Becoming an affiliate marketer is easy. Simply decide to start doing affiliate marketing.
What is challenging is earning steady affiliate commissions!
I’ll explain how you can make your first commission and how you can make commissions month after month.
The quickest way to become an affiliate marketer is by choosing a niche that you want to be in, finding an affiliate program with a great commission rate related to your niche, and setting up a niche website. Create content on a weekly basis that attracts free targeted traffic.
Learn how I earn a steady income online with one website and recommend other people’s products. Click here to learn how.
How to Become an Affiliate Marketer in Three Steps
I’ve been an affiliate marketer for several years now and the road was not easy! Initially, I tried learning things on my own.
I’d find a so-called “new strategy” and begin implementing it, only to get distracted by another “new strategy”, all of which led me to make zero progress.
Maybe you can relate, many beginner affiliate marketers experience this.
I didn’t find success until I settled on one method of making money online and sticking with it.
That method is niche websites, also referred to as niche blogs.
It doesn’t require much to get started, but there are some key things that you should know.
Step 1 – Choose a Niche That You’ll Enjoy
One of the first things you’ll need to do to get started as an affiliate marketer is to choose a niche.
A niche is simply a group of people interested in the same thing. Some common niches are things like:
- Cooking
- Health & fitness
- Podcasting
- Fashion
- Personal finance
- Cars
- Coffee
- Fishing
The list could go on and on. I like to choose niches that I have a personal interest in. You don’t need to be an expert but you should have enough of an interest that you want to learn more about it.
As a beginner, you will likely jump around a few times before settling on a niche that you really like.
The mistake I made when I started out was choosing a niche based on income potential so I chose golf.
I’ve never played golf, nor do I know anything about it. There was no way I could compete with other golf niche websites.
I didn’t have enough of an interest to learn about golf so needless to say, my golf niche website fizzled out fast.
Besides that, I was bored with the niche! Boredom is the fastest way to give up on your website.
My Recommendation: Choose a niche that you actually enjoy.
Step 2 – Find an Affiliate Program with a Good Commission Rate
After you have chosen your niche, you should start searching for a good affiliate program.
I’d start with thinking about the best product or service that will serve your niche audience.
You can do a Google search for “product” + “affiliate program” and that will return related products that offer affiliate programs.
Also, you can consider major affiliate programs such as Amazon.com, Walmart, and others.
There are also affiliate networks that you can join and search for various affiliate programs. Some of these networks include:
Finding a good affiliate program isn’t difficult as there are plenty of them out there.
My Recommendation: If at all possible, choose an affiliate product that you have personally used. It will be easier to recommend to your audience and your recommendations will be genuine which leads to higher conversions.
Step 3 – Create Content to Attract Free Targeted Web Visitors
Here is the key to success. You have to write new blog posts often. I recommend 2 to 3 times per week if you can with a bare minimum of one post per week.
Creating a new piece of content starts with doing keyword research.
The purpose of keyword research is to find out what types of things people in your niche are searching for.
In order to get traffic, you have to attract the people that would likely buy the affiliate products you’re promoting.
Your content is what will attract these visitors. Write blog posts that help answer the questions and concerns of your target audience.
You should write with intent. Remember that the search engines like Google want to return the most relevant web pages.
When you do keyword research, think about the intent of the web searcher. The more relevant your post is, the higher the chance it will rank well within the search results.
The Easiest Way to Get Started
You don’t need much to get started. One of the nice things about affiliate marketing is that it is one of the lowest-cost online businesses to start.
All that you need is:
- Domain name
- Web hosting
- WordPress installed on your account
Almost any web hosting company can set you up with everything that you need. Bluehost will automatically install WordPress for you with any of their WordPress hosting plans.
Another option is to get everything thing that you need in terms of hosting, plus step-by-step training on how to build a successful niche website.
You can get all of that following the same online training program I used.
Taking action on what I learned is what helped me to transition out of a full-time retail job to working on my website full-time.
Closing Thoughts On How to Become an Affiliate Marketer
Creating a steady income as an affiliate marketer will require consistent effort. Don’t expect to earn commissions if you only create a new piece of content once every few months.
You have to be consistent and post at least 1 to 2 times per week (2 – 3 times being even better.)
A niche website really is one of the best ways to promote affiliate products and earn affiliate commissions.
Discover how I went from zero to a steady income online using one website and one affiliate program. Click here to learn how.
