product you review, thence it is advisable you create a call to action for people to subscribe or sign up to your email list so it will not be a total loose of the potential audience that visit your page. 

Intense Emphasis: Review Blogs

Some review does really well if it centered on comparison with two or more direct competitors. Their  could be two or more manufacturer of a particular product, Search for a products you are using and have a look at  different kinds to compare and blog post on it. Whatever you’re reviewing, very good you have used it. Share the truth about it and not for sake of making money. If your reviews aren’t genuinely helpful, people are intelligent, they will sense immediately that you’re just trying to make money. Be credible about it, solve problems, help consumers out and not greedy gains.  In any product you are promoting, be it digital, physical or even course, when writing reviews on your blog,  use an affiliate link carrying your coupons to link to the products that you promote. You can recognize  links on other blogs, by looking out for the long “/ref…”  at the tail end of the regular link; by this you know it’s an affiliate link.

How to become an Affiliate Network.

The more common and slightly easier route to becoming an affiliate network is to create a review website or blogs that feature large categories of products. In few easy steps you can start on the journey to become an affiliate network.  

Steps to become an affiliate network

The role of an affiliate network is standing as an intermediary between affiliates marketer and affiliate merchant. They enhance more visible resources for affiliates to find and participate in affiliate programs that suite their niche.

·         Create a review website or blog site for large categories of products

An affiliate network page from a website that houses large categories of products and services from different merchant should be built. Filled with curated list and categories of product and service you deal in.

·         Get affiliate marketers to sign up

A response sign up page for your affiliate program is required. A good forum point where interactive section can be held is also required,

·         Create Email List and forum to engage your promoters

Very vital for communication. An avenue where you can easily communicate to individual affiliate according to their choice of niche and needs/

·         Offer incentive to sign ups

Often time it is good in as much that the product merchant is carried along. This help foster good relation between you and the publishers

Affiliate marketing is a good way to get started with online marketing. The only question is’ which side are you going to pick?

Frequently Ask Question “Affiliate Marketing “

·         What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of getting paid to when you promote someone else’s products or services and it generate sales in return. Note you only get paid if your marketing effort leads to customers buying through your link else no pay If your links don’t generate a sales.

·         How much money does affiliate marketer make?

The amount you can make varies respect to niche, products and the rate of your conversion. Affiliate marketing income is not consistent though. Therefore, it good to stretch the income base on annual and not monthly and in some cases it may be based on cookies length of the potential coupons you use some 30 days some 90 days etc. One really has to be analytic about the CTR and the conversion you able to pull from the advertising effort you made.  Will just say if you just starting out may be very low as compare to if you are already a master mind in it you can pull anywhere from $10,000 a year to $400,000 or more as a super affiliate  their no limit to the amount you can make.

·         Is their functional affiliate networks Platform I can join?

Yes, lots of them out there online that you can research product related to your niche and when you are pleased you can then sign up with. Examples of functional affiliate network platform are offervault, boutycpa, Clickbank, Shareasale, Amazon, Jumia, Konga, JVzoo, Hotmart, Clickbooth, Ads 4 Dough, Commission Junction, Amazon Affiliate Program, and eBay Partners Program to mention but few. Each and every one of them with is uniqueness and terms. Take a little step forward to speak with the affiliate manager sure they have good information to help you excel. In lieu of that you also speak directly with merchants that’s offers same for better negotiation.

·         Affiliate marketing! Is it a pyramid scheme?

Capital NO. It is not but a commission bases sales driven online business model. You get paid whenever your marketing efforts convert sales to a business, brand, products or services.

·         How Affiliate Marketers Make Money

Simply by using a strategic marketing tools to advertising a products to potential buyers and if they end up buying through your link you get paid a commission for your marketing effort

·         How can I learn more Online Business Intricacies?

Hey Readers are Leaders; reach out to BizOnSol anchor by Abiona Temi; a Business Technologist and an Internet Entrepreneur who is solely determined to make an online business grow, help others grow theirs, so if you so willing to start or grow yours then connect with me for support ”FREE” to build something meaningful and earn income doing online business of your choice.

Learn’ & Do It Yourself; Online Business!

·        Digital Marketing

·        Website Design

·        Social Media Advertising

·        SEO

·        Niche site

·        Content Marketing

·        Blogging

·        Social Media Marketing

·        Affiliate Marketing

·        Conversion Optimization

·        Online Marketing Automation

·        Business Tools Kit…….

And other intricacies of online business. I also offers business consultations to help take your business to next level.

·        How to start affiliate marketing business?

Learn affiliate marketing business

If you had no prior experience about online business, I will advise you start by learning first. Learn the takes, the business tools and how to use it. Many of which you can know reading herein this resource.

Research products and affiliate programs

Pick a niche you have passion in, that represent you core interest or your business model and carry out research on products or service you want to promote. Visit affiliate networks sites to browse through various products related to your choice niche in other to familiarize yourself with the products or service. And whatever product/service you pick, make findings on the demand, where in particular are the consumer situated. Do all other related research necessary

Sell what product/service you know

Start with a product/service you are familiar with. Do all you can to test the product, reach out to those that have use the product to get better information? Customers experience is very vital. Finding on the pros and cons will go along way.

Build a website relevant to the niche

One of the criteria to meet before you can become an affiliate is to have a website or blog. Many companies will like to know the URL of the website you will use to sell their products. Do yourself good by building a simple responsive website that is rich in contents relevant to your niche despite the fact that you can drive sales from other online platform. You also require having an account where your commission will be paid. Note do not give out your credit card number to join an affiliate network else you scammed

Join an affiliate network program

Go sign up for an affiliate program in any of the affiliate network platform. You can as well sign up directly with merchant that put out calls to join their partner programs it almost free to join in as much you meet their terms and condition.

Get affiliate links to add to your contents

Already generated link exist on your affiliate program site, go ahead and copy same to be embedded in your content. Be transparent about it, good. Though some people chose not to be telling it to their audience but better if you are. It can build up your credibility as customer will know and can decide which is best for them. Better they trust you.

Make good use of your side bar

Your website side bar is a good place to promote products. Kindly do not let it be clumsy. By using visual ads like banners is a good way to go. Relay good read contents that can help drive sales where you embed same links too in your sidebar that is a post excerpt. 

Update your website regularly with contents relevant to you niche

To keep people visiting your website, you have to produce quality content that is value added to visitors on regular bases. You can collect their email to better help them get informed whenever you post new content good for their consumption.

Promote Using Social Media Ads

Very important to grow your business by advertising.  Social networks houses large percentage of online users therefore running a strategic ads on social media like facebook, twitter and other gives you an edge in area  of driving visitors who can be potential buyers to your page.

Measure your performance

Use analytic to measure your success, analytic is a means of knowing what stuffs works and what doesn’t work. There is a tool design for this purpose that you can use to gather information on how you performing. Google analytic will help you to pin point facts about how traffic are behaving on your site.

Back up your business as it grow

Prepare your business documentations, back it up with legal service, authenticate in by registering. Pay necessary dues where applicable. Expand the scope of your business, strive to grow further.

Delegate routine task

As your business grow and expands likely many routine task may still erupt in diverse area of your business. So as an entrepreneur you have to know when to delegate some of the task to who will continually make sure it’s done while you concentrate on some other relevant task to upkeep the continual development of your business. Affiliate marketing can get more advanced however herein are the fundamentals that get you to the point where you’re ready to make your first commission. Good you are already in business, right herein lets further digest into good practices of affiliate marketing business which includes but not limited to starting from expert advice.

Affiliate Marketing! Advice from expert desk “don’t create own product”

Safe your time and energy for creating better of marketing strategy, informative contents, reviews, audience relation, traffic and lots more related to your niche rather than growing through huddles of creating products, why? Because someone else out there who has capabilities already did. Do reinforce your energy in direction sending traffic through a link to that product of your choice and do continuously map out other strategy to make sales by exploring other relevant marketing means. Many times you can’t avoid waiting a while to see the effect of your marketing effort before you engage on other means.

Affiliate Marketing Success Rules for Merchant, Network and Marketers

·         It does good to test the product you are promoting, to be sure of your recommendation

It is very possible to use the product you are promoting; it does you lots of good. Kindly do before you go about recommending it. And if a condition warrants not necessary for you use a product, try and meet with two or more people who is using it. You can build trustworthiness by doing it once and doing it right, make findings, get information before you start promoting any product. In this you can make yourself approved you know in and out of what you promoting and be ready to answer likely question that may come up. Put customers in mind they are people like you and I am sure you won’t like to be misled too.

·         Be open and trustworthy to your audience

In business building your reputation is found also in truthfulness. It a way to build strong customer relations, your customers should be able to trust your judgment in anything you offer them. Remember they are human being like you. They hate lies, it’s good to let them know when you are promoting a product, despite; it is a good product. Being honest won’t stop anybody from following your links to buy as compare to not being open. Nothing can stop reasonable people to seek out your affiliate links in order to help grow your business since they know you are trustworthy. It will just be an avenue to pay you back for the values you provided to them. Give customer freedom to decide what they want. Just say the truth and nothing else.

·         Take ownership of the product you’re promoting

Taking ownership of a product you promoting required you go extra mile after you have test the product or gather vital information from those who had use it to extent of finding out the intricacies that answers questions customer may likely asked about such product or service in preparedness to help customers and also add to the phase lift of the product. Compliment your action by bringing the product out of boxing to show the stuff it made off in your promotion or advert. Speak to the manufacturer where necessary to have detailed information and to enhance your view speaking from manufacturer mind; meaning you know and are confident in any recommendation you make. Thereafter you can use all tools in your care to promote the product.   

·         Create an informative resource page.

Resource page is a powerful tool in the hand of a website owner. It should be rich in vital information that is helpful to your audience.  It can and should house resourceful data like information that your audience are searching for. Do special SEO on it. Information on it should be brief and direct to point. Use catchy Image with informative caption. Use video, embed the right links, paste books, post etc.  If done write, it should be profitable page, and the most visit by your audience. It should provide added value. That is when it can be an income generating resourceful tool that will keep generating an income at the same time, which is the name of the game.

·         Doing cross-pollination affiliate links

Its’ not enough to promote a product in a single way as it may likely not the effective enough looking from the direction of customers. Customer look out for products on line in many diverse way therefore to capture their interest as affiliate marketer, you must be ready to meet  potential customer any way, anywhere, anytime using different tools, method and platforms. Cross pollinating your advert will help along way and it solely depends on how you can re-present a particular product in diversify manners that will enhance quick and easy access to it online. For example if you through content marketing in your blog post you promote a products links, it doesn’t stop you from creating an article on related topic where you can equally use your affiliate link to publicize same product. Learn to use various means to bring your product into the awareness. Other means you can use is video, podcasting, broadcasting on telegrams to mention but few

Intense Emphasis: Promoting more than one offers

 It’s not bad to promote more than one solution for a particular problem or pain your audience has, but when it comes to doing this, kindly; choosing one best solution only is the best thing you can do. Why? Because people who are just starting out get confused when there are a lot of options. Be confident in your top recommendation, even though there may be more than one solution, chose the best and let them see reason to you choice however they have right to their own opinion and it’ll pay off for you and get your audience started on their journey. More so when promoting an offer that you know its very good for customer consumption, go ahead to by using various medium to reach out to your audience.

·         Where possible in your recommendations offer bonuses or discounts.

As it is a marketing strategy also it is a valuable asset to promoting sales. A business affiliate marketer can stand unique if it offers bonus or discount. Customers seldom likes having discounts or bonus on purchase they make. And also you not the only affiliate promoting an offer, therefore any of affiliate counterpart that promote product offering bonus stand the chance to gain more customers.

Affiliate Marketers Success Tips for Beginners

So far I want to believe you have being really loaded on the intricacies of affiliate marketing from the angle of merchant, network and marketers. Herein I will want to emphasis on how to improve your chances as a beginner in other to make quick sales. Below are the tips

·         Use an effective link building tool “Pretty Link”

There are lots of link building tools out there, out of which pretty link a word press plugin find it place at number one as a tool that you can use to convert long affiliate links which are filled with cookie, ugly and too long to something short, catch and easy to share. Meaning just copy the long links from your affiliate network page and paste in the plugin and see how it convert it easily convert it. As well, it can helps you to keep track of number of clicks when you configure it and allows you to keep up to date those redirect links without need for changing links every now and then.  And for those that promote product through amazon associate program to outside your native country, Geni.us Link is a good tool you can use to validate you are capturing affiliate commissions from your audience residing outside your native country

·         Build Relationship with Affiliate Managers

Affiliate manager are affiliate marketer sponsor, therefore it is good you reach out to them to build lasting relationship. They are your business partner and with them also a success is guaranteed. Their sole responsibility is to lend you a helping hand that will enhance your success in area of sales through marketing effort. Reach out to them engage in conversation before you go ahead to start promoting their offers. You stand the chance to learn one or two things from them. They have vital information gathered through analytics from verse experience, they know what works and what stuff don’t work, they will be able to guide you how best you can go about your affiliate journey. They will be very glad you give them a call.

Best way you can build mutual relationship with affiliate manager as an affiliate marketer  

While starting out before and after you had sign up to become an affiliate marketer for a particular product. You can simply go ahead to reach out to the merchant to further learn about the product, frequently ask questions and other related information to aid your marketing style. From whence you begin to know you, get acquainted to you. And as time go by in your marketing efforts, you can future them to further authenticate your legitimacy as a sales rep. This could in turn help you get more informed about the product and you can further educate your audience. It is a good way for your audience to learn more about the product features, and other related benefits, you can easily get latest information about the product anytime there is update or upgrade and tell your audience about it in good notion that acclaims you are directly involved and therefore your audience can trust your judgment always about the products

Affiliate Marketing Product Ideas/Service to Get Started

While you researching into your potentials in order to choose from a functional business model and breaking down your finding to focus on a specific niche; you as well required to make findings on the related products that you can feature in your website that will  be value added to your customers. Doing this early enough will help you to quickly engage in monetizing of your niche site. You can do this by looking in affiliate network programs in any platforms you like to sign up with. As this has to be niche based product or service idea, you must ensure that it is something that is beneficial to your audience. Below are example of product and service ideas that you can start with depending on the business model you chose and specific niche you may want to operate. For example someone in Education niche will want to look out product or services pertaining to education e.g. online course, books, educational materials etc. in any of the affiliate network program platform. Likewise it is to someone in health niche; will look out for products and services related to health while someone in entertainment will make finding based on the niche focused; things like mobile applications, music’s from entertainment affiliate program etc. may likely be the takes of that person. In every facet, just make sure you are helping your audience out with information, products, services that will promote their in person. As you grow thus, build and earn trust, add value to people.

Affiliate Marketing Business Operations:

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Promote a product or service; if it convert into sales you get paid’ if not? No pay

Take on a business model and specialize in a specific niche, research in direction to provide solution to people problem through information, product or services. Make findings on product or service that related to your niche; that are good for your audience in affiliate programs out there online. Create your responsive website or blog site, create contents, and go sign up at an affiliate network platform. Chose products or service you want to promote, copy to use the affiliate product link in your post contents, articles and other related means you want to use to reach out to your potential audience. And while you start promotions do analytics to see how traffics are converting. Several way exist to track affiliate in as much people are clicking your links which are cookie inbuilt and in turn your leads convert into the customer buying through you links they you earn a commission on your marketing effort. Do know that when a customer visit your site and click on any of your affiliate links, a file called cookie that is attached to the link drop a coupon and store on the digital gadget e.g. phone, computer, laptop, ipad etc. the person used. And if the person go ahead to buy a product, the merchant tracking system sees that the leads to sales is generated by you and for this you can be rewarded accordingly.    

How to Start Affiliate Marketing with Blog site

•  Do niche picking by taking on a particular business model and specific niche of your choice. Dear to choose evergreen niche
•  Build a Blog for your niche or a Website with blog
• Research Products or services in your chosen niche that you can promote
•  Sign Up for Affiliate Network Programs
•  Make findings on other products related to your niche that can add value to your audience
• Create informative content; video, tutorials, review posts, resource pages, emails etc. and use your affiliate link
• Do SEO on each page and post and be analytic in tracking your rank in Google
• Post regularly to keep in touch with your audience

Go on here to have full details on; how to start affiliate marketing with your blog site.

How Affiliate Marketers Make Money

Simply by using a strategic marketing tools to advertising a products to potential buyers and if they end up buying through your link you get paid a commission for your marketing effort. However there is a big picture behind it that has to do with how you go about it. There are some basic requirement to be put in place before you can start to make money as an affiliate. Therefore if you have being reading in this resources and assimilating in right order you would have learn what tools you need like a website or blog in your choice niche to house contents, email for communication and to sign up in an affiliate network program, informative contents that add value to readers, the links of the product you want to promote copied from affiliate network platform, embedding it in your strategic marketing tools like contents, email subscriber list, social media posts, search adverts though you need to watch out for ads block! Etc. Doing it right guaranteed you making recurring passive income.  

How to do Simple Affiliate Marketing Audit before Promoting a Product or Service

Beginners are advice to do simple audit before they venture into promoting affiliate offers. This are basic question there is need to ask oneself when you are making findings to decides on what to promote and what not to promote. Do by asking this questions below:

• Do I clearly understand what my niche site is?
• Do my findings point to evergreen products?
•  Do I use the product or know of someone who use any of the product I want to promote?
• Will my audiences benefit from using this product?
• How relevant is the product to my audience?
• Have I gathered enough information about the product?
• What are the means I will use to promote the products?
• How easy is the buying process?
• Does the product has lucrative affiliate commission? Optional.
• What product is best for me to promote that best suite my audience?
• Have I communicate to affiliate manager?
• Do I understand their terms and condition?

And other related quest that you need to use to evaluate your potentials in promoting a particular product, providing good answers to this questions help you a long way.

Affiliate Products and Services: Best Products an Affiliate Marketing Beginners can promote

While a beginner is setting out to start affiliate marketing, this question engulf their mind; Best product to promote in the course of my affiliate marketing? The simple answer is you can promote any products out of this three types of affiliate products which includes:

• Physical Products 
• Information Products
• Services

And each of the three above has their pros and cons.

Strategic Affiliate Product Marketing: How to promote three different kinds of affiliate products and service

Physical Products: How to Promote Physical Products

Physical products are numerous and it is a better thing to start promoting while you go into affiliate marketing. Majority of affiliate network programs houses lots of physical product you can make findings on related to your niche to start with. More so you can liaise with affiliate merchant that give room for individual party to take part in their affiliate marketing program. Call their affiliate manager to discuss your plea with them that’s after you are prepared and have handy necessary affiliate marketing business tools kit.

To promote physical products do this in few steps:

• Choose a business model and specialize in a specific niche
•  Make findings on the product that are related to your niche that are high in demand
• Filter to pick products that can add value to your audience that has long time cookies
• Build your website or Blog
• Create contents that add value to your audience regularly to keep your audience engage
• Sign up for affiliate network program in a functional platform
• Build relationship with affiliate managers through communications
• Locate the products with you make findings on and copy their affiliate links
• Embed it in your contents, article and other related means of promotion
• Drive traffic s to it with your marketing tools
• Track your marketing effort to see how its converting
• Keep mapping out strategic ways to enhance your marketing effort

Intense emphasis: How to promote a physical products and make quick sales

To make quick sales, always be in look out for action product items. You can do this easily if you understand your niche, do analytic on the products you want to promote through search engine. Use those specific products names to make your findings easier, see how their demands. Go further to type into search “product name and affiliate program” in other to get ideas of related good options you can work on. Try also to type into search engine your niche category to see stuffs you can work with to achieve success you so which for in good time.

Information Products: How to Promote Information Products?

``Information product are digital products, they can be so great to promote despite they are not many like physical products and it requires a strategic ways to promote such.  Such products like apps, course, blogs, content, podcasts, audio, video to mention but few fall in this category. They come with high commission, fueled by an influenced person which build trust and often easier to sell with advertising aids. In most cases they are either created to solve a particular problem or provided to meet a challenge their audience is in search for. They are rich contents like information that guide people on a particular subject matter.  

To choose and promote information product, do this in few steps

• Make findings on the information product that are related to your niche
• Read about it to get in-depth value It will add to you and your audience
• Build your website or Blog
• Communicate in person to the author to see if he can grant you access to promote same
• Sign up with as an  affiliate
• Foster relationship to learn more about the product
• Get the necessary information and links required to promote the information product
• Drive traffic s to it with your marketing tools
• Track your marketing effort to see how its converting
•  Keep mapping out strategic ways to enhance your marketing effort

Services as Product: How to Promote Online Services as  a product?

Service is another type of product you can promote to make money. It finds applications in so many ways that help people solve one or the other task easily and efficiently. Look from the direction the technology world is going and to do lots of things services are required. Internet is a service provided, email is another service for communication, ads is a service for reaching out to potential customer, search engine provide related service for search, web hosting service for your website, writing service, website analytic service, Keyword finding tool service, teaching service, SEO services and many others. I cannot over emphasis there are lots of them out there that as well have affiliate programs you can join to promote. As usual you can just visit Google search engine type in services as a products affiliate program, browse through result presented to see what your niche category can promote. You can as well think of a service you are using online that has added value to you, see if they have affiliate programs you can then start promoting it. 

To choose and promote online services as product, do this in few steps

• Make findings on the service as product that are related to your niche
• Read about it to get in-depth value it will add to you and your audience
• Build your website or Blog
•  Communicate in person to the service provider to see if he can grant you access to promote same
• Sign up with as an  affiliate
• Foster relationship to learn more about the service
• Get the necessary information and links required to promote the service as a product
• Drive traffic s to it with your strategic  marketing tools
• Track your marketing effort to see how its converting
• Keep mapping out strategic ways to enhance your marketing effort

Affiliate Marketing Business Tools kit for starting and promoting an Affiliate Offers

If you have come this far diligently reading this resource, I will assume you known a lots and you are ready to startup and create passive income system after this business model. Having a good understanding of what affiliate marketing means and good idea of product you may likely want to promote within the context of your niche will enable you to figure out how your website or blog will look. The contents like information to provide for your audience and many other related things. However, to crown it all below I am going to cap this resource with basic affiliate marketing business tools to foster success in direction of how you can start promoting affiliate offers using strategic tools of the trade   

Knowledge and Skills of Affiliate marketing

This I believe you have since been learning by reading this resource. It may get more advance but sure this basics will keep an aspiring entrepreneur going strong. And a little takes on how to operate computer and surfing internet is very important.

Computer with good internet service

Definitely a digital gadget required to carry out your business functions. A vital tool to use; that houses related software from your internet browser, word processor, graphic designs to mention but few that enable you to surf the internet, make research, compile data after finding.   

Responsive Website or Blog

I can’t over emphasis on this as it is one of the criteria to join affiliate network program aside your email that will be requested for during sign up. Actually website or blog is not the only means you can use to promote offers but it is very important tool if you really want to scale up fast. It does better having a responsive website as it enable flexibility.

Resource Page

This is one of the profitable page on your website that will require you build with enthusiastic. It is one of the easiest thing you can use to bring sales to your promotions. Looking into the whole content of your website, definitely there are tools you use to have bring it up and running in good shape. This stuffs if is good for your audience consumption you can put it up in your resource page to add value to your audience. You can blend same with profitable resourceful products you are promoting directly with in the content on your resource page.

Contents

Informative contents in article form, quick reads and many more is a good take where you can embed affiliate links of product you are promoting. It could be specifically design as review or a complete pillar article that feature related information of an offer and other information to learn from that add value to your audience.

Product Reviews Posts

If you are having to promote two or more product of same category from different manufacturer’ good to use product review or compares post. However you really need to be honest as it look more of argumentative kindly do with care. A product that is perfect for A might not be for B and probability the both coexist on your platform. I know you won’t want to bread misunderstanding that is why it is required you speak your opinion from best of your views and let others decide. It should not be a must compelling ground for your audience but a ground to further educate them. And why you do that use pictures, well stated headlines, recommendations and your affiliate links.  

Email Campaign  

One of the most effective business tools kit for promoting affiliate offers. In the early stage while starting your online business it advisable to start create email list in other to be build effective communication with your audience. It is an avenue to reach out to your customers when you have an offer that can add value to them. However, it required you learn to understand how email marketing works and as well you will need huge number of subscriber to be able to scale well.

Blogs

I had said this and will once again lay emphasis on it that blogs is one of the criteria required when signing up for affiliate marketing. It is a very vital tool in the hand of an affiliate. A regular published of posts like article on your blog page can equally be used as a medium to promote affiliate offers. In simple note, kindly create one in a niche of your choice.

Social Media

I can’t over emphasis the role social media platform can play when it comes to advertising and marketing. Fact is that social media houses huge sum of potential customers and as well, it has facilities to make marketing and advertising works fine. However, it required skills to be able to use it for the purpose of promoting an offer.  

Video

Short informative videos of the product is a good way to promote affiliate offers. Though you will have built a channel that worth nothing less than a thousand subscribers respect to you tube demand. A well edited video on a topic that can add value to your audience can as well be used to promote offers.

Others

Podcasting, Tutorials and many other useful tools can be used to promote affiliate offers. Just try as much as possible to master two or more of the good tools available and I tell you your success is guaranteed. 

This is meant for you....Tag:Achieve Your Business Success Goals  written by me Abiona Temi powered on  BizOnSol.blogspot. I am an experienced IT Professional, Business Technologist and Entrepreneur. You find lots of useful information here in? Kindly share for others to benefit also your comments will be helpful drop a line below. Thanks for reading.