Affiliate marketing is one of the most profitable business models online. Many online marketers have made millions of dollars from it and continue to do so daily.
The concept is simple. You’ll be creating content that promotes other people’s products. For example, if you have a website on fitness, you may write about treadmills and drop a link to popular treadmills being sold on Amazon.
Visitors who come to your site will click on the link and just might buy a treadmill from Amazon… and you’ll get a percentage of the sale. It’s like being an online salesperson.
The difference is that you’ll not need to meet anyone face to face. Affiliate marketing is also much easier than other types of online marketing.
There is no product creation involved. You won’t need to fulfil orders or handle customer complaints either. It’s a very ‘hands-free’ style of marketing and something that would be suitable for most seniors who get into online marketing.
In this article, we’ll look at 7 pointers that you should be aware of. Employ them in your business and you’ll take your affiliate marketing to the next level.
1 – Sell the problem the product solves
As an affiliate marketer, your job is to ‘presell’ the product. Preselling basically means that you recommend the product to someone without being too salesy or pushy.
For example, if you were suffering from swollen knees that hurt all the time and you tried out curcumin supplements and the pain disappeared – you’d tell anyone who cared to listen about this miracle.
If a friend of yours suffered from the same problem, guess what you’d do? You’d tell them about how the curcumin tablets worked for you! This is word of mouth – and that’s exactly what affiliate marketing is in a nutshell.
It’s about telling others why a product is good and how it will help them solve their problem. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to look helpful and extol the virtues of the product.
You do NOT do that by stating the features, specifications or ingredients of the product. The sales page/product listing will do that. You only need to arouse enough curiosity to get the click… and the sales page will do the selling.
2 – Only promote reputable products
There are tons of hyped up products that are shoddy, poor quality and don’t deliver on their claims. Very often, you’ll notice that the lousy products often pay the highest commissions just to attract affiliates.
Avoid promoting products that are not reputable. Associating with poor products just for higher commissions will ruin your reputation. It’s just a matter of time before visitors to your blog lose trust in you and your recommendations.
Only promote products that are good, and that people mostly love. You can always search online or in the Amazon store for real customer reviews, and ascertain what the consensus is regarding the quality and efficacy of the product.
3 – Don’t hammer your list with offers
If you have an email list, do not email them incessantly about the latest and greatest products offers. After some time, it will get old and the people in your list will lose interest in what you’re promoting… and may not even open your emails.
4 – More value, less selling
As a marketer, you should always provide more value than actual selling. People come online to learn or become better informed to solve their problems. Help them out more than you sell to them.
For every email you send with a pitch for a product, send 3 other emails over the next few days offering value – this could be either content that informs or teaches or is just fun to read/watch.
5 – Know your niche
You must know your niche. If you’re targeting dog lovers, do not have links going out to cat food, etc. You must know the needs of the people in your niche.
What problems do they have? What products are they looking for? What are the most popular products that they’re loving?
When you know what your niche loves, you can sell better and truly bond with them. Stay on track and be aware of trending topics in your niche. Cater to your market all the time.
6 – Cross-sell where you can
Always check if there are related products that you can promote. For example, if you have a dog training site, you don’t only need to promote dog training courses. You could also promote a course that teaches people how to make homemade dog food.
Mention how the pet food industry creates dog food with substandard ingredients and how one’s dog will benefit and be healthier with homemade food. The person who is training their dogs will also be interested in feeding their pets and keeping them healthy.
This is cross-selling. Constantly be on the lookout for ways to introduce new and RELATED products to your niche… and tell them how these new products will help them out with problems that even they are unaware of.
7 – Keep creating more content
Good content is king. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating blog posts, posting photos on Pinterest or making videos for YouTube. The goal is to create as much content as possible.
If your content is informational and interesting, you will build a tribe that follows you and wishes to hear what you have to say. Once you have built trust and loyalty, promoting products to your tribe will be much easier.
To conclude, the 7 tips mentioned above can immensely help you with your affiliate marketing. Follow them and you’ll make a very comfortable income as an affiliate marketer.
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