Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to make money on the internet. In this tutorial about Affiliate Marketing For Dummies, I will walk you through the step by step process which you must follow to get the most results.
In Affiliate Marketing, there is no product creation, no maintenance, no team management, no inventory management and customer support activities. This is the easiest way to make lucrative income online if you follow the right process and methods.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
In a simple term, It is a way of promoting other people’s products for a commission. These commissions range from 2% to 100%. On average it’s 20% – 100%. It can be explained or defined in so many ways. With Affiliate Marketing, you will not create a product. You will just register on the platform, pick any product and promote to your audience.
After registering for the program, you will be given an affiliate link which represents the product you are promoting. When your visitors or audience click on this link and go to the product sales page to make a purchase, you will be rewarded with a commission. This is how Affiliate Marketing work. There are more you will learn about Affiliate Marketing as we move along.
Affiliate Marketing for Dummies : Why Affiliate Marketing?
Now you know what affiliate Marketing is but you can still be thinking why should one go into affiliate Marketing. If you are one, then this Affiliate Marketing For Dummies guide is for you. Well, for your information affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to make lucrative income online. Even though it’s not as easy as we see it, when you follow the right methods and processes, you will succeed.
Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing
1. You will not create any product : For one to make money out of something by selling, you need to first create the product and set up a lot of things before you can generate sales. But with affiliate Marketing or being an Affiliate Marketer, you will just register on the program, pick the product and promote.
When you generate a sale, you will be rewarded with a commission as simple as that. Normally 50% and above is the commission most affiliate companies or programs pay.
2. No Inventory and Management of the Product: In affiliate Marketing, you will not store and manage inventories. No keeping of products and no construction of warehouses.
3. No Team Management or Maintenance cost : You will not be working with large number of people and paying them monthly salaries. There are a lot which I cannot finish talking about now.
How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?
First thing in getting started with Affiliate Marketing is to choose a niche in which you would want to work with. We have different types of niches. We have major niches and sub niches.
Example Of Niches
- Travel niche
- Health niche
- Dog niche
- Spirituality niche
- Make money online niche
Cooking niche etc.
You can read more about niches on google. Now after selecting the niche, you now look for which platform to register and pick a product to promote. And this will take us to the next point.
Affiliate Programs
There are so many affiliate programs out there. Some companies have affiliate programs on their website. Then there are platforms which you can register on to pick products to promote. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies.
Examples Of Affiliate Programs
Let’s start with platforms to register on and choose products from varieties of niches to promote.
1. Clickbank
2. Warrior Plus
3. Jvzoo
4. ShareAsale
5. Amazon
6. Jumia and other platforms you might come across.
Other type of Affiliate Marketing Platform which are company based are:
1.Web Hosting Companies
2. Email Marketing Companies like Getresponse
3. Content Management Systems ( CMS like wix.com,weebly.com, WordPress etc. )
4. Funnels and Landing Page Management Platforms like clickfunnel.com, builderall.com etc
And many other companies which affiliate programs attach to their products. Depending on the niche you choose, you can register on any of the platforms to pick products to promote. For clickbank, jvzoo, ShareAsale and Warrior plus, you can choose from varieties of products to promote.
If you are going for web Hosting programs, you can pick Bluehost, siteground, hostgator, hostinger etc and many other hosting platforms out there. From experience and reports, Web Hosting companies pay the most commissions. From $50 – $2000 commissions per sale. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
Registration: How To Register On Affiliate Platforms?
Registration is as simple as creating a facebook account. It’s left for you to decide on which platform to work with. Some companies will accept you as an affiliate straight forward once you complete your registration while some will reject your application. No worries when your application gets rejected because there are so many programs out there to choose from.
All the Affiliate Marketing platforms I’ve listed above will accept your application right away but the only one which has restriction is clickbank. Clickbank is one of the most popular affiliate Marketing platform which pays huge commissions to its affiliates from 50% and above. Unfortunately, clickbank is not accepting affiliates from some of the counties.
Africa countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Pakistan etc that I learnt are restricted or blacklisted on clickbank. You can check on google about clickbank blacklisted countries and see if you will find your country inside. There are other countries blacklisted by clickbank. You can do research on it and find out from google. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
How to Locate And Register For An Affiliate Program.
On every platform or website which you want to work with as an affiliate, you can easily register by using their partner link. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
How To Locate Affiliate Links?
Most at times, these links are located at the footer part of their websites. Take a look at the picture below of where some of the partner links are located. This is bluehost. Best Web hosting company and recommended by WordPress for website hosting.
This apply to all other platforms. If you don’t find it at the bottom, then check their menu as well. If you don’t find it on the website, then they don’t have an affiliate program available.
Affiliate Marketing Commissions Breakdown
As I have said earlier, commission ranges from platform to platform and products to products. Web Hosting, Email Marketing, Clickbank, Jvzoo, Warriorplus pay the highest commission. 50% and above on average. Web Hosting pays a flat commission from $50 – $2000 per sale. I will talk later on each of these platforms. Below is the commission for Bluehost
How To Promote Affiliate Products?
Now this is where the magic begins. As I’ve said above affiliate Marketing is not difficult but if you don’t follow the right process, choose the right methods and don’t have patience, I’m sorry it will be very difficult for you to generate sales and commissions with Affiliate Marketing. And this is where most people fail and don’t make a single commission. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
Registering on platforms, choosing products and doing many other settings are not something difficult or hard. What brings in the income is the promotion of the Product to generate a sale. If you don’t promote the Product well, you won’t generate any sales and will not get commission.
Now let’s start. There are two main ways to promote products either normal products and services or affiliate products.
- Free Methods.
- Paid Methods.
To be honest with you, the free methods take time and are difficult to convert well. But is the first approach that newbies and those who don’t have money for paid methods use to begin with. So we will look first at the free methods then move on to the paid methods.
Before I continue with the free methods. Let me show you how to generate a link for a product to promote. What you should know is that all the Affiliate programs have a special link which will be generated and assigned to you to use for your promotion. It is through this link that the company can track your activities to know whether you are the one who sends visitors to their websites.
So once your customers click on that special link generated by the company and assigned to you, their system will track and know whether the traffic is coming from your link and the appropriate commission will be credited to your account when there is a sale. So take Note of that. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
How To Promote Affiliate Products For Free
1. Social Media Platforms
When I say social media platforms I mean all the social media platforms you know. Facebook,Instagram, Twitter etc. You can promote your products on these platforms for free to your friends and followers. But there are rules and guidelines that you need to follow in order not to waste your time and energy. You need to do it in a professional way.
Now for social media, is a free resource or platform to use for your marketing of your goods and services but you need to do it in a professional way so that you won’t be blocked or restricted by these platforms. Let’s take facebook for example. You can promote your product on Facebook in many ways :
- Through your profile
- Through groups
- Status
- Pages
For the groups you need to join them before you can promote inside. Also for the page, you have to create a page purposely for your product and build it with the audience before you can do your marketing and promotion on it.
Now when you want to promote on Facebook, you need to make your affiliate link look professional and unique. Facebook will block your account or put restrictions on your account for directly sharing affiliate links on the platform.
Secondly, these affiliate links look very horrible and ugly that the visitors will not like to click on them. They normally see them as fraudulent links and will be afraid to click on them.
So how to make your links look unique and professional to be accepted on Facebook and other social media platforms. What you need to do is to create a landing page or bridge page and integrate the link inside then copy the landing page link which is unique and will be accepted on Facebook and use.
1. You can use landing page builders for this job. Some Email Marketing platforms have this options. I mostly use getresponse to create the landing page for this. You can register for free trail here
2. If you have a website, then there is no need to use a landing page builder. You can just use a plugin to cloak the link and make it look professional or create a new page on your website and make it look like a landing page. Then copy the page link and use on the Facebook or other social media platforms.
Example is this article about how to create a website which was published on our website. It is cloaked like this https://softechreview.com/website.
When you click on this link, it will take you to the article where you learn how to set up your own website/blog in under 1 hour. We cloak the long permalink with the use of the plugin. It makes your affiliate link look professional and clean.
How To Create An Affiliate Website ?
Before you create a website, you need two main elements or building blocks. They are:
- Domain Name
- Hosting
We recommend Bluehost for all our client to use for their hosting because they are fast and you will get a free Domain name for 1 Full Year. You can read more here on how to select the best hosting plan on Bluehost.
Now Click here to go to Bluehost (Save 66%) and get your hosting and free domain . The next step is to create the website. You can click here to learn how to set up your website or get back to us to set up one website/blog for you free of charge. Make sure to use the link above to purchase the hosting to get the best discounts. So that’s how to cloak your affiliate link and use for your promotion on Facebook.
Now the question is, is it effective and working?
It will work when you target the right groups and pages. Your audience will definitely be interested in the Product you are promoting. This method will take a little bit of time before you will start seeing results.
When sharing the links , summarize what the Product is about and what problem will it solve for your audience then place the link under the post for them to learn more. Know how to choose your words to convince them in clicking on the link to visit your offer page before they make any buying decision. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
This method can be applied to all the other social media platforms that you belong to. Just know how to cloak your link and build a landing page to collect emails and automate your marketing process. You will understand when you watch the video here.
Now the next free way to promote Affiliate products is through a blog or by blogging.
Those who have a blog/website can use this method. If you don’t have, click here to get started and get back to us to set up one for you. You can as well contact us anytime. It’s very cheap. For the blog, you only need to write an article about the Product and publish on the blog.
You can write a review article or come out with your own topic. But the question is, writing an article and publishing on the blog will generate sales and commission ? The answer is NO.
It may work but it will take a long time before you start seeing the result. Unless you do it the right way. This is when SEO comes in. You can’t just wake up and come out with a topic to write an article about then thinking you will get sales and commission.
1. You need to know whether the topic or the article you want to write about have people searching for it on Google or other search engine platform. The next step is the search volume for the topic or the keyword. Last is to check the Keyword difficulties to see if you can easily rank for that keyword before you start writing your article. These terminologies are SEO terms.
There is another one which is called Domain Authority. This shows the strength of the website and the authority that it has in the field. It is measured on percentage from 0% to 100% . The higher the percentage the more strong and authoritatively the website is.
You can use SEO tools Ahrefs, SEMrush, and others to analyze the keywords and other parameters before you write your article. I always use this one and it works best for me.
Example of how it works is this. I have ranked for one of my articles on the first page of google. The keyword I used was Quora Ads Tutorials For Beginners. Check the image below. In this article my title is Affiliate Marketing For Dummies.
You could see that I have been ranked on the first page of google for that keyword. It is because I have analyzed the keyword and checked its search volume and the keyword difficulties before writing the article. And based on that I have been able to rank easily on the first page. I used this software to do my analysis and it always gives me the best results. Start to use it for free here.
They have a free course that you can join and learn more about the software. This is called SEO which is a big Topic on its own. Is a service we render on our platform. So I will not talk much about it now. You can contact us here to learn more. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
So in short you need to analyze the topic well before you start to write your article. But if you have a large audience that you can reach with your blog , then there is no need to waste time on SEO . You can just go ahead and write the article and share it with your audience.
How To Write Blog Article?
Writing blog article is the same as a normal blog post but this one you have to be professional and know which kind of topic to choose from. You can come up with topics about products and applications reviews, trainings and tutorials about skills and programs.
Examples Of Blog Topics To Write About
- Web Hosting Reviews
- Keto diet reviews
- How to loose weight.
- 4. How to make money online ( this one is hard to rank for ) Now after you have finished writing the articles, you will link your affiliate links inside and when people click on these links to buy the Product you are promoting, thenyou will make a commission from it. All depends on how you write the article and the call to actions that will convince and force people to click on the link to buy the product.
- Like how my article title is Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
So this is all for the blog method of promotion.. I will go into details about the SEO in another topic.
How To Create A Landing Page?
What is a landing page?
Landing Page is simply a one page of a website. Is just a one web page. It doesn’t contain a menu and other options like a website. It’s created purposely for collecting emails. You may ask why collecting emails. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
In affiliate Marketing, one thing that I kept and did not say is that, the best way to promote Affiliate products either through free or paid methods is, you need to set up a landing page to collect visitors emails and re-market the Product to them later when they don’t buy on first visits.
This is when the automation will come in .. You set it up and sleep then the email software will market and generate the sales for you. cloaking the Affiliate link and sharing it on social media platforms is not the best way to promote and succeed in your promotion.
How to create a landing page and integrate the Affiliate link inside for Collecting email ?
This cannot be explained by writing but only when you watch the video and see how it works. But let me brief you. We are going to use this email marketing software ( getresponse , you can register here for free trial ) to create our landing pages.
This software has an email marketing option and the automation setting which means after creating the landing page and integrating your affiliate link inside, you will get a special link which will look professional than the horrible affiliate link. You can share it to your audience when doing the promotion either through free or paid method.
Now when people click on that link , they will come to the landing page and before they get to the Product page, they need to enter their emails before reaching the product page. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
Now what will happen to these emails?
Good. Before we publish the landing page, we will set up automation emails work flows like up to 20 different emails which will be automatically sent to the visitors on a daily or monthly basis after they’ve subscribed to the list on the landing page.
This is where you just promote once and the software will do the selling for you .
This software will be sending more emails about the Product you are promoting to these subscribers on an occasional basis until the 20 emails you have set up have been exhausted. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
You can register for the software here and try it for free. Video will come out about how to use it effectively but you can try it now. This is all about the landing page and the automation.
How To Promote Affiliate Products With Paid Methods?
Our last topic is the Paid Method of promoting affiliate Products. Affiliate Marketing is just like the traditional marketing business that we do physically. You go to wholesalers or manufacturers to take products and sell for a commission.
This one you are taking care of inventory and other maintenance but with Affiliate Marketing you just do it digital. The product you carry along is the affiliate link. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
Paid Methods Of Promoting Affiliate Products
Is only for people who are not getting results with the free methods and have the money to reach their audience quickly for commission. This is where you will go and pay advertising companies to advertise your product to a large number of people . But before they broadcast your product to their audience you need to pay them.
Major Advertising Companies
1. Facebook And Instagram
2. Google ( Google ads, Youtube ads, Admob etc. )
3. Microsoft ( bing )
4. Taboola
5. Quora
6. Pinterest
And many other advertising companies. We have about 1000s of them. There are other paid methods to promote your affiliate products. You can use Instagram influencers, YouTube Video creators, udimi ( pay people with a huge email list to promote your product to their list and many other ways) Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
How To Advertise On Facebook?
We will use facebook for all the platforms. Before you begin, you need to know how to advertise on facebook. You need to set up your landing page with Affiliate link and the email automations. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
1. On Facebook , you need to create an AD Account.
2. Link your credit card or PayPal Account to it for payment of the advertisements.
If you don’t have a PayPal Account , you can contact me here for one ( This if PayPal Account creation is not available in your country). You can withdraw directly to your bank/card. I’ve been doing it so it’s possible.
3. Create a page for the AD account. Is just like normal facebook page creation. Because on Facebook you need to have a page before you can run advertisements on the platform. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
Now after setting up all those tools, you can now create your advert. In creating your advert, you need to create either the banner or the video if you want to promote using a video. You can create the video yourself or contact video creators. For the banner image creation, you can use canva to create it or use Photoshop.
Watch the video here or below to learn how to set up your Facebook advertisements. This is a whole course on its own on how to do it the proper way so that you will not waste your money without making any sales. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jhdOBQY8N8[/embedyt]
The main key point in the advert set up is the targeting option. This is because if you don’t do it properly, you will just target the wrong audience who are not interested in your product. And you will eventually waste your money.
Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
Now after setting up the adverts, you just monitor it and make sure your landing page is set up well. This is where the landing page you set up will help you.
This is because when you drive people through the advertising and they subscribe to the email list and don’t make purchase the first time, you can then re-market to them continuously until they make a purchase decision. So you will only spend on advertising once and use your software to complete the sales.
Conclusion
We have come to the end of the tutorial about Affiliate Marketing For Dummies. In a nutshell, Affiliate Marketing is the easiest and fastest way to make good amount of money online. You will just select your niche, pick any of the best platform to register on, select one product you are interested in and start your promotion. You can use both paid and free methods to promote your products.
Automate your marketing and promotion by using the best email marketing software to complete your sales. This is how the whole system work. I will edge you to read this guide well and try to take action. If you don’t take action and get started, you will not make any commission. Thank you for reading my education about Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate Marketing For Dummies
