If being an affiliate marketer is something you’re already engaged in or are a complete beginner to, let me tell you, these 10 killer tips are going to save you!
Affiliate marketing has been my main business for over a decade and I’m here to tell you that you haven amazing opportunity before you if you know how awesome it is and how to tap into it. The following tips I have are really going to propel you forward this year and if you have any personal ones you wish to add, leave a comment below.
First, my proof:
Now let’s start this list of affiliate marketing tips:
I promise you that if you’re a beginner, you’re going to get a lot of value out these tips:
Affiliate Marketing Tip 1:
If you’re a TOTAL beginner:
Read this definitive guide on affiliate marketing here if you are NOT familiar with this business. It explains literally everything I know about affiliate marketing and how I made $1 million in sales from it.
Affiliate Marketing Tip 2:
This business is ever expanding. Absolutely ANYONE can enter the affiliate marketing world THIS day and become successful. There is no such thing as “too much competition”. You are NOT entering this game late, believe me.
There is no such thing as not enough space on the internet, it’s ever growing and once you admit this FACT to yourself (that’s the tip) , then it will drive the ambition to push you to become one of the many people in this industry who have made it big. And here’s a list of 10 incredible success stories in this business.
Affiliate Marketing Tip 3:Â
The best way to get started is to select your own personal niche topic and not a topic you believe to be a profitable one. Here is a pivotal article on niches I recommend if you’re new to them. After you read it, pick one, then continue on with the other parts of this article. And if you need ideas, how does a list of 100 affiliate marketing niches to get you started sound?
Niche topics are without a doubt the MAIN starting point for MOST affiliate marketers out there, including myself. The idea of selecting a specific group of people and giving them specific solutions to their problems continues to be the KEY to success.
Everything that comes afterwards which is getting them to your website/videos/social channels is secondary, but it actually easy to do when you have that main bulls eye prepped (the niche chosen).
Affiliate Marketing Tip 4:Â
Understand that after the niche, keywords and content creation is your next most important component. Find niche keywords, write and/or create video/social content based on the keywords and go from there. Build your website, grow your video (YouTube channels), grow your Instagram account with the niche audience.
- The keywords help the niche audience find you.
- The content creation helps the website grow and get the niche audience more and more exposed.
- More content creation through targeted keywords (and hashtags if you’re using Instagram/Twitter) is the way to combine these elements together to get traffic to your channel/website/page.
If you’re building an affiliate marketing business that sells solutions on getting six pack abs, utilize these tips as follows (use your particular niche in accordance with this example):
Find keywords on six pack abs, the more you find the better. Review exercise equipment, fat burning pills, topics and FAQ’s on the subject and break down each particular product/topic into it’s own blog posts/articles/YouTube videos where you answer this.
Make sure to attach a keyword to every single product and topic you review and make sure it gets searches. Use this keyword tool to help you.
Never stop growing your page/channel using this strategy. The more content you create like this = the more exposure that content gets and it’s all exposure to the niche audience you want to have.
Affiliate Marketing Tip 5:
Decide which route is best to grow your business. There’s many choices, but make sure 90% of your attention is focused on whichever will help the online business grow.
Here are your options and my recommendations:
SEO: Arguably this is the best starting choice/point for affiliate marketers. Despite social channels growing a lot, SEO and making websites rank on search engines continues to be the primary way most affiliate marketers make money.
If you write in a decent way and up, make a website, and write content in the form of articles using the tips in #4 (keywords, content).
YouTube: This is basically video content creation. The same idea applies, but it is better meant for people who are good speakers and can make OK and up videos about whatever niche subject they chose.
Entire businesses can be made on this as YouTube (like this affiliate marketing case study) has many opportunities and auto pilot business tools to help you make videos, grow a following and go from there.
In the case of content creation, let me use the six pack example, just apply the recommendations in #4, but in a video format. Find topics on six pack abs, make videos on every single topic you find and explain things. Grow the channel and as for money…
You can either funnel the traffic to a website you made or affiliate offers of your choosing. Direct linking in YouTube videos works very well (I have a few case studies here where I did affiliate marketing with YouTube and how this earned me money).
And I’ve got my own guide to making money with YouTube here if this is the route you want to go.
Instagram: IG is a social channel I’ve come to appreciate a lot, but not every single niche you choose is ideal for it. My understanding is that more visual niches are better to promote on IG.
For example: Raising dogs, getting six pack abs, exercise types, nature exploration, raising animals, things that people crave to SEE, not necessarily READ. If they crave reading it, then focus on SEO.
And if IG is the way to go for you, grow your IG page via hashtags using the same understanding as keywords. Here’s a tutorial on Instagram Hashtags.
Pinterest: If you decide to go an IG route, consider adding this social network to your business as well. It has basically the same idea behind it, except there’s no hashtags.Â
Paid ads such as Bing/Adwords and FB marketing. If you have a budget, this is an additional bonus I’d recommend if you go the SEO route as it’s great for getting you extra, targeted traffic in DROVES.Â
For affiliate marketers, paid ads are a must in many cases. Here is a tutorial for you.
Facebook ads/fan pages and more. I’m going to tell you this right now: If you’re running a local business or a website/channel where your name/website/brand name is known, make a Fan Page and share your content there, it will help it grow further.
These are 6 of the biggest drivers of traffic and profits and for affiliate marketers, they are the drivers of success. In my case, 90% of my success has been through SEO while the other 9% is paid traffic and the other 1% is miscellaneous stuff.
But again, pick one main option and STICK to it using the main idea of creating content through targeted keywords/hashtags.Â
Affiliate Marketing Tip 6:
Stay extremely consistent. I promise you that if you create a new article, targeting a new keyword, every single day and/or create a new IG post, targeting good hashtags every single day, your website/channel will grow. It may not be a huge growth, but it will go in that direction.
Consistency is one of the toughest things for affiliate marketers to maintain because frankly it takes a lot of hard work to do and most of them want fast results, which is a mistake that leads most who try this stuff into ruin.
1) You’re not just going to create a website with 100’s of articles in days that have huge rankings.
2) You’re not just going to create a YouTube channel with tons of videos that get tons of views in an instant.
3) You’re not just going to make a huge IG/Pinterest channel in an instant.
All of that comes in time and that is also in GREAT part due to the consistency of the person who works on it.
Affiliate Marketing Tip 7:Â
Set a quota.Â
Using the above recommendations, set a quota on how many videos/articles/IG posts you wish to make within a year and make sure to not undersell this. Go into the 100’s, 100’s of articles, 100’s of IG posts, dozens of YouTube videos, ect…
Make it happen because with this, you will be executing the recommendation I gave about growing your channel, growing your site and growing your business.
My final thoughts:
All of these tips will really help you grow a business, but I did miss one thing and that was about the money…
So here’s a final tip:
Pick an affiliate product that will make your audience happy, and one preferably that you have tried and loved using. Do not mistake this for something that JUST pays you a lot and you believe it’ll help people, KNOW it will help people, particularly your niche audience.Â
Do not worry about promoting just 1 thing or many. If you find 1 good promotion, set your whole business around promoting that 1 thing. I do that with great success and believe me, you can market an unlimited amount of products to an unlimited amount of people and make an unlimited amount of money off just promoting 1 thing.Â
And when you choose that 1 promotion (or several if that’s the case), make the CASE for why it’s awesome so the niche audience will love it.
And remember this:
A happy niche audience that gets their solutions makes a happy affiliate marketer.
Update: Want to get even more awesome affiliate marketing tips?
I have a website, it’s called HelpingHandAffiliate.com and it literally was designed for people seeking help with this business. Check that site out if you need more resources and help on this subject.
Great article. All of your 10 tips are true and although they are all simple and easy to understand for everyone, it’s not easy to do. I feel most difficult thing is consistency.
You have to be really disciplined to continue growing and expanding your niche website. It’s on each individual to keep themselves going and I feel your article is a good overview of what type of work one will be doing each day in order to succeed.
Best,
Katya
You are right Katya. While my 10 tips are pragmatic, they are at the start difficult to do for beginners, but like you said with that discipline, they can become easier to accomplish.
Hey man really good article, you put a lot of good information in each one. I am still trying to learn as much as I can, as I go. I had to put all of my focus on my main site and forget about my second one for now until I get to a point. I may change my niche for my second site later down the road, I also use all the social medias including Instagram.
Hi Justin, you did the right thing focusing on one site. Until you have that 1 site which brings in the good money and the priceless experience which comes with it, do not divide up your attention and effort on multiple sites.Â
Hi Vitaliy,
Wow, some golden nuggets here for anyone trying to get in on the affiliate marketing route. I loved your tips and even found that I am not using some of them.
I think you are right in saying any niche or market is not saturated, there is no such thing in life. This is the one thing that holds people back. What do you think?
I believe every niche has something to offer it just depends on how you are going to approach this, and that is where I feel the key is “the approach”. Sometimes we get lost in the process and stop.
Great advice, I have bookmarked your website so that I can follow your advice.
Thanks,
Khayyam
Hi Khayyam, yes I agree that people who believe a niche market is too saturated set themselves up to fail. The fact of the matter is that it isn’t the niche that has something to offer as much as it is the person experienced in the niche who can offer that niche audience something of value and as a result can defeat the competition.Â
Wow. I could spend hours on your website. I’ve looked a lot of passive income opportunities over the years and even gotten involved in some. Usually that meant them getting rich and me saying good-bye to some cash. Most are selling “get rich quick” ideas and I know there’s really no such thing. The step-by-step approach you outline here seems more down to earth and practical. I have a hobby I’ve been passionate about for years and I always wanted to build a website. How long would you say it takes to build an audience?
Hi Joel, I assume when you say audience, you mean traffic to the site. It depends on the niche and how often you blog. You could actually start seeing decent traffic numbers within a month as long as you blog actively (daily), and write your blog posts on fairly low competition keywords.Â
I love your article on affiliate marketing tips, I agree that it is a very lucrative market and just about anyone can get started! Just wondering what would be your recommendation for social channels, as far as affiliate marketing goes which one would you start with? I’ve heard that Pinterest is the best for affiliate marketing, would you agree with this?
I have to be honest in that my knowledge in marketing on Pinterest is limited Nekko, although from what I have studied regarding it (I purchased and read a few programs), it’s good. Ideally though, affiliate marketers should focus on marketing on search engines as most buyer traffic is there.Â
Thanks for this great article! I particularly like Tip 5. I try to grow my reach using SEO as I find the market saturated with other affiliates in the same niche as me.
However, I do distribute my posts to Social Media too. What advice would you give someone who still thinks that the market is too narrow?
Thanks
Jackie
Do you mean narrow or too saturated Jackie? I think you meant saturated given the context of the question, so here is my advice. Do not let a niche topic you love stop you from making an online business from it just because there are “too many affiliates” in it too. I guarantee you, 99% of them aren’t working hard enough to be a problem for your site.
Hi Vitaliy,
Yes. I meant saturated. It looks ‘narrow’ from my viewpoint ?
I will check out your article. Thanks for the encouragement.
Jackie
My pleasure Jackie! Do let me know if that article helped you and/or if you have any further questions 🙂
That’s one thing I’m always worried about, being too late at doing something, thinking maybe this stuff is already outdated. When you look at how fast technology evolves, I think it’s a normal feeling.
But it’s true though, like I’ve read somewhere, more and more people are buying online, and there is also more companies launching their affiliate programs, while looking for affiliates. So affiliate marketing is not dead indeed.
Finding a niche, like you mentioned in tip #3, was one of the hardest things to do for me. But I like your article on the subject related to niches. That’s what I had to do. Sit there and think of the thing I enjoy the most to do, that I am already spending a lot of time doing.
It is normal to feel overwhelming competition in any new business venture you enter, but believe me, every single market has holes and opportunities for new business ideas to capitalize on and build off. If that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t have a high ranking website in a competitive niche topic like making money online, but I do and have consistently been able to repeat this process with other competitive niches.Â
I hear that a lot of affiliate marketers are moving towards Facebook groups as oppose to having traditional Facebook pages because of lack of engagement. Do you find truth in that?
Also, a lot of high authority affiliate marketers are telling me to build an email list as soon as possible? Am I able to still be successful without one?
Hi Jessie, there are numerous FB groups out there that have a community and/or popular marketers. The idea there is like joining a big club. Many of those places promote to one another and share their lists so joining them is like having access to a friend with a big network. It works, but I typically find the programs that come out of these places to be very low quality.Â
I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. If you become an authority in your own niche, find other FB pages where you can connect and share value, you can totally grow a good business from that, but my point was more related to the affiliate marketers. There’s really a lot of bad stuff promoted through those groups.
As for the second question, no you do not need to build an email list. It is a very good thing to have and manage, but it is not the only way to go, my site makes a full time income without it only because I follow this program’s advice on the matter.Â
List building is ALWAYS an option, but it doesn’t have any weight if you have no website, no traffic and no niche topic targeted. Once you get that in order, then I’d worry about building an email list.
Thanks for all the great tips! But, what about if you have no idea which niche to choose? I am having a hard time deciding on something that I would stay interested in and know enough about to get started. Any tips for that?
Also, where do you find programs or products to promote? Is there a centralized place to find what you need for your business?
Hi Leah, use this tutorial for niches, it should help you out. As for the promotional question, there’s a few central places I typically focus on:Â Amazon, Clickbank, Wealthy Affiliate. I find most if not all my promotions are there and those programs are solid to work with.
Hello Vitaliy!
You give great affiliate marketing advice. The one nugget that sticks out to me when reading this article is “consistency”. Many people online make it look like affiliate marketing is an action then a jackpot, but you’ve described the success in affiliate marketing as a journey. I think the advice to focus on promoting one product is great advice especially for starting out. Now that I’ve been learning about affiliate marketing and the testing, trial and error, and gauging of metrics, I can completely understand how choosing one product/service to promote would make it much easier to hone in and get results. Great article! I couldn’t agree more with the things you’ve mentioned.
Hi Tiffany, thank you very much! Promoting one product in endless volume, but through a point of view that in your niche market, there is only one choice for them, will really leave doubt out of the mind of the reader and help that sale happen easier.
Hi Vitaliy, really nice post here once again. 🙂 and super interesting, since I have a blog myself. I would love to see a post by you about how to successfully build a facebook page or group. Since you seem to know a lot about social media. I also have another question. I have read in a post from a Google executive that they will focus the algorithm more on long (2000+ word) posts that are high quality, than on consistent posts that come out mediocre or under 1000 words. What do you think about that?
For social media I’m actually not as experienced as you may think Aaron, but I do have a post on fan pages here. As for the Google thing you read, I’m not surprised, I’ve been saying that longer, high quality content is going to be the continuing trend moving forward and it’s always been this way.
It’s reassuring to hear you say 2018 will be a great year for affiliates – I’m just now starting out, but with these tips in mind I can really get going. I do think consistency is the hardest part, but the content creation for each social media platform is also daunting. It was great to hear your perspective on each social media platforms and I agree, I’ve come to love Instagram too. I’m also trying to get past the hope of making it BIG quickly – it is difficult and a lot of work!! Thanks for the article. Do you think affiliate marketing is getting more difficult though? I know you said there’s enough “internet” to go around, but I don’t know. It seems a lot more people are involved!
A lot more people are getting involved with it, but because there is a lot of hard work, 99% drop out of this. This has always been the case ever since I started and even I dropped out a few times.Â
As for your question on social media sharing and it being hard, it’s actually not, all you need to do is create new content, then share the link across whichever social media platform you’re working with. It shouldn’t take more than 1 minute in most cases to share across multiple networks.
You’ve hit the nail on the head when it comes to tip number 6 which is consistency. I have all the right tools I need as an affiliate marketer and have been doing the right keyword research and creating content but sometimes, I get lazy and unmotivated and I think that is the most hardest part where most affiliate marketers tend to quit and give up. What would you suggest to someone who has lost their consistency in writing & publishing content?.
Hi Rab, I would say that when you reach a point where a website is making money, then you stop being consistent, that will absolutely refuel you to go back to writing, but if you haven’t gone through the first stage and don’t know what that feeling is, then my best advice would be to analyze what other options you have in life besides affiliate marketing and if those other choices don’t make you happy, push your ambition into affiliate marketing and see what it’ll be like the day your site becomes profitable and let that motivate you to be consistent.
Hi, Vitaliy. Thanks for the tips. They make great sense for anyone interested in affiliate marketing, which I am. I especially liked tip #2, the one with the list of 10 successful affiliate marketers. I really like to read about successful people in the field that I’m trying to become successful in, because the stories give me inspiration.
I think if anyone, including me, follows your tips religiously, they can’t help but become successful.
Thank you Grant! Those 10 people and myself really succeeded by following Wealthy Affiliate’s guidelines. They consistently make success stories, so following their training will lead you to the same outcome.
Awesome article! I have been in the affiliate marketing space for just over a year and am finally beginning to get some results. This article has motivated me even further to keep up the consistent action (as you mentioned) and double down on the channels that are working for my sites. I really hope to apply some of the key points you mentioned in my business for 2018 with hopes of having a big growth year! 🙂
So thanks again for the great information, tips, and most importantly inspiration!
Cheers!
The fact that you’re getting results with your affiliate marketing efforts already shows you’re doing the right thing David. I would say in this case, keep increasing the level of effort that got you to this point, it will only continue to help fuel your site’s growth.
Very good article on how to get started! You are right about niches and keywords! They are so important. If you get that wrong, it will be hard to make any headway with a site. I hadn’t really considered PPC but I like your thinking! Thanks for the detailed article! All the best, Alanna
PPC has done a lot for me over the years Alanna, you’d be missing a huge piece of business if you didn’t utilize it!
Great tips! I am debating on getting started in affiliate marketing and there is so much information out there to decipher. I am glad that I came across your site, these tips will give me something to consider while I figure out how I want to pursue this journey.
Knowing that this business isn’t overcrowded is very reassuring as well! Thanks for writing this and making my concerns seem minimal now.
Its “overcrowded” in the sense that there’s a lot of people interested in doing it and even a lot who start it, but very few work hard enough to reach the point where their business makes good money, so in that regard, this industry is still wide open for new people to come in and make good money.
Vitaly, This article, coming from such a successful online business entrepreneur such as you are truly should be considered as required reading for newbies who seek to learn how to grow an online business from the ground up.
Within the 10 tips that you included in this article, I was interested in the statement revolving around tip #5. Depending on the niche selected, the business owner should concentrate on developing strategies – whether it be in SEO used in article content creation, (relevant keywords), video creation, Instagram social media promotion, PPC marketing, etc.
The correct strategy to allow the owner to attract targeted traffic would depend on the niche selected. Not all strategies that you mentioned would work equally well for every niche. You made it a point to make the fact abundantly clear.
The link that you included which re-directed to 10 very successful entrepreneurs, (all members of course of Wealthy Affiliate) was also motivating as you mentioned what has made all of these individuals successful in each of their businesses.
Jeff
Thank you as always for the kind words Jeff!
Hey! I’m glad I decided to read your article. I am a web developer/marketer for almost 20 years now. I’ve done my fair share of marketing and I have to say sometimes a small reminder about consistency is all it takes!
Consistency is the key! Unfortunately this is extremely hard for me on many things, even though I have reaped the benefits from being consistent. As I read, you emphasized how affiliate marketing is still wide open and its still not too late to build something lucrative, a light bulb went off in my head. Actually the same one from years ago when I started my first blog. I can feed my OCD with a new blog or marketing campaign every day! So thanks for that 🙂
No problem! Very often success can lead to people becoming less consistent because they will they can reap the rewards forever, but this leads to a decline in the business which basically leads back to the person reigniting their will to work harder. It has happened to me numerous times.
So very true. I really like items 6 and 7 regarding consistency and making a quota. Consistency is a real key. It isn’t about putting a hard day in and then laying back and relaxing. I haven’t set specific quota’s for myself but it is a great idea I am going to implement.
Thanks for the great read.
No problem Kevin, good point on consistency being used everyday, not every once in awhile.
Hello,
I can agree that quality content is very important. I have some problems with my content as English is not my mother tongue. I know it enough to be able to write content that people will understand but on some points it is with broken English. I am struggling to make my content good in English. Will I have problems with search engines like Google if a page is not perfect in English and do you know some good but free grammar check page which I can use to check content of my web site?
Thanks in advance,
Uros
Hi Uros, I have to say, reading your comment, you actually have better English writing skills than most people I know. I don’t know if you used a grammar tool to do this, but if this is how you write naturally, you’re going to do fine in the search engines.
As long as it makes sense for the reader and they take the time to read it and then comment on it, Google will be totally fine with this. Of course, the goal is to aim to make sure the grammar and spelling are fine. The only 2 tools I can think of to help you with this issue are Microsoft Word (if you have an Apple computer, use a program that’s like it) or the site Grammarly, which is free 🙂
Another very good reminder of what internet business and specifically affiliate marketing is about. If you only put in minimal or marginal efforts to grow your website, you will have a hard time being successful. The importance of adding quality content on a weekly or better yet daily basis, cannot be emphasised enough. Does that mean hard work? You bet it does. That is why beginners should start with only one website and not try and overdo it from the outset.
Well said Jerry! I could not agree more or even add more to what you said 🙂
Excellent article. I’m new to blogging and you’ve given me so many valuable tips and links to back them up.
You write that you should create new content every day. Is that too much content?
Will people get tired of seeing you promote your new posts across all the different social media platforms?
Also will you get burnt out too quickly?
Anyway,I love the information on relevant hashtags, that’s something I’ve always struggled with. Thanks for an informative post!
Hi Niko:
1) There is no such thing as too much content, especially if you consider that high Google rankings require it. I am aiming to pass 1,000 articles on my website this year. The more GOOD content you write, the more your website will grow, it’s that simple. So write as much as possible.
2) No, it’s actually the other way around. A good website which attracts a hungry niche audience will generally have that audience CRAVE good content and there’s never enough for them. Look at big YouTube channels for example, do you see how often creators put up new videos? They often make several of them every single day and that’s because their subscribers want more and more. You should apply the same concept to website rankings.
Furthermore, a website which stops producing good content will eventually die out in the rankings and lose it’s business, so new, fresh content being posted is one of the best ways for it to survive and remain relevant.
3) It depends on the niche topic man. Good, popular niches generally don’t run out of topics to write about. People who aren’t interested in their niche are usually those who “burn themselves out” because they quickly run out of ideas. Like I said before, I aiming to reach 1,000 articles this year. That’s 1,000 different topics on making money online I found. I’m sure you can do this too! Here are the strategies I use.
Hope this helps.
Vitaliy
Hi! I love these tips! I wish I had someone to tell me these things in the beginning of the journey of affiliate marketing. Instead I let them sell me on the fluff. Making money fast! When in fact it takes time. And you have to be consistent to be successful. Having a solution that will help me be successful has been a help to me thus far. Although, I have not reached the success I wish too, I do believe I will get there.
You’ll get there Jaime, I have no doubt! The fact that you embraced that this business is not a get rich quick scheme is already the main stepping stone you took to succeed. It took me years to figure that out!
Hi, thank you for some enlightening information. As a new affiliate marketer I know about keywords, but wanted to know more about Instagram and twitter and how they work in marketing and how to use it. Step 5 gives me the information I can start with.
Step 6, I like because it does take time to make content, right now I am wanting to make at least two pages a week.
Two pages a week is not bad, and if your website or social friendly like I said, it would not hurt to try and add Instagram and the other networks to your overall game plan.