Let me ask you this. Have you been living in the rat race, sick and tired of waking up in the morning, being struck in morning rush traffic jam and your boss breathing down your neck?
If that is you,
you might want to consider affiliate marketing as your alternative income. However there are certain basics and fundamentals you need to understand in order to succeed.
If you do not know what affiliate marketing is, it is another yet more common term for internet marketing by definition. By action, it primarily means promoting other people's products in exchange for commissions.
They can be digital like ebooks, software, video courses and web templates or physical like what we buy from shopping like toys, DVDs, computer games etc.
With that said, here are the basics and fundamentals:
1. Select Your Niche Well
A niche means a certain product with market demand. Products like affiliate marketing, network marketing, weight loss, movies etc are all considered as niches since they have potential markets in need of those.
But to start off with, you need to select a niche well. It can be something you like. Or it can be something you know a lot and think can help people who need it badly.
The best places to start off with finding niches are 43 Things, Amazon and Clickbank. The former is a site where people put forth their resolutions and wishes while the other two are online marketplaces.
2. Select Your Keywords Related To Your Niche
Once you selected your niche, you need to find keywords related to your niche.
Keywords are basically words people type into search engine toolbar such as Google to find information, product or service. Your goal is to find at least 20 to 30 keywords with high number of global or monthly searches, low competition and some PPC ads.
To do this, you need a tool. And the best tool is Google keyword tool which you can find via Google search. After doing this, download and save in your PC notepad.
Best of all, it is free.
3. Create Content From Keywords
The next step is to create content from the keywords you complied on your notepad in the form of 20 to 30 articles.
Remember to include each keyword as a title and in the first paragraph of your article in order to be ranked high by search engines especially Google.
If you are not good in writing articles, you can either outsource to freelancers or sign up for article marketing courses and learn from there.
Your objective of creating content is for your site, separate articles to be syndicated to article directories, email marketing, classified ads and even videos to sites like Youtube.
4. Buying A Domain Name And Web Hosting
I will buy a domain name based on the keyword with highest searches, lowest competition and highest PPC ads from the list. It can be .Com, .Net or .Org which Google favours more than the rest.
At the same I will get a web hosting account. These will be used to save, store and publish my site for people to see. For this, I recommend Namecheap and Hostgator.
5. Building A Site Based On My Domain Name And Content I Created From Keywords
When I first started marketing online in 2008, I started off with Blogger which is free with its hosting and domain name.
Subsequently I tried Webs, Weebly and eventually sticked with Wordpress. I also realized in order to get my site ranked well in Google and other search engines, I need to have my own hosting and domain name.
Initially I built landing pages with a video, few bullet points and optin boxes for people to get their free gift by filling in their names and email addresses. But since Google Panda update last year, I converted all my landing pages into review sites with optin boxes, articles, privacy and contact page.
Of course it will be up to you whether you want a landing page or review site.
6. Get An Autoresponder
An autoresponder is a web-based tool that allows you to build your subscriber list using the optin boxes they provided and send follow up emails for them to get their free gifts either in ebooks, ecourse, reports, software or web templates.
Or you can email offers to them and make money from there. .
Though there are many autoresponders available which you can find through Google search, the one I have been using and highly recommend is Aweber.
7. Invest In Affiliate Marketing Course
If you want to succeed quickly and easily in affiliate marketing without going through the trial and error, you need a mentor. Someone who has already achieved success in what you want to do.
It can be normal affiliate marketing course or a coaching program.
I learn this from different marketers like Ewen Chia, Mike Filsaime, Stephen Pierce, Eben Pagan, George Brown and Steven Clayton before mastering and devising my own system from there.
Once you invested in affiliate marketing course, your mentor will teach you all those I just mentioned as well as how to get targeted traffic to your sites and make money from there.
