What is the best way to do affiliate marketing? While there are many different ways to make affiliate sales, there’s definitely ways which are faster and more reliable than others. As someone who has tried many methods of doing affiliate marketing I feel I’m well placed to write this post! Checkout another post on this topic of mine “22 ways to promote affiliate products“.
Affiliate marketing is also a broad topic so in this post I’m going to cover the areas I feel are most important:
- Product choice
- Aligning with your values
- Marketing strategies
- Targeting the right audience
- Tools to use
- Ikigai – Constant learning and improvement
Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing – Your Way!
The “best” way to do affiliate marketing is a way which you CAN do given your circumstances and situation. What might be the “best” for one person isn’t the best for another. For example, the “best” way if you’re aiming on leaving your 6 figure job will be different than the way for someone who is unemployed and has limited money to invest!
For one person it might be blogging, and for another it will be paid ads. If I said “start with a $20k marketing budget”, that might not be relevant for everyone and if I said “write a blog post every day for 5 years”, most aren’t going to be able (or willing) to do that either.
“By hook or by crook I WILL succeed” whatever your circumstances, is the attitude to bring with you as an affiliate. Many affiliates quit and there’s a 95% drop out rate. That’s testimony to the problems inherent in affiliate marketing, (and any business for that matter).
So in this post I’m going to share some of the best insights I’ve found which have made the biggest difference to me personally. I’m no expert nor am I a millionaire but I’ve been doing affiliate marketing for several years now. I’ve also failed a lot, and learned from those “failures”. Without them, and the will to continue past them, I wouldn’t have had any affiliate success at all!
Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing – Product Choice – Choose A Product You Can Stand By With Total Conviction & Be Proud Of
When I started affiliate marketing I was in a rush. I rushed to find a product to sell, take a course and promote it. I didn’t consider that I might be “at it” for as long as I was. I wanted quick money! I failed miserably and after building many websites (well over 100) I threw in the towel. None of them worked bar one which made a few measly sales. But I took this as “hope”.
I was also totally uninterested in the products I was selling. I just wanted the money. It was only when I became determined to succeed with affiliate marketing that things began to change. I found a product I believed in because it helped me personally.
A product you don’t care about has no meaning for you. So how can you sustain a business built on foundations which you are indifferent to? Particularly if you’re going to need to spend YEARS building it. Yes, it’s going to take a lot of hard work and years of your life to build your business. If that’s not for you, you’re wasting your time.
You can find the free video series which led me to the product/service I now promote here.
If you’re not proud of your product choice, or you are misaligned with it in some way, it will affect your business over the longer term. I would also recommend using subscription based affiliate marketing products and high ticket products.
Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing – Aligning With Your Values
It took me a long time to figure out what my “values” were. But essentially it’s in growth, empowerment and helping others succeed. I built many websites which weren’t aligned in any way with who I am. They pretty much all failed. Only when I started aligning with helping others did things begin to change for me. Before that I was only trying to “get the money” in a desperate way.
In any business, you’re going to need to consistently work towards its growth over a long period of time. If you can’t imagine doing that in your business, then you’re in the wrong business. To help you find your mojo in business or your “path” here’s a few questions to ponder over:
- What activity could I consistently enjoy doing over several years which connects my passion with my ability to earn an income?
- What would your perfect day look like in terms of activities and interests?
- Who do you choose to hang around with when there’s no financial incentive?
- What do people say about you in terms of your personally or characteristics?
- What do you most enjoy doing?
- How can you connect this with your online affiliate business?
Marketing Strategies – Organic Vs Paid
There’s many different marketing strategies you can use as an affiliate marketer:
- Pay per click advertising – Google Adwords, Microsoft Bing for example
- Organic marketing, SEO (search engine optimisation) content marketing
- Social media marketing – Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, TikTok etc.
- Blogging and Video blogging
So which one will suit you the best? Do you like creating content in your chosen niche? Do you have the time for content creation or are you too busy? Depending on your available time and/or budget, you may choose to promote affiliate products through paid advertising or content marketing. Ideally choose a strategy you can stick with.
As someone who has done some of both, I would say I quickly gravitated towards blogging due to circumstances and limited budget. However, this will take much longer than paid marketing. If I were to say which is the “best” I would say use paid marketing, even if you can afford only a small daily budget. Paid marketing is faster, more scalable and much, much easier. But of course it costs money. See also organic marketing versus paid marketing.
Targeting The Right Audience
This is something I failed at constantly until I understood it. The best way to do affiliate marketing is to promote the right products to the people who most value them. In short, don’t waste time or effort getting the wrong message out there or in front of the wrong audience. To understand this concept fully takes a little deep diving and it’s well worth your time because it will shave years off your affiliate marketing journey.
There’s millions of searches going on every second online and most of the online marketplace doesn’t want your product. Most of them are completely uninterested in what you have to say or offer. However, a very small sub-section of the online marketplace are looking for exactly what you are offering.
But when you get excited about a product, you can often assume that everyone else will be too! But that’s an incorrect assumption. When you learn who exactly is interested in your product, you become a better affiliate overnight. By “who” I mean what are they searching for online, where do they hang out, what are their interests and what are their pains and problems?
More about this in the customer avatar worksheet pdf.
Customer Avatar Example
“When you try and sell to everyone, you sell to no one” – is a popular saying in the affiliate marketing world. But it’s very true. When you are excited about a product, but fail to communicate in a language your customer avatar can understand, you can even put off potential customers who might be interested in your product.
But when you understand the needs of your perfect customer, you can speak to their pain points and talk to their needs rather than your own.
When I started out as an affiliate, I assumed everyone who stumbled across my website had the same pains as I did. That they would leap at the chance to buy my product (as I did)! But everyone has different needs and most online website visitors are browsing for information rather than to make a purchase, (with a notable exception).
One example of a perfect customer (for any given product) are the ones browsing a review of said product! When someone is looking for a review of your product, they are potentially ready to buy (with their credit card in their hand!). On the contrary, someone looking for a free “how to” guide, isn’t looking to buy anything, but get some free information.
Get specific about your target audience/customer avatar and you’ll waste far less time as an affiliate.
Tools To Use
There’s many tools for affiliates from SEO plugins to social media sharing tools and data collection apps and plugins too. Check out some of the tools I use in my article best free blog plugins for WordPress. However these are useful if your’e going to take the blogging route. If not, they’re not going to help you!
One of the best tools you can use as an affiliate marketer is an email autoresponder. I tried to make affiliate marketing work without one for a long time, trying to do everything on the cheap. I simply didn’t understand the importance of building an email list of my own.
Why build an email list? Simply put the email list puts you on control of your traffic. Without one, you’re at the mercy of Google’s next algorithm update or your advertising campaign and constantly spending budget sending traffic to your offer. A list gives you much more leverage and all the work you do is multiplied with a list, much like with choosing to promote subscription products which pay out recurring commissions!
With a list you can also build trust with your audience over a much longer period of time than is possible just from a website. Most online consumers will want multiple touch points with a website or product before making a buying decision; a list gives you that opportunity.
Ikigai – Constant Improvement
Ikigai is a Japanese term meaning constant improvement. With affiliate marketing and certainly in the early days, you’re going to have a massive learning curve. While this seems like a lot of struggle, (often without a financial reward), if you can see this as your learning curve you’re going to be much more likely to maintain your activities and stick with it.
Problems are “learning opportunities” for affiliates! When you “fail” it’s an opportunity for growth! It’s also definitely worth getting help and support because if you’re surrounded by others on your same journey, you’re going to feel more empowered and learn more quickly. If you surround yourself with people NOT on your journey, they are going to dissuade you and hinder you from continuing.
In the beginning phase of being an affiliate marketer, you’re going to be learning a lot; probably 90% of your time will be spend in “learning mode”. Once you have some idea of what you should be doing, you can switch this to implementing your skills and “doing”. At this point the learning/doing ratio will be something like 80% doing and only 20% learning.
Don’t get stuck in learning mode which feels satisfying but can be addictive without any progress being made.
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