How to do affiliate marketing without any experience? You don’t need to be an experienced affiliate marketer to sell something online. If you’re a beginner you have something which nobody else has – your unique perspective. People buy from people when they shop online so you can leverage your own distinctive viewpoint by creating something which comes naturally to you. The key is to be genuine and find a way to express yourself through digital means online.
Affiliates do this through blogging, video, social media interactions and email messages. You don’t need to be an “expert” in order to sell online. You only need to be yourself (if you know who that is!). Single mum’s for example, attract a unique audience because of their life experiences. Burned out professionals who transition to online business attract another “niche” of online shoppers.
Who would relate to you and your own unique story? Your story is your superpower and is unique to you. If you can put your uniqueness in front of people, and attract a specific audience, you can promote something which you genuinely believe in which will help them too.
How To Do Affiliate Marketing Without Any Experience – Selling Without Selling
To sell something online you need to join an affiliate program and promote a specific product. The product you choose is massively important. You need to choose something which you genuinely believe in and which aligns with who you are. When you do this, you’re in a much better position to sell without selling. I’m no salesman, so I like the idea of selling affiliate products from a website without having to be “salesy”!
In fact, I love the idea of being able to help people through my blog posts and email messages. If someone buys something it’s not because I “sold” it; rather it’s because I helped them and built some trust.
That’s the best thing you can do as a newcomer to affiliate marketing. Figure out a way of helping people through your messages. Whether you choose video, blogging, email marketing or paid advertising, if you align your intention with your inner values and believe in what you’re doing, it’s very powerful. Much more so that just making a “buck” online!
Top affiliates help and inspire. The give value and the affiliate commissions they earn are a byproduct of that service. Look at Martin Lewis’s website MoneySavingExpert.com. That’s an affiliate website and it makes money through referrals. But it also delivers huge value in terms of what it does to help people with their money, bills, mortgages and credit cards etc. Value first, commissions second!
How To Do Affiliate Marketing Without Any Experience – Ikigai
Your Ikigai is your “reason for being”. Ikigai is a Japanese term and it is useful to know what your ikigai is if you’re going to become an affiliate marketer. Your ikigai is where your values meet your purpose and your way of interacting in the world (and making money). When you can make money from purposeful work through affiliate marketing it’s a wonderful thing, very unlike “working” in a job you have no passion for. I’m sharing this because for a long time I just tried to “make affiliate marketing work” but I didn’t realise that I was completely out of alignment with my values.
When you’re working in alignment with who you are, work is enjoyable and you feel good about it. When you’re working only for the outcome, it doesn’t feel good because you only want the end goal – the money!
Be The Genuine Article – “YOU”
Being you isn’t that easy, especially in public. There’s so many pressures to become some kind of “guru” once you put yourself out there. But people don’t relate to the guru’s, they relate to ordinary people with their own unique perspectives and problems.
George Burns said “Acting is all about sincerity, if you can fake that you’ve got it made”!
Sincerity goes a long way online too. So figure out who you are and what you stand for and believe in, and be more “you”!
When you are “you” you’ll naturally act in ways that are genuine and sincere. Find a way of expressing yourself online whether through video, chat, email or through a blog. Choose products you love, and genuinely want to promote because you believe in them, not just for the cash! When you love what you do, you’ll enjoy the process and then you’ll enjoy the ride.
Not everyone will gravitate towards “you”, but the ones who “get” you will!
Summary
This post has been more about the “inside” job of affiliate marketing rather than the nuts and bolts of actually selling online. I’ve done a tonne of posts on how to actually sell online. Checkout my post on 22 ways to sell affiliate products if that’s what you’re after.
But I genuinely believe this is the crux of it in this post. Once you can figure out a way to serve, not sell, you can figure out how to do affiliate marketing well. Align your values, interests and genuine “you” with a product you can get behind genuinely and you’re half way there!
Once you have figured out how you want to serve people, you can serve them through your products and create a value add that’s irresistible to the right people.