8 Affiliate Marketing Secrets To Take You From Zero To Super Affiliate Hero

Did you know the average affiliate marketing actually makes ZERO dollars in revenue? I know it’s hard to believe but that’s the cold hard facts about this industry. In this article, I am looking to change these stats for the better, by letting you into some big affiliate marketing secrets.

Once you have read and implemented these you could go from ZERO to SUPER AFFILIATE HERO.

Before I dive into nuts and bolts of this article I just want to point out a couple of things. There is NO get-rich-quick scheme here. Creating an online affiliate marketing business is just that it’s a BUSINESS!

I have owned my own business now for nearly 20 years, they take TIME and HARD WORK to run and affiliate marketing is no different so if you are here for an easy ride you might as well click away now.

Still here… Great, let’s crack on!

1. Understanding The Affiliate Structure

How It Works

This is a common thing I come across, not everyone actually knows how the affiliate marketing structure works so they end not really understanding the process and of course making huge mistakes a long the way.

Let’s briefly run through the process right now, just in case I have now put doubt in your mind too.

• A customer searches for a solution either through social media, search engines or other means.
• They arrive at your website and the content that you have created to solve the problem they have.
• The customer clicks on your affiliate link and they continue and buy the product.
• The link is tracked back to you as the affiliate and you are then paid a pre-agreed commission.

Simple process, any questions leave me a comment below as this is essential that you understand this before going on.

Commissions

The commissions can vary depending on the products and companies that you sign up with. Companies such as Amazon and Target have low commissions ranging from 1% – 10%. Whilst some digital products can even have a 100% payout. Although anything between 30% – 70% is great in my book.

2. Do Your Research

Research is key to any business but affiliate marketing it is vital. Many people fail with this task by either not doing it correctly or not doing it at all.

Your Niche

One of the first things you will need to research is your niche. When looking to go into big niches such as Weightloss, Health, Make Money Online or Self Development to name a few, you will have to drill down into sub-niches to stand any chance of getting noticed.

Using a tool like Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool can make this operation easier and quicker.

Your Ideal Customer

Create an ideal customer profile from what you know about your niche this can then be used for reference when creating content, ads, and promotions.

Where’s Your Audience

Finding out where your ideal customer hangs out will always be useful as you build your business. This can also save you $100s in wasted advertising costs if you are targeting the wrong places. Some different places I am talking about could be Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or any of the social networks. They maybe hiding within forums or online communities or even on video sites such as You Tube.

Discover this and your challenge of building your business just got easier.

3. Don’t Go Promoting Everything

Within any niche, sub-niche and beyond there are numerous products and services that you could promote. One big mistake I see is that people try to promote absolutely every product they can.

People love to buy stuff but don’t like being sold to. By promoting product after product this can come across that all you are doing in selling.

Choose a few great products to promote. Preferable ones that you use or have used so that you know they are great products. There’s nothing worse for your reputation than recommending and bad product.

Choose wisely here!

4. Avoid Google’s Bad Book

Be Unique

Don’t get into the search engines bad books by duplicating content whether it’s your own or even worse someone else s. By all means research by looking at your competition but when it comes to actually create it make it as unique as you can.

Royalty-Free Images

This one is something I do see, time and again. Using Google images is not acceptable, please don’t do it. These images are copyrighted and you could at least be asked to take it down or at worse taking to court. We don’t want that to know, do we!

I would suggest using your own images that you have either created or photographed or use images from royalty-free photo sites. There are plenty of these available. Some best ones are Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels.

You could also buy a license to use a photo from somewhere like Fotolio these will only cost you a few bucks.

5. Create Well Balanced Reviews

With most affiliate marketers creating product reviews is a great way to reach your targeted audience. Whilst most cover the Pros and Cons to the product make sure that the review is well-balanced. Even the best products still have some issues and the worse has some good points.

By doing this you will gain the trust of your readers and followers and they are more likely to buy from through your affiliate links.

One of the worse things you can do is guess. Ideally, you would have tried or still use the product but if not look at other people’s reviews and put together some good material. Be sure to mention that you have not used the product.

People love honesty and will love you for it. Another way to build trust with your potential customers.

Keep in mind with any content you are looking to solving problems that your reader has, tell them the problem so they know they are in the right place and then show them what the solution is and where to get hold of it.

6. Be Weary of Banner Blindness

Of course, the idea of affiliate marketing is to promote products and one of the most popular ways of doing this is to use banner ads on your site. But, use these wisely as over populating your site with ads can cause what is known as banner blindness. In other words, your visitors will just become oblivious to them and not click though.

I have also seen this with Google ad blocks that people have placed in every possible position throughout their site. Do some testing with these banners and see which ones get clicks and which don’t and then place them strategically for maximum clicks but minimum annoyance.

7. Don’t Put All Your Traffic In One Basket

Why do people always struggle when it comes to traffic? Traffic is everywhere all you have to do is go and get it.

Although organic search traffic is the optimum source of traffic don’t just rely solely on this. With Google changing their algorithms on a regular basis these rankings could disappear overnight and so could your business.

Search Engine Optimization is still a must but also look at other ways to drive traffic. Some alternatives are building a following on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin plus all the others. Use these sites to promote your blogs and get traffic indirectly to your affiliate offers.

Forums can be another good source of constant traffic. Always go to help others and offer solutions this will help gain trust and improve your traffic results dramatically.

Video is huge right now and if you ignore this then you could definitely be leaving plenty of traffic on the table, so to speak! You Tube is the obvious site to utilize but of course, there are many other great sites too.

Not forgetting good old face to face networking somewhat overlooked with the emergence of the internet, but still a great form of traffic if used correctly.

Finally, email marketing is still an amazing source of great targeted traffic of which you own. Once a group of people are on your list with a push of a button you can get some brilliant traffic to your affiliate offers… which leads me into the last secret in this article.

8. Build A Money List

You have no doubt heard the saying the money is in the list. Well, it is and you need to be building your money list starting today.

Of course, what I mean is your email list. Email marketing still works and it’s a huge part of your business. There are some great email marketing systems out there and some run into hundreds of dollars a month. Also, there are others that would stay well clear of as they seem okay but don’t really deliver when it comes to the affiliate marketing business ethos.

I have always used AWeber for all my email services and have never had any issues with them. You can read my full review on why I recommend AWeber to everyone who is just starting out.

Summarizing

So let’s just summarize these points again so you clear of what you need to avoid doing and what you definitely need to be doing to create a great affiliate marketing business.

• Understand the Process
• Do Your Research
• Don’t Promote Every Product
• Don’t Duplicate Wording or Use Copyrighted Images
• Create Well Balanced Reviews
• Don’t Over Promote on Your Website
• Don’t Just Rely on Google for Traffic
• Start Building Your Email List

Before you head off and start implementing all that I have suggested, there is one final thing that you will need to bear in mind. That is things change all the time with online marketing so I would recommend that you find a place where you can keep yourself updated, ask questions and get support as you grow your business.

I use and would recommend Wealthy Affiliate as this community-based training site will give you everything you need and more. It’s also totally free to join as a starter member. You can connect with me inside the members’ area too and I will be more than willing to help you.