In this affiliate marketing 101 pdf I’m going to share some of what (I consider to be) the most important aspects of affiliate marketing. Download this article on pdf format here.
Affiliate marketers promote other people’s products and earn a commission based on the sales. There’s many ways for affiliates to do this. Some build websites, others spend money on advertising. Most affiliates have an email list and sell products through their list.
There’s many products which affiliates can choose from too. Some products are physical products, like you’d find on Amazon. Others are digital products which can be accessed from anywhere in the world from a laptop and given an internet connection. For the affiliate, choosing products and marketing strategies can seem simple. But that choice can result in success or failure. And your choices as an affiliate are pretty important and are built on your knowledge of the subject.
Affiliate Marketing 101 PDF – Building Foundations
Therefore knowledge is pretty important for the affiliate marketer. When I started out learning affiliate marketing I thought my enthusiasm would make up for my lack of knowledge! It didn’t sadly and I went through several years of struggling. I jumped from one course to another, never really getting anywhere. I was broke too which didn’t help and I avoided buying expensive courses and using paid marketing.
But the biggest thing going against the lonely affiliate is lack of knowledge – hands down. What you don’t know is always working against you, and as hard as you work, unless you’re following sound advice and a proven strategy, you can easily go down a rabbit hole and never get anywhere.
Think of your knowledge as an affiliate as your foundations. If you want to build a shed, or even a small cottage, you only need small foundations. But if you want to build a skyscraper, you wouldn’t use those same foundations. If you just want to place an affiliate banner on your website, and hope for the best, you might have a “shed”. But if you want to make a living from your affiliate business, you’ll need to put more work into building your foundations.
Affiliate Marketing 101 pdf – The Biggest Challenge
Anyone can “have a go” at affiliate marketing which is why the failure and drop out rate is so high. The barriers to entry are much lower than a traditional “bricks and mortar” type of business. You only really need your laptop and an internet connection to get started. I would also suggest purchasing an email autoresponder and getting training too as the bottom line of what you really need.
Once you’ve set up your sales funnel and have your products ready to sell with your affiliate links in place, you need to learn marketing. This is the hardest part of affiliate marketing. Even with a “done for you sales funnel“, marketing will be your biggest problem.
There’s many programs and courses which will give you all the tools and products you need. But it’s then your job to actually make it all work. And this means getting good at the marketing side of things. Your marketing strategy will depend on what you can afford to do and the time you have to do it. It will also depend on your aspirations for your affiliate business. So let’s have a look at what business models will allow you to do what kind of marketing.
Affiliate Marketing 101 PDF – Products
You can choose from thousands of products on the internet as an affiliate marketer. Some pay you only 1% commission! Others can offer up to 101%! Choose wisely! Physical products tend to pay out less in commissions. With a physical product you have manufacturing costs, postage and handling costs to consider.
With digital products, such as a video course, you’ve only got the costs such as website hosting. Delivery can be done digitally (over the internet). Manufacturing costs are minimal once the product is created and so costs for selling digital products are pretty negligible in comparison. As such, product owners can pass more of the profit to affiliates to encourage them to advertise those products and make sales.
What this means to you, the affiliate is that digital products pay more, a lot more. Certain digital products also offer other benefits too:
- Recurring income – membership products and software products offer ongoing commissions if you choose recurring commission affiliate programs.
- High ticket products pay up to 40% on products valued up to $20k+
- If you choose a product range you benefit from ongoing sales to your existing customers
- A built in sales team can close sales on your behalf.
- Multi-tier commissions allow you to earn from sales made by your referrals
With a good sales funnel like this you can use pretty much any marketing strategy – according to the products you place in your “digital store”. At the highest level you can benefit from high ticket sales and multi-tier commissions. See SFM Digital Business System.
If, on the other hand your product range doesn’t include high value digital items, your choice of marketing strategies might be more limited.
Marketing Strategies
To drive qualified leads into your sales funnel you’ll need a marketing strategy. Blogging, paid marketing, social media marketing and video marketing are all forms of marketing. As an affiliate you’ll need to choose a strategy according to your own specific products or product range.
With low value products, like you’d find on Amazon, which only pay out 1-11% commissions; you’ll need a cheaper strategy. With a high ticket sales funnel (see below) you can use the more expensive advertising platforms such as YouTube for your marketing strategy.
Your Mindset
There’s a lot of things to navigate while learning affiliate marketing. There’ll be a lot of opportunity to doubt what you’re doing and of course quit too! When your friends and relatives are doubting you, and you’re doubting yourself, it’s easier to quit than carry on!
Ideally get yourself a mentor and surround yourself with other affiliates by joining a community and getting help. Other affiliates can help hold you accountable and keep you going when things get though, which they undoubtably will (get tough that is!).
Set goals to keep yourself moving forwards and celebrate the small wins. Don’t focus on things which frustrate you. Learn strategies which keep you buoyant and forward focused. Mental coping strategies are important for affiliates because they work by themselves for a lot of the time. It’s useful to set up positive habits which you can stick to even when you’re having a bad day.
For more help and advice and to join an online community and access an all in one business system click this link.
To download this affiliate marketing 101 pdf document click here.