How do I become an affiliate marketer? This might be the first question you ask yourself after you learn what affiliate marketing is and realize that it's something you want to do to make money online.
The reason affiliate marketing is such a great way to get started making money online is because you don't have to create your own product or service to start earning. And so many companies have affiliate programs.
You want to become an affiliate marketer, but you don't know where to begin.
I know that's how I felt when I first learned about affiliate marketing. I wanted to dive right in, but I wasn't really sure how to get started. But once you understand the basic process to becoming an affiliate marketer, you will be ready to launch your first campaign.
You are going to learn all about how to get started as an affiliate marketer and the exact 7 steps to follow to start making money online without having to create your own product or service.
After learning how to become an affiliate marketer, you are going to be a pro at how to launch any affiliate marketing campaign.
This post is all about: how do I become an affiliate marketer in 7 steps and actually create a successful online business.
How Do I Become an Affiliate Marketer
The first thing to understand before getting started is that there are people who are able to start making money with affiliate marketing relatively quickly after they have their systems set up, but by relatively quickly, I mean a few months.
Success with affiliate marketing, just like anything else, is not going to happen over night. But if you get your systems set up correctly and follow the exact 7 steps I lay out below, you can have success with it.
Let's dive in!
1. Choose Your Niche
The first place to start is with choosing your niche. What does this mean? You need to decide what category of products and services you're going to promote.
If one day you promote a dog training course and the next day you promote products that will help a baby sleep through the night, your audience is going to be confused.
However, I am not of the opinion that you have to hyper-niche down. You certainly can, but I don't think it's necessary. What do I mean? If you are into gardening, one way to hyper-niche down is to only focus on tomato gardening. If that's something you are super into and that's all you want to talk about, then you can be all about tomato gardening.
But if you want focus on all kinds of vegetable gardening or even all kinds of gardening including flowers and trees, you will still have success.
While I do believe you can have success with almost any niche, there are some factors to consider when choosing your niche. The niches that are considered the most profitable fall under one of the following categories:
- Health
- Wealth
- Relationships
The reason these are considered the most profitable is because they are all tied to a core desire that most people have.
Other important factors include how passionate you are about it and how much do you know about it. For example, you may be passionate about gardening, but if you haven't done much gardening, that may not be the place to get started. However, this isn't a hard and fast rule because you can learn more about it if the passion is there.
Being passionate about a topic is important because the majority of the work you will do as an affiliate marketer is the marketing. That means all of the content you're going to create will need to be all about that topic. If you're not passionate about the topic, it's going to get old really fast.
2. Pick Products or Services to Promote
As the saying goes, you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, so I recommend picking multiple products to promote. Promoting multiple products will also help you create multiple streams of income, which is one of the keys to success with affiliate marketing.
Start by choosing one main high-ticket or recurring product that will be the core product you will promote. Aim for something that costs at least $300 or has a monthly subscription. From there, pick three to five products that pair well with your core product.
For example, if your niche is health and you've decided to focus on eating keto, you would look for a high-ticket course or membership site about keto that you can promote.
From there, you would pick other keto adjacent products such as keto supplements, keto books, keto ingredients, and anything else keto you think your audience would love.
{RELATED POST: 9 Questions You Should Ask When Looking for the Best Affiliate Program}
3. Apply for Affiliate Programs
One you've selected the products you want to promote, there is an application process. For some affiliate programs, this is as simple as signing up, but some affiliate programs have an approval process.
Those that have an approval process may want you to already have an audience on social media or a blog. If you are rejected, don't be discouraged. Once you grow your audience, you can always go back and re-apply if it's a product or service you really want to promote.
But this is also why it can help by looking for products listed on an affiliate marketplace such as:
4. Get Your Links
Once you've signed up for the affiliate programs you want to promote, you will typically be provided with a dashboard you can log into to get your affiliate links.
These links are super-important because it is through these links that the affiliate programs will know that any traffic you send them is from you. Without these links, you will not be able to receive any commissions.
The affiliate program will also have you set up a payment method so that it is able to pay you when you receive your commissions.
You will need a platform to share your affiliate links. Here are some of your options:
- A link-in-bio page
- A landing page
- A blog
- A YouTube Channel
The most simple way to share your links is through a link-in-bio page. These can be obtained through companies such as Linktree, Beacons, and Koji. With a link-in-bio page, as the name implies, you will simply add your affiliate links to your page, and when you create content on social media, you will direct people to check out your link-in-bio page.
The reason to use a page like this is because most social media platforms only allow you to add one external link to your profile. A link-in-bio page allows you to include several links on the one page.
While a link-in-bio page might be the simplest way to start sharing links, it is not the best way unless you are linking to a blog or landing page. Let me explain why.
You are going to want a way you can start collecting email addresses. The reason this is important is so that you can re-market to your audience. This is especially important if you are promoting a high-ticket product or service. Most people won't purchase a high-ticket product the first time they are exposed to it.
This is also important because you don't own your social media accounts. Social media accounts get shut down all the time, but you do own your email list.
This is why you want to choose a platform that will allow you to collect email addresses. This is why having a simple landing page or a blog are important.
But if you are just getting started, start with the landing page. Landing pages can be created as part of a simple funnel created on a platform such as ClickFunnels.
There are also several email marketing platforms such as GetResponse and ActiveCampaign that also give their users the ability to create landing pages.
5. Create a Lead Magnet
You might be wondering how you are going to get people to give you their email addresses. This is why creating a lead magnet is essential.
A lead magnet is something free you're going to give your audience. A lead magnet can be as simple as a checklist, a guide, or a short ebook.
For example, if you're niche is keto, you might create a free checklist of how to get started eating keto or provide a short ebook with your five favorite keto recipes.
When you are willing to give your audience something of value for free, it is one of the ways you build trust with your audience, which means that they will be more likely to buy a product that you recommend.
6. Create an Email Sequence
Once you have your lead magnet, landing page, and sales funnel set up, you will want to create an email automation sequence. An email sequence will be a series of at least 10 emails that you will send your audience once they submit their email addresses on your landing page.
Some affiliate programs will give you what's known as “email swipes” that you can use to write these emails, but if those aren't available, you can either write them yourself or use a platform such as Jarvis or Funnel Scripts. These are AI platforms that will essentially write your emails for you.
My favorite email marketing platform is GetResponse. Others that I have also used and can recommend are ActiveCampaign and AWeber.
7. Start Marketing!
Now for the fun part — the marketing! You will want to start by picking the social media platform you want to promote the products or services you have chosen.
Here are some options:
- TikTok
- YouTube
If you are completely new, I would start with TikTok or Pinterest. TikTok and Pinterest are platforms in which you are able to grow an audience and generate traffic to your content relatively quickly. Once you get comfortable with one or both of those platforms, you can look at adding Instagram or YouTube down the road.
Take an Affiliate Marketing Course
If you just read all of that and are feeling overwhelmed, I highly recommend taking a course where someone will walk you through step-by-step, click-by-click each step of the process.
Here are some courses that I have personal experience with and can recommend that will help you achieve your goal of becoming an affiliate marketer:
- Freedom Breakthrough. Freedom Breakthrough starts with a 3-Day Challenge that costs only $7. This challenge is not just fluff, but it does walk you through each of the steps above.
- Affiliate Secrets. Affiliate Secrets starts with a webinar that goes over the process to follow to become a successful affiliate marketer, but there is no in-depth training until you purchase the full-course.
- 5 Day Lead Challenge. The 5 Day Lead Challenge is free, but it is not only about affiliate marketing. But it does walk you through defining your niche, creating a lead magnet, setting up the funnel, writing the emails, and how to get started marketing. There's a ton of value here and it might be worth doing alongside one of the other courses. (And it's totally okay if it takes you longer than 5 days).
- Legendary Marketer. Legendary Marketer starts with a 15 Day Challenge which varies in costs, but it is never more than $7. Once you purchase the full-course, they do walk you through how to set up some “done-for-you” affiliate marketing campaigns. This gives you an almost instant understanding of how each of the steps work. But Legendary Marketer is the priciest of the bunch, so I would check out the options above first.
- Perfecting Blogging. This course will show you how to do affiliate marketing through blogging. I also recommend the Perfecting Pinterest course that pairs well with the Perfecting Blogging course. If you decide you want both, definitely get the bundle.
Conclusion: How to Become an Affiliate Marketer
This post was all about how to be come an affiliate marketer.
The first six steps of the process do take some time to set up, but it's important to understand that you only have to set it up once. From there, all your efforts are on the marketing, which can typically be done in less than an hour per day.
Courses do cost money, but if you are serious about becoming an affiliate marketer, they are worth the investment.
Check out my free affiliate marketing ebook here, where I go into this process in greater depth.
Are you ready to become an affiliate marketer?
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