Finding affiliates is a process that combines having an excellent affiliate program and reaching out to people who might be interested in promoting your products. Let's not forget, generous commissions are also a big plus. Finding the right affiliates is not an easy task since there are literally thousands upon thousands of affiliates out there.
If you're looking to promote a particular product or service from someone else, then finding the right person who could help you reach those potential customers is crucial. In this article we'll cover some tips about how to go about finding great affiliates so you don't waste time trying to figure things out yourself. You can also learn more about building a successful business by reading our articles about affiliate marketing here!
The first thing you should consider when choosing an affiliate company is their ranking system. Affiliates will have different levels based on whether they've been with the company long enough to become part of its "inner circle", or if they're just starting out (and therefore less likely to make any money). This means it's important to choose affiliates whose level matches yours. If you want to start earning money quickly but still feel like you're learning something new every day, try signing up as an affiliate with a smaller company which has a lower tier than you currently hold. They may offer better commission rates and payouts, but they won't necessarily give you access to all of the tools needed for success.
In terms of specific sites, you need to check out each one to see what kind of traffic they bring in, the quality of visitors, etc. The best way to do this would be to sign up for their newsletter and take a look at the analytics section. This will show you exactly how many visitors they receive daily, weekly, monthly, and over longer periods of time. It's also useful to know how long users stay on the site before buying anything. There are plenty of other ways to analyze these statistics too - Google Analytics, Alexa, HubSpot, etc.
You need to decide what type of traffic you'd prefer. Are you targeting men/women aged 18-35, or 25+? What cities are they coming from? How do you plan to monetize them? Is SEO going to work well for you because most people search online using keywords, or do you plan to use social media ads instead? Knowing this information ahead of time makes it easier to create content specifically targeted towards your audience and gives you a good idea of whether you want to focus on making sales through organic search results or paid advertising.
This depends entirely on what niche you're working within. Some niches are very competitive and demand higher prices whereas others aren't nearly as popular, thus lowering the value per sale. For example, let's say you run a blog about fitness and health. Your readership isn't huge, but you write interesting posts and provide helpful advice. However, if you were to publish a post titled "What Happens When You Don’t Exercise?" you wouldn't attract the same amount of attention. People would probably click away faster rather than read further into your writing.
A low paying niche doesn't mean it's impossible though. To calculate the value of a single page, simply divide the number of visitors you received last month by $1.00. Then multiply that result by 12 months. So if you had 1 million visits last year and made $10,000 off of them, your annual revenue was $12,000. Multiply that by five years and you'll end up with roughly $60,000. Of course, the actual values will vary depending on the size of your reader base and how much profit you actually made, but this calculation shows you how valuable a simple webpage can be. Now imagine taking that concept even further.
As mentioned above, you can always advertise your own products on your site and earn a few cents whenever someone clicks through to buy them. But sometimes you may want to avoid doing this. Instead, you could join affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, Pay Per Call, and ShareASale. These platforms allow you to set up an account, pick a merchant or affiliate partner, and start promoting their products immediately. While you won't get credit for sales until the customer completes checkout, you will usually only pay a small fee upfront to open your account. Once approved, you can select the products you wish to promote and begin driving traffic to your site.
There are several advantages to joining affiliate networks over setting up your own store front. First, you'll never have to worry about managing inventory or shipping costs, because everything is handled automatically once you link the two accounts together. Also, while it's possible to build up a large following organically without spending any money, you'll often find that network partners will pay between 50% and 100% more for certain types of traffic. Finally, you'll typically be able to target multiple demographics simultaneously and track data across both channels.
One disadvantage to joining an affiliate network is that it takes quite awhile to gain traction. You'll need to wait anywhere from six months to three years before seeing real results, but this is generally considered necessary when trying to establish a brand name. As soon as you hit a certain threshold, however, you'll be rewarded handsomely.
While it's true that you can drive traffic to your site for free via social media, direct mail campaigns, banner ads, email blasts, and video advertisements, these methods require significant effort on your part and little chance for conversion. By contrast, creating high converting landing pages requires almost no setup whatsoever. And unlike traditional ad campaigns, your conversions can happen instantly -- after clicking a button or visiting a URL.
With a bit of trial and error, you'll eventually come across the perfect combination of elements to maximize your efforts. Here are just a few ideas:
Use Facebook Ads to boost engagement and increase clickthrough rate
Create a pop-up box offering a discount code and asking people to enter it during registration to unlock additional benefits
Encourage buyers to leave reviews or share a story about their experience
Add a callto action encouraging them to visit another page and purchase now
These tactics work best when executed properly, and you must remember that nothing happens overnight. Building a strong brand presence usually involves lots of hard work and patience.
Selling affiliate products on Shopify
Shopify lets anyone turn their ecommerce website into an online storefront. Whether you're selling digital goods or physical items, Shopify provides a robust platform to host your entire operation. Plus, you can easily integrate third party services that assist with payments, shipping, and customer support.
Using Shopify's built-in features, you can list and manage all aspects of your storefront including the categories and subcategories, descriptions, images, pricing, and availability. After uploading your listings, you can customize them with text, colors, fonts, and logos. Additionally, you can specify whether you want to charge shoppers directly or send them to an external payment gateway.
Once you've created your storefront, you can generate leads through various strategies, including display ads, banners, videos, social media sharing, and email promotions. Since Shopify integrates seamlessly with Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree, and Dwolla, you can accept payments from virtually everyone.
When launching your Shopify store, it's advisable to invest in professional photography and branding materials. Otherwise, prospective clients may have trouble envisioning themselves purchasing your merchandise.
To keep up with current trends, it's recommended that you periodically review your store's performance. You can view detailed reports directly within Shopify itself or download them onto Excel spreadsheets to perform your own analysis.
It's also important to note that Shopify does not include hosting, domain names, SSL certificates, or technical assistance. These resources cost extra, but they greatly enhance your overall visibility. Fortunately, there are numerous companies dedicated solely to helping entrepreneurs launch profitable stores.
How to Add Affiliate Marketing to My Website
Affiliate programs are a powerful tool that can dramatically improve your bottom line. Not only does adding an affiliate link to your webpages enable you to earn income passively, but it also allows you to tap into the millions of dollars spent annually online.
If you're serious about growing your business, you should definitely explore ways to incorporate affiliate marketing into your existing strategy. Just think of all of the places you already spend money online: blogs, social media, forums, emails, etc. Why shouldn't you leverage those relationships to promote your products?
If you have been looking into starting your own business online or just want to learn more about it then this article will help you with everything from how to market your new venture to finding affiliates (the best way) to promote your products. This guide should teach you everything you need to know about creating an affiliate site and earning money through them as well.
You may think that building an affiliate site sounds like a lot of work but if done correctly it could provide you with a steady stream of income while still allowing you enough time to focus on other things such as running a blog or working on another project. The key is to build something unique because no one wants to see their favorite brand of jeans being sold by someone else so ensure that you offer quality content and information along with value added services.
The first thing you will need to figure out is what kind of affiliate platform would be most suitable for your niche. There are many options available including Amazon Associates, Commission Junction, LinkShare, Pay Per Sale, ShareASale and ClickBank. Each has its advantages and disadvantages which we will go over later so choose wisely! You don't necessarily need to use all five at once but they each serve different purposes so decide which ones fit your needs based on what you're trying to achieve.
Once you've chosen your affiliate sites, now comes the hard part - getting traffic to those sites! If you're using any type of SEO strategy, whether paid or organic, getting visitors to your site is going to take some effort. For example, if you were to start blogging regularly about dog training tips you wouldn't expect anyone to stumble across your posts without doing anything special. However, if you had thousands of followers every day you'd probably notice a difference pretty quickly.
This is why it's important to consider social media when planning your campaigns. Nowadays almost everyone uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, these platforms allow you to share valuable information directly with potential customers, increasing exposure exponentially. When choosing your social channels though, you'll want to keep them consistent with your overall branding.
It's really simple to set up an account on any of these networks so don't let yourself become intimidated. Once you have the accounts setup, post relevant articles, videos and images related to your niche and watch your numbers grow. As long as you maintain high-quality content, your audience will come back again and again. It takes patience and persistence, but if you stick to it eventually your efforts will pay off.
There isn't a specific amount per sale but there are two factors that determine this number: 1.) Your conversion rate 2.) How often you promote
To give you an idea, here are some statistics regarding earnings for various programs:
Amazon Associates: $37-$100/sale ($0.15-$0.50/click)
Commission Junction: $9-$25/sale ($0.18-$0.36/click).
LinkShare: $5-$17/sale ($0.12-$0.34/click)
Pay Per Sale: $1.00+/sale ($0.10+/click)
ShareASale: $2-$6/sale ($0.24-$0.48/click)
Clickbank: $20-$30/sale ($0.35-$0.65/click)
However, you shouldn't base your entire plan on commission alone. Consider offering bonuses, gifts to subscribers and exclusive offers etc. In fact, you should always try and maximize profits whenever possible so consider adding additional features to your site such as membership plans, shopping carts, video tutorials, guides and even ebooks. These extras will increase revenue further than just focusing solely on sales.
Another great benefit of having your own affiliate site is the ability to keep track of conversions and sales reports. This allows you to easily monitor performance and adjust accordingly. It's also easier to tweak certain aspects of your site depending on feedback received from users. Having a dedicated dashboard makes it straightforward to manage everything from analytics, reporting, customer service, payments and shipping.
Creating your own affiliate link is fairly straight forward. Just follow these steps below to generate a clickable URL that leads to your affiliate page.
Make sure to include the following text within the anchor tag: Your Name + Affiliate Links = Profit
For instance: John Doe Affiliates | Product X & Y
Now copy the generated code above and paste it onto your HTML document inside of the head section between the opening and closing tags. Make sure to replace "John Doe" with your name and to change the words "Product X & Y" to whatever products you wish to advertise.
Don't worry about formatting the code because WordPress automatically formats it for you. All you have to do is enter the text exactly as shown above.
Affiliate links themselves aren't expensive however, you must purchase advertising space on the internet before you can begin promoting your products. Advertising costs vary wildly depending on what sort of budget you have, how large your target market is and how competitive the industry is. Typically, it ranges anywhere from $1 to $10 per click or lead. So if you are targeting 500 clicks per month you will spend roughly $500 dollars. Of course, spending less is better especially if you already have a sizable list of email addresses.
One of the easiest ways to save money on advertising is by purchasing ads on Google AdWords instead of buying banner adverts separately. With AdWords you only pay for actual clicks whereas banners require you to buy multiple impressions. Also, you can specify keywords and phrases that you want targeted so that you are able to reach a particular demographic rather than just driving random traffic around the web.
Additionally, if you sign up for ClickBank's advertising network you can earn 75% commission for referring others to join. They charge $29.99 per month for unlimited access to their affiliate tracking software which includes detailed stats on your referrals' activity and purchases.
Some of the top companies in the world run entirely on wordpress blogs. Sites like HubSpot, Squarespace and Weebly are examples of popular tools used to build a profitable affiliate site. While these kinds of solutions won't appeal to beginners, they are extremely powerful and versatile making them ideal for professional marketers.
In addition to providing templates and themes for free, these platforms also host your website for you and handle hosting fees, domain registration and SSL certificates. And since you don't have to deal with technical issues, you can concentrate on designing a beautiful landing page and writing engaging content.
On the downside, these types of websites usually lack advanced customization options and support. Plus, they tend to look very similar to each other meaning that it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish yours from competitors'. But if you have experience with coding, you can customize the design to match your personal style.
So there you have it! A crash course on how to create an affiliate site. Whether you're ready to jump in immediately or prefer to wait until you have more experience under your belt, hopefully you found something useful today. Good luck!
Finding affiliates to promote your product or service is one of the most important aspects of making money from it. It's important because finding the right people to help spread your message will ensure that your business succeeds. You want to make sure that any affiliates you hire have experience with what they're going to promote and know exactly what their audience expects.
There are many ways to go about this part of the equation but here we'll focus on some of the more popular ones as well as offer some tips for getting started. If you'd like to learn even more, check out our guide on How Do Affiliates Make Money Off Your Products. We've explained everything from how to find affiliates to how to maximize sales.
The first thing you should decide is whether or not you need a middleman between yourself and your customers. In other words, if you're creating physical goods then you probably don't. But if you're selling digital downloads, books, music, videos, etc., then the answer depends upon how much control over pricing you want and how much time you want to invest into setting up your own store. The easiest way to find affiliates would be to create a blog post about your topic (or another related topic) and include a link to your website. Then write a short blurb about your product along with information about why someone needs it. This will serve as a call-to-action for visitors who click through.
If you choose to use a third party platform such as Shopify or WordPress, you can set up automated emails that contain a link to your product. A good example is using email automation software such as SendBlaster to send weekly newsletters containing product recommendations or offers to subscribers automatically. These types of systems allow you to keep track of which emails generate the highest conversions without needing to manually manage them all.
You may also consider running Facebook ads, Google AdWords campaigns, or Pay Per Click advertising (PPC). PPC allows you to target specific keywords so you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. There are several companies that provide these services, including HubSpot for instance. If you opt to run PPC campaigns, you'll likely see higher conversion rates than if you were just sending regular emails. However, you won't always get instant results. Sometimes you'll wait days or weeks before seeing traffic convert. That being said, these methods can work really well. Just remember that you'll need to spend money upfront for each campaign unless you already have a following built up.
Once you're ready to start looking for potential affiliates, try joining platforms like ShareASale, ClickBank, and Commission Junction. These sites list thousands of available partners so you won't necessarily have trouble finding someone willing to market your brand. Be wary though - you must conduct proper due diligence by checking references, asking questions, and doing research. For example, you shouldn't let anyone tell you that he has 100,000 followers on Twitter when he actually only has 500. He could very easily be lying! When choosing an affiliate, look at his profile carefully to see what kind of content he creates. Try to find someone whose stuff appeals to yours.
Another option is to join networks of marketers who share similar goals and interests. Some of the best places to search for affiliates are Reddit and Quora. They often feature communities dedicated to niche topics and you can browse through threads until you find something interesting. On top of that, you can ask users directly for referrals. Keep in mind though that the quality of answers varies greatly depending upon the user base so take things with a grain of salt. Also, avoid spamming your posts. Instead, build relationships with trustworthy members of the community. Once you establish trust, feel free to ask for advice whenever necessary.
Finally, it's possible to buy a domain name and host it yourself. While this does save you some cash initially, it doesn't solve the problem of finding and maintaining an audience. Plus, you'll still need to figure out how to drive traffic to your site. Many hosting providers charge extra fees per month so this isn't ideal either.
After deciding what type of affiliate network makes sense for your particular situation, you can begin building connections. There are two main approaches for this step. One involves cold calling while the other uses social media.
Cold Calling
One method is called cold calling whereby you contact individual businesses directly and request to become an affiliate partner. This is usually done via phone calls, text messages, or personal visits. Cold calling requires patience and persistence. You'll have to follow up regularly and reach out multiple times before you get anywhere. Don't expect immediate success.
Social Media
Another approach is utilizing social media to connect with existing audiences. Start small by sharing relevant articles and engaging with others within your space. Over time, you'll gain momentum and eventually attract a large enough following that you can grow bigger and faster.
It's worth noting that both options require time investment. As mentioned above, cold calling takes patience and persistence whereas social media marketing requires consistent effort. Both strategies involve trial and error but if you give yourself plenty of room for mistakes, you stand a better chance of succeeding.
A lot of factors come into play when determining the value of an affiliate website. Here are three key points to think about.
First, you need to understand how valuable your website is to your end goal. What makes someone purchase your product or sign up for your service? This is referred to as your customer acquisition cost (CAC). CAC includes costs associated with acquiring new leads, converting those leads into paying clients, and retaining loyal customers.
Second, you need to calculate the average number of purchases made from your website. If you're selling digital files, for example, you'll need to account for bandwidth usage, storage requirements, and server maintenance expenses. All together, these are known as variable costs. Variable costs tend to increase every year so you'll need to factor this into your estimate.
Third, you'll need to measure revenue earned from your website. Revenue is basically profit minus operating expenses. To properly gauge its importance, divide total revenue by the number of active accounts. An active account refers to an account holder who has purchased anything from your website during the past 12 months. Ideally, you should aim for 10% or more.
Online affiliate marketing is a great form of passive income. With minimal startup costs, it affords you flexibility as long as you have access to the internet. Plus, once you get off the ground, you can scale quickly thanks to the low barrier to entry. Below are four different models for generating profits from affiliate programs.
Commission Only Model
This model relies solely on commissions generated from affiliate partnerships. No direct sales are involved. You simply earn commission based upon how much of your referral's sale price was paid out to you. Usually, you receive 20%-50% of the final amount charged to your client.
Payment Plan Model
In exchange for signing up for a payment plan, you agree to collect payments from prospective buyers after they complete a certain action. Examples include downloading a report, purchasing a membership, completing a survey, etc. Payments typically range from $10-$100.
Cost Per Action (CPA) Model
With this model, you refer prospects to another company that pays you for taking actions to bring them closer towards buying whatever it is they're seeking. For instance, you're asked to submit reviews about various products and services. The company pays you 50 cents for each review completed.
Affiliate Marketing Platform Model
Similar to a traditional ecommerce storefront, but instead of selling items directly, you partner with brands to sell their products. This is beneficial because you never have to worry about inventory management, shipping charges, or handling returns.
While this article focused primarily on affiliate marketing, there are numerous other ways to make money online. Check out our full guide to earning money online for more ideas.
Just follow our battle-tested guidelines and rake in the profits.