In a highly digitized world, survival or revival of the fittest is the key to success. With multiple businesses going digital, there is stiff competition in the online space. Gone are the days when only print and word of mouth publicity was adopted to promote products. Today the reach has expanded to social media marketing, print ads, banners, kiosks, flyers, radio, television and the list is exhaustive. Amongst so many amazing platforms to promote your product, service or website, comes a new wave called online affiliate marketing program.
A traditional approach modified overtime, affiliate marketing is nothing but linking of people through various social networks/ platforms to promote business. If you have a product to sell, there are buyers out there who are interested, but the trick to let them know about it in a sellable way. Today the marketing system has become quite sophisticated with effective and secure tracking systems in place to analyze who is bringing in business and who is not. What medium of marketing is working and what is not. With these advancements, let us understand how affiliate marketing works.
Like depicted in the flowchart above, affiliate marketing is conversion of a lead to sale by employing different marketing techniques. So how does one of the best affiliate marketing programs work? Let us understand the steps-
- Sign up for an affiliate marketing program such as with LeadDyno.com
- We make an affiliate marketing sign in page for you and host you at your ‘domainname.leaddyno.com’
- You also create a shorter version of the affiliate sign up form that you can easily embed in your website or links anywhere you want
- You receive a welcome mail from LeadDyno that will walk you through all the different ways you can get started with promoting your website or products / services
- You can add your affiliates to the program as well and start building your network
How do you actually become an affiliate marketer?
The luring world of affiliate marketing is actually quite interesting; now who would want to deny an opportunity to earn some passive income, eh? However, this definitely does not happen overnight. You need to put in a considerable amount before beginning with the entire affiliate building exercise. You need to put in a lot of time and consideration in affiliate marketing in order for it to succeed for you. Once you have determined your way to this, half your battle is already won.
All the work you need to put in to getting your first sale gives you the high to get the others going.
- Choose your forte before venturing into affiliate marketing. Few aspects you need to consider about your forte are-
- Topics that you are really passionate about/ really love writing about
- Is there any money involved in this field or no?
- Any topic that you choose to write about should have a lot of churn out of content ranging from 25 to 100 blog posts in a month; however, they need to be thoroughly researched
- Are there other affiliate marketers involved in a forte such as yours
- Are there enough buyers/ sellers in the market for your topics
- Are there enough affiliate programs available in the market for the topics you have chosen
- Research your affiliate programs before actively getting involved with them. Good research goes a long way in determining your effectiveness as a marketer in the long run. Points such as money / commission involved, other sellers involved in this program, confirmation on whether you really want to be associated with the said services and products. If yes, you need to know everything about those products and services to be able to convince the audience to buy them. Also make sure you have enough support in the affiliate program such as customer support, speaking with other sellers, etc.
- Build your website on any of the platforms you want and make sure you have the required content on it that you would want to promote or think about promoting.
- Get a domain to get started as the website is the first thing that the audience will be interested in learning about before moving onto the product or service you are promoting
- Consider hosting with the appropriate tools that are easily available on many website builders.
- Write excellent content to be able connect with the viewers and build your network and connections better. This could include well-written product reviews, blogs, articles, PR’s, etc.
- Building an interesting audience which is a task by itself. Connect through various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, etc. This will not only reach out to many people at the same time, but act as a great influence because familiarity breeds trust.
- Promote your affiliate offers on different platforms once you have got the above steps in place. This will help you stay apart from other affiliate marketers and gain an edge in the market. This can be done via great product reviews, using banner ads, email marketing / promotions, links within content, offers and discounts, etc.
We have helped to highlight the simple ways in which you can actually step into the world of affiliate marketing. Although there is a lot of time and research that you need to invest in becoming an affiliate marketer, however, once you are in there is absolute intrigue waiting for you. One of the most crucial steps is to know the best affiliate marketing program to get involved in. There are plenty of programs running online today, read and study before investing your time in one.
Since the entire system is done online, there are effective ways to track the affiliate marketing program so that you never miss out on an opportunity or a marketer. Although it seems like a great way to earn an extra buck, but you have to be prepared to invest quality time in order to increase your network and actually understand all the nitty-gritties of running a successful affiliate marketing program.
Guest article written by: X