How to make money with Affiliate Marketing??

        One way to grow a business is to create a strong sales force. Building your own sales force used to be very expensive, and due to that it was a substantial barrier to entry for product creators.Using affiliate technology, you can also build a sales force that can bring in multiple six figures and even millions of dollars - all without hiring employees. You only pay your sales force (affiliates) if they make a sale. As an affiliate (salesperson), you only earn money if you make a sale.To be successful with making affiliate marketing profits you’ll need to find your niche, discover the right products to promote, create your own products, find the right affiliates to market them, and keep your affiliates motivated. It all starts with finding and understanding your niche.

                                                   

 

        The very first thing you need to do if you want to make money as an affiliate marketer - whether you’re going to make money selling other people’s products or your own (best to do both) - is that you need to figure out who you want to work with and what niche you want to be part of.

 

        One way to figure out the type of people you’d like to work with or help is to look inside yourself to find your interests and passions. If you really enjoy being around certain people,you will know about their hopes, desires, and needs due to being part of that audience yourself, that’s one way to do it as you will already have insight. However, don’t let this give you an excuse not to do your research. Your experiences, even as part of your niche audience, are subjective and real results may be very different than you imagine. Try describing your ideal customer in one or two sentences to help you move forward.

 

        Once you have identified a potential niche audience, it always helps to look at the competition. After all, if this niche has no competition, is it really a profitable niche? Some people will say that you should go for the low competition niches, but it's better to go for the niche that offers enough potential customers for you to reach your income goals if your conversion rate matches industry standards. For example, if there are 1000 potential customers, and according to your research there is a 4 to 7 percent conversion rate, and you know that you can get your materials and information in front of those 1000 customers, you may get at most 70 customers from a campaign. Is your price point high enough for those 70 customers to make you profitable?

 

        Do you have specialized education, experience, or knowledge that makes you particularly suited for this niche? You don’t have to be part of the audience to do well in a niche. For example, if you have identified a niche that needs someone to advise them on products to use for their love of camping which are different from what’s out there, you can still learn about it and serve the audience even if you have no camping experience or appreciation of camping. Maybe instead of direct experience, you have resources that enable you to pay people with subject matter expertise to create your business.

 

        Always look at yourself too. What makes you different from your competition? What skills can you offer to this niche that others can’t? How can you stand out from the crowd? Are you going to approach the niche in a different way than the others? For example, if you’re a business coach, are you buttoned up or a free spirit? Whatever you are, you’re going to attract an entirely different segment of your audience base than someone who is different from you.

 

        The other thing you want to do is ensure that any niche you choose is profitable. Asking yourself if it’s profitable is an important question. Just because you have internet and passion doesn’t make it a profitable niche. What makes it profitable is that the target audience exists in enough quantity and has enough money to buy the solutions you create and offer.

        Once you narrow down some options, the primary considerations are whether your niche idea is profitable or not, and whether you have the skills to proceed or not - either skills you learn or skills you buy from others. Choose a niche that you like that can provide enough profit and that you know how to serve.

 

        Now that you know who your audience is and the niche you want to be part of, it’s time to find the right products and/or services to promote to them. There are numerous ways of finding the products or services to present to your audience.

 

        Once you have an idea of who your audience is, you can focus on figuring out their problems and then locating solutions to help them. Make a list of at least three problems that you want to solve for the audience, based on the niche you’ve chosen.

Here is an example:

 

        Married working moms of school-aged children who thrive on order

 

        Keeping a family calendar, meal planning, organizing

 

        Digital calendars, DFY meal plans and shopping lists, organization tips and organization products Once you have a list of problems and solutions, go to some known affiliate networks to look for the products you have identified as a good fit.

        A quick search on ClickBank.com - a popular affiliate network where you can find products in any niche to market as well as use to promote your own products - reveals several products that you might want to promote, such as Get Organized Now

        Don’t just start promoting that now, though. Make a list of several products. Then, do some research on each product. Find out about the creator, look at the conversion rate for the product, and think about how the creator’s values and style fit in with the brand voice you want to display.

        If you don’t know someone who knows them to vouch for their professionalism, test them out by buying the product yourself so that you can evaluate the quality of the product and the company for their customer service. After all, as an affiliate marketer, you are turning your customers over to someone else to serve. You need to make sure they will take good care of your customers so that your audience continues to value your recommendations.

 

        There are numerous affiliate networks that list opportunities for you to promote to your audience.

A few programs to check out are:

 

        Each network has its pros and cons, and there are many more than these. You can find huge lists of affiliate networks by searching Google for "affiliate networks," and you can also find specialized networks. For example, if you want to sell organic goods only, you’ll find many options.You can also look up specific products you’d like to promote, find a link to their affiliate program, or email them for information about it. Some business owners don’t use affiliate networks, but so many do that you’re sure to find many profitable products that you can promote. Even if you don’t see one, you can always email the creator to offer your services by showing them your social proof.

 

        Before you choose a product to promote, it’s imperative that you check out whether the product is profitable or not. If it’s listed on an affiliate network, you can see the metrics listed to help you determine how profitable the product is. If you are working directly with a product creator, you may need to test your assumptions after trying out the product yourself.

Here are some things to think about.

 

High Commissions – When it comes to digital products, less than 50 percent commission is probably a waste of time.

 

High Sales Price – If it’s a commission lower than 50 percent, is the sale price high enough that you’d make a per-sale price that makes it worth your time?

 

Conversion Rate – Most affiliate programs will list something to do with the conversion rate, how many sales have been made, or other information to help you determine if this is a good choice or not.

 

Sales Page – What does the sales page look like? While it may not please you to know, the longer sales pages sell better than shorter ones for many audiences. Is the sales page thought out? Does it convert?

 

Buy It – When you find a product that you think you want to promote to your audience, buy the product. If you have enough influence, you may be able to get it free or a sample copy of some kind for you to evaluate. However, buying it as a customer is the best way to learn how they do business and whether the product is right for your audience.

 

Is There Competition? – If you do a search and find other products like this one that you want to sell, that’s a good thing. You won’t have to educate your market as much if it’s already something they want and are searching for.

 

Can You Come Up with More Search Terms? – Once you have determined that a product is something you want to promote, can you come up with more search terms for it so that you can start developing content for marketing?

 

How Will You Promote This Product? – The other question you want to ask yourself is how you’ll promote the product. Will you do an all-out campaign or are you going to slip it in as an in-content link on your blog? Will you promote it to people already on your list? Which segment? The more you can plan out exactly how, when and where you’re going to promote the product, the more likely it is to be profitable.  CREATING YOUR OWN PRODUCTS OR SERVICES Another way to make a profit as an affiliate marketer is to start creating your own products and/or services to promote to your audience too. As you work with your audience and gain customers due to the products you promote and the content you publish, you may gain insight into the audience that gives you the idea to create a brand-new product for them. Your product can be free or for a fee, depending on how you’re going to use it.

 

        One way that you can add your own products to the mix is by offering a bonus for the purchase of a different product for which you are an affiliate. The bonus product offers you the ability to add them to your list, boost your revenue, and perhaps demonstrate more of what you can do for the audience regarding their problems.Some affiliate systems enable you to add your bonus product right to their funnel on the affiliate platform (such as is offered via aMember.com or JVZoo.com) if the product creator activates that ability for you. In other cases, you may have to get creative and send the bonus another way. However, there is a lot of technology that will do it automatically for you too.

 

        As an affiliate marketer, you can create your own products that are only for listbuilding purposes. A good example might be a checklist to help your audience choose the right affiliate marketing software or help them set up their first webinar. Anything that your audience really needs and wants that is simple to create makes a handy list builder.

 

        Additionally, as a product creator you can create products as a separate income stream over and above your income generation as an affiliate. Maybe you can make a better cleaning organization calendar than the one that you’ve been promoting. Perhaps you have written a course about keeping your home organized that you want to market. Once you create the product, you also can recruit affiliates to make the sales for you.As a product creator, you’ll need to ensure that you have the right software like aMember.com that helps you set up a shopping cart and even a membership site that enables you to distribute your digital products and services to your audience. You can also use any number of affiliate networks mentioned to list your products and attract affiliates to boost your income.

 

        Once you create your own products for sale, it’s time to set up an affiliate program of your own so that you can maximize your reach. Having your own affiliate program is like having an army of salespeople on your site building your business every single day. But finding the right affiliates takes a little thought and consideration.

 

        Having 1000 affiliates will not help you if they are not good salespeople. If the people who want to promote your product use unscrupulous means to make sales, that can also affect you very badly. By focusing on recruiting quality affiliates over a lot of affiliates, you can avoid most of the problems that can come with affiliates - namely fraud and spam.

 

        Check out any applicants’ websites. Do they have an active blog? Does the content fit your audience? Is the website secure? Are they following all the pertinent laws for their country and yours regarding spam, privacy, and other issues? Do they appear honest and confident based on the information you find on the website? • Their Domain Name One way to find out about the person behind the website is to do a "Who Is" search. Some of the websites are going to have the information hidden. If that happens, do a little more digging on to ensure that the people behind the site are honest people that you’d want to deal with in person.

 

        When you go to the site and read the content and information, does it speak to your audience such that they will choose to buy from them? What sort of keywords do they use? Is the content and information direct and above board? Would you feel safe sending your mother to that site to get information?

 

        The other thing you will want to do when you get an affiliate is to ensure that they fill out all the right legal forms required. Even if you are not going to send out 1099s because you pay via third party like PayPal, getting that information is still important because it establishes their legality and validates them in a way that helps you keep your customers safe. Additionally, have they proven themselves to be effective affiliate marketers?

       When you are first starting out as a product seller, you may not be able to be too picky about who becomes affiliates, but at the very least ensure that they are who they say they are, that they are not criminals, and that they serve their customers honestly and transparently. Just realize that if you choose people who are new to affiliate marketing, you need to offer training and encouragement to them so that they make more sales. 

 

 

THE STEPS TO GETTING STARTED 

 

Know Your Audience – Conduct research so that you know as much as you can about your audience. Where do they hang out? What keeps them up at night. Who do they like getting info from?

 

Know Your Audience’s Pain Points – What are at least three pain points that you can solve with your knowledge and the products you have created or discovered?

 

Know Your Why – It’s imperative that you know why you care about this target audience and why you are the right person to find or create the products that become solutions for them.

 

Create a Branded Website for Your Audience – Your branding is essential because it needs to speak to the audience in such a way that they understand what your brand stands for right away.

 

Set Up Branded Social Platforms – The same with your social platforms; they should be branded correctly so that everyone knows it’s you.

 

Set Up Your Email Autoresponder – You cannot be successful without email marketing so start building your list before you have any products, using freebies and checklists and your blog to attract them.

 

Set Up Your Funnels – Use technology to automate your marketing funnels for each product that you are going to promote to them.

 

Fill Your Website and Social Media with Targeted Content – Set up your content marketing plan based on each product, service, and problem that your audience has.

 

Find a Product to Promote – Knowing your audience, seek high-quality products that you can be proud to promote with companies that offer top-notch customer care.

 

Become an Affiliate for That Product – Sign up as an affiliate if you can find the information to contact them about it. Don’t give up if you get turned down at first; build yourself up and come back if needed.

 

Create Content Based on the Product – Remember to create content based on the products you want to promote to everyone based on their stage in the buying journey.

 

Promote the Content Everywhere – Use technology to promote your content everywhere, even when it’s free. Promote it as if it’s the most expensive product you have.

 

Check Your Numbers – Always keep studying your numbers to ensure that the actions you take get the results you wanted.

 

Repeat – Don’t stop. Be consistent and keep doing it. Adjust based on your metrics.