How do you make money as an affiliate marketer?

You need four things to be successful with affiliate marketing which are something to promote (an offer), some place to host your content that promotes that offer, traffic, and conversions (sales). I will break down the four steps in this article and show you how to get started quickly.

Step #1: Choose a Niche and Offer

Starting out…most people stick in the health, wealth, and relationship niches because they are the biggest, most evergreen niches that exist.

The best places to find offers are at some of the larger affiliate networks:

• ClickBank
• ShareASale
• Commission Junction

Once you signup and choose your offer, you are ready to go to step #2 to have a base to drive traffic to and start making sales.

Step #2: Where to Promote Your Affiliate Link

You have a couple of options when deciding on how to promote affiliate offers.

Start a blog

This is the most common and best long term strategy for affiliate marketing. You will build a blog around your ‘niche’ and update it with content to drive traffic over time and sales.

Create videos and post on YouTube

The is the easiest and fastest way to start with affiliate marketing. You can setup a channel and starting posting videos very quickly.

Squeeze page and list building

This is a little more advanced but it involves offering something of value in exchange for a visitors e-mail. You can then send them promotions over time and build a relationship that will make them much more likely to become a buyer.

TIP: Make sure you have FTC and and other disclaimers in your affiliate promotions stating that you will make money by promoting the offer they see.

Step #3: Choose Your Traffic Method

You have a couple of different options when it comes to driving traffic…

Free Traffic

This can come from search engine traffic and people searching from your blog posts. This can also be in the form of videos that you have created on YouTube. Free traffic may not cost you anything out of pocket but it does cost you time.

If you are looking for quicker results you may consider paid traffic below.

Paid Traffic Options

• Paid traffic can some in many forms including:
• PPC traffic (Google/Bing/Yahoo)
• Push notifications
• PPV traffic / Pop ads
• Native ads
• Facebook Ads
• Other Social Media Ads
• Solo Ads

No matter what paid traffic method you choose you need to make sure you have a clear objective of what you are trying to accomplish, have a budget in mind, and have tracking in place.

This is much more advanced then just working with free traffic because you want to be able to have a return on investment.

When doing paid traffic it is highly recommended to build a list at the same time to have an asset you can you use down the road to make more money long-term.

Step #4: Getting Those Conversions!

And finally we have conversions..which is probably the most important part of the whole affiliate marketing formula we have discussed.

If you cannot get conversions from your efforts your time and possibly money is wasted. Alot of success with online marketing comes with testing, testing, testing and figuring out what works.

Once you find something that converts and a process for doing it, you can expand to other products in the same niche OR use that same process in other affiliate marketing niches.

Final Tips for Success

• Focus on one niche and traffic strategy to start with (Example: Health niche and YouTube videos)
• Build up a following or traffic for your one niche
• Be consistent and set goals to create content / run campaigns several times a week
• Test and track what works and focus on that
• See what others in your niche are doing and if they are successful you can get ideas from them

Making money online as an affiliate marketer is fun and rewarding and can build a long term business if done correctly.

I hope these tips have given you some ideas and motivation to get started with affiliate marketing and start working towards an online business.

Check out other tips, tricks and strategies on this internet marketing reviews blog to make money online.