How To Be Successful In Affiliate Marketing

It’s an understatement to say that affiliate marketing is trending; in fact, it’s one of the fastest-
growing business models right now. It’s already driving a few billion in revenue, and that’s only expected to grow.

However, many internet trends tend to die out with time. It’s natural to feel like that’s going to be
the case with affiliate marketing.

Let me assure you: you’re not too late to get started. I’ve seen enough people start out, fail, and
claim it’s just another trend people are taking advantage of to sell expensive courses, books,
and anything along those lines.

Well, that’s mostly because people don’t know how to tackle the business.

Today, I’ll tell you how you can start your own affiliate marketing business while increasing the chances to
succeed.

I’ll give you a few tips a lot of people miss with their first attempt and even how you
can start for less than $5 every month.

Interested? Well, let’s dive into it.

You need to understand products and customer

The first rule when it comes to affiliate marketing is the same rule every entrepreneur needs to
understand.

You need to sell something to someone, and you simply can’t do it if you don’t
know them.

For the products you’re selling, you need to know all their in’s and out’s.

This makes it easier for people to trust you and your offer. You must be an expert; it’s either your or your business’
reputation on the line there, and the more people trust you, the more you’ll be able to sell.

When choosing a product, you want to focus on something that’s useful, people want, and
you’re knowledgeable about. If it’s your first rodeo, then you’ll make your life a lot easier.

Once you know everything about your product, your audience comes next. You start to learn
about them by knowing who they are: their age, demographics, etc.

Then, you research what they want: cook better, become more productive, start their own businesses, live healthy, and
so on.

The key to make a sale is to understand what your audience wants and needs, then provide
nothing but that. This comes down to your niche: health, fitness, entrepreneurship, coaching,
eCommerce, pets, etc.

That’s why niches are so important; they narrow down your audience and products to a limited
range. This helps you find more products for the people who want to buy them.

Don’t place all your eggs in a single basket

It might make sense to stick to a single product: it lets you specialize, learn all of its features and
disadvantages, and study your audience with much more depth. However, you’re not helping
yourself if you decide to go down that route.

You want to have a few products to offer. This lets you curve any difficulties you might have with
one of the products, and more products simply mean you have more chances to succeed.

You must remember you don’t control your affiliate program. The company behind your product
might decide to change the terms or price, and they might decide to stop selling a specific
product altogether.

If you stick with a single product, you’re out of luck and have to start over again; if you have a few other products under your sleeve, you can just discard it and move along.

Some affiliate programs make you sign exclusivity agreements that tie you to a single product or
brand.

Naturally, the former is a bigger hindrance, but the latter might be just as bad if the
company decides to shut down or mess with the program’s commissions and terms.

Sure, if you can associate yourself with a mega-company that drives millions of sales with
amazing products, good rates, and high chances to last for a good while, then, by all means, go
for it. However, these cases are quite far in-between, and it requires a lot of trust.

It doesn’t mean sell to everyone

Now, if you put all your eggs in a single basket, and it falls, then you’re screwed. On the other
hand, if you use too many baskets, you won’t be able to carry all of them; they’ll fall anyways,
and your eggs are gone.

Alright, enough with the eggs; that was a mistake.

Nevertheless, you get what I’m saying: not tying yourself to a single product doesn’t mean you
want to promote all the products you can find.

That’s—again—why niches are so important. Some people do things like promoting dog collars in one post, then an online entrepreneurship course on another, and a dietary supplement in the last one.

Then, you look at their site’s name, and it’s something like “Mike’s Crafts And Woodwork”.

This lack of direction makes these people look like they don’t know what they’re talking about.

They might be experts in all of those subjects, but spreading themselves too thin makes them
lose credibility.

People who want pet products will go to a pet-related site; the same goes for fitness enthusiasts
and aspiring entrepreneurs.

On the other hand, you could stick to a single niche; let’s say pets. You can sell dog collars,
toys, houses, cat scratching posts, and more. You’ll have more chances to sell 5 products within
a single niche than selling 5 or less from different ones.

Things will most likely change, and that’s fine

Remember when I said affiliate programs might change or even die out? Well, that’s quite
common, and every successful affiliate marketer has gone through that issue at least once or
twice during their careers.

That’s just part of the business, and the same goes with offering products that end up failing to
sell at all after spending weeks working on your site and content. The key lies in adapting
instead of giving up.

The internet is all about trends. One day, people love fidget spinners; a week later, they don’t
even remember them and move on to another product. It’s not always as radical, but people’s
interests are always shifting.

You can decide whether you want to take advantage of that or let it kill your business.

Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, or you won’t learn

The only way to know what works for you is by trying and failing. Again, every successful
affiliate marketer—and any entrepreneur, really—has at least a couple of failures under their
belt.

A lot of people give up after failing once, and I’d even go as far as saying that they make up the
majority of the comments saying affiliate marketing doesn’t work.

Failing teaches you a lot more than succeeding, and that’s one of those uncomfortable truths people often forget or prefer to
ignore.

Entrepreneurship takes patience and resilience. You’ll likely face more than one failure until you
hit the jackpot; the key lies in studying failed attempts and learning what went wrong.
Sometimes, it’s the product, and other times, it’s lack of research, marketing negligence, or
simply giving up too quickly.

Affiliate marketing is passive income, yes. After everything is set up, you’ll start “making money
on autopilot” as so many marketers say.

However, that’s after you’re done setting up and promoting your business. It’s far from a quick buck, and it often takes months before you start noticing significant profits.

Just embrace this side of the business, turn it into your learning approach, and you’ll eventually
hit gold.

Taking action

Now, let’s go into your first steps to create a good affiliate marketing business, I said you could
do it for less than $5 every month, so let’s find out exactly how you can do that.

Finding a good domain name

Your domain is a huge part of your brand. As I said, if your business is mikescraftsandwoodwork.com, then it’ll be a lot easier for people to find you if they’re looking for products related to woodwork.

You get the idea: your domain is the first thing your audience will look at. You want to hint at what you’re offering, so ensure you use one that’s directly related to your niche.

You can find one for even less than $10 annually, and it could even be free.

Finding a good hosting service

Hosting is another way you can save money. For instance, Bluehost offers hosting for as little as
$2.95 with the Basic plan. That’s barely $36 every year. Furthermore, it comes with a free
domain if you want to save even more.

Furthermore, even the premium plan is $5.45 monthly right now—again with the free domain.

That’s pretty much all you need if you decide to go for WordPress, which is the best platform if
you want to run a blogging site for your content marketing.

Creating a good blog

Finally, the best way to create a blog is to go for a dedicated CMS like WordPress. It’s easily the
most customizable approach if you’re willing to put in the time learning about SEO and getting a
few plugins to help you out.

You can find all the basic plugins you need for free, get a free theme, and learn SEO on your
own without spending anything more than your hosting subscription. WordPress is open-source,
so the only money you’ll invest in your business is hosting, domain name (if you don’t go for
something like Bluehost), and plugins and themes, optionally.

Conclusion

There you go! The tips to grow a successful affiliate marketing business and how to do so with
$5 monthly.

However, I do advise you to consider investing in something like a premium theme and premium plugins. They offer much better features than free options most of the time; you can even start out with free ones and then re-invest some of your profits into better alternatives.