Guide To Getting Profits
Table of Contents:
➢ Finding Your Niche
• Who Do You Want to Work With?
• Who Serves That Audience Now?
• What Skills and Solutions Can You Offer This Niche?
• What Makes You Different?
• Check an Affiliate Network for Products That Serve That Audience
➢ Finding the Right Product or Service to Promote
• Problems and Solutions
• Different Programs
• Determining Profitability
➢ Marketing for More Sales and Profit
• Content Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Affiliates
• Joint Venture Partnerships
➢ The Steps to Getting Started
➢ Creating Your Own Products or Services
• Problems and Solutions
• Different Programs
• Determining Profitability
➢ Finding the Right Affiliates (and Ones to Avoid)
• Problems and Solutions
• Different Programs
• Determining Profitability
➢ Helpful Technology for Affiliate Marketers
• Website Tools
• Domain Name
• Website Hosting
• Website Builder
• Landing Page Builder
• Email Marketing
• Market Research
• Traffic Generation
• Tracking and Converting
• Content Marketing
AFFILIATE MARKETING GUIDE
TO GETTING PROFITS
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. Thankfully, due to the advent of amazing online
tracking technology, you can not only become a salesperson yourself for many
different products and creators, but you can also create your own products to sell.
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.
It sounds simple, and it really is. However, it’s a good idea to learn all you can about
affiliate marketing before you jump in. Learning about affiliate marketing and the
various ways you can maximize your earnings will push your business to the next
level and take you toward being the true CEO of your business.
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.
Finding 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.
• Who Do You Want to Work With?
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 and you 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.
• Who Serves That Audience Now?
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?
• What Skills and Solutions Can You Offer This Niche?
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.
• What Makes You Different?
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.
• Check an Affiliate Network for Products That Serve That
Audience
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.
FINDING THE RIGHT PRODUCT
OR SERVICE TO PROMOTE
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.
• Problems and Solutions
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:
1. Audience: Married working moms of school-aged children who thrive on
order
2. Problems: Keeping a family calendar, meal planning, organizing
3. Potential Solutions: 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.
• Different Programs
There are numerous affiliate networks that list opportunities for you to promote to
your audience. Each has its own quirks and issues that you’ll have to learn about as
you join a network. You can also find affiliate products through direct programs
which are not listed in affiliate networks.
For example, many individual publishers like using technology like aMember.com
to set up their program, in which case they won’t be listed on the affiliate platforms.
To find those products, simply look up solutions using keywords that you think will
find them.
For example, in the example above, we searched for Household Organization on
ClickBank. Search for Household Organization on Google to find out what it shows.
The first result in our case is a website called Getorganizedgal.com which offers
solutions that the audience would need and want.
However, you cannot see an affiliate program, but with more investigation she uses
Teachable to deliver her courses. Teachable has an included affiliate module. You
could send her an email explaining how you like her products (after you buy some)
and that your audience would too if they open an affiliate program for you.
Another that shows up is Cozi.com, which is a family organizer. It includes a
calendar, shopping lists, to-do lists, recipes, and meal planner and even a family
journal. You can promote Cozi and earn money through their affiliate program if
you meet the requirements.
A few programs to check out are:
4. JVZoo.com
5. Affilorama.com
6. ClickBank.com
7. ShareASale.com
8. Amazon Associates
9. eBay Partner Network
10.CJ Affiliate
11.Thrive Market
12.Udemy.com
13.Skillshare.com
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.
• Determining Profitability
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.
14.High Commissions – When it comes to digital products, less than 50 percent
commission is probably a waste of time.
15.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?
16. 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.
17.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?
18.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.
19.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.
20.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?
21.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.
Finding a profitable product isn’t really that hard if you’ve chosen a good niche that
has a healthy audience clamoring for the solutions they need to make their life
better. It’s your job to figure out what your niche is, the products your audience
needs, and how you will present them to that audience.
You can also create your own products for the niche. Let's look at that neStream
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.
• Offering Bonuses
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.
• Building Your List
As an affiliate marketer, you can create your own products that are only for list-
building 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.
• Another Income Stream
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.
FINDING THE RIGHT
AFFILIATES
(AND ONES TO AVOID)
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.
• Quality not Quantity
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.
• Their Website
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.
• Their Content and Information
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?
• Financial Validation
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 sBuilder
Helpful Technology for Affiliate
Marketers
Once you have made a choice to become an affiliate marketer, there are tools and
technology that will make your job easier. The technology that is available today
include website building tools, email marketing tools, market research tools, and
more.
• Website Tools
To build a highly converting website, you need to choose the right type of domain
name, hosting, website builder and landing page automation so that you can get
more done with less work and worry. The following tools will help you get it all
done.
• Domain Name
One of the first things you need to do to get started with your affiliate marketing
profits is to buy a domain name so that you can build a website that attracts your
ideal audience. Choose a name that includes a keyword, that’s short and easy to
remember, and that uses a dot com extension. An excellent choice for buying
domains inexpensively is Namecheap.com.
• Website Hosting
The next thing you’re going to need after you buy your domain name is website
hosting. You might want to check with the host before you buy your domain, as
sometimes they offer a deal where you get the domain free by paying up front for
hosting. A good website host offers at least 99 percent uptime, good customer
service, and an easy to navigate website. A good choice, especially if you’re a
newbie and don’t understand what you’re doing, is MomWebs.com. They have
great customer care and service.
• Website Builder
You also need to build or have a good affiliate website built. One of the best and
most used choices for this is self-hosted WordPress. You can learn more about it at
WordPress.org. (Note: This is not the same as WordPress.com, although that dot
com is run using self-hosted WordPress.) This builder is easy to use, inexpensive or
even free, and what is most important is that it works great and search engines still
love WordPress.
• Landing Page Builder
Once you get everything done, you’re going to need some form of landing page
builder. Now, you can do this for free using self-hosted WordPress just by making
a new page, but it won’t have as much automation on it.
One thing that can help you earn more money is automation so that you don’t have
to do everything manually. A good choice for automated landing page software is
Instapage.com. If you use a robust system like Infusionsoft.com for your marketing,
you already have it included. This type of software will automate your funnels in a
way that will seem to turn your site into an ATM some days.
• Email Marketing
Email marketing is not something you can skip out on. It’s one of the most effective
and valuable forms of marketing that exists today. Even social media marketing
cannot match the power of email marketing. This means you’re going to need to
both capture leads and send out emails automatically. One of the most popular
choices today is AWeber.com although there is also a lot of love for ConvertKit.com
and ActiveCampaign.com. These, along with your landing page builder, will
automate so much.
• Market Research
As an affiliate marketer, you’re going to have to do a lot of market research to
ensure your efforts do not go wasted. If you don’t do the research, you’ll take a lot
of action that is not going to produce results. Don’t make assumptions; do the
research. You can research your competitors using software like iSpionage.com,
and you can research trending topics using something like Google Marketing
• Traffic Generation
Investing in tools to help with traffic generation is also a meaningful way to create
a successful affiliate marketing business. After all, you need a lot of targeted traffic
to get the results you wanted when you set your goals and objectives.
22.AdEspresso.com by Hootsuite – If you plan to run a lot of ads on social
media, this app is something that is going to help you make it easier. You’ll
be able to run ads that are beautiful and optimized in all the top social media
platforms.
23.Facebook Ads – You can use Facebook directly to do retargeting and
remarketing campaigns by using the Facebook pixel on your site. Then you
run an ad that only former visitors see, which has been shown to increase
traffic and sales.
24.RecurPost.com – This software, once set up, will grab your blog posts and
push them out to the social media sites you recommend randomly and
automatically.
Don’t forget to send an email out too. When you have a new blog post, go ahead
and tell your email audience about it using your email marketing software’s
automatic blog post sharing features.
• Tracking and Converting
The other tools you need to help you become a profitable affiliate marketer are
tools that help you track the effectiveness of your efforts and convert your
audience. Every website needs to install Google Analytics. It’s free and it works
great. After all, Google is still the leading search engine. That means you need to
follow their recommendations.
For link tracking, a good choice is PrettyLinks.com. You can set up your website so
that any time you mention specific terms, the software automatically inserts an
affiliate link in that term. That’s a great way to automate your recommendations
and track clicks and conversions.
• Content Marketing
One of the ways you’re going to generate more traffic for your ideal target audience
is to publish content that they’ll be interested in. In order to produce compelling
content, you’ll need to do your research, ensure it’s understandable, and that it’s
attractive. Not only that - you also want to ensure that you are posting content on
a consistent and regular basis. These tools can help you accomplish that.
25.Research – When you want to do research, the most natural place to go is of
course Google Search and Google Website Tools. That is where you should
start. But there is also wonderful paid software that you can use even more
effectively depending on what you are researching. A few tools you may
want to try are social media platform searches, competitor searches, and
their internal data by buying their products.
26.Editing – When you publish anything, whether it’s a blog post or a product,
you want to ensure that it’s readable to your audience. To accomplish that,
first you need to know who the audience is and what terms they like using,
then you need to be native in the language or hire someone who can help.
You can also use tools like Grammarly.com to help you edit. However, the
main issue is that if you don’t know what is right, the software can confuse
you.
27.Graphics – At some point, you’ll want to create graphics to add more interest
to blog posts, social media updates, to create eBooks and more. A good
option for a non-graphic designer is to try Canva.com, although there is merit
in hiring an experienced graphic designer to do that for you too.
28.Scheduling - There is a lot to do when it comes to marketing and scheduling,
as well as planning what you are going to do to market your affiliate business.
But software like CoSchedule.com can help; this is an entire marketing suite
that has a marketing calendar, a content organizer, social organizer, and
more all in one spot.
You may also need to hire someone to help you plan and create content for your
affiliate business. You don’t have to do everything yourself. You can hire a content
writer to help, and you can also use private label rights content to help you fill in
the gaps in your content.
Using helpful technology that is made for marketers is a vital way to get ahead as
an affiliate marketer. Always read the fine print for any technology you want to buy
or use, because some of them expressly prohibit activities that include affiliate
marketing. It’s always good practice to read the rules because it’ll also give you full
insight on using each tool you buy.
MARKETING FOR MORE SALES
AND PROFIT
As an affiliate marketer, it’s going to become clear that the saying, "always be
marketing" applies to you in a big way. For the word to get out about the solutions
you are marketing, you have to tell people and promote. Thankfully there are
numerous ways that you can promote your affiliate business that are not
expensive, and some are even free other than the time it takes to do them.
Remember that you may have different aspects of your business to market too. You
will need to market your own affiliate program to those who might want to make
money. You will need to market the products you create or find to those who need
them. Therefore, it’s a business to business and business to customer situation, and
they should be marketed totally separately from one another.
You can market both in the same way, but the material will look different based on
the audience and the product you’re promoting. The primary way to market your
business is via content marketing.
• Content Marketing
This type of marketing includes any kind of marketing you are doing with content -
including social media marketing, blogging, and email marketing. Create a plan for
every single product that you want to promote. Know who you’re creating the
content for, where it will appear, and what the call to action should be.
• Search Engine Optimization
Learn what you can about SEO because it’s essential for your success. It will help
you create better headlines, better subject lines, and indeed much better content
that is targeted correctly. Remember that SEO includes both on-page and off-page
options - from internal link building to getting links to your work, and all should be
considered. Adding software like Yoast SEO to your blog can help a lot.
• Paid Marketing
The most successful affiliate marketers use paid marketing in addition to the free
choices. Remember that there really isn’t any free choice, though. You’ll either use
your own time or your own money. Which you choose depends on the priorities
you have and the skills you possess.
• Social Media Marketing
Develop each platform that you use so that it shows your brand voice and the image
you want to project on the world. Use the content you create to get the word out
to the masses regularly - using both free and paid options.
• Email Marketing
Email marketing is part of content marketing, but it needs to be stressed that email
marketing is not something you can skip if you want to be a successful affiliate
marketer long term. Building your own list based on your target audience is what’s
going to keep you in business, even as your ideal audience grows and changes with
time and social media platforms die out.
• Affiliates
We already talked about starting your own affiliate program to sell your own
products that you create based on what your audience needs. This is an excellent
way to generate buzz and get the word out faster about any product you produce.
Once you have your own products, start bringing on affiliates. Start with your
happiest customers and train them to be effective money-generating affiliates
• Joint Venture Partnerships
One way to market your business is to form partnerships with others who serve the
same audience as you do with complementary products and services. By the way,
these are also opportunities for you to promote their products as an affiliate and
vice versa.
The way a JV works is that you agree to work together for a common cause on a
temporary or long-term basis, while remaining separate business for everything but
the joint project. For example, you might get together with a bunch of your friends
with affiliate programs, who offer programs to working moms of school-age kids
such as meal planning, household organization, self-improvement and more.
You can put on a webinar with a few different experts in this area, each offering
their own product or service to the audience. Everyone markets the event together
at the same time to create buzz. Then you host the webinar live, and you can even
replay it as live to generate even more leads.
The only way to make more sales and profit is to market more. Get more people
involved and ensure that as many people as possible are talking about your
products and services. Don’t be afraid to aggressively tell your audience about your
offers. After all, you know they work, and you are proud of them. Why wouldn’t
you tell people about them as much as you can?
THE STEPS TO GETTING
STARTED
Every successful venture starts with learning and then planning. Use this getting
started list to help you truly get organized and take that first step toward affiliate
marketing profits.
1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Set Up Branded Social Platforms – The same with your social platforms; they
should be branded correctly so that everyone knows it’s you.
6. 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.
7. Set Up Your Funnels – Use technology to automate your marketing funnels for
each product that you are going to promote to them.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. Check Your Numbers – Always keep studying your numbers to ensure that the
actions you take get the results you wanted.
14. Repeat – Don’t stop. Be consistent and keep doing it. Adjust based on your
metrics.
The only question now is, what are you waiting for? Affiliate marketing is a lucrative
career to start, even on a part-time basis. You don’t have to do it all today. Start at
the beginning and work your way through the process. Before you know it, you’ll
start seeing the first income flow into your bank account.
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