Getting started with the digital sales venture boasting the fastest turnaround time in the online marketing industry.
The buzzword of "Affiliate Marketing" has been gaining major traffic recently in primary search engines. Much of the hype is generated through isolated, individual cases of vast success through the niche, magnified by large social audiences. But more substantially, we have the sizable wave of information products that are saturating the space online.
The e-knowledge industry has reached all time highs in annual revenues measured, and "online income gurus" are capitalizing off of the wave handsomely. But underneath all of the surface-level hype and fake mentors swarming the topic, lies a highly valuable opportunity very few are fully mastering.
Affiliate Marketing, by nature, is the sale of a vendor or separate company's product in return for a commission (percentage of the sale price) payout. With the explosion of social platforms has the accompanied benefit in a sales and marketing capacity to take these affiliate products, and pitch them straight to corresponding audiences effectively through advanced targeting techniques or brand development on popular social outlets like Instagram, Facebook, and others.
The key to becoming a successful affiliate lies in two primary skill sets - selecting an effective product, and knowing how to sell effectively. I'll break down some key research points for each below to assist in your due diligence when pondering moving into the space;
Product Selection:
You can be the most experienced affiliate in the world, but without a product, you'll never make any money. The first step in your journey to becoming a well-paid affiliate marketer is to identify a product that you are passionate about. Selling something you aren't even excited about yourself will prove difficult - while selling something you know and love or can proudly endorse, however, will allow for a much more confident pitch filled with in-depth wisdom about the features and benefits of the product.
To find good products that sponsor affiliate programs that will allow you to create an affiliate account and begin selling that company/vendor's product, go to websites such as www.ClickBank.com or www.JVZoo.com to browse thousands of products spanning several different niches such as health and wellness, sports and recreation, and much more.
Upon finding a product you believe you like, first consider data points such as Gravity (Clickbank). Gravity measures the popularity (and inherent competition) of each product. Picking products with a high gravity may call for higher adspend when marketing to punch through the higher competition, but will also often sell easier and for better commissions if you can accomplish that market penetration.
Also, note what your commission rate is for that product. For example, if the product holds a price of $100.00, and it reportedly has a 60% commission rate, you'll be paid $60.00 per sale. I personally prefer digital products such as ebooks, courses, coaching recordings, and other intangible products. If you select a similar digital product, you'll be guaranteeing yourself larger commissions because physical products that have overhead (costs of production) for the materials and assembly of that product have a smaller profit margin. If a product is digital, it means that it costs very little if anything to replicate and fulfill delivery for, and therefore has massive net profit margins to afford higher commissions to affiliates.
Effective Affiliate Product Promotional Approaches:
Once you have selected an affiliate product you believe you resonate with and has good margins and demand in the marketplace, it's down to the reason this is called Affiliate "Marketing" - the actual selling part.
There are many ways to successfully promote products and services online as a brand representative or affiliate. You could go the classic route of prospecting manually (networking personally with potentially interested individuals called "prospects"), or attempt building complex series of websites with sales text and video content in place to sell the viewer called Sales Funnels, built through popular programs such as www.ClickFunnels.com. but whichever route you decide to try your hand at, have these key factors in mind when promoting your product;
Know your Niche! Always reverse-engineer and deeply understand the perspectives of your perfect customers. Use this comprehension of your ideal customer in order to identify and leverage the needs and desires of the target market you are hoping to sell to.
Know your Product! Just as important as understanding what your preferred customers are looking for, you better also know what it is you have to offer like the back of your hand to effectively sell it. Ponder unique (although always accurate and ethic) ways to represent your product that will best tailor to the interests and hopes or worries of your prospective customer. However, you can only ever achieve this if you fully understand and appreciate the features and benefits of your product.
Know your Channel! Everybody is better at different things and styles of marketing. Learn whether or not you're most effective manually prospecting directly for your sales by practicing sending 10 - 25 messages per day depending on how hard you want to grind it, or get your feet wet jumping into the more enhanced topic of web design, conversion rate optimization, funnel building and email marketing integration with tools like autoresponders.
Through the topics in this article, you should at least have a solid general basis of terminology and vocabulary to research to begin your affiliate journey. I hope that this article was helpful, and if you found it valuable, I'll always appreciate emails with comments or questions as well as sharing.
To emphasize - if you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to reach out through the contact page to fire over any clarifications you'd love to have made so you can go out and hit the ground running.
Cheers, and catch you guys in my next article! Be sure to follow on social media channels.