Are you wondering “How do I become an affiliate”? How to start an affiliate business and make money from it? We have put together the most important building blocks for building your own affiliate business. Of course, for a successful start, you still need a few strategies on how to stand out from the crowd. With our five secret tips you will be well prepared! In addition, we also have a great, free webinar tip for you so that no questions remain unanswered. Here we go!
You have probably already seen the small note “Affiliate Link” on websites or in social networks. You probably associate the term with big influencers – and you are right. But affiliate marketing is also often behind themed blogs or product test sites. This is recommendation marketing: An expert recommends a product or service to you and receives a commission for it. But can you really make money with affiliate marketing? Definitely – and actually anyone can start with affiliate marketing! Here you can find out how it works and which five secret tips you can use to get off to a good start.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a sub-discipline of online marketing and actually already an “old hand” among online marketing strategies. Nevertheless, affiliate marketing is still underestimated by many companies! The affiliate marketing industry is estimated to be worth twelve billion US dollars worldwide. And the industry is responsible for a whopping 16 percent of online orders. Does that seem like a lot to you? That’s right – because according to this, about every sixth order came about through affiliate marketing. Of course, not only the companies benefit from this, but also the website operators who earn money with affiliate marketing.
This is how you can start with affiliate marketing
You can build an affiliate business with relatively few financial resources. It is important that you invest a little time at the beginning, because your basic guarantee for later success is your network. But let’s start at the very beginning:
1. YOUR BATTLE PLAN
First of all you need a plan. This does not mean that you should determine what you want to sell and when. But you should think about which topic you want to start with affiliate marketing. Do you have a hobby that you are particularly good at? Your options are diverse: you can focus on sports activities such as diving, horseback riding or fencing, for example. Or you are well acquainted with spirits or wines and commit yourself to a topic in the field of enjoyment. Perhaps you also enjoy reading books on the subject of finance and would like to share this knowledge with your community.
No matter what you choose: Decide on a topic on which you want to make recommendations and make sure that your contributions are coherent and authentic. If you associate dog toys with types of whiskey and diving equipment, his community will be surprised at the lack of focus and you will quickly appear implausible.
2. YOUR WEBSITE OR PROFILE ON SOCIAL NETWORKS
The fundamental basis for your affiliate business is the channel through which you want to make your recommendations. You can set up a website or profile on social networks. It is important that you can credibly underline your expertise. Because only if your community has the feeling that they can trust your recommendations they will also buy via your affiliate link. Make sure that you offer your readers added value.
3. YOUR WIDE REACH
This is the point where you have to invest some time first. Because without visitors on your website or your social media channel – in marketing this flow of visitors is also referred to as traffic – you have no audience who will buy your recommendations. Here’s the good news: everyone started small! Be patient with your traffic generation. If you write and post a lot of informative articles, then more and more visitors will gradually become aware of you.
5 Secret tips for 2022
Now you know the essential building blocks that you need to start with affiliate marketing and your fingers are definitely tingling to finally get started. We would like to give you a few exclusive tips to help you along the way!
TIP 1: FIND A NICHE MARKET!
To be honest: if you start your website today, the competition is very big. But that’s why we have a good tip for you here: Concentrate on a niche market! Simply writing about sports or nutrition becomes difficult. There are now countless websites that already deal with the topic. However, if you instead focus on the vegan or alkaline diet niche, you have a better chance of ranking your website on Google and being found by your narrower target group.
TIP 2: CONTENT IS KING!
High-quality and up-to-date content is the be-all and end-all for your traffic. When you start with affiliate marketing, you should focus on emphasizing your expertise with your texts. Why should your readers trust your recommendations? Add value to your readers, solve their problems and answer their questions in your posts. Product comparisons or test reports are really good. Be honest here! This is the only way your website will appear authentic.
Incidentally, the more your website covers your field of interest, the easier it will be for you to publish new articles regularly. Also, be sure to check your posts for updates from time to time. Your readers will no longer be interested in which dive sites were the top secret tips ten years ago or the right affiliate links are also crucial: tailor the products you recommend to your target group, otherwise your affiliate marketing will go haywire Empty.
TIP 3: USE SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION!
You can use Google Ads, for example, to attract customers to your website. But if you’re just starting out with your affiliate business, you probably won’t have a budget left over for advertising. That’s why we recommend that you make your website visible with search engine optimization in order to appear on page one of Google if possible. This gives you a strong lever to direct non-paid traffic to your site.
TIP 4: INCLUDE LEAD MAGNETS!
Lead magnet are a really good way to build up a newsletter pool. You can then contact this email list when you publish a new post to regularly guide your readers to your website and earn money from their clicks on your affiliate links. Wondering what a lead magnet is? Surely you already know some. Have you ever given your email address to download an e-book, listen to an episode of podcast, or watch a video? Then you have already consumed a lead magnet! Checklists and white papers are also popular. If you start with affiliate marketing, it is worth getting your readers excited about your posts in the long term. If you gain their trust, they will look to your website for answers to their questions in the future.
TIP 5: KNOW YOUR KPIS!
Starting with affiliate marketing also means that you have to keep an eye on the performance of your posts and social channels right from the start in order to be able to optimize later. Which articles are read most often? You can find out such KPIs via Google Analytics, for example. It may also be worth placing additional affiliate links or banners on such post pages in order to further boost the sales of your affiliate marketing. However, many who start with affiliate marketing do not yet know what is well received and what is not: Split tests are suitable for finding out which small adjustments improve the performance of the posts.
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