Beginning your journey as an affiliate marketer may seem intimidating. It can feel like there are too many things to learn and many action steps to become successful as an online entrepreneur.
In this 9-step guide to affiliate marketing success, I will share your steps to succeed.
I want to tell you that the work it takes to become an affiliate is worth it.
The more you publish content as an affiliate, the higher your income will be because it snowballs and grows as time goes on.
9 Steps to Affiliate Marketing Success
With these nine steps to affiliate marketing success below, you can be sure that you’ve completed everything necessary for a beginner to launch an affiliate marketing business.
These first steps will help you take action to get the ball rolling and bring the money in from a variety of platforms in any niche you choose to tap into.
You can build your business as quickly or slowly as you like. Thousands of products are waiting to be recommended to your readers, and vendors are eager to pay you a commission.
Step 1: Decide Which Niche You Want to Be In
The first step you need to take to become an affiliate marketer is to choose the niche you want to work in.
When doing this, try to pick a topic you like. For example, don’t start a blog on medical advice if you know nothing about health.
When people read your content, they want to feel excited about it. Intriguing your readers is something you’ll need to do if you want them to buy the products you’re promoting.
If your topic is something you enjoy writing about or something you already know, your readers will be able to tell through the content you produce.
If you pick a topic you’re unfamiliar with, research it before writing about it. The readers want to feel like they can trust your opinion, so being informed on your topic is important.
Step 2: Figure Out What Your Audience Wants
The second thing you need to do is analyze your audience’s wants and needs. Each niche has an audience that wants information on specific items and needs different products to solve problems or achieve goals.
Writing content and promoting products for your audience’s wants will help you become a successful affiliate marketer. You must appeal to your audience if you want people to care about your blog.
One way you can do this is through keyword research. Keyword research is where you search for your topic using a tool like Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, Ahref, Semrush, etc.
These tools will then show you a list of things your audience is searching for that relate to your topic.
For example, if you searched “gifts,” one of the keywords that would show up could be “best Christmas gifts for mothers.”
These keywords can be used to know what people are searching for. More specific keywords, called long-tail keywords, are phrases relating to your keyword that are more specific.
The gift “best Christmas gifts for mothers” example used above would classify as a long-tail keyword.
Long-tail keywords can also often be questions. “How do I bake a cake from scratch?” would be an example of a long-tail keyword that asks a question.
You could use this keyword to write a blog post called “How to Bake a Chocolate Cake From Scratch” or something else that relates to the question.
Another place you can find out what your audience wants is on forums. Websites like Quora often have loads of people asking questions about different topics.
Search the keyword of your topic and see if any questions pop up. If so, consider how to make their question into a blog post.
Step 3: Start an Affiliate Blog
The third step is one of the most important things you can do as an affiliate marketer. You need to start a blog. Without a blog or website, it’s improbable you’ll get approved for any affiliate programs.
Companies you work with will want to know you’re a reputable affiliate. Showing companies that you have a website where you create content to promote products will get you approved for affiliate programs much faster.
Start your blog using QuickInstall to load WordPress, a free and reputable tool. Begin posting content on your blog, even if you can’t put any affiliate links with it yet – you’ll be able to later.
Your website is also essential when becoming an affiliate marketer because you control it.
If you only rely on social media, like a TikTok account, for all of your affiliate marketing, you’d lose all of your business if your account randomly got shut down one day.
Step 4: Familiarize Yourself with Affiliate Platforms
The fourth step of becoming an affiliate marketer is to look at different affiliate platforms and programs.
The platform you choose will most likely depend on the type of products you promote and whether they’re tangible or digital.
You will want to use platforms like Amazon, Share-a-Sale, and Commission Junction for tangible products. All three platforms are free to sign up with and are reputable among affiliate marketers.
Bloggers who promote digital products will want to use platforms like ClickBank, Warrior Plus, and JVZoo. These three platforms are also free to join and reputable, so they’re perfect for beginners.
Step 5: Sign Up for Social Media Sites
Social media is massive when it comes to marketing. Every other post seems to be an influencer promoting a new product or brand.
Social media can give marketers a powerful platform with a few viral posts or uses of hashtags.
Start your social media accounts on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. All of these websites are easy and free to sign up for.
Make your username the same as your blog so people will remember your name and connect your account and blog more easily.
Incorporate the latest social media trends into your posts to make them get more views. For example, “#cleantok” is a trend on TikTok where people will film videos of themselves using different products to clean areas of their houses.
Posts like those would be great for an affiliate marketer. If you were to run a cleaning blog, you could make a cleaning video, post it with popular cleaning hashtags, link to your blog on your account, and tell your viewers they can purchase the products you’re using from there.
Social media has given many of its users an extremely short attention span. There’s too much interesting content that viewers would choose to watch over a long, boring informational video about a topic.
Because of this, you need to make concise content that gets to the point and catches your audience’s attention.
Using bold colors in thumbnails, starting your videos by asking the viewers a question, and getting straight to your points are a few ways to get and maintain the viewers’ attention.
When making pictured content, like photos you post to Instagram, Pinterest, and sometimes Facebook, make sure to have eye-catching posts that intrigue your followers.
When making video content on TikTok, YouTube, etc., be careful not to make your videos too long.
Posting hours of content on YouTube most likely won’t keep viewers intrigued the whole time. Try to keep YouTube videos at 10 minutes long or under.
TikTok started as a platform where you could only post 15-second videos. Because of this, many app users are used to quick, straight-to-the-point videos. Keep your TikTok videos under 60 seconds to appeal to more users.
Step 6: Pick the Products You Want to Promote
The sixth step of growing your affiliate marketing business is choosing what type of product you want to write about on your blog and promote through your affiliate links.
You can promote tangible items, which customers buy and have shipped to their homes, or digital items, like eBooks, courses, and other information.
The products you’ll promote depend on what niche you choose to work in. Some niches have the most tangible products, while some have primarily digital products.
A toy blog is one example of a niche that sells mostly tangible items. Most people aren’t going to spend money on digital things for information about toys they’d want to buy for their kids, so they’ll purchase tangible items instead.
A digital niche would be something like spirituality. Since spirituality isn’t exactly something you can buy, most products in this niche will be informational digital things instead of tangible items.
Some niches can combine tangible and digital products. Stress management would be a niche that could combine these.
A stress blog could sell an eBook on reducing stress while selling items like weighted blankets, essential oil diffusers, etc.
Step 7: Make Quality Content
Step seven to affiliate marketing success is making sure you are producing high-value content.
Quality content is crucial when beginning your affiliate blog because it helps you gain the traction you need to succeed.
High-quality content should include valuable information. It should answer customers’ questions about the product in a detailed and clear manner and tell the readers why they need it and why purchasing it will benefit them.
Quality content should be fairly long. You aren’t writing enough about the product if your posts are only a few paragraphs.
Customers won’t feel informed enough about the product you’re selling and will leave your site.
Long content ranks well for SEO. Google ranks informative content that will help the readers more than short, general posts that lack a decent amount of information.
Writing high-value content will also make you look good to the companies you want to work with.
A high-quality website with informative content gives you more opportunities to work with different brands.
Having quality content also means posting regularly. Try to post a few times a week. Posting a few times a week means you’re always giving your readers new content to read, which will keep them engaged.
Step 8: Use Your Affiliate Links on Your Site
Now that you’ve created a blog and posted high-value content, you can apply for affiliate programs. Most programs like Amazon and Warrior Plus are free to sign up for.
Once approved as an affiliate, you can use affiliate links on your website. Write content about the products you want to promote and have a link for them.
Hyperlink the product’s name and a photo with your affiliate link so that when readers click on it to buy it, part of the money they spend on it will go to you.
You can also use your affiliate links on your social media. One program called Linktree is commonly used among TikTok stars and Instagram users.
This program combines multiple links into one page, so when the users click on it, they’ll be directed to a page that lists multiple different links for them to choose from.
Many people use Linktree to place their affiliate links in a list people can easily access from social media. Others also put links in places like the description of a YouTube video.
Step 9: Build Traffic to Your Site
The ninth step in affiliate marketing success is gaining traffic to your site. You may have many quality posts, but does it matter if no one is seeing them? Building traffic can be easy if you take the time to analyze your site.
One huge part of building traffic is writing to appeal to the SEO keywords in your niche. Your audience has a specific type of content they want, and writing using the keywords will help them find you.
You can also build traffic by buying advertisements for your blog. You can buy ads on Facebook, pay to boost your TikTok videos to a specific audience, and purchase ads on Google.
You can also do solo ads, where you buy an ad in the format of an email that goes out from a marketer with a larger email list and a more loyal audience than you do.
Something else you need to do to build traffic is check your analytics. Google Analytics is one example of a site you can use to see your website’s information.
Pay attention to what kind of content is doing best, and produce more of it to build more traffic.
Conclusion
That is it. Those are the nine steps to affiliate marketing success. These first steps will help you take action to get the ball rolling and bring the money in from a variety of platforms in any niche you choose to tap into.