A Newbie Guide To Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Well, at it's basic level, affiliate marketing is selling other peoples products for a commission. Essentially someone has already created a product, you promote it and if someone buys the product, you get a small payment aka a commission. Seems simple enough right? There is a little more to it than that....

The trickiest part of affiliate marketing is the one thing that can make or break your success...traffic. More specifically targeted traffic. What do I mean? Well, if you know someone who is interested in losing weight and you try to sell them a product on how to train their dog (and they don't have a dog)...odds are they won't buy your product. Makes sense that you would want to sell them a weight loss product right? That is targeted traffic. Finding people who are interested in a specific niche and putting products in front of them that match that niche.

So let's say you found a bunch of people interested in weight loss and you found some products. Now you send them directly to where they can buy the product right? WRONG! Think about how you buy products of your own. Do you buy the first thing you see? Or do you shop around a bit? Odds are you shop around so you can make an informed decision. It's the same concept with affiliate marketing. You NEVER want to send people directly to product sales pages because 99% of the time, they won't buy. You need a way to capture some contact information from that person in order to present them options. This is where an opt-in page comes in.

The optin page will capture that persons contact information, mainly an email address, that you can use to keep in touch with that person. You will collect email addresses onto a list that you can then use to send additional products to said list. This process can be manual or automated (preferred) which is called an autoresponder. Messages are sent automatically to your email list promoting new products, or reminding them of previous ones they have seen. This is your greatest asset as an affiliate marketer! Capturing contact information is SUPER important if you want to be successful.

Now what?

You have a contacts (email) list, and you have emails to send them. Well, you sit back and wait. As tough as that is, most people need to be presented something several times before they decide to buy. Your job is to make sure you keep sending them products as a reminder. In this day and age, people move on very quickly so if your campaign is too short, they will forget about your product and move on. Getting your email campaign just right will take time. But your patience will pay off in the end...plenty of successful affiliate marketers will tell you that!

What's next?

To recap, you have targeted traffic being sent to your optin page. When people opt in, they are added to your email list which presents them products on a regular interval. Is that it? Essentially yes, all you have to do is wait for your optins to buy. However, it wouldn't hurt to do your own custom follow-ups every so often. The idea here is to develop a relationship, not just shove products in peoples face. Make sure your emails are friendly as well as transparent. If people feel they are being scammed, that is the quickest way for them to unsubscribe to your emails.

This sounds really involved doesn't it?

It most certainly is and any successful affiliate marketer will tell you that success doesn't happen over night. Most have spent years getting their business successful and now fortunately for you, they are willing to share their secrets of the biz! You might call these people "gurus" but in reality, they have become highly successful just doing what you have just went over. There are even a handful of individuals who are willing to do all this work for you to get you on the path to success even faster!

Interested?

How would you like to have all of this set up for you? The targeted traffic? The opt-in pages built? The emails written? Even the products chosen for a specific niche? Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? Well, as I said before, there are a lot of successful individuals willing to share their path to success and a small handful of those will even set it up for you step-by-step!

How do I get started?

I recently stumbled upon a program that you can literally set up in the next 30 mins or so. No fluff, no BS, just step-by-step instructions on how to get started in affiliate marketing. The best part is, all the traffic is provided for you! The opt-in pages, bridge pages (essentially just a thank you for providing your email), and emails are done for you! A simple copy and paste is all it takes to set up! Even the best selling products are chosen for you!!

What are you waiting for?

I think I have said all I need to say. If you are serious about getting started in affiliate marketing, let me know in the comments below or send me a message. I will give you all the details!

To your success,

Jason