Nothing Held Back: Complete Guide to Affiliate Marketing and Targeted Traffic

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online and there are many things anyone can do to take advantage of it.

But since affiliate marketing is one of the most well-known ways to make money, it is also misunderstood. Most of the time, those who don’t get it usually fail to generate any income.

It’s just not as easy as putting some other company’s products on your website and hoping the sales will increase.

This article aims to show you some of the possibilities of generating income without creating your own products.

I’m talking about finding products to promote and making commissions from them.

I also want to emphasize the power of traffic and also show you how you can drive floods of people to your page. In the end, it comes down to you and how honest you are with your marketing.

This guide will help you get a head start on affiliate marketing and show you the right way to promote products without making the common mistakes marketers make.

What you will learn:

• What is affiliate marketing?

• what is not

• How to start

• Where to find affiliate products and successful companies

• Write helpful content and honest reviews

• Know your target audience

• Traffic

• Be patient

• keep trying different things

• What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is simply a way to make money online by promoting a service, product or site that is not yours.

As an affiliate, you are rewarded with a performance-based structure that allows you to earn money based on your advertising efforts.

For example:

If you promote an Amazon product and someone makes a purchase by clicking your link, you earn a percentage of the total sale. They have an affiliate program called Amazon Associates and you can promote any product.

You basically get a link that has your specific affiliate code at the end of it.

What affiliate marketing is not:

It is not a way to get rich overnight. You can’t just put a few products on your website and expect some magic to happen. Anything that has rewards takes work, and affiliate marketing is no different.

You may not see sales for weeks, months, or even years.

Okay, if you don’t get a sale after a year, then you know you’re doing something wrong. But it just requires patience and skills. It is not simple as you need to be unique in the way you promote any product.

You have to be honest, or you can break the trust of your visitors.

Is affiliate marketing easy money?

While it is one of the most lucrative ways to earn income online, it is important to understand that it is not easy money.

Most people who try it usually fail and give up because they are missing one of these key factors:

• Targeted traffic (not just random traffic that has no interest in what you’re promoting)

• Understand the products you promote

• Find products that really work

• Build relationship and trust with visitors.

• Good sales copy writing skills.

Of course, there’s always the chance that if you push too hard with your affiliate marketing efforts or promote low-quality products, you’ll run into problems with trust and your reputation.

You can’t expect to burn your visitors with something that is low quality or just doesn’t work, and have a happy ending.

That will never benefit anyone, especially you!

How can you get started with affiliate marketing?

While you may only have one social media page where you can promote products or services, it is highly recommended that you have your own website.

If you’re not sure how you can start your own website or think it’s difficult, there are tons of YouTube videos that show you how to do it in an hour.

After you know where you will promote services or products, you need to choose a niche.

It may seem easy to promote random products, but if you’re going to be selling baby products to young mothers, you probably don’t want to promote hunting gear.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Pick your niche, preferably one with a lot of products. Health, wealth, and relationships are the top 3, so boil it down to something where you can solve one problem instead of dozens.

Where to find affiliate products?

As I mentioned earlier, Amazon has an associate program that you can use to promote your products.

Amazon is one of the most successful online retailers and has been around for MANY years! So you really can’t go wrong with them.

Some others include:

• clickbank.com

• CJ.com

• linkshare.com

• ShareAsale.com

• neverblue.com

• iPAS 2

• empowernetwork

These are considered some of the best affiliate programs out there. You really can’t go wrong with any of them, it all comes down to what you want to promote and what niche you choose.

I personally take advantage of iPAS 2 and the Empower Network.

This is because they offer:

• Best-in-class sales funnels, with pre-built capture pages that convert

• Video Training and Tutorials – Recorded and Filmed by a Hollywood Production Crew

• Easy scalability

• Top Tier Commission Structure – Up to $3000 per sale

• LEVERAGE – more time freedom through automation

Write useful content and reviews

Okay, you have your affiliate products in mind and hopefully your website is ready, now you’ll want to have some content.

Now there used to be a time when you could write a few paragraphs, make a million dollars, and be ranked in Google for the number one spot for that particular product.

But Google is smart and is always adapting.

Keywords matter, people will want to find your site based on their search, but you’ll need to write for those people, not just Google.

So write useful content.

Solve their problem and tell them what they can do to solve it. Make the product the centerpiece, add your link multiple times in the post, don’t be shy.

You are making the effort to write a nice and detailed post of something useful for them.

Hopefully you know the product or service well, so well that you’ve tried it or seen it in action. You will want to write reviews as people are always looking for reviews.

You won’t get far without writing an HONEST review.

“Hey yeah, this product is perfect, no problem, buy it now” will not work. You’ll want to write down the good AND the bad about the product. If you don’t, they will notice and they won’t trust you as much.

Oh yeah, keep your target audience in mind. If you’re writing for dentists looking for dental equipment, you don’t want to write like you’re talking to a small child.

You’ll want to place banners and links where you think people will see them. Obviously, at the bottom of it all, it’s probably not optimal, but keep trying different places without being too spammy.

get traffic

You can have the best content, the best recommended products/services, but if it’s a ghost town, what good is it to anyone? You have taken advantage of the flood of Internet traffic.

You won’t magically grow into millions overnight (let me know if you do!), but you’ll have to try.

One of the best ways to get traffic with minimal effort is by guest posting. Guest posting is a way to connect with other established websites while writing content for them.

They will usually plug in your website so people can see what you have. Take advantage of well-established influencers and websites because they already have an audience!

try different things

You don’t want to try one thing and expect it to be the answer to everything, and just let it be. You will want to try different things. Maybe your sales copy isn’t selling them, or maybe your reviews aren’t honest enough.

Whatever it is, you’re bound to fail, but that’s when you can take advantage of being successful. Set yourself up right from the start so you’re on the right track. People are smart, they want honest affiliates, not robots.

So be a human!

Be patient

Patience is a virtue; you have to have it.

Any affiliate will tell you that this takes time. Nothing happens overnight and you will want to be patient or you will not give yourself a chance to see success.

Like I said, it can be months before you see your first sale. Until then, you have a lot of work and testing to do!

wrapping it up

So now that you know all about affiliate marketing, you’ll want to get started right away. Action is the first step to anything.

You’ll also want to have an email marketing plan because email is one of the best ways to stay in touch with your visitors. It’s also great for building rapport and trust.

You don’t want to advertise or hassle them with that product you want them to buy, but you do want to solve their problem by showing them that you understand what they’re looking for.

Treat each visitor like a friend, get to know them and learn what you can do to improve their experience.

Most affiliate marketers fail because they don’t care about their visitors. Take care of them and show them the way to a more amazing life!