If you’re an affiliate marketing newbie here’s a few things you should know. When I started out as an affiliate, I made a lot of mistakes. I got distracted, trapped in learning mode, became a “busy fool” and wasted time. As an affiliate you need to focus on doing the work which is the most productive use of your time. Without sales you don’t make any money so it’s vitally important to keep your focus right and move your online business forward.
That being said, it’s also important to get the right knowledge before setting out too. If you jump straight in, you can also waste a lot of time and effort like I did! Getting the right knowledge upfront can save you heaps of wasted time, money and energy.
Affiliate Marketing Newbie – Use Recurring Commissions
For starters you should definitely use recurring commission affiliate programs. Most affiliate programs don’t offer recurring commissions. If you rush into affiliate marketing like I did, you might be tempted to join the first affiliate program you hear of. For me this was Amazon and eBay’s partner programs. But unfortunately these aren’t the best payers.
Amazon affiliates only earn 3-11% commissions on sales they make from Amazon. If you’re going to be doing a lot of work finding customers for products, don’t you want to be paid the most you possibly can? Amazon products too are difficult to sell with paid marketing.
This means you’ll need to create a lot of content in order to get traction. With recurring income products you only need to make a couple of sales and you’ve got a recurring monthly income. A couple of sales from Amazon will only make you a few pence/cents depending what the products are.
High Ticket Products
If you’re an affiliate marketing newbie you may not have heard of high ticket affiliate products. With high ticket products you can earn a lot more than the standard product you might promote. Clickbank.com is another starting point for affiliate marketers. However, most Clickbank products only pay once and products are generally valued at around the $100 mark. With a 40% commission (much more than physical products) you’ll make around $40 on a sale. If you do use Clickbank, use a website called CBengine which will help you find recurring commission products.
High ticket products give you a number of advantages when learning affiliate marketing. For starters you’ll earn a lot more for a sale. High ticket items are generally priced upwards of $500. With digital products you’ll earn more commissions than for physical products, too. See highest paying affiliate programs list for some examples. Digital products are no more difficult to sell than physical products. You’re going to learn a skill either way when you learn affiliate marketing; so why not learn how to earn the most from your time?
Affiliate Marketing Newbie – Multi-Tier Sales
A multi-tier commission is a commission you get for sales made by your referrals within a program. Most programs don’t offer multi-tier commissions and it’s not essential to have them. However, if you’re going to be doing affiliate marketing for a living, it’s worth a mention.
Within the SFM Digital Business system you can opt to position yourself at the top of the business structure. This means becoming a partner member of the company. If you decide to take this step, you can access multi-tier commissions and earn from sales made by your members. See best two-tier affiliate programs with recurring commissions.
Here’s what the commission structure looks like:
Affiliate Marketing Newbie – Marketing
Every affiliate marketing newbie struggles with their marketing. It’s almost like a rights of passage! Whatever marketing you decide on be prepared for a certain amount of failure! But don’t call it failure – call it learning or “failing forwards”. Without failure you’ll never learn anything. Only by trying and failing do you learn what doesn’t work so you can learn to focus on what does work.
As a child you learned how to walk. You probably fell over a thousand times but you kept getting up and eventually you learned to walk. As an affiliate marketing newbie it’s much the same with learning marketing. You’ll want to give up a thousand times and it’s painful and traumatic when nothing seems to work. But those who succeed in affiliate marketing keep this analogy in mind and keep getting up!
Whether you’re a blogger, use paid marketing or social media, keep at it and gain experience by doing. Blogging and organic marketing will take a longer period of time than if you’re using paid marketing, though. Using paid marketing can be costly while you’re learning, but eventually you’ll have a more easily scalable business if you use it. However, you’ll need a good business model such as the SFM Digital Business System in order to use some of the more expensive marketing platforms.
With cheaper affiliate programs which offer lower levels of commission, it’s much more difficult using paid marketing and making a profit, so you’ll need to use cheaper or free marketing strategies.
Get Help
It’s worth investing in getting help and support if you’re an affiliate marketing newbie. It’s one of the most important things you can do for your future and affiliate business. Without help and support, there’s a million rabbit holes you can venture down as you trial all the multiple methods and strategies out there. Before I found an online training program and community of support, I jumped from course to course without really having a clear direction. Each course led me down a different route. I wasted years on strategies which simply didn’t work.
Access an online training platform and community through this free video series.
