Can You Use Affiliate Marketing Links To Earn Money?
So you want to make money selling items to the public online right? Well if the answer is yes then you will most definitely want to continue reading. After reading this srticle you will have a solid grasp on what will be needed to accomplish this goal. The principles will help you be successful in the wide open year of 2021 and into 2022.
Often time’s new marketers come online and begin to desperately try and make affiliate marketing money any way they can. (Which is to be expected)
It has been my experience that usually, the new internet marketer will bounce around from one method to the next and never really spend enough time to master one technique. In this article, I will take you through the proper steps from
1 How To Set Up a Website
2 Finding and Placing Affiliate Marketing Offers
3 Finding Methods of Traffic and Putting Eye's Onto Your Affiliate Links.
Alright, let’s get into it. The first thing you will need to decide on is what is it that you are going to be promoting? This, in my opinion, should be a small and obscure niche just to begin with and later on, when you gain more experience, you can expand out into a larger and more broader area of that niche.
Or if you only feel as if you can go into one of the larger niches then do some searches for it and really shrink it down.
Take the category of making money online for a minute. If you simply build a website about how to make money online, you will most likely waste months and possibly years of your time earning small amounts of money only to wind up getting discouraged.
But if you use your noggin and start a site for how you can make money by arbitrage or affiliate marketing for surfers, then you would have a better opportunity to attract more targeted searchers and buyers.
On a side note, if you don’t know what arbitrage is, it is the action of buying items or services low and selling them back on the marketplace at a higher rate. As a matter of fact, let’s use arbitrage as our example. I know I might be putting an exact game plan together for someone to profit with but that is what my website is all about…value.
One of the biggest aspects of marketing is developing trust. So showing proof that you can make money or achieve what you are trying to sell others will go a long way.
Alright so we have our niche picked out and now we will need to begin to get our website put together. Let’s head on over to Namecheap.com to pick up a great domain. Now when you are picking a domain name there are a few factors that you will need to consider before making a purchase. Years ago it would be perfectly safe to just head to a domain registrar like Name cheap or GoDaddy and find a domain that you liked then go ahead and buy it without any worries.
But with all the shenanigans that have gone on with SEO’s using different tactics to get other websites to rank by getting links that they control on them, I would advise that you first put the domain through a website called Archive.org
There you can see if the domain has been used before and even what it looked like. In, fact, you could and should even run it through Moz Open Site Explorer to see if there are any links still pointing to it. The last thing you want to do pay your hard earned money on a domain name that has been spammed and used as a Public Blog Network.
If you don't know about PBN's don't worry about that for the moment.
I say buy the domain at Namecheap because you will receive 1 year of “Whoisguard” which will protect your identity for I believe a dollar or two. Protecting you privacy is a must in this business.
Let us carry on to the next steps…
While we are here on the topic of domains, I will go over a tactic that is an essential piece of affiliate marketing psychology in order to increase conversions. This tactic is called “cloaking your links” you can read up more on this in an internet marketing article that is on another page of this blog but essentially it is changing those long and ugly links to something more easy on the eyes.
This is what I use and it's free to use. I use the Pro Version for around $50 a year.
Ok so next, on this list on getting ready to start your affiliate marketing website, you will need to get some server space to put your website on the internet. I like Hostgator as I have never had a problem with them and they have always been quick to help. I suggest the baby plan which is around $11 a month.
I will not go through the installation process and setup with the hosting as this is an affiliate marketing training, but maybe down the line, I will put together that short course.
Ok so now you have your wonderful WordPress website all set up and live it’s time to start promoting products.
Make sure to build simple privacy policy and an about me page and possibly a resources page.
I have always had success by reviewing products and placing the commission based links within the end of the reviews. But a better strategy to this is to review 2 different products and give the reader two options instead of just one!
A website will not gain any traction if there is no content for Google to sift through and inspect. Buffer articles are essential to building up trust with your website and at this point, I will go over a piece of advice that I got some years back by one of my mentors.
Essentially the advice was when you begin your niche and you know you are going to have to create content for your affiliate marketing articles it would be a good idea to spend the first thirty day’s just reading up on your subject to become an expert instead of attempting to be an expert. Like many of the marketers out today.
That way when you’re creating the subject relevant content you won’t be so stressed out and the articles as they should just flow out of you.
Also when it comes to these buffer, niche related articles and moving into mid-yearof 2021, Google is not going to give any traction to spun or light articles. Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing as I believe Google is utilizing the best technologies on the planet to identify helpful articles and crap content. For more information about the spooky strange artificial intelligence technology check out any articles on Rank Brain.
For this purpose, you are going to need to construct big and informative articles. This means they should be at least 1,500 words. I would suggest that you start out with at least ten of these buffer articles before you start trying to make money by placing affiliate marketing links.
Then you can give your links proper placement and have enough content for Google to begin to start ranking the website. It will probably jump around a while in the rankings as the A.I. within Google will try to see where it will best fit and give the most value to its readers.
No matter how you set up your blog you can always insert banners into your posts. To me, banners do not hold the same weight that they did a few years ago as many of the persons who search online are not as responsive as they once were.
I feel like most of them are a billboard that yes, will get you those looks or impressions but for today’s savvy buyer, they need more than just a catchy picture. This holds true only in my mind for placing banners on others websites.
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If you should decide to try out placing banners with affiliate links within them then you can make your own banners at Canva.com
If it’s on your own website and is totally relevant to what you are talking about and promoting then I’m sure it will increase your conversions when combined with contextual links. Those are links embedded within your text.
A good tip for banners is that you want to make look as intriguing as possible. I will even admit that at some points in time, I placed cartoonish looking banners on my website, but a relevant and clean looking niche related picture will get you the same boost. If not more.
Let’s jump back a few steps in this article about learning how to really make money with affiliate marketing and onto the subject of linking. I previously mentioned contextual links and what these are, again are links that have been placed within your text. Hyperlinks are another type that you may have heard of but they are basically the same thing.
So…we have the website up, the niche related articles and the understanding of links. The next step to getting a proper affiliate marketing website working for you is to begin reviewing products.
I will cover two different methods of how to do this and have an example at the end of this for you to think about.
If you don’t really know how to go about doing a product review there are many examples available online. But not to worry as I will go over it step by step how I do a product review for affiliate marketing.
Preferably you would want to purchase and go through the product yourself but if that is not possible simply do a Google search for “product+review” and you should be able to find a good amount of information about it.
If nothing comes up then email the creator and ask for a review copy. If you get no answer then find another product that is more accessible.
Now let’s assume you have a good product that meets the beginning criteria of our checklist. So what you will want to do next is write about who the creator is and are there any other products available from this person.
If so, how have they been received and what is the general consensus of the public’s perception. This is all about building trust and it doesn’t need to be more than a few sentences.
Next, you are going to want to dissect the product inside and out. Dissect may be a little too strong of a word so let’s use an overview. Because, remember, product reviews and affiliate marketing articles do not have to be as long and intensive as the buffer articles and if you “spill all the beans” of the product in question the reader might not buy.
Think about the reader’s mindset when they're reading reviews and the mindset when they are trying to learn something. To me, if I am looking at reviews for a certain product, I am almost at a buying decision point. So they are not looking for unimportant facts and filler content. What they are thinking is…
“Get me the pertinent information and show me the known affiliate link where to buy.” The absolute best way for you to get them to that point is to give examples of how it saved you money or time which will get them thinking positively about the product.
This is a fine line that must be walked delicately because if you go overboard the reader will feel like your review is un-genuine. And that is a place where you do not want to be.
Also it is essential that you provide bonus content and I will explain a little more about that a bit.
That is how you do a product review and now let’s go into the second way that you can recommend products. This circles back to the beginning of this article when I suggested that you take the first thirty days and research on the niche that you will be recommending products in.
This was done in order to have you be able to provide some type of teaching methods about how to accomplish a goal of your readers.
The second method is you take them through a full teaching of let’s say how to find cheap products on Craigslist and the method for finding those items to resell on eBay. You can have this in a video form or a series of articles. Make the method as long and intricate as you possibly can.
Provide nothing but value mind you but since this is a teaching method it is ok to talk about the smallest details. An example of this would be to tell them when the most opportune time to check Craigslist for specific items. And also which items have the biggest profit margins and things like that.
Finally, after you have touched on every little bit you can say something to the effects of…
“Now if you like the idea of this training but you want to speed up the process…have a look at this product here.” And of course, the product that you recommended has your cloaked affiliate link inside of it.
It’s all about building trust and providing maximum value in order to have your readers take your recommendations. So now that we have covered the two methods that I use to get affiliate marketing commissions, let me give you another piece of advice that when compounded together with the trust that you will be building up can potentially double or triple the response rate that you get.
And you might be asking what could possibly be able to exponentially increase my chances of making more sales…Yep, you guessed it. It’s Bonuses.
This is the main secret of the super affiliates and I would say a good amount of them will not put enough emphasis on how important these are for getting sales through your links.
Often times I will create my own bonuses but if you are just starting out there are many great places where you can find your own. I will suggest PLR or Private Label Products that are easy enough to find as long as you put your own spin on them and rename them.
What you don’t want to do is give the buyer the exact same micro eBook that has been shared with ten thousand other readers. Also, you should throw in your own affiliate links into the bonuses cause well, why not.
Finally, let’s go over how you should be promoting and getting traffic to your website. Knowing about affiliate marketing is fine but being able to drive traffic to your offers is where, well, the rubber hits the road…Ok, I'll stop.
As you've probably heard, you should be active in the forums within your niche as you can have a great time connecting with others and learning and sharing different thoughts and ideas.
For SEO purposes I say get at least 10 or so Web 2.0 properties and begin posting on them to build them up. Find them at Knowem.com Connect them all by placing links to your other websites and just keep them active. There is a great website call IFTTT that you can post on one and set it up so that it is posted on all your others.
Next, it is important that you put together a YouTube Channel and you can just use simple pictures for a slideshow type of videos. They don’t have to be brilliant and viral but the links will eventually help and could possibly bring traffic to your site. Links are what is important in this specific situation.
A great way to juice up your social profiles is to head over to Fiverr or Konker which you can find at my internet marketing resources page and buy some services to shoot at those high domain authority websites.
This will build them up and make the links more powerful coming from them. That’s about it and it should get you on your way to having a better idea about how affiliate marketing can be accomplished.
Remember to take those first thirty days to become an expert or at least a more knowledgeable teacher then build out the website. Go into the product reviews with a little-skewed bias as you want the readers to buy and let them know how this product helped you.
Provide as much value as you can and don’t forget about those all important bonuses that should take your readers over the edge and make that purchase.
In closing you will also want to get as many social media properties as you can set up for you niche websites and a gresat short cut for this is by using Fiverr.com Konker.com
There you go! A way that you can really make money with affiliate marketing!
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