Is Affiliate Marketing The Perfect Online Business Model?
Affiliate marketing is certainly one of the easiest online business models to get started with. All we recommend that you start with is a domain name, web hosting, WordPress website and an autoresponder service.
Once you have chosen your niche then you will need to find good affiliate offers to promote. If you choose a popular niche like make money online, weight loss or personal development then there will be no shortage of offers for you to choose from.
Product Reviews
You will need to decide how you will promote the affiliate offers. One of the most effective ways to do this is to create product reviews. Your review needs to be honest and point out and disadvantages of each product as well as the advantages.
A lot of people look for product reviews before they purchase a product. If you can get your review in front of these potential buyers, and your review is good, you will make affiliate commissions with this approach.
Some product reviews are harder to rank for in the search engines and YouTube search than others. If the product has a good reputation and pays a generous commission then there is likely to be a lot of competition. Do your homework here and choose the right traffic strategy.
You can test the effectiveness of your product reviews by spending a little money on paid traffic. Measure the amount of visits against the commissions you make to determine the conversion rate. The good thing about this strategy is that you can generate traffic fast and make tweaks to your reviews for higher conversions.
What makes a good Affiliate Offer?
First and foremost a good affiliate offer is one that converts. It is no good promoting an affiliate offer with excellent commissions if it hardly ever converts because you will not make any money.
The best affiliate offers will have the right combination of high conversions and good commissions. Affiliate offers that have monthly recurring commissions are well worth considering. You just need to drive traffic that converts once and then you will receive commissions each month as long as the customer stays with the program.
Use reputable affiliate networks to ensure that you receive your commission payments on time. Clickbank.com has an excellent reputation for paying their affiliates for example. You do not want to put in a lot of hard work only to find that there is a delay in receiving your commissions or you don’t receive them at all.
Do you need approval?
With some affiliate offers you will need to be approved by the product vendor first. If you are in the make money online niche then you will find this to be the case with affiliate networks like WarriorPlus.com and JVZoo.com.
You have to make a request and tell the vendor how you will promote their products. When you are just starting out it can be tough to get approval as you do not have a track record. Start with Clickbank.com or Digistore24.com as these provide instant approval.
You can also look for affiliate offers from individual products.
I recommend promoting software that has recurring monthly fees. Search the web for such products and see if they have an affiliate program and apply.
It is easy to start with affiliate marketing but being successful with it is not always easy. You are always likely to face competition from other affiliates and you will need convincing tactics to convert visitors into buyers.
To Your Success
Everhard Smith
P.S. To recap what we covered
- Affiliate can very well be the best Online Business Model on account that it is easy to start.
- Product reviews is the easiest way to do affiliate marketing and it is also the least expensive. However if you do decide to spend some money on paid advertising it will make it even easier.
- What makes a good Affiliate Offer? First an offer that converts and then one that pays good commission. Get that combo and you hit pay-dirt.
- Do you need approval? With most affiliate offers from networks such Clickbank and Digistore24 you don't. If you want to skip the networks and go straight to a product that you found and offers an affiliate program you probably do. When you start out with Affiliate Marketing, use networks like the above mentioned, it will be easier.