For years I struggled to learn affiliate marketing. I started over 10 years ago and began by building websites which I hoped would rank on Google’s free search engines. Back then, courses taught this strategy because it used to work well! Over time and with the millions more websites and affiliates attempting to rank their content, this strategy got progressively more difficult.
I ranked a few websites and made a couple of sales here and there though. But it was by no means a living and I had spent many hours watching videos and learning over a long span of time. I there in the towel many times but knew it was something worth pursuing.
One of the secrets to affiliate marketing is to stick at it until you have some results. Learn from your lack of results but continue learning and never stop. My strategies were flawed in the first instance. I was expecting an easy win. I suspect many people come into affiliate marketing expecting the same.
Over time I slowly realized the time and effort needed to make affiliate marketing work for me. I learned that, just because I wrote an article, it was not necessarily going to be seen by millions of people! In fact, most of my articles were never even seen. I did not know how to promote them and get them seen. I just expected everyone to come, because, well, I was special and it was just going to work! How naive!
One of the ‘secrets’ of affiliate marketing is building an email list. I had the best results once I had a list of subscribers and promoted a product with paid advertising. This is probably the quickest way to see results in affiliate marketing. Content building takes time and there’s no guarantee your content will ever get a large enough audience to start selling anything.
Building an email list is vital for anyone who wants to build a real business from affiliate marketing. Without one, you’re relying on your website visitors buying from you after they land on your website. This only gives them a few minutes to make a buying decision. Get them on an email list and you can extend tis period of time to months and even years ahead. Plus you can build a relationship with your subscribers by offering them value, insight and information which may be of use to them.
Paid advertising is another ‘secret’ of affiliate marketers. I avoided paid strategies for a long time because I did not have the confidence in the products I chose. I did not know how to run paid campaigns and I was afraid of losing money, because I did not have very much of it! So I stuck to ‘free’ marketing strategies like article writing and video creation. However, the results were very limited because of the strategy I used and the niche I was in.
It takes much longer to get traffic if you focus on only organic strategies. Paid traffic in instant, but again, takes time to learn and master.
The other ‘secret’ to using paid traffic is in choosing the right products to promote. This again was something I took a long time to understand. Having products which continue to pay out, even after your initial sale is a major key to making affiliate marketing work for you. I initially sold products which only paid me once. Plus I only made $ 40 or so on a sale of a $ 100 product.
I later learned that top affiliates choose bigger items to promote for better commissions and they choose memberships to sell so they can earn continuous commissions every month. A subscription product which pays you a small amount every month is worth far more than a single product which only pays you once. For each customer, you can earn a residual income, potentially for a lifetime. 100 customers becomes a real income because of the continuous commissions you receive each month of their membership.
Up-sells are another affiliate marketing ‘secret’ too. An up-sell, is basically a product which is sold to a customer after they have already bought from you. If you’ve even been to a fast food franchise you’ll know they always offer up an up-sell. “Do you want fries with that?” Is an up-sell. “Would you like to supersize?” is an up-sell. By offering many products to existing customers you can earn far more than by only selling one product.
An existing customer is far more likely to purchase from you because they have already paid for something. Top affiliates know the power of the up-sell and benefit from more commissions made from each customer. Repeat custom is a major factor in most businesses so it should also factor in your affiliate marketing business too.
Here’s a final affiliate marketing secret. Most affiliates starting out will concentrate on getting someone to their website in order to turn them into a subscriber. They will spend a lot of time working on their website visitors number. But there’s two factors in turning a visitor into a subscriber. The number of people visiting your website is one factor. The opt-in rate is another. You can get many more visitors converting into subscribers just by altering your opt-in offer.
Cross testing various opt-in offers and in particular, making a clear call to action with a benefit driven ‘giveaway’ offer is the best way to measure this. So don’t focus entirely on building traffic because you can make more progress by creating an enticing giveaway offer to build your email list.
