Successful affiliate marketers use a plethora of marketing strategies and tactics to achieve high sales and commissions. Some of them seem advanced to newer marketers, but they are almost always based on marketing fundamentals.
Affiliate marketing is about taking a person on a journey from looking for a solution to the sales page of a product. Your content put in front of the right traffic at the right time leads to sales from the sales page. You aren’t selling a product, you’re providing valuable information about solving a problem with a link to a product or service that saves time or money over not using the product or service.
Every strategy, tactic, and trick is in support of the same simple goal. Bring someone seeking a solution through a journey to a sales page. Here are some strategies to support this goal.
* Niche sites
This extremely popular strategy uses a small website focused on a single product, service, or topic. The focused content is sprinkled with the right amount of affiliate links that get clicked due to the nature of the content.
This is a simple strategy in the sense setting up a website, adding a few articles, and inserting some affiliate links can get done in an hour with practice. It’s not necessarily easy as converting content takes practice and there are tracking and SEO nuances that increase chances for success. Once it’s set up and optimized, you can sit back and let the sales come in.
More content and further optimization can lead to bigger profits. When the audience is large enough, branching out to related content, products, and services can exponentially increase income. It’s a tried and true method with great potential.
* Facebook groups/Pinterest boards
Social media. Once referred to as Web 2.0 sites and apps such as Facebook, Discord, and TikTok are where people hang out these days. Social media accounts dedicated to your niche allow you to tap into existing hotbeds of traffic while targeting an interested audience.
Create posts, pictures, and videos that include information and links back to your main site or email list. From those links, you then generate affiliate sales as normal. You can also direct link from a social media platform to affiliate offers. In either case, meet your audience where they are and help them. The rest follows.
* YouTube channels
YouTube is big enough to warrant its own entry. It is possible to make videos without showing your face if that’s your thing, but they will take longer to rank and become popular. Get videos posted and as views come in traffic rises, at no additional cost.
Use the video descriptions and comments here. Link to offers or your site in the description, and interact in the comments. Engage and get the commentators on your email list where you can interact directly in the future.
* Email lists
Ah, the dreaded email list. From sidebars and pop-ups to squeeze and landing pages, always work to add visitors to your site to an email list. When the traffic is on someone else’s website they are that website’s traffic and can vanish at any time. When they’re on your email list they only vanish when they want to. Do whatever you can to build your list.
The list is the best place to become known to your audience, build trust, and ultimately offer products and services.Â
* Paid ads
This one is riskier and takes more time to learn, but the payoff is bigger. Paid ads generally lose money at first, but proper tracking and optimization can lead them to great success. Your budget can start small and expand as success starts to trickle in. Even the worst ad campaign that loses money provides data on what does and doesn’t work. Think of it as market research if nothing else.
Successful marketers almost always end up using paid ads because they work. As you go down this road and learn them, you’ll get better with them and they’ll perform better.
These five strategies don’t guarantee overnight success, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a truly successful affiliate in any niche that isn’t using some combination of them. Get started, work through the initial slump, and watch your commissions start to grow.
Which of these steps are you on in your journey? If you’re stuck on one of them I can help move you to the next one.