Welcome to the step by step affiliate marketing for beginners 2019!
Affiliate marketing is a big topic. There’s lots of pitfalls and potential problems which it’s wise to avoid. That’s why I’m writing this step by step affiliate marketing for beginners 2019 article!
I started learning about affiliate marketing over 10 years ago. Back then, there were a lot of courses which I took which taught all kinds of conflicting advice. It was tough and I failed more times than I succeeded.
Each time a course promised more than the last. And each time I was disappointed with my results. Over time and with persistence, I did manage to make a bit of money from:
- Google Adsense – Adsense is a program which lets you monetise a website with adverts.
- Affiliate marketing – Affiliate marketing is a means to earn online by selling other people’s products.
I quickly realised that the money I could make with Google’s Adsense program was so little, that I would need a huge amount of traffic to make it profitable. Affiliate marketing on the other hand, was starting to show its hand. I’d made only one or two sales with affiliate marketing and already my income had overtaken months worth of Google Adsense clicks. This is when I realised that affiliate marketing was the path for me!
Step By Step Affiliate Marketing For Beginners 2019 – Where To Start?
The step by step affiliate marketing for beginners 2019 guide.
When I started with affiliate marketing, it was after a number of other online strategies had failed. I worked on eBay for a while, buying and selling from the auction site for small profits on each sale. I used a strategy I share in my article: how to start a profitable ebay business. Then, I made my own ebooks and attempted to sell them unsuccessfully! I turned to a marketing course to learn how I should sell them, and discovered affiliate marketing.
So, firstly I would say that you should start with a marketing training course which also offers products for you to sell. Access my recommending course here. There’s a few other reasons why I recommend this particular course too, which I’ll share later in this article.
Going the long way round as I did, allowed me to make many mistakes on the way. I don’t want that for you! You can do it far more quickly and easily by using the resources I have found over decades of trying and failing! See my article Affiliate Mistakes Newbie Affiliates Should Avoid!
Step By Step Affiliate Marketing For Beginners 2019 – Marketing – The ‘Heartbeat’ Of A Business
If cash is the ‘blood flow’ of a business, then marketing is its ‘heartbeat’. As an affiliate marketer, you’ll need some sort of marketing to bring people to your products and services. When I started learning affiliate marketing, I was dazzled by all sorts of ‘get rich quick’ schemes which promised some kinds of magic bullet formula for success.
I thought I could press a few buttons, hear a ‘whizz’ and start churning out money! Although there is a tiny element of truth in this fantasy, it’s just not quite like that! There’s work involved! If you do the work, over a long enough period, you can start to see some magic happening in your business!
There’s all kinds of ways to promote your affiliate marketing business. With the right products, you can use paid marketing strategies. This is the fastest way to build a successful online business. But you’ll need some high commission affiliate programs to promote, in order to recoup advertising spend. The more you can afford in terms of product range, the more accessible some of the more expensive advertising platforms are. With smaller, cheaper products, you won’t be able to afford paid marketing.
Step By Step Affiliate Marketing For Beginners 2019 – “Free” Marketing Strategies
I say “free” in quotes because there’s a hefty price in terms of time and effort to pay! Free marketing strategies take time to implement. They are much more difficult to scale up quickly like paid strategies. Free strategies include things like:
- Blogging – Writing content (like this article)
- V’logging – video blogging and uploading to YouTube
- Social media posting – building a following organically any of the platforms
- Article marketing – writing content on article marketing websites
- Back linking – linking to website content from around the web
If you’re on a budget, free strategies might be the way to go. Free marketing strategies can work well, once they start gaining traction. They take much longer though than paid strategies to generate any results. If you keep going long enough, you can start to see some passive income coming from work you’ve done previously. This is quite a wonderful experience!
Paid Marketing Strategies
Paid marketing is the best strategy hands down for a couple of reasons:
- You can determine quite quickly which strategies work and which don’t. (Cut the adverts which aren’t working, and scale those which do).
- You can scale up much more quickly when you know the data
- It’s much faster
- It’s less time consuming
Paid marketing is the best way to go if you’re busy in a job or career, and are looking to escape it! You can run a number of adverts simultaneously and determine which ones produce the best results in your business. Then, cut back those adverts which don’t perform well, and scale up those which do. Over time, by testing and measuring, you can start building traction in your business quite quickly.
With the right products you can use paid marketing platforms like:
- YouTube – One of the most expensive platforms
- Adwords
- Bing
- Other Social Media Platforms
Your Affiliate Marketing Products
Earlier, I mentioned that I would explain more about why I would recommend this training program. One of the most important decisions you’ll make in affiliate marketing is which products to choose to sell. When I started out, I promoted all kinds of products. All I wanted was a sale! Unfortunately, this isn’t a good long term view. You need your affiliate business to build on itself and be profitable.
If I could go back and tell my younger self what I now know, I’d be much better off right now! So, I’m telling you instead!
Physical Products Vs Digital Products
I used Amazon at first because it offered so many products. I still promote the occasional product from Amazon, but it’s not the best strategy for an affiliate. For starters, Amazon only pays affiliates 3-10% commissions on it’s products. This pretty much rules out the possibility of using paid marketing for these kinds of (physical) products.
So you’ll need organic marketing strategies to sell products from Amazon.
Digital products on the other hand offer much more in the way of commissions (40-50%). There’s no postage costs with digital products. They can be accessed directly over the internet. This means the savings can be passed to the affiliate and you also have a global reach.
The best way to build an affiliate business however, (in my opinion) is with a product range. A product range takes advantage of multiple earning strategies. While many digital products only pay you once, a product range pays you multiple times in the way of:
- Subscription products – subscription affiliate programs pay you over and over again for a single sale.
- High Commission Products – High ‘ticket’ products pay out larger than average commissions
- Up-sells – Using a product range with a built in sales team gives you the ability to earn later on from further purchases your referral makes
- Multi-tier sales – You can also earn from sales generated by your team if your product range offers multi-tier sales.
If you’re going to put in months and years of work into your affiliate business, why not choose the best strategies to make the most of your efforts?
Get Started
Take the first step by accessing a free training workshop.