Top 11 Affiliate Marketing Tips For Beginners: Full Guide (2024)
Many people are tired of the traditional way of living life, and more are starting to look for other ways to make an income. People tend to open their eyes to affiliate marketing since it’s a pretty beginner-friendly business model.
This leads to the affiliate marketing space becoming more and more competitive. Do you want to become an affiliate marketer? Then these 11 tips will help you out.
As the industry keeps developing, so do the strategies to succeed. The things that worked for 5 years ago, don’t work as well today.
In this article, I’m going to share with you 11 of my best affiliate marketing tips for someone just starting out. Keep reading to find out how you can achieve massive results as an affiliate.
Disclaimer: This article may contain affiliate links where I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. For more information read my Disclosure.
What Are The Best Affiliate Marketing Tips For Beginners?
Affiliate marketing can be a highly profitable business model and side hustle if you do it the right way. Too many people get into affiliate marketing and start spamming their links everywhere online, that’s the WRONG way of doing it. If you want to become a successful affiliate, you need to set up a system and find your strategy. Down below you’ll find what I think are the most important factors in succeeding with affiliate marketing.
1. Get Into The Right Mindset
My first tip to anyone who is just starting out with affiliate marketing is to get into the right mindset. Many people get into affiliate marketing because they don’t need to handle customer service, shipping, refunds, or manufacturing. All this is great, but it paints a fake reality. By excluding all of these tasks, it seems easy to succeed with affiliate marketing because you don’t need to do much of the hard work. Here’s where many people get it wrong.
Yes it’s true that you don’t need to handle the customer service and shipping etc. as an affiliate marketer, but that doesn’t mean you can surfe your way to success. Affiliate marketing is won in the long run. You need to patient, because results are not going to come right away. As in any business you need to put in a tremendous amount of work. Especially in affiliate marketing you need to be able to work for a long time without getting much in return. This is the number one reason why people quit affiliate marketing, because they don’t see instant reuslts.
When you’ve got your mindset in the right place, then you’re able to achieve massive results online.
2. Pick a Niche and Audience To Serve
If you’re reading this I assume you know a little bit about affiliate marketing. If you’ve done some research, then you know that everyone tells you to find a niche. This is important because you need to pick an industry where you can promote products as an affiliate. But what niche/industry should you choose?
There are a lot of ”gurus” that tell people to do affiilate marketing in a niche they know and love. It might be a hobby or something you like. I partially agree with that. You need to have some knowledge about the niche you choose, but you don’t need to love it. Most people say ”do what you love”, I want you to ”do what it takes”. When I’m picking a niche, here are the factors I’m looking at:
- Competition: Does the niche you’re looking at have huge competition? If so it means there are money in it, because it shows that a lot of people are interested. It also means you need to work a bit harder to get the results you want.
- Commercial Intent: Do people spend money in this niche, can you find products to promote that people are willing to pay for? If you choose a niche thats focusing on kids, it will be harder to monetize than a niche full of grown ups with their pockets full of money.
- Trends: Whatever niche you have on your mind, enter it in Google Trends and see what results you get. Are your niche dying out of interest, or does look like it’s about to have a phenomenal year ahead? You don’t want to pick a niche that people becomes less and less interested in.
When you’ve chosen a niche, you’ve also found your audience. These are the people you’re going to serve and promote affiliate products too. Ask yourself: what kind of people is this niche made up of? Because in the future you’re going to create content, targeting these specific people.
3. Find Good Paying Affiliate Programs
High-paying affiliate programs are key to making money with affiliate marketing.
Without affiliate programs, you don’t get paid as an affiliate. That’s a fact. This is where you get your affiliate links which you can share with others to make a commission when they make a purchase.
I wish I knew what niche you chose because then I could have helped you find the perfect affiliate program. Anyway, you don’t need to overthink this step, just go ahead a find some products in your niche and see if that company has an affiliate program. If you can’t find an affiliate program to join, then visit Programmorama. They can help you find the best affiliate programs in any niche/industry.
When you’re joining an affiliate program I want you to look at the commission you get for each sale. If it’s below 10% of the product’s value, then I would recommend you find another one, but it’s up to you. My favorite type of affiliate program is those that pay 40% and above in recurring commissions.
4. Make A List: Problems, Questions, Roadblocks & Results
As an affiliate, your job is to connect people with products. Since you don’t deal with customer service, shipping, refunds or manufacturing, your only job is to sell and promote affiliate products. Here are some important things to remember: People buy suff because of emotions, not logic. They’re not buying products because of you, but because of themselves. They believe that your product can help them solve a pain they have, or help them reach the goals they want.
When you’ve comepleted the steps above; found your niche and joined an affiliate program. Your next task is to make a list of Questions, Problems, Roadblocks, and the Results your targeted audience have in mind. After you’ve done that, you’re going to connect all the solutions upto the product you’re promoting (affiliate product).
Example: If my targeted audience were Real Estate agents and I was promoting a product like Clickfunnels, then this is how I would write the list:
Problems Real Estate Agents have: Need more leads, spending to much money on things that don’t work like ads etc.
Questions Real Estate Agents have : How can I get more leads by doing it by myself and not need to hire someone to do it for thousands per month?
Roadblock Real Estate Agents have : I’m not very tech savvy, and don’t have a lot of free time.
Results Real Estate Agents want: More commissions and more free time, basically more success in the business.
After you’ve done this to your targeted audience, you’re able to connect your affiliate product upto their pain points. Of all the issues a Real Estate Agent can have above, could be solved with Clickfunnels. That’s what your product need to do. If you do this, and if you’re able to show your targeted audience that your affiliate product will solve all of their issues, then they will literally raise hands to buy.
If you want to learn more about this exact strategy and how you can use it, then check out the FREE Affiliate Bootcamp and go through the training today.
5. Find Your Affiliate Marketing Strategy
Have you ever though about this before: Do you know how you’re going to do affiliate marketing? In most cases new affiliates just grab their affiliate links and post them everywhere online. That might sound like a good idea to start with, but in reality it isn’t very strategic or sustainable strategy. You need to find a real way to do affiliate marketing. Here are some of the ways you could make money as an affiliate:
- Blogging and SEO
- Video Marketing
- Social Media
- Forums and QnA Websites
- Paid Advertising
- Email Marketing
- SMM/Funnel Building – Agency
- Two-Tier Affiliate Marketing
- Create A Digital Course
- Publishing eBooks
- Bridge Funnel with Bonuses
By selecting a specific way or strategy to do affiliate marketing, your chances for success will increase. If you become really good in one of the areas above, you’re going see results. Remember what I said about mindset, don’t quit and keep working. Because some of these methods require that you work for little or no money to start with, but it will add up as time goes. If you want to know more about each of the strategies above, then click the link below and read the article.
Related: 11 Profitable Ways To Do Affiliate Marketing
6. Setup an Automated Affiliate Marketing System
One of the reasons I started with affiliate marketing was because of the automation opportunities. If you setup the right system everything can be done on autopilot. If you want to automate you affiliate marketing business note this:
- Join affiliate programs that pay out recurring commissions.
- Inlcude email marketing and setup an autoresponder which sends out pomotional emails on autopilot.
- Start a blog or YouTube channel, so you have the ability to generate free traffic on autopilot.
I know that these three factors can completely automate any affiliate marketing business. The key is to setup a system the correct way. If you want a step-by-step guide on how to do this then I highly recommend you check out Anthony Morrison’s $7 program Partner With Anthony. This is a course I’ve taken myself and I got a tremendous amount of value for the money. If you want to create your own passive income source online, then click the link above and go through the training.
7. Get Your Traffic Right!!!
No online business can survive without traffic. The same goes for affiliate marketers, you need to get your traffic right! To achieve this, I want you to get into the habit of sharing valuable content everyday online. You must give value to get value. This can be a blog post, YouTube video, Facebook post, Instagram story, you name it.
My advice is that you choose one traffic source and get really good at that, then jump into other areas. This can blogging (SEO), YouTube, paid advertising or social media. This step also depends on your niche and targeted audience. Where are the people you want to reach located on the internet?
What type of content should you create? As long as you’re giving value to your audience, you should do just fine. You can also focus on creating timeless content, meaning it will be relevant several years ahead.
8. Be Patient, Consistency Is The Key
Affiliate marketing is won in the long run. Unlike dropshipping, SMMA and Amazon FBA, you won’t see massive results right away. Being patient is a big part of succeeding as an affiliate. If you can’t handle to work hard at the start without getting paid, then maybe you shoud do something else.
If you stay consistent and make content everyday, then eventually you’ll start to see some results. It’s important to never give up, if you do you’ll never achieve your goals. Affiliate marketing is a marathon, not a sprint! Don’t be a part of the 95% of people who give up to soon.
9. Make Sure To Grow Your Own Audience!
The ninth tip I have to give you as beginner in affiliate marketing is to grow your own audience. As an affiliate you don’t really have your own business, you simply just sell other peoples products. I want you to make it a business. By growing your own audience you have the ability to make it something more in the future. As you grow your following, you also build your social capital, which is a ”must have” for every business that operates on the internet.
So how do you grow your own audience? here are some tips:
- Build a personal brand by letting your audience know who you are. As people get familiar with you and learn your name, they tend to trust you more and are more likely to buy from you in the future.
- Collect email adresses. When building an email list you have the opportunity to ascend the relationship with your audience via emails. This is a great way of growing your audience online and it’s something I think every affiliate marketer should do.
- Build a social media following. By no means is it necessary to have a huge social media following to succeed with affiliate marketing, but it might be beneficial in the future.
It isn’t a must to grow you own audience, but I highly recommend you do it anyways. It won’t hurt you.
10. Keep Learning, & Learn From The Best
The key to succeed and stay successful is to always keep learning. Did you know that the average millionaire reads 52 books every year? that says something. Do you need to read that many books to succeed? NO, but you need to keep developing you skills!
If there is one course/training I would recommend to boost you affiliate marketing skills, then it’s the Partner With Anthony Program. The course creator Anthony Morrison has made millions of dollars as an affiliate marketer the past years. Recently he also reached $1,000,000 in commissions inside Clickfunnels affiliate program. If you truly want to give affiliate marketing a try, and achieve massive results, then this is a course you want to take. Click the link above to get instant access.
If you want to boost your entrepreneurial skill in other areas then check out our Freebies page and our Recommended Training page in the menu.
11. Scale For Success
Every company who wants to become super successful needs to scale their business. The same goes for affiliate marketing. If you want to take your business to the next level and increase your earnings, you need to scale. Example: If you’re doing $10/day you want to increase to $100/day. And if you’re doing $100/day you want increase to $1,000/day. But how do you do that?
There’s in theory only TWO ways do it:
- Get higher conversion rate
- Get more traffic
Since you don’t controll the sales page as an affiliate marketer, you can’t really do much about the conversion rate. But you aren’t completely helpless. If you add a bridge page before sending your traffic to the sales page, you have the opportunity to pre sell your audience. They will become more educated about the product, therefor more likely to make the purchase. You can also collect emails, so you have more opportunities to sell them the product you’re promoting. Learn more about this in the article linked above.
When it comes to traffic, there are a lot of things you can do. All you really want is to get more targeted visitors. How can you achieve that? The first thing you could try is to start using multiple different traffic sources. Example: Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora, etc. Another thing you could try is Facebook ads. NOTE: I wouldn’t recommend spending money on ads unless you know what you’re doing. If you have some experience in running ads on Facebook, you have the chance to find super-targeted people that are likely interested in what you have to offer.
You might also like: How To Make A Full Time Income With Affiliate Marketing
Final Words
As I’ve shared in this article there are a lot of factors you should have in mind to achieve great results as an affiliate marketer. Eventhough these are just mine personal opinions, I’ve found them to be very helpful.
If you’re looking for resources to boost your entrepreneurial skills and take your business to the next level, feel free to check out our Resources category in the menu. Cheers!