Success with Affiliate Marketing
Beginning with today’s Marketing Monday, I will be revealing the elements needed for affiliate marketing success – basics.
Too many times I see other marketers presenting an oversimplification of what is needed for online success, or rather fail to mention (even leave out) all aspects of what is needed (sometimes on purpose) – perhaps one of the reasons why others fail at it.
Making connections and sales
Most all online marketing endeavors along with affiliate marketing is about making connections and making sales. To be effective, you need to have or learn sales techniques. This includes things like the art of persuasion to reading the needs of your potential customers. Without it, you will find it difficult if not impossible to make money online.
It’s about mindset
Without the proper mindset, you will find it a struggle to do all the elements necessary for success. Mindset is more than attitude, desire, or motivation – although each element is part of it. Mindset is the way you view everything. An employee has a different mindset than the owner or manager.
Both can have the proper attitude, desire and motivation to do their perspective jobs – but how and what they think about are different along with their approach to it. Self-view is also important part of how you go about your day.
It’s about selecting the right niche
Too many times people jump into affiliate marketing without taking time to consider the market they are in. They either see a cool product they like and see the money making potential behind it, then jump right in without knowing anything about the market or needs which they hope to attract for sales.
They enter it blindly!
However, it’s worth the time to investigate further before jumping in to anything (see Evergreen Niche Markets for Affiliates).
Also a big mistake newbies fall into is taking on the “make money online” without the experience to go with it. Even though this is a big market, it is also extremely competitive and without knowing what you are doing, you’ll be eaten alive with it.
It’s about establishing an online presence
An online presence is anything from social network accounts, like fanpages, to websites and blogs. It helps to establish you, your brand, or both so others can get to know who you are, what you are about, and to establish a loyal following.
It is impossible to survive online hiding in the shadows, jumping around from thing to thing without having some place to call your own. To learn more about establishing and the importance of a online presence, see Do I Need a Website as an Affiliate Marketer?
It’s about selecting the right products to promote
once you have your research completed, niche selected, website setup – it is time to select the product or service you are going to promote. This is an important part of the process.
If you select a shoddy product or never-heard-from-again application that stopped working, it will reflect heavily upon you. Plus it is real import to understand what it is your market is looking to solve so that you can provide the right solution to their problem.
It’s about promotion and advertising for traffic
Even though others might handle it this way, it is not a one-size-fits-all world! One successful method of promotion and advertising for a particular market may completely fail for another. Results will very from technique to technique, market to market, network to network and so on.
That is why it is important to learn about the different methods for promoting and advertising online. Then deciding on the ones best suited for your market. Most likely you will choose several to start with (not too many, or you’ll become overwhelmed) and discover the best ones that work for you.
To see more about different tactics, refer to the Traffic Tactics Thursday section of this site.
It’s about testing, tracking and reviewing results
To know what works from advertising to product promotion, you need to track your results. You also need to tweak everything from salescopy to opt-in forms, why split testing is important to know which version has the most conversions.
Also who comes to read your blog posts and how did they find it? At what point in the sales funnel do your visitors leave? What can you change to make it better if you need to do so? This is what testing, tracking, and reviewing results help to reveal to you!
It’s about dedication and consistency
Arguably you could include this with mindset, but you need to be consistent (something I struggle with at times) with an online business at all times. If you publish articles on your blog, then you need to establish a consistency so they know when to return to look again.
For example, my desired goal for this site is 5 published posts per week, one per theme day for a 100% target. My actual results are currently 70% and it shows. How? I have a visitor tracker and some days this site sees a dozen people, while other days zero! Why? No new content was available on the day before. Miss a few days, blog goes cold.
Dedication is another factor that has to be part of your online business. If you are not dedicated to your business or to those you want to have and keep as customers, you won’t make it. Even though an online business is more flexible and forgiving than a brick and mortar store, both the business and customers suffer when there is a lack of it.
Final thoughts
These are just the main points behind what is needed to become a successful affiliate (or online) marketer. Each element should be nurtured and developed as you proceed with your online endeavors. It is not running a sprint, but pacing yourself like running a marathon.
As always, I like to know your thoughts, ideas, experiences, questions, or observations by leaving a comment below. And if you find this article to be helpful, I encourage you to share it with your favorite social network. Thank you! 🙂
