How To Begin In Affiliate Marketing
Most newbies want to know how to begin in affiliate marketing. There are many websites on the internet that cover the things that you need to know about this topic.
But if you are anything like I was when I first started, you will have found that regardless of having learnt all the strategies, affiliate marketing just isn’t quite working out the way you thought.
When I first started out with affiliate marketing, I dreamed of making my fortune and of giving up my day job. So, I joined an excellent affiliate program, and diligently followed all the steps of my training program.
Then when nothing much happened, I started to wonder where I went wrong. If this is your experience, then take a few minutes to read this post to learn how to begin in affiliate marketing.
The following 7 points will help you to turn things around. You’ll then have a better idea of how to achieve the online financial freedom that you deserve!
1. Not A Get Rich Quick Scheme
The concept and process of affiliate marketing is simple. You join an affiliate program, you promote the goods and then you make money. Right?
Well yes and no. Yes, you can make lots of money with affiliate marketing and thousands of people have done just that. And no, because it doesn’t happen immediately.
The problem that many newbies have when they join an affiliate marketing program, is that they look at all the people that are making huge sums of money. They then believe that it is a quick and simple process that takes no time at all. Well anyway that’s what I thought.
I didn’t realize that those people spent many months and sometimes years before they saw a decent amount of money come their way.
It not simple to create a life around online financial freedom. It doesn’t happen straight away. But if you put in the work into affiliate marketing, you will in time, reap the rewards.
2. Don’t Have False Expectations
Everyone wants to make lots of money! When starting out it’s good to set your sights on the amount of money that you would like to eventually earn. Having a goal to work towards will help to keep you motivated.
However, don’t have false expectations about how much money you will initially make. And don’t disillusion yourself into thinking that making money online is a quick process.
Most people will quit affiliate marketing before they truly give it a chance to succeed. This is because they don’t know how to begin making money in affiliate marketing. They are deluded that they will make heaps of money straight away.
They think that they have failed when the results that they get, aren’t what they had hoped. In order to achieve success you need to change your mindset. You need to realize that results take time.
Success may not happen tomorrow, next month, or a year from now. If you are aware of this important piece of information in advance, then you won’t have false expectations. You won’t then be disappointed when the great looking website that you spent weeks, or months creating, doesn’t convert.
My advice is to not quit your day job until you start earning a good income from your affiliate business. However, if you want money instantly, then affiliate marketing isn’t for you.
3. Set Your Goals
How to succeed in affiliate marketing? You aim for the bulls-eye and set yourself some goals. When you set goals, you know where you need to go and what you need to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis in order to reach them. Goals will keep you focused and help you live up to your expectations.
Setting goals will help you to post regularly so that you can build a site that is informative, and helpful to your readers. If you provide original, helpful content, your readers will come to trust your advice and then they will start to buy the products that you promote.
Consumers need to trust a site before they will buy. After all, you won’t buy from people that you don’t trust, and neither will your readers.
4. Don’t Pay For Ads
Many websites tell you that the only way to make money online is to advertise. While advertising can explode your business, it can also sink your business if you don’t know what how to begin in affiliate marketing.
You would be much better off doing a training course on this subject rather than throwing away money on an area that you aren’t an expert in.
You should also wait until you have a built up some revenue from your website before you start to advertise. Then set yourself a budget to spend on ads. If you don’t set a budget and stick to it, you could quickly overspend on ads and that will eat into your savings.
5. How To Begin In Affiliate Marketing? Invest In Training!
Instead of fumbling around, not knowing what you are doing, get yourself some proper training on how to begin in affiliate marketing. Many people don’t want to pay for affiliate marketing training as there is a lot of free advice on the internet.
If you think that you know everything that you need to know because you watched some YouTube videos, then think again. While there is a lot of information on starting an online business, it’s all ad hoc. Worst still, you need to search the internet and hunt it down.
Instead, the best way to make money with affiliate marketing is by undertaking a marketing affiliate course that will give you all the knowledge you need to know, via a step-by-step process. This beats just going on YouTube and getting bits and pieces of information.
The best all-encompassing training program to learn about affiliate marketing, that I have found, is Wealthy Affiliate. You can read more about it here.
Getting proper training from the experts will save you money and time in the longer term. A well structured training program will teach what to do and what not to do in a logical, orderly fashion.
And once you learn something through a good training program, you can then use this information over and over again to make even more money.
6. Take Action
Once you learn what you need to do through your training course, you then need to take action! Undertake to work twice as hard as you think that need to do! The more you do, and the harder you work, the quicker your results will be!
Many people tell you that if your marketing strategy is based on blogging, then you need to blog 2 times a week. But if you want to see success in a shorter amount of time, you will need to double your efforts and blog 4 times!
How much time you invest in your online business will depend on the time that you have available to you and your ability to manage your time. But ultimately, if you blog more often, then the quicker you will see results.
Once you know what to do, then go ahead and do it. You need to regularly produce content for your website. You should spend most of your time doing this as this will make your site an authority within your niche.
Google will then reward you by increasing your rankings. As a result, your audience will increase. If your content is helpful, your consumer trust will increase, and so will your conversion rates!
7. Focus On One Marketing Strategy
Many newbies to affiliate marketing expect to make money straight up. But when they don’t get the results that they expected immediately, they try to find the secret of wealth creation.
They become impatient and what start looking around trying to find out the strategies that makes other people successful. The best way on to how to begin in affiliate marketing and succeed is to stick with one marketing strategy until you start seeing the results you want.
For example, if you’re a good writer, your marketing should be via blogging, so focus on that. If you are great in front of the camera, then focus on making videos. Whereas social butterflies, should focus on posting on social media.
Because when you flint from one medium to another, you spread yourself too thin. You end up not putting enough effort into anything to make it work. You will also wear yourself out and be disappointed as your efforts won’t pay off.
Once you have built up your business to where you want it to be, then you can branch out. When your business takes off you can then try other forms in order to grow your business further. Until then, stick to what you know or where your strengths lie.
Don’t waste your time following what others do. Other people are working with their strengths, so you should work with yours. Stick to one strategy and you will get the results that you want!
How To Begin In Affiliate Marketing: Summing Up
The best way to begin in affiliate marketing is to get some proper training right from the start. You then need to take action on what you have learnt. The biggest failure rate occurs when people take in all the information, but then don’t apply it.
Affiliate marketing can change your life and anyone can do it. But the the secret of wealth creation is hard work, time, dedication and effort. So, do something every single day to move your online financial freedom concept forward.
Get proper training, set your focus on your goals and work hard towards them. You will then find that you will start to move forward towards your goals and dreams and live up your expectations!
If you want to be successful with your online business, click here to take action NOW!!
NO ONE WILL DO IT FOR YOU!
What is the biggest affiliate marketing struggle that you have?
Have any of these points resonated with you?
Hi Suzie,
I’ve just started on the road of Affiliate Marketing and your article has really provided some great tips. I think focusing on one marketing strategy at a time is something that I will need to work on. I have so many ideas that I want to implement, that I should really just put my mind towards just the one.
Hi Fiona,
Yes it is difficult to concentrate on one idea when you have so many running through your brain. But I found that starting on too many projects at once means that you can’t give your full attention to any.
The whole idea of starting an online business is to make money. It takes time and effort to establish an on line presence and then make money from it. From my own experience two business websites are more than enough to concentrate on, because you have to be constantly blogging just to get Google to rank your site.
So unless you find blogging a breeze, my suggestion is to have a maximum of two websites, however for most newbies one is more than enough. Once you start making a good income from your website, then you can start on other websites.
I wish you all the best in your online venture.
Suzie
Right on the spot. I wanted to start making money on the internet. At first I was looking at all kinds of programs that promised fast success with little work.
Soon I found out both of these promises were not kept. Now I do a blog, I like writing and think I can offer help by reviewing products and offering suggestions in my niche.
I tried to get traffic from Facebook, and Pinterest as well, but like you say, this all takes too much time to really do it successfully. Now I focus on publishing content on my website and the visitors numbers are starting to slowly rise 🙂
Hi Stefan,
Get rich quick schemes don’t work, if they did there won’t be any victims. The best way to make money is to work for it in your own business.
Unfortunately it is so easy to look at all the people would have made a heap of money on the internet and believe that making money online is easy. But those people would have put in heaps of work, as well as money to get their business to where they are today.
I think that you have the right approach with your online business, which is to regularly publish helpful posts. This will convince Google that you are an authority in your niche and your rankings will increase. The result will be more and more conversions.
I wish you every success with your online business.
Suzie
Hi Suzie,
Very well said! Affiliate marketing is a business and like any other business it takes time before you even break even, never mind become profitable.
I think having unrealistic expectations is the chief reason why newbies don’t succeed. One can’t blame them though. Having been there myself it’s easy to understand how this comes about.
Often one starts a business like this because one is desperate to make money, leave one’s job and so on. Unfortunately there is so much false marketing out there promising that it’s easy to make money online. Put the two together and you have started building that unrealistic expectation that will be sure to trip you up.
You have covered some great tips to help people not fall for the hype and rather invest in a sound strategy that works. Getting good training is fundamental and like yourself I believe that the programs offered by Wealthy Affiliate is the best to be had.
It’s not enough though. Like you say, you have to take action and you have to keep taking action until you are successful. That may take months or years but if it’s important enough you will do it.
Great post. Thanks.
Mark
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your comments. I think that it’s important for people to have high expectations of their business, otherwise they wouldn’t want to go into business for themselves. But people also need to be realistic about the time-frame as well as the amount of effort that is involved in order for their business to succeed. If it was easy everyone would do it!
I think that one of the problems is that many people have is that they think that just because it is an online business, that it is easy to make money. This cannot be further from the truth especially when you first start out. Just getting traffic to your website could take months let alone making any sales.
But as with any business, proper training, setting goals, taking action and perseverance are the key to success. If you give up, you will never achieve your goals.
All the best,
Suzie
I really enjoyed reading this well thought out and very clearly delineated post. I am new to affiliate marketing and initially I encountered a get rich quick scheme. But it just didn’t feel right to me so I did further research and came to know the practice to yield temporary results in an unethical manner.
I think that your points about process and expectations are dialed in, and having the right mindset is key. I believe that you should reap the rewards of your efforts in a mutually beneficial manner. Your suggestion of Wealthy Affiliate is spot on as their training is clear, concise and approaches building out an online business in an integral fashion.
I will definitely bookmark your page to refer back to for inspiration.Thank you for this post and all the very best of success to you!
Hi Bex,
Unfortunately there are some unscrupulous people on the internet that just want to dupe people with their get rich quick schemes. I believe that the only sure-fire way to make money online is through your own sweat and maybe some tears.
While affiliate marketing is the most cost effective way to make money online, you still need to put in the time and effort in order to succeed. One of the areas that I really floundered in was not knowing what to do and the correct steps to follow. It was a relief when I came across Wealthy Affiliate! The training you get is phenomenal and everything then starts to make sense.
I wish you every success in your online venture.
Suzie