Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time. Even before the Internet, some businesses would pay referral or finder’s fees to people who sent new customers. But the Internet has expanded the concept through affiliate marketing and has made it possible for anyone to make money online.
Unfortunately, affiliate marketing is not well understood, which is not surprising considering how it is marketed. Some deceptive marketers sell affiliate training, but call it “typing”, “data entry” or “rebate processing” jobs, which is not what affiliate marketing is about. Many super affiliate gurus sell quality informational programs, but they sometimes give the impression that affiliate marketing is a set-it and forget-it job. They fail to mention that they can set-it and forget-it because they hire people and use expensive systems to manage their affiliate business. You can do that too, but until you are making enough money to hire people, all the work needs to be done by you.
With that said, there is much to learn from the super affiliates. If you want to make a living from affiliate marketing, you should implement the same strategies used by super affiliates.
Super affiliates…
1. Verify their idea is profitable. They do this by researching the keywords related to their topic using a Keyword Tool to find out how many people search the words each month. They also check out the number of websites that are ranked for the keyword and what the sites do to make money, such as do they market affiliate products, sell their own products etc.
2. Choose a niche topic of interest to people who need to buy something to fix their problem. A niche is a narrowly defined group within a larger group. Despite being a smaller group, niches tend to make more money than general topics. But not only should the group be targeted, it should be a group that has a problem that an affiliate product can solve. For example, teenagers with acne is a niche topic targeting a group highly motivated to spend money to fix the problem.
3. Focus on building a list. There are many ways to promote affiliate programs including squeeze pages and blogs, but the super affiliate views these methods as ways to develop an email list. The super affiliate asks visitors to his squeeze page or blog to join his email list in exchange for something free such as a report. Having a list allows the super affiliate to continue to promote his affiliate product if the person doesn’t buy during the first visit to the site and also allows him to promote other related products. In fact, super affiliates make most their money, but from their lists.
4. Market, market and market some more. Affiliate marketing, like any other business venture, requires marketing. People can’t buy affiliate products or services from you if they don’t know about you. Super affiliates use a variety marketing techniques to get people their websites including search engine optimization (SEO), article marketing, videos, paid ads and joint ventures with other affiliate marketers that have a list.
Affiliate marketing, like many other work-at-home options, can make a great deal of money; however, like other work-at-home options, most people don’t make anything at all. That’s not the fault of affiliate marketing. Success in affiliate marketing depends on you. It requires that you do the research and implement proven strategies. You have to work on it every day and tweak your actions if things aren’t working as planned. You need to give it time and commitment. Super affiliates are super not because they’re smarter or understand technology better, they’re super because they kept learning about marketing, maximizing the efforts that made money and dumped the ones that didn’t, and working on their business until they made money.
Become a Super Affiliate – Work-At-Home Success University offers a step-by-step course, Affiliate Marketing Success.
The four week, self-paced email course that covers:
- What is affiliate marketing?
- How to determine if your idea is a money maker.
- How to choose products or services to market.
- Free resources and affiliate marketing options.
- Why and how to build a list.
- How to use squeeze pages and blogs to make money with affiliate marketing.
- Other monetization options.
- Marketing your affiliate products and services with little to no money.
Start your super affiliate career today by getting the knowledge, training and step-by-step action plan at Work-At-Home Success University: Affiliate Marketing Success
