How To Get Started Online
With so much information online, and a lot of it being confusing, wrong or outdated, let’s look at simplifying this process, for it is not complicated; as long as you have some inspiration and drive to succeed, creating an Affiliate Marketing business online is for you.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliates Joint Ventures with other companies and drive traffic to their websites using digital marketing to direct sales and, in turn, get commissions for their efforts.
Not a lot has changed with this process in over a decade; a “Simple formula” has worked then and continues to work to this day.
That’s it! You have a product, and you have a customer. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to align these two things.
A Diagram Outlining How Affiliate Marketing Works:
I have oversimplified this a tad for a reason. It would be best not to fear the term “Affiliate Marketing,” for anyone can create a full-time successful online business with the proper training, guidance and tools.
Explore the different terms and an exact online business 4-step process...
Terms
Affiliate (YOU)
You are the affiliate, meaning you can join companies like Etsy, eBay, Walmart, and Amazon (along with 10,000’s others) and promote their products and services.
When you join these companies’ Affiliate Programs, they will give you a unique “affiliate link” exclusive to you and allow you to track all the sales you generate.
Affiliate Program (a company like Amazon)
Most companies have an affiliate program, 99% of all the brands in the world can be promoted online, and you, as an affiliate, can earn a commission.
Amazon is one of the most effective affiliate programs in the world and will allow you to promote 100’s to MILLIONS of products with a single account. Pretty awesome right?
Earning Affiliate Commissions
Affiliate programs will give you a kickback if you can send people to their website, and they end up buying something. Say you send someone to Amazon through your affiliate link, and they buy a fridge; Amazon will pay you a % of the total sale.
Amazon offers around 3-6% commissions, so a transaction like this may yield you $50-100 (depending on the price of the fridge).
Depending on the company and affiliate program, they typically pay between 2% and 75% in commissions.
Unlimited Potential
As an affiliate marketer, your potential has no limit. The more people you can get buying through your affiliate links, the more money you make.
Many affiliate marketers make several million dollars annually, which can be a reality for anyone willing to try to build an online presence.
But HOW do you build an affiliate marketing business?
An Exact 4-Step Online Business Startup
The 4-step Process
There are only 4 steps to creating a successful Affiliate Marketing Online business.
If you follow this 4 part-process along with training, tools and support (which I will be helping you with), you will be off and running for a startup and growth.
These are the exact steps.
Step 1: Choose An Idea
The first thing you will need to do before you start the build-out of any business is come up with an idea for your business.
This is also called the “niche” stage, where you can choose your business’s audience and category.
This could be anything, from training a puppy to basketball, sports betting, video games, etc. You can head with your business with millions of potential directions.
This is the exciting part.
I recommend that people choose a passion/interest as their niche. This way, you will genuinely love your business, and when you love what you do, you never have to “work” a day in your life.
The Internet and the affiliate marketing industry have afforded us this opportunity; with nearly 5 BILLION people online now, even the most obscure places have vast audiences.
Suppose you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate. In that case, you have direct video classes walking you through the niche selection process and immediate help from the community (and myself), who can give you feedback on your niche.
Step 2: Build A Website
Your website is the foundation of your business.
Think of it like a shop within the offline world. If you have no “storefront,” you can’t attract and help customers or the ability to sell anything.
Your website is, in essence, your storefront, where you can help, communicate, and promote products/services to your audience.
If you don’t have a website, you can’t stand the hope of running an online business. It is the first and critical necessity to create long-term success.
How to Accomplish: You can quickly build high-performing and profit-ready websites at Wealthy Affiliate easily and quickly.
You can even get up and running with one for free within the Starter account. Another perk to using the website platform at Wealthy Affiliate is that their hosting (where your website lives) is high-speed and ranks better than other providers. This can give you a competitive advantage and lead to many more opportunities as you build out your website.
Step 3: Get An Audience
Your website is also where your “traffic” will arrive in the Internet world. Without people visiting your website, there is no way to make money. So it is essential to understand how to attract traffic to your website.
Traffic can come in many forms, but search engine optimization or SEO, is one of the most sustainable and long-term traffic methods. This means ranking in search engines like Google and Bing and getting FREE traffic to your website. Once you have traffic, you have opportunity.
So this is the next focus once you have your website up and running.
How to Accomplish: You need proper “traffic” training and a website set up to rank well within search engines. These are both things provided within Wealthy Affiliate; you can access elite SEO training, classes, and experts to help you with your traffic campaigns.
Plus, there are many other ways to get traffic to your website as you build it out…
- Social media channels
- YouTube/Videoblogging
- Podcasts &
- Paid traffic channels (PPC)
These are all covered in detail within the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
Step 4: Make Money
Last but not least, the “make money” part of your business.
This is where you earn money through affiliate programs. There are over 550 MILLION products/services that you can promote as an affiliate marketer in exchange for a commission.
You will be adding these special links on your website from companies like Amazon, Etsy, Nike, Apple, eBay, etc., and you will then earn a “kickback” if someone goes from your website to theirs and ends up buying something.
The affiliate marketing industry is growing at the fastest pace ever, and affiliates stand to earn $12 BILLION online this year…with this increasing even more next year.
You can get your chunk of this pie.
How to Accomplish: Finding affiliate programs can be an inefficient task at the best of times. You typically have to go through many Google searches to find what you seek.
Within Wealthy Affiliate, you have instant access to an Affiliate Program search where you can search through 10,000+ affiliate programs across some of the top affiliate networks online.
Not to mention the training on properly integrating affiliate promotions into your website to maximize conversions, insight into the customer purchase lifecycle, and critical information if you want to become high-performing and successful affiliate marketers online.
Final Comments
So there you have it, how to effectively start an affiliate marketing business.
Suppose you are interested in creating your online presence and have no experience. If you are trying to build or scale an existing business but are not getting the desired results, I CAN HELP.
Next Steps
If you are even the slightest bit interested in becoming an elite affiliate marketer, you can get rolling right now with your account.
You will get access to the training, websites, hosting, research tools, networking, mentorship and direct support. I will contact you within 30 minutes or so of your joining.
See you there!
Feature Image courtesy of Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Final image courtesy of Marijana from Pixabay
