Affiliate Marketing 101: What You Need to Know Before You Start

Ok, now that we have decided to start our Online Business using an Affiliate Marketing model where do we go from here? What do we need to do to start Makin Cheddar?

Just like constructing a building or a house we need to make sure we have a good solid foundation in order to give ourselves the best chance to succeed. I think there are at least 5 things

each person must do to start building their Affiliate Marketer’s foundation to insure they can hit the ground running and have the greatest possibility of success. (I wish I understood these when I started)

• Choose a niche: Choosing a niche is important because it helps you target a specific audience that is already interested in your topic and are having problems that you can help them solve with the affiliate products you choose to promote. When choosing a niche follow these suggested steps.

• • Put together a list of topics that you are passionate about, have knowledge about or experience with. This niche is what you will create content around.
  • Research each topics market demand, competition and profitability. So how do you do that? There are several free tools that you can use to find these answers, they are:
    • • Google Trends
      • Google Keyword Planner / AdWords
      • Amazon best Sellers
  • Now that you have gathered the data, narrow your list down to a few niches that have high demand, low to medium competition and good earnings potential.
  • Validate your final niche list by looking for existing blogs, forums, social media groups and influencers. Notice what kind of content and products they offer and how engaged their audiences are.
  • Now your ready to make your niche selection. Don’t worry about wondering if you chose the correct niche because they all use the same model foundation. As an example while you are learning how to put all these pieces together you could go with the MMO (Make Money Online) niche. If you found yourself later in the gardening or fitness niche your foundation would still be the same, you would just have to change your content.

• Creating a website and content: A website and the content in it are essential pieces of your foundation as this is where you tell your story, promote your products, attract, educate your audience about your affiliate products. To create a website and content here are a few steps you can follow:
  • Choose a domain name and a hosting service.
    • Your domain name is a way to identify and locate your website on the internet by using a simple or memorable word or words instead of a complex set of numbers.
    • A hosting service is a company that provides space and resources on a server for you to put your website files while making it accessible to the internet. There are several plans and service types offered by these companies so you have to make some choices here. As far as a platform WordPress is probably one of the most used in the world and most all hosting services offer a WordPress plan.
  • Designing your website and optimizing it for your users’ experience, speed and SEO.
    • If you have chosen to use WordPress as your website platform you’ve made a good choice as nearly 810 million website are using WordPress as of 2024. When using WordPress as your platform you will need to choose several plugins/tools to help you get the outcome you want. Good news is that there are all free versions of these available for your website. Here are a few plugins/tools:
      • • Themes – Themes are how your website will look and flow you just have to add your own graphics and content
        • Security – This plugin will help your site from getting hacked
        • SEO – This type of plugin will help you with Search Engine Ranking, there are many to choose from just pick the one that offers the functions you want most.
        • Spam Blockers – This plugin will help with posts and form submissions by blocking most spam content.
        • Link Tools – This plugin will make your affiliate links look more pleasing to the user instead of a long link with numbers and symbols.
        • Analytics – These plugins will help you understand information about your users, where they are coming from, what pages they visit most etc.
  • Plan and create your content strategy.
    • You can use tools like BuzzSumo, AnswerThePublic and Ubersuggest to name a few that will help you find topics, keywords and questions that are relevant to your niche that you can create content around to keep your audience interested and engaged.
  • Produce and publish high-quality, valuable and SEO-friendly content that solves your audience’s problems, provides useful information and promotes your affiliate products. You can use tools like Grammarly, Hemingway and Canva to help you improve your writing, editing and visual design skills.

• Join an affiliate program: An affiliate program is an essential piece of the pie because it connects you with the merchants who offer the products or services you want to promote and earn commissions from.
  • Research and find the best affiliate programs and products for your niche. You can use platforms like Clickbank, Amazon Associates to browse and compare thousands of products in various categories and niches.
  • Apply and get approved by the program. You may need to provide information about your website, traffic and marketing methods. Some affiliate programs have specific requirements or criteria that you need to meet before you can join.
  • Once you have been approved you will get your unique affiliate link for each product you want to promote. You can then use your link plugin like Bitly, Pretty Links orThirstyAffiliates to shorten, customize and track your affiliate links activity.

• Promote your affiliate products: Promoting your affiliate products are important because this is how you drive traffic, generate leads and increase sales. By adding your affiliate links to your content in a natural and ethical way you can make use of different types of content to promote your products.
  • Different types of content can be in the form of blogs, videos, podcasts or ebooks.
  • You can create product reviews, comparisons or tutorials that showcase the features, benefits and drawbacks of your affiliate products.
  • You can use email marketing, social media or paid ads to drive traffic to your website and affiliate products.

• Earning commissions (Makin Cheddar): Earning commissions is of course the main goal of affiliate marketing. To do this without guessing you need to track and optimize your marketing performance. This is where the analytic plugins come in.
  • Monitor your traffic, conversions and commissions using a dashboard either from the plugin or the affiliate programs with tools like Google Analytics, ClickMeter, Monster Insights. This way you will be able to monitor your best performing products, content and channels.
  • Test and work on improving your website, content and marketing strategies with tools like Google Optimize, OptinMonster or Unbounce. See what works best for your audience and niche by using different headlines, images, copy, offers and calls to action.

After reading all these points above you’re probably saying, “But How Do I Put All These Things Together”? There is a lot of work and consistency that is required in making this online business a reality.  There are thousands and thousands of YouTube videos out there that all want to tell you how it’s done. Neither one of us knows any of them so we would have to follow them for a period of time to see if they actually know what they are taking about. This is the “Free” method of creating an online affiliate marketing business. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be done this way, but it does take a longer period of time and more hurdles to jump over.

There are paid for programs that you can join that are run by what are known as “Guru’s”, most of these guys offer the same programs throughout the year, but just name it with the latest buzz words. To be honest you have to treat this like you were buying a car or some other type of product.

• Who is the program designed to help?
• What methods are used to teach these principles or strategies?
• What experience does the company have with teaching these?
• What are the methods available to me for help?
• Does the program offer some kind of mentorship?

I choose to go with a paid program that has a mentorship component with it. This way I could accelerate my progress and build a strong foundation from someone that had already done what I wanted to do. Thereby eliminating some of the hurdles that most people go through trying to learn themselves. This program was offered by a company named “Internet Profits” (Great Name!) and their leader was Dean Holland a highly established Affiliate Marketer. In a later post we will go through some of the things that are offered in their programs that put them a step up from their competitors.

I know this post has gotten a bit lengthy, but unless you understand the basics of creating a strong and firm foundation your bound to end up disappointed and frustrated. If you should have any questions concerning any of this information, Please Don’t Hesitate to leave your comments/questions below.

P.S.

I told you I would keep you informed about my own progress, so this last week I have implemented my email setup for this website. It included making all the necessary additions to meet the Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft and others new email qualifiers. I have also added my contact database for creating a email list which I will be implementing soon so you can be notified of new posts and insider information.