step by step Archives - Affiliate Marketing Mentors

How affiliate marketing works step by step:

You join an affiliate program or “partner program” such as Amazon
You get a unique affiliate link to promote – through the program’s dashboard/members area
Learn how to promote your link through a training program – e.g. blogging, list building, paid marketing, social media etc.
Work on your promotion method until you make a sale
Rinse and repeat and learn from your experience

How Affiliate Marketing Works Step By Step – Joining An Affiliate Program

Anyone can join a partner program and access a unique affiliate link which they can then use to promote a certain product or service. Amazon, for example has one of the most popular affiliate programs. To join some programs, you need to have an existing website, or some ability to promote. However, some programs only ask you to set up an account with them and give them some details about yourself.

Clickbank.com is another affiliate “go-to” for many new affiliate marketers. Clickbank offers a huge variety of digital products which anyone can sell through signing up with a Clickbank account and finding a product to promote in Clickbank’s marketplace.

If you already host a website of your own in a particular topic, you can also search for affiliate products related to your existing online presence. Simply search for “{your niche} affiliate program” on a search engine (Google, for example).

Your Unique Affiliate Link

Once you have joined an affiliate program, you can go to your dashboard or the members area and browse sales materials. Most affiliate programs will at least have an area where you can collect affiliate links to send people directly to specific products or to a main website where there’s a choice of products. Some will also offer sales materials such as banners and videos which you can use in your promotion methods.

Access a free video series to learn more about affiliate marketing here.

An affiliate link can look a little messy and by itself isn’t immediately appealing. But you can link in text and use images and banners in your copy to make clicking on a link more appealing.

This is where many new affiliates struggle. With access to an affiliate program and your own unique affiliate link, the next step is to learn a strategy for promoting it in a way which attract the right audience so you can actually make sales online and earn commissions based on those sales. This is the most difficult part of affiliate marketing so it’s the one which requires the most of your attention. It’s well worth joining a program which can give you that training. Access training here.

How Affiliate Marketing Works Step By Step: Learning How To Promote Affiliate Products

Product promotion is done by a number of different methods. You can choose any given strategy or use a combination of many. most successful affiliates pick a single strategy first and focus on it for long enough to break through and start generating sales. This can take weeks, months or even years depending on your marketing strategy. Here’s a few of the most common strategies used by affiliate marketers:

Blogging and V’logging – writing content and uploading video content are two simple and organic strategies. They take time and effort but are cheaper than using paid marketing. See niche blogging for profit.
Paid marketing – many affiliate marketers use paid platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Adwords etc. They either send traffic directly to affiliate products or to their content or into a sales funnel (through a landing page).
Social media marketing – some affiliates use social media platforms without paying for advertising using various methods. See unpaid social media marketing.
List Building – Most successful affiliates will build an email list of subscribers and follow up with automated messages to help them promote affiliate products. See the power of email marketing.

Join a program to help with this step here.

Work On Your Promotion Method Until You Make A Sale (However Long It Takes!)

Depending on the promotion method you choose, it can take some time before you start seeing results from an affiliate business. If you’re a blogger, it will take considerably longer to generate traction than through using paid marketing and list building, for example. With a large marketing budget, you should expect to see things happening much more quickly compared to free marketing strategies.

Many affiliates get disheartened in this stage and give up, so building on your belief and joining others on the same mission can help a lot.

If you’re building an email list from scratch you’ll need to focus on a strategy to get leads. A major key to success with affiliate marketing is to keep your eye and intention on the bigger picture while working on the small daily tasks you can achieve every day.

A considerable amount of time will be spent in learning mode as you begin. But once you have learned some things, you should spend less time learning and more time implementing. Focus on small wins initially like website hits, getting a marketing campaign going or creating a piece of content regularly. Celebrate small wins and over time with consistency you’ll be celebrating the bigger wins too!

Once you make your first sale congratulations, you’ve now achieved something great. Learn from what you have done and focus on the actions which brought about the best outcomes. See pareto’s principle.

Rinse & Repeat & Learn From Experience

Making your first sale online is a magical experience. However small your commission is consider this a major breakthrough. Many affiliates will give up long before this even happens so if you’ve made it this far pat yourself on the back!

But a single sale isn’t going to replace your main income overnight! Even a high ticket sale will only go so far. Continue to learn and develop your affiliate business and build on what is working for you. There’s often a lot of work to be done in affiliate marketing before you reap the rewards. Consider frequently what a successful affiliate business will do for your life: