Hello and welcome to "You Can Succeed With Affiliate Marketing". Most people who succeed online start with affiliate marketing. Why affiliate marketing? Because it's easy to get started, simple to do and it doesn't require a big budget or lots of connections. In this article we're going to overview the process of affiliate marketing and then in the following articles we're going to dig deeper into exactly what you need to do, exactly how to do it and why it works. Many people start out knowing what they want to promote. If that describes you..that's great, if not and if you're starting from scratch then your first step is to choose a niche. You may be asking, but what is a niche? It's a group of people who have something in common. It's just that simple! Simply a group of people who have something in common...they may want to lose weight, they may want to meet their significant other, they may want to make money online. They need to solve a problem, all of them need to solve a problem and if you help them solve their problem they'll buy the products you suggest. Doing some basic research on Google will tell you if there's a chance of making sales. We'll go into that deeper in module 2. Next you choose a product that this niche needs and will buy. Those are two separate things and you need to know both. We're going to go into that again in module 2, this takes some simple research, it's easy to do and we'll show you exactly how to do that research in module 2. Next you create a way to build your list and make sales. That is a usually called a squeeze page. You need to have a way to build your own mailing list because your own mailing list is a powerful asset online. You want to be able to offer the people who join your list more than just one thing and you need to be able to make sales as well. This can be done in one day and then you drive traffic and measure results to that page. All of these things and more will be covered in this blog. Now people often ask, can anyone really do this. The answer is YES, if you have an internet connection, you're reading this blog post right now and have a desire to succeed, you have what it takes! They also ask what does it take to succeed with affiliate marketing and that's why we created this blog to give you the exact steps to follow.
Let's look at different ways that you can succeed with affiliate marketing and find the one that fits you. There are many ways for you to succeed with affiliate marketing. The key is to find the one that you like the most and will do consistently. It's very important that you like it. You can master that first and then move on to other techniques. Here's what you don't want to do. You don't want to try to learn 10 different marketing techniques at once because that's going to lead to confusion. So pick the one you like the best out of the ones that we present to you and then learn how to master that! Affiliate marketing should be a joy not a chore. It's fun and should be fun for you. Let's look at the choices: number one we have content marketing. It's very hot, very popular and very effective. Content marketing simply means sharing information that helps people. That's it, information that helps people. Notice I said sharing because that's important. Content marketing does not mean you need to be a writer although writing works well if you want to do that. If you don't, you can curate, which basically means sharing other people's content ethically while adding your own twist or commentary to it. If you have ever recommended a movie to a friend you already know how to do this. You just make the recommendation online instead of in-person. The most common way to do content marketing is with a blog, your own blog and when you have your own blog you can post articles and videos, ask questions, build your list and much more. A blog can be your home base for all your affiliate marketing. Other options for content marketing includes Facebook, which is a powerful platform. Facebook groups are free and easy to set up and you are in control of the group. You're the moderator of the group, so you invite people in and that gives you the authority because they're lisstening to you as the moderator. YouTube is incredibly powerful, you can make videos of your own or get access to videos and put them on YouTube and get a lot of traffic. That's a great way and sell affiliate products. Twitter is great for sending announcements, especially about launches or sales that you're promoting or any social media gathering place online. This includes forums, which are wonderful places to make affiliate sales. Marketing communities like reddit are great places to do affiliate marketing, chats and Skype are super good places to do affiliate marketing because you can have a group of people around the world that you're having a discussion with completely free.
Now let's look at email marketing. It's a very powerful way to market online. Email marketing is simply selling things using email as the communication method. You either need a list of your own or you need to pay someone to send email to their list for you. That's often called a solo ad. Either way you're basically sending an ad and asking the readers to click a link. Having a list of your own is a powerful advantage but if you don't have a list don't worry. You can always begin building your list when you're ready. Paid advertising is next and it's very powerful. Paid advertising can take many forms online. Many people have heard about solo ads and pay-per-click. Those work very well for affiliates but there are other methods that work well -also...including banner ads on targeted blogs. Did you know you can place your image ad or your banner ad on one specific blog and you know the readers of that blog are interested in a particular topic. When you present to them a product that solves a need you know they have, they will buy from you. Native ads are very powerful, now those are ads that appear in content sometimes underneath the content and they'll often say "you might also be interested in" and then they'll have a little picture and people click it. That works very well for affiliate marketing. Sponsored tweets work very well because they bring with them the credibility of the influencer. Sponsored post on Facebook work super well. So if you post something on Facebook you can sponsor that post, which basically means showing that post to a group of people who don't follow you who meet a particular criteria, that you set. You can reach new niches, you reach more people in your niche and more with sponsored posts. Facebook ads also work very well if you want to use paid ads. Remember this, send all the traffic to your landing page first so you can build your list. Your list is your main asset online. So you really want to focus in on building your mailing list! When you do, you can make multiple offers to those people. You can even ask them what else they need and offer them more products. You then can develop a relationship and that's the most powerful thing you can do online. Then you send them on to the affiliate site after they've joined your list. It's just as easy as pie.
Social media and tribe building is very effective also for affiliate marketing. Social media can be very powerful for affiliate marketers. Especially if you love social media and spend some time there. Now there's no easier or cheaper way to build a list of followers than Facebook. If you share valuable content with them they'll like you and they'll trust you. They already do that because they're following you and they'll listen when you make suggestions about products. When you're promoting about any product or service, each of these will work. You have to do the work and answer the questions as to which is the best fit for you. There's no right answer. My advice is to start where you are. If you're on social media, start sharing content and recommendations with the people you already know. Then choose a product or service that you love already, join their affiliate program and get your affiliate link. Then begin sharing your experiences about the product on social. Just a list of why you use the product will often get you clicks and those clicks over time add up. If you have a blog start sharing on your blog. Write little short posts about why you love a particular product and include your affiliate link. You can make a suggestion that they go check it out and be sure to include advertising on your sidebar. This is expected these days and it works wonderfully well.
Many people ask about review sites. Review sites can work wonderfully well but not if they only contain reviews and make offers. You must deliver value first and then ask for something in return. The best review sites are not sites at all but rather pages on content rich blogs. Here are some basics for doing this. Make sure to tell the whole truth, the good the bad and the ugly. Be honest, be yourself because all you have to do is tell the truth and provide a unique bonus. This is maybe the most powerful tip of all! Provide a very unique bonus and people will buy just to get your bonus. You can use high quality PLR products to do this the easy way. You can provide special support if you're promoting a product or service. You really know a lot more than you realize about them. You can provide a little report about how you use what your promoting. Give that away as a bonus. People love to get all their questions answered before the sale. Put up a little contact form on your blog and say do you have questions about this product, ask me anything and you can tell them as a user of the product. Sometimes people will ask you before they'll ask the product owner because they know you're going to give a more candid answer. These things alone will make you stand out from other affiliates and help you earn more passive income. In our next post we'll reveal how to choose the right niche and then the products that people in that niche will buy from you.
