Affiliate Marketing 101
If you’ve heard of Affiliate Marketing, you probably know the basics. You promote an offer for another business and you get a commission. It’s about referrals. You find a product or service you like and tell other people about it. When they buy the product or service you get a commission. It’s like referring your friends to join the gym you belong to and getting a free month. The cool thing is that you can create a business around this process by using the power of digital marketing and automated tools to build a pipeline that is big enough to create a consistent income for yourself. The most important thing to know is that your business is the audience you create not the offer you share.
Your Offer
Your offer could be any product or service that you like. It should be something that you believe in and can stand behind. Something that you feel good about tell other people about because you know it will bring them value. There are a lot of products or services that you can promote. The best offers are high ticket offers that convert easily and have their own sales team for follow up. When you find an offer like this, you can build a campaign around it.
Your Campaign
You can promote offers however you like, through social media posts, email, paid ads, etc. When you find a good high ticket offer, you can build a campaign around it. The campaign will generally include a paid ad that will bring traffic to a page that will allow you to collect some basic information about your prospect and then share the offer with them. The prospects will then be added to an automated email follow up campaign that will share the benefits of the offer and give them the opportunities to buy. If you set your campaign up correctly, you will break even with your upfront marketing costs and build your email list at the same time. The profit will come from the follow up emails and offers that you share.
Your Follow Up
They say the fortune is in the follow up. A small percentage of people will buy the initial offer, a few more will buy at some point in the follow up sequence. Others may buy at some point down the line. The important thing is to keep following up with your prospects and offering value to them. It’s critical that you keep in contact with them and add value each time. You might share some valuable information, a testimonial, something inspiring or even something funny. The idea to continue building the relationship and adding value.
Your Business
So, if your offer isn’t your business, what exactly is your business? Your Affiliate Marketing business is the audience you create and the relationship you build with them. You want to establish a reputation with a large group of people as a person of integrity who is an expert in a particular are and wants to help people. Some people refer to this as ‘Celebrity Authority’. Basically, you become known as someone who is an expert in a particular area. You can do this by sharing valuable content and your personal experience. You might start out not knowing much, but as you keep learning and sharing, you will become an expert. You might share lots of valuable products and services. Some of them might lead to affiliate commission others may not. The point is that you are creating a relationship with your audience and adding value.
How to get started
The best way to get started is to start learning and sharing. You can do this on your own blog or youtube channel. Or you can using social media platform like Facebook. Do some research on a topic that interests you and share about it. There is some important strategy such as defining your niche, your audience and your offer and then building a campaign. The most important thing is to just get started, take action and remember that your business is the audience you create. If you are looking for some guidance and the best strategies, consider going through some training. The link below will take you to the best training that I have found so far. It explains the various options available and will help you figure out the best one for you. Get started now.
