Here’s a short “affiliate marketing for dummies pdf” manual covering some of the main things you need to know before you starting out.
Download this guide in pdf format here.
When I started out as an affiliate, I thought I’d be super rich very quickly. I rushed into building websites and joining affiliate programs.
But an investment in my education could have saved me years of wasted effort. Back then, it wasn’t clear how to do affiliate marketing. There were lots of courses you could buy. But most of them were just a few videos to watch. There wasn’t an affiliate marketing mentorship program you could join. Or, at least I didn’t find any back in the early 2000’s when I started.
So, instead of joining a program which gave me access to successful affiliates, I jumped from course to course, learning one different strategy after the next. I got nowhere fast despite building hundreds of websites and joining many affiliate programs. I just didn’t know what I was doing. Eventually I found a mentorship program and things changed. Here’s what I learned.
Affiliate Marketing For Dummies PDf – Get Help
Firstly, as already mentioned you should get help. Affiliate marketing is just too difficult to do alone. There’s many paths you can take and get lost down. You need a mentor to help guide you on the journey. Access a training resources through this link.
Secondly don’t expect it to be easy. High expectations of huge financial outcomes for little work are one of the main reasons people quit. Expect to work consistently at your affiliate business for several months or years before you see any results financially.
This will of course depend on your investment. If you can afford to purchase a large value sales funnel, and use paid marketing, you can build a profitable business much more quickly. If you take the slower route of blogging, for example, and getting traffic organically, it’s much slower.
The products you decide to promote as an affiliate will have a huge bearing on how well you can do financially.
Affiliate Marketing For Dummies pdf – Types Of Products
There’s thousands of products and services you can choose from as an affiliate marketer. So it’s a good idea to know what products are the best ones to earn from. Amazon and eBay were the first partner networks I joined but pay very low levels of commission. Amazon, for example pays between 3% and 11% to its affiliates. Unfortunately I didn’t know any better and spent a long time promoting Amazon products from a blog for peanuts!
Digital products on the other hand pay much larger commissions. They tend to pay 40% and upwards for sales made by their affiliates. One of the first places I found digital products was Clickbank.com. Clickbank has hundreds of digital products which can suit almost any niche you can think of. See Clickbank Secrets Pdf.
Then there are products with offer recurring commissions. Recurring commission affiliate programs tend to be things like memberships or software products. With a recurring commission, you can sell an item once, and benefit from commissions for years, even decades.
High ticket products are another thing to consider as an affiliate. With a high ticket digital product you can make up to $8000 on a single sale. See what is high ticket affiliate marketing. Obviously that’s a whole lot better than selling a book from Amazon at 3% commission.
Multi-tier commissions are also worth a mention here too. With a multi-tier program, you can earn commissions based on sales made by your referrals. See best two tier affiliate programs.
Using a product range is another consideration worth bearing in mind for affiliates. With a product range, you refer the customer to the entry level product. At any time, if your initial referral purchases another product from the range, you make a commission – even years later.
Marketing Strategies and Ikigai
As you can see, there’s many different types of products you can promote as an affiliate. Another consideration is how you are going to promote these products. There’s two main strategies for promoting products online: paid and free. Paid strategies are much faster, but you’ll need a good product range, or return on your investment (ROI) to make it work.
You can’t easily use paid marketing with Amazon products for example because they pay such low commissions. You’ll need a higher value product/product range.
Organic strategies such as blogging, or v’logging (video blogging), will take much longer to generate the same results you can see very quickly using paid strategies. But with organic strategies you can build traffic over time and eventually benefit from free sales through your content.
Depending on your values, you can choose a suitable and appropriate marketing strategy which suits you. If you have a corporate job, and are time poor, blogging might not be the best option. You’ll want to use paid advertising. But if you’re only working part time and affiliate marketing is going to be another income source, organic marketing might be more suitable for you.
Ikigai is a Japanese saying meaning “reason for being”, or purpose. If you’re going to be a content creator, it’s a good idea to align with your ikigai. When you are aligned with your values and purpose, work seems easy and flows naturally. When you’re fighting against your values, everything seems like a hardship. Since organic marketing takes such a long time, it’s well worth choosing a topic and strategy which is aligned with your ikigai.
Affiliate Mistakes – Choosing A Blog Topic
Expect to make some mistakes as an affiliate marketer. Mistakes are made when you take action. Uncertain action is far better than certain inaction. One of the mistakes I made was to build a niche website around a topic I didn’t know or care about. It was out of alignment with my ikigai and I was just desperately trying to make money.
I built a mushroom harvesting site and blogged on it for several months. Every blog post had to be researched and it was incredibly difficult keeping going. Eventually I ranked the site at the top of Google for its main keywords. But it didn’t make any money and I eventually gave up on it. So if you’re going to write about something and become a blogger, make sure it’s something you care about and can continue for a good period of time.
Affiliate Mistakes – Throwing Money At Marketing
Impatience is the enemy of an affiliate marketer. I’ve made this mistake myself. I threw a lot of money at a marketing campaign because I got fed up of getting no sales! I got myself into financial trouble with a credit card and deep in debt running paid advertising on YouTube.
Affiliates who use paid advertising do so carefully at first. Only when they have a consistently profitable campaign do they increase their budget. Super affiliates often spend tens of thousands of dollars a day on their marketing campaigns. But they have done their research starting from $10 a day and slowly built up when they know they have a profitable campaign.
Beginner affiliates can get impatient and think throwing money at the problem is the solution! But Google, or any marketing platform will take your money regardless of whether you make any sales or not! So beware!
Affiliate Mistakes
There’s a lot to learn as an affiliate before you can even make your first sale. One of the main problems is getting stuck in learning mode. It can become a bit of an addiction watching videos and learning new skills. But learning doesn’t move your business forward. You also need to implement what you’ve learned as you go, otherwise you’ll find months have passed and you haven’t moved your online business forward.
See also 23 affiliate marketing mistakes newbie affiliates should avoid.
I hope this affiliate marketing for dummies pdf has given you some insights into the affiliate marketing business. Hopefully it will better prepare you for your affiliate journey if you choose to accept this mission!
If so, you can start by clicking this link to access a free video series.