Why Affiliate Marketing?
If you’ve been online for any time, I’m sure you’ve heard of the affiliate marketing business model. Affiliate marketing is simple to understand, businesses pay people a commission to sell their products and services.
To get started, you join the affiliate programs of these businesses and get an affiliate link. You then recommend their products and services, they do the selling, and you earn a commission from each sale.
Affiliate marketing is the easiest business model for most solopreneurs, because of its advantages over other business models.
- You don’t have to create products or buy inventory, which is a big time saver.
- Once you make a sale you’re done, since the vendor supports the customer.
- You can offer a wide variety of products and services in your niche, by working with many different merchants.
- It is a simple, low-cost business model, and works great for newbies and experienced marketers alike.
- It’s perfect for stay-at-home grandparents looking to supplement their income online.
You Are the Test Subject
The easiest products to sell are products that you actually use.
A few months or a year into your affiliate marketing journey, when you review all your affiliate promotions, the top performers will be the products and services you used and liked best.
That’s why it is so important to promote stuff you buy and use yourself. Or at the very least, get your hands on someone else’s research.
By personally testing the products and services yourself, you can literally show potential buyers all the good and the bad of the product.
That makes your promotions real and genuine.
Sometimes a vendor will give you access to their products via a JV document, if not, reach out to them for a demo. It is worth the small expense even if you have to wait until the product launches and buy your own copy.
The best way to do a proper review and recommendation is to actually show your prospects how it works while you use it.
These are the most effective affiliate promotions, whether you are writing about your experience or showing them with a video, and can lead to affiliate marketing success.
Remember, all the products and services you purchase for your promotions are a tax write-off for your business.
Be prepared to make yourself the test subject if you want to maximize your affiliate commissions!
Pre-sell Using Emotion
When you are doing affiliate marketing, you will constantly be creating content around the products you promote.
This content will be in the form of emails, blog posts, videos, and social media posts, that help potential buyers make a decision.
This is where many affiliate marketers go wrong. They take all the emotion out of their content and start going into sales pitches like a bad used car salesman.
Instead of trying to sell products and services, you should be talking to your audience like you are one of them.
Make it obvious that you respect them, you want to help them and you can relate to the issues they are facing.
Talk about real-world things in your promotions, and don’t be afraid to inject a little humor. Keep it light and don’t pressure them to buy, instead, let the sales page they go to do the selling.
They’ll be much more receptive to this approach and will always want to hear more from you.
And yes, they might even buy from your link, if not this time, maybe next time.
Use these tips and you’ll keep your audience growing, and make more sales in the process!
Focus on the Relationships
The secret to long-term profits and affiliate marketing success is in the relationships you build.
As an influencer or authority in the niche, you want to be the person people think of when they have questions.
There are two ways you build relationships with your audience.
The first way is through regularly publishing helpful content in the form of articles, emails, social media posts, and videos.
As more and more people see your content they will remember your brand and associate it with value.
The second way to build relationships is one by one.
Make yourself easily accessible so people can ask you questions anytime they need help. Don’t be afraid to share your email address often and everywhere you share your content.
You won’t get overrun with inquiries, but you will get occasional requests. Every single inquiry you reply to will add another person to your tribe.
Your business and your income will grow steadily, through these relationships built one at a time.
This is the true secret to affiliate marketing success and longevity.
Helping people as thoughtfully and often as possible will lead you to super affiliate status before you know it.
Remember to have fun as you build these relationships, and you’ll create a prosperous and rewarding business.
