😲3 Simple Steps to Affiliate Marketing Success

Written by T. Alan Younker, posted 24 June, 2021

Finding your way to affiliate marketing success doesn’t have to be hit-or-miss proposition. As the famous Tony Robbins likes to say, “success leaves clues”. In this article we will present a straightforward approach that doesn’t require you to blaze any new trails, just follow the pattern and put in the effort.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s a brief summary of the sequence:

1.0 Affiliate marketing preparation – do your research and pick your niche
1.1 Pick a domain name – one that includes at least one of your keywords
1.2 Get a hosting account – implement these strategies & build your website
1.3 Start your brand – narrow the focus of your niche & get a logo
2.0 Prospects – attract an audience
2.1 Freebie – build a good one, to entice people to trust you with their email
2.2 Autoresponder – to collect the customers’ emails, send them your messages
2.3 Opt-in page – your sales pitch, and a pop-up to gather email addresses
2.4 Thank you page – thank them for requesting your freebie
2.5 Your first email – to deliver the freebie
3.0 Promotion – letting people know what you’re offering
3.1 Content – provide frequent doses of fresh, valuable content
3.2 Traffic – generate free traffic
3.3 Build your affiliate marketing list – it’s very valuable
3.4 Promote affiliate products – now and then, in emails
3.5 Rinse & repeat – just follow the pattern

3 SIMPLE STEPS TO AFFILIATE MARKETING SUCCESS: CONTENTS

1.0 Affiliate Marketing Preparation
1.1 Pick a Domain Name
1.2 Get a Hosting Account
1.3 Start Your Brand
2.0 Prospects
2.1 Freebie
2.2 Autoresponder
2.3 Opt-in Page
2.4 Thank You Page
2.5 Your First Email
3.0 Promotion
3.1 Content
3.2 Traffic
3.3 Build Your Affiliate Marketing List
3.4 Promote Affiliate Products
3.5 Rinse & Repeat

STEP 1 – Affiliate Marketing Preparation (has four parts)

1.0 Pick a Niche; the very best ones are:

Make Money Online
Fitness & Weight Loss
Finance & Investing
Health
Dating & Relationships
Pets
Personal Development
Beauty

Once you have narrowed it down to one large category, you’ll need to narrow your focus further. Pick one area of your chosen niche, and set about learning all about it. You want to know what people want, not just what they need.

A good way to start learning about your “sub-niche” is to use Amazon reviews. Use the negative reviews to find out people’s complaints and concerns, and positive reviews to find out what people are looking for, and the words and phrases that are their own special lingo. You need to speak the “language” of your target audience.

You can also do searches on Facebook to evaluate possible sub-niches. Are there groups that are focused on it, do your searches get lots of hits? Another clue is magazines; if there are none for your niche, it probably won’t work out, so you should back up and try again.

1.1 Pick a Domain Name

You want it to include at least one keyword for your niche. It should be solution-oriented, focusing on the desired outcome, something that generates curiosity or desire. Don’t use hyphens, make sure it is in the .com, .net. or .org domains. Don’t consider any other domain types.

It can take a while to find one that meets these criteria, but it’s important to get the starting point correct. There are lots of sources for buying them, GoDaddy.com and NameCheap.com are both well known. I’ve had my domains at GoDaddy for many years.

1.2 Get a Hosting Account

This is the server on which your site will be installed and operated. There are lots of them. This could be at the same company at which you buy your domain, but it doesn’t need to be. At the company that has your domain, you just tell it where to direct the traffic to your hosting account by giving it the two nameservers at your host.

Here’s a good article that tells you what to look for, and which hosting services they currently consider to be the best: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-web-hosting/

1.3 Start Your Brand

What are people going to associate with you and your domain? Focus on one small part of your niche, not the whole darn thing! Get deep knowledge about a sliver of your niche.

To add a professional touch, and give your site an online presence, get a logo. You can design your own, hire someone on Fiverr.com, or splurge on a professional graphic designer, such as gfx-1.com.

There are emotions that relate to various colors, so you might want to have your graphic design centered on a specific color. For a great graphic that describes those emotions, together with famous brands that have logos of that color, go to https://www.incredibleart.org/lessons/middle/color2.htm and scroll down to the Color Emotion Guide. It’s a very clever graphic.

STEP 2 – Prospects (has five parts):

2.1 Freebie

Assemble a professional looking eBook that the potential visitor will find intriguing enough to enter their email address in order to receive it (and get on your list, but don’t dare say that!). It doesn’t have to be a mini-novel, maybe 1000–1500 words. But it needs to be attractively assembled, and delivered in PDF format.

It all starts with a catchy title. You want to generate curiosity in the mind of the reader, by using a “magic phrase” such as “7 little-known hacks to help you XXX” or “my secret Rolodex of killer XXX.”

Include a Table of Contents, images to illustrate the various sub-headings, and at the end you want to include a call to action, for the affiliate product you are promoting. You can put it together in a matter of hours, by doing web searches, compiling ideas from various sources, then putting them into your own words in a logical sequence.

A good source of free images is Pixabay.com. They suggest that you donate to the originator of the graphics, and encourage you to include attribution to let your readers know the source, but these aren’t requirements, just suggestions. A Google search will give you many more sources of free graphics that you can use.

I have produced professional-looking eBooks using Sqribble’s online eBook system. It’s available at this link: http://anode88.sqribblex.hop.clickbank.net (full disclosure, it’s an affiliate link so if you purchase, I receive a commission). They offer quite an array of products, but all I’ve bought are Sqribble Commercial and Sqribble Professional. Hint: in my one-time experience, when I used their chat system to ask a few questions about the commercial version, I received a very generous discount on the Pro version.

2.2 Autoresponder

This is a key element in affiliate marketing success. It is the system that will receive the email address the customer enters in exchange for receiving your Freebie, and store it in an account for you. It will also respond by sending your first email, which has a link to download your Freebie. The two biggest names in this field are aweber.com/ and getresponse.com.

Once you have an account set up, you can enter email messages to be sent to the list that you will be building up. The messages can be automatic responses, such as when a customer gives you their email in order to get the freebie, or messages that you pre-write, to be sent out on a schedule based on when a new email address is added to your account. You can also send out “broadcast” emails that will be sent to your whole list at once.

2.3 Opt-in Page

On your website, this is also called a “landing page”. It has a sales pitch, to “sell” your Freebie, and a pop-up window in which the customer enters his or her email. The best-known is LeadPages.com, but there are lots of others. Some autoresponder companies offer their own landing pages for their customers, so you can save money by using theirs, instead of buying a separate landing page service. But the landing page specialists will have more special features, and they know how to integrate their pages with all of the popular autoresponder companies.

2.4 Thank You Page

On your website, this is where the customer is sent after entering the email address. You say “now check your email, I just sent you my report, as promised. The email is from you@yourdomain.com”.

2.5 Your First Email

This is the one that is automatically sent by your autoresponder, the subject should be “Your guide on XXX, as promised”, and the body of the message should be very brief – “Here’s the guide for you, [a link where you can download it], then ” Please reply to this email, and let me know if you have any questions.” Careful, don’t say something like “thanks for joining my list”!

Autoresponders don’t like to add attachments, so you’ll want to have your freebie stored on DropBox, Google Drive, or a similar location.

Step 3 – Promotion (has five parts):

3.1 Content

Always remember, when it comes to affiliate marketing success, content is king, or queen. It’s quality content, added frequently, that will keep the search engines happy with you, and keep people checking your site frequently. Ideally you want to be adding a new article each day.

3.2 Traffic

You want to start by driving free traffic to your site. (Paid traffic is a challenge even for well-established marketers). Use a site such as YouTube to find the many ways to drive free traffic from sites like FaceBook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Quora, Forums on the subject of your niche, Podcasting, Guest-Posting on the sites of well known authorities in your niche, etc.

But never make your posts sales pitches, instead, offer up content that will draw people to want to learn more about you, and request your freebie.

3.3 Build Your Affiliate Marketing List

As you attract people to your web site, each time someone opts in to get your Freebie your autoresponder will be socking away that email address. That list is such a valuable asset that you want to carefully nurture your relationship with those people.

3.4 Promote Affiliate Products

Email your list on a regular basis, but you need to be judicious with sales pitches to them. Focus on providing valuable content, and now and then sprinkle in an advert for whatever affiliate products you are promoting.

For valuable suggestions for choosing an appropriate product, check out this article: 😉 How to Choose an Affiliate Marketing Offer to Promote – AffiliateMarketingTips.net

3.5 Rinse & Repeat

That’s the formula, tried and true, to achieve affiliate marketing success. If you put in the effort you will be rewarded. It will take time to build your list and get frequent visitors, but take the long view and realize this is how lots of prosperous marketers got to where they are today.