Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: What You Need to Know
Here are a few lessons I learned from my years of blogging and affiliate marketing and how you can succeed as an affiliate marketer.
I love blogging and affiliate marketing. It’s what I do for a living. I started my blogging journey many years ago. I started blogging on and off in 2011.
However, I didn’t pursue affiliate marketing until 2018. I didn’t know exactly how to do it right. I thought it was about posting links on blog posts and then waiting for my readers to click and make sales.
Well, it didn’t happen like that. I was fooling myself. I didn’t learn any SEO skills and I didn’t know anything about content marketing. I just wanted to blog and was treating it like a diary.
Blogging has changed throughout the years. Blogging is no longer a form of diary where you write for yourself.
Blogging has turned into a communication platform that is used to inform readers about a certain topic that he/she might interested in.
For example, if you’re here reading this post is probably because you’re new to affiliate marketing and want to learn more about the topic.
Similar to a printed newspaper but in digital format.
In a newspaper, you will find articles written by writers and reporters. And, you will also find some ads too. The ads in the newspaper you can think of as the affiliate links on a blog.
Lessons I Learned from Blogging and Affiliate Marketing :
Lesson #1
You can start for free using platforms such as Blogger, Medium, Vocal Media, WordPress.com, and YouTube.
If you decide to use a platform such as Blogger, then you need to get a domain and legal templates because if you’re planning to make money then your blog is not a hobby but a business.
And, online businesses need legal templates such as Terms and Conditions, Disclaimer, and Privacy.
Lesson #2
It would be best if you learned SEO (even after recent Google Updates).
Lesson #3
Must invest in tools such as Grammarly to make your writing better and trustworthy.
Use affordable keyword search tools such as *Mangools, KeySearch, Ubersuggest, and maybe free Ahrefs Keyword Generator and free Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty.
*affiliate link
Also, use Google’s People Also Ask because that is what people are looking for. Use the questions as a guideline or outline for your blog post.
Lesson #4
Affiliate marketing takes time to learn and to make money. It requires a lot of work before you see any results.
You will spend most of your time finding ways to acquire traffic, promoting your content, and creating digital freebies for opt-in. And not just making content.
You might get tons of clicks but you can‘t control the conversions. It’s up to the reader if he/she wants to buy from you or not. All you can do is nurture your readers. Get them to sign up on your email list and nurture them.
I learned the hard way to never do a hard sell on your email marketing without nurturing your email subscribers.
It’s never an overnight thing. I have blog posts on my website that took a few months before I made my first sale from that post.
For example, I took a course about affiliate marketing and SEO (Stupid Simple SEO) in late 2020 during COVID-19.
I bought it with my unemployment check. I learned it and implemented it what I learned in a blog post that I wrote in late 2021. Made my first ever sale in January 2022.
What You Can Do to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing
Learn everything you need to know about affiliate marketing
Learn about affiliate marketing and how you can make money with affiliate marketing correctly without spamming people.
I suggest watching videos such as this one that teach you about how to get traffic organically, how affiliate marketing works, how to start an email list, and much more.
Get a Digital Platform
Get a digital platform that is easy to use and free so that you can start creating content to attract traffic and leads. You can use platforms such as Blogger, Medium, Vocal Media, YouTube, TikTok, Podia, or even Systeme.io.
The majority of the platforms I mentioned are free to use and you can start with a freemium account. For example, the free platforms are Blogger, Medium, Vocal Media and YouTube.
The freemium accounts you can start using are Podia, Systeme.io, and Beacons.AI All these freemium platforms also offer a website and blogging platform you can use except for Beacons.AI which only offers a free website and not a blog.
With these freemium platforms, you can use to start your email list and create opt-in pages, thank-you pages, and sale funnels.
With Beacons.Ai you can add your affiliate links in the link-in bio instead of the website and it also offers free email marketing.
Learn About Automation
Automation is key in every business because it will save a ton of time and money when you’re a solopreneur.
Running an affiliate marketing business is not easy and it can be time-consuming because a lot of work goes behind the scenes when you’re trying to do everything yourself in the beginning.
*Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products I would use myself; all opinions expressed here are mine. In addition, I may earn a small commission.
You have to do research based on your targeted audience’s interest, create the content, promote it, nurture your email list, etc.
There are automation tools that can help you run your business smoothly.
You will need to eventually hire a team to help your business scale.
Gain Digital Marketing Skills
Learning digital marketing skills is key to success for any business. This also includes affiliate marketing business.
You can learn through this course 72-Hour Challenge by Jonathan Montoya $9 course.
Digital marketing is not the same marketing that they teach in college. Some colleges still have outdated concepts about marketing and haven’t taught students the concepts of digital marketing yet.
You can also learn digital marketing for free on HubSpot Academy and look for a Digital Marketing Certification Course. There are also free certification programs for email marketing, SEO, social media, and digital advertising.
However, you will have to do everything yourself but if you join the 72-Hour Challenge you will learn how to automate everything for your affiliate marketing and how to get leads which is hard when running an affiliate marketing business.
Final Thoughts
Affiliate marketing is an extremely lucrative business. It has gained popularity for more than a decade thanks to the internet, blogging, and social media.
Knowing how to do it the right way and easily with automation can help your affiliate marketing business run smoothly. As a solopreneur, time is money, and running this business alone can be time-consuming.
There is a lot of work involved that goes behind the scenes and it does take time to see any results. As such, finding an easy solution to how to do this smoothly is key.
I wish I learned this sooner. It would avoid me a ton of headaches, and save me money, and time.
If you’re starting, you don’t have to do this alone. You don’t have to do everything yourself when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Try the 72-Hour Challenge and you will be amazed at what it can teach you.
