12 AFFILIATE MARKETING TIPS FOR BEGINNERS

Affiliate marketing is still one of the leading ways to make passive income. It can even become a big source of revenue for your blog. The key to maximize affiliate marketing income depends on producing valuable content and engagement with readers. However, affiliates are only paid when a buyer ends up buying from your affiliate links. This post discusses affiliate marketing tips for beginners who want to maximize their affiliate earnings.

Let me remind you.

Affiliate marketing is not as simple to execute as it appears. Basically, it’s about promoting someone else product over a commission rate. So, the idea is to convert readers into buyers on your blog. If you want to increase your affiliate earnings then you will have to compel readers to take some sort of action on your website. It can even be a newsletter subscription, a purchase through your affiliate links, or even joining your Facebook group.

When you persuade people to take action on your blog, affiliate marketing becomes easier. To achieve such results, you’ve to engage with your readers.

Well, there are some fundamental tips for affiliate marketing which you should follow. Affiliate marketing is also one of my income sources. From past two years, I have learned smart affiliate marketing strategies from experts in this field. Trust me, it has helped me so much!

It’s time for you to learn how to be a successful affiliate marketer.

12 AFFILIATE MARKETING TIPS FOR BEGINNERS TO PAY ATTENTION

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. It means that if you make a purchase through affiliate links, it will help me earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. 

To help you generate better results, here are some best affiliate marketing tips for beginners. Just go through these affiliate marketing techniques and determine what changes you should make on your website.

As said, it can be a great income source only when done properly. There has to be a proper affiliate marketing strategy in hand. However, Using these tips will help you get significant results.

1- CHOOSE A NICHE FIRST

Every now or other day, people emphasize on choosing a niche. The main idea is to be specific in what you promote on your blog. The reason is that when you start a blog, you build an audience. Choosing a niche will help you cover a topic in detail with a variety of content for your audience. One main topic can be divided into other sub-categories. People will also identify you and your blog as the main content source. In that way, whenever you recommend something on your blog, readers will respond.

They will more likely to read more from you about products you promote.

·         The products you use

·         How using certain products benefit you

·         What are the pros and cons of using such products

·         Is there any drawback of using the product?

·         What was your personal experience of using the product?

·         Are you satisfied with the monthly subscription to a product or service?

·         How affordable is it?

All it starts with covering a niche and building an audience.

If you are just promoting everything that comes to your way then you’re making it complicated for yourself, and the readers.Initially, pick the categories that resonate best with your niche.

2- KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

One of the common missteps of new bloggers is that they don’t really know their audience. So, the most important tip to do affiliate marketing is to only promote products that your audience is interested in buying. Dig deep into knowing the needs and wants of your audience.

Consider all the reasons why someone is following your blog or social media channels.

What help do they need from you?

Make sure the affiliate products you’re promoting solves their problem.

If you write about beauty products, don’t put up affiliate links for cat foods because you are a pet owner or possibly cat foods convert well. The readers who are coming to your blog for beauty tips and beauty related products are not interested in cat food.

The bottom line here is to understand your audience needs.

Think about what products can solve your reader’s problems?

3- PLAN KEYWORD SEARCH

A quick keyword research can bring you free Google traffic, and affiliate sales. Once you’ve found out affiliate products to promote on your blog, conduct a keyword research. Imagine if one of your keywords starts ranking on google then you can get direct traffic from Google without any marketing tactics.

I would definitely recommend using a paid tool for keyword research.

4- PRODUCE VALUABLE CONTENT

As far as my experience in blogging, I would emphasize on valuable content creation. Trust me, it’s getting harder to engage with the audience if the content is trash. Make sure, you invest time and hard work in generating great content for your blog.

Whatever you write, make it useful, informative and helpful for your readers.

If your blog fails to fulfill the audience needs, they will immediately navigate to someone else blog. As simple as that.

You don’t really want that, right?

Always create great content for your readers. Don’t give them a reason to leave your blog page. The valuable content will have the potential to compel readers to stay on the page and read your advice. If you write book reviews, then your reviews should be balanced. It should cover all the reasons why one should either buy or not buy a book. People would like your opinions on the book. So, your review needs to help your readers.

Make your content a go-to source for readers to make informed purchasing decisions. Give actionable takeaways so that your readers feel comfortable clicking on your affiliate links.

5- FOLLOW SEO PRACTICES

Keyword research isn’t sufficient if you don’t really follow SEO tips on your blog. Learn to optimize your content with keywords. Make content SEO friendly. Emphasize more on creating content that Google loves to show on front pages.

6- PLAN AN AFFILIATE MARKETING STRATEGY

Creating an affiliate marketing strategy is an essential step to become a successful affiliate marketer. The best affiliate marketing strategy involves choosing a niche market, finding the businesses, providing creative promotional materials, building a strong brand, using different traffic sources etc.

It may not be as simple for new bloggers.

But, having a plan is an important factor. You can start with choosing relevant affiliate products, picking the right content formats, ideas to increase engagement with readers, content promotion strategies and implementing the effective affiliate marketing techniques.

7- PAY ATTENTION TO LEGAL GUIDELINES

Nowadays, affiliate networks have made it compulsory to abide by the legal guidelines. If you are new to affiliate marketing, you should pay attention to areas of compliance to avoid any future violations.

Everybody who uses affiliate marketing has to follow FTC disclosures. It’s important to make the disclosures crystal clear for the audience. FTC decided that if you’re not displaying affiliate disclosures on your website, social media or any other online platform then you’re deceiving your audience.

8- WORK WITH QUALITY AFFILIATE NETWORKS

When applying for affiliate networks, consider following things.

·         Quality of products

·         Commission rates

·         Affiliate management support

·         Promotional materials like banners, ad, images etc

·         Payment methods

·         Cookie period

Furthermore, you can always ask other affiliate marketers for a review. Ask their experience working with a specific network.

9- TRY DIFFERENT AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

If one affiliate program doesn’t really work in your favour, try a new program. Maybe, the new affiliate program offers better products or this is what your audience is looking for. It’s not really plain to read your audience minds and find out what products they typically buy. So, trying different programs can help to increase your affiliate income. Or, maybe find a relevant program that has a better pay-out, creative promotional ideas, discounts, coupons etc.

10- BUILD ENGAGEMENT WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

If you just keep on throwing affiliate links on your blog then it won’t possibly work. Start building engagement with your readers. Speak to them in the natural tone. Connect with them directly through your writing style. Write content that encourages readers to make a comment and discuss. Adding questions also increases engagement.

11- USE CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGIES

Other than implementing SEO, it’s essential to follow content marketing techniques. You need to bring your content in front of the right audience. If your audience is most active on social media, use Facebook ads to drive traffic to your website. Consistent posting on Facebook can also bring you leads.

Pinterest is another great platform to promote your business and products. It’s the platform used by more than 200+ users. It is also a traffic-generating platform.

Many blogs and businesses use content marketing to drive traffic to their websites which ultimately gives a boost to their affiliate sales. Basically, you provide informative, entertaining and educational content to your audience with the aim of getting clickable action from them.

12- AFFILIATE MARKETING TAKES TIME – BE PATIENT

This is the most important thing I often advice new bloggers. Whether you would like to increase blog traffic or blog income, the key is to be consistent. Don’t be impatient as you may get easily unmotivated. Some bloggers make $30 in their first month of affiliate marketing while few bloggers claim to make $1000.

Things work differently for everyone.

Just follow your own track, and stick to your goals.