What are something beginner affiliate marketers need to know, learn and do to give themselves the best odds at making this thing work?
As many can agree, even though affiliate marketing seems simple in theory, it is not as easy as it is made out to be.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
In 7 years of doing affiliate marketing, I’ve come to realize that the reasons many beginners struggle is actually a very short list of issues that come from not knowing.
Today, I want to share with you 10 things beginner affiliates need to learn to hopefully make the start-up phase a bit less intimidating and a little bit less “easy to achieve”.
If you are just getting started, I’m going to share with you 5 things you should be focusing on, and 5 things you should not be focusing on.
It will be a quick read, but I promise you these 10 “ideas” have the potential to change how you approach affiliate marketing and just might give you that “ah-ha” moment you’ve been waiting for.
Let’s get started…
5 Things To Focus On When You’re A New Affiliate Marketer
Learning
As a beginner, the best thing you should be focusing on right now is learning.
One major reason why many fail is the fact they go into affiliate marketing expecting to get rich quick but having no idea what needs to be done.
While yes, affiliate marketing can make you a lot of money (it can even make you rich), it does not happen quickly and that success comes after you have learned what it takes to make it.
I won’t go through the steps on how to become a successful affiliate marketer as I have plenty of guides that talk about that but;
If you really want to make money with affiliate marketing, dedicate yourself to learning.
I have been doing affiliate marketing for 7 years and to this day, I still learn something new (nearly) every day.
Simplicity
Also, I see a lot of beginners over-complicating things, which is terrible.
Affiliate marketing really is simple, but it’s made difficult by (not learning how to do it) and by over-complicating things.
Also, when it comes to building your affiliate website; keep it simple.
You do not need a fancy website, you do not need to “wow” readers with your visuals, you need to “wow” readers with your helpful content and with the product you are recommending to them.
Traffic
The only thing you need to focus on as a beginner affiliate marketing is traffic – that’s it.
Traffic is what makes the money so if you’re wasting time on other BS (such as how your website looks) you are not moving in the right direction.
How do you get traffic?
It’s easy…
Create Content
Content is how you will be making money.
Yes, it does involve you writing content for people to read (but don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds).
Your content will rank on Google, your content will get shared on social media and all that traffic has the potential to make you money.
The more content you create, the more traffic.
So, if you’re a beginner affiliate marketer reading this and you have a website up and ready, stop reading and go create a new piece of content.
“A new blog post” is always my go-to task to grow my business when all else is done and it just works.
I have over 300+ blog posts on this website and most of them (not all) bring in traffic on a daily basis and make me money.
Email Marketing
One last thing I want to mention before we move on to what you should NOT be focusing on is – email marketing.
Email marketing allows you to capture a reader’s contact information and thus; you will be building a list of highly engaged readers that you can get in touch with “whenever you want”.
As they say, “the money is in the list” so I even if you don’t have a lot of traffic coming to your website, do not be afraid to add a simple sign up for and start collecting emails (check out Aweber for that).
The more you have the better.
If you have an email list of 10,000 subscribers, I promise you will never have to work another day in your life.
5 Things You Should Not Focus On
Banner Ads
I come across a lot of affiliate websites which are using banner ads to sell their product, and there’s an issue with that.
If the banner is for the product you are promoting, then ok – you should try the banner, however;
If you are doing affiliate marketing, do not try to make money with a service such as Google Adsense.
AdSense will display adds on your website that are not relevant to what you are selling and in return, they pay you pennies.
If you have an affiliate website and it’s ranking for good keywords bringing in high-quality traffic, then your best bet is to get that traffic to convert for your affiliate offers, and not click through some banner to go to another website.
Sure Adsense may earn you some income, but in the long run, you’ll find that you’ve been losing traffic (and money) in exchange for a few $$ a month.
Totally not worth it.
Money
What if I told you that your focus should not be on making money?
What you need to focus on, is traffic (which only comes from content).
When you are starting out, you’d be putting in a lot of work and making next to nothing in return, which could really put a dent in your motivation to build an affiliate website.
Do not focus on money until you are 6-12 months in.
Doing so before that will signal affiliate marketing is not worth it, but – if you focus on getting (the right) traffic, the money will come eventually and you’d be surprised to see your affiliate website earning you a full-time income sooner rather than later.
Short-Term Traffic
Also, since we are talking about traffic – do no let the day-to-day traffic count get to your head.
A new website has wild fluctuations in traffic and that is because Google is testing things out and seeing where to place you.
One day you may have 50 visitors, the other day 0 – it’s just how it is.
With time, and with patience, your traffic will gradually increase and it will hold so again, give it time and do not drive yourself crazy over-analyzing why you got 0 clicks today when you had 10 yesterday.
This should only be an issue when you start hitting that 500 to 1000 clicks a day milestone.
Other Affiliates
Do not focus on other affiliates.
If Joe is making $10,000 and you are not, that is irrelevant.
Never compare yourself to others in life, or in affiliate marketing.
What another affiliate earns has a lot of variables that are out of your control, you can only control what you earn.
Do not feel discouraged because this affiliate makes X and the other affiliate makes Y.
Focus on your website, on your rankings, on your content, and on your earnings.
Shiny Objects Syndrome
Last but not least, we also have to mention the fact that many beginner affiliate marketers simply want to make money online, and are not particularly interested in affiliate marketing.
This will lead to a lot of confusion and a lot of “shiny object syndrome”:
- “Maybe I should try dropshipping”
- “Maybe I should create a course”
- “Maybe I should build a personal brand”
- “Maybe I should build a marketing agency”
All that is just confusion and a lack of focus and yes, it will hinder your chances of ever making something worthwhile happen with your affiliate business.
How To Get Started In Affiliate Marketing In A Scam-Free, Easy-To-Understand Environment
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