What’s covered in this post?
In this post we will go through some basic concepts you should think about before you start your journey as an affiliate marketer.
Why become an affiliate marketer?
Becoming a successful affiliate has many perks: You get to choose how and when you work, for whom you work, and where you work. In short – You gain a lot of freedom. However, to get there you have to be prepared and you have to understand how the game works. Below we’ll briefly go through some of the topics you should consider. Please note that this post is not at all exhaustive and that more research on the topic is always recommended.
Getting started
Second paragraphSo first off, don’t go spreading your links all over the place and hope for the best. This strategy will not bring any good results, and even worse, it will be damaging to your budding career as an affiliate marketer. So start as you do with anything worthwhile – Start with a plan and try to think of who your audience is, where you can find your audience, and how to best pique their interest. Simply throwing links around all over the place will feel like spam, and why wouldn’t it? Personalised well placed links that are relevant to your audience is key.
Don’t use your personal media (unless it fits!)
A common mistake is to spread your message and links on your personal media. While this is not always wrong, you should consider who the audience of your personal media are? A good guess is that they are following you. Obviously if the message fits your own personal media, use it, but be sure to check that there is a match between the content you are posting and the audience.
Audience and niche
Starting off we recommend that you also find a niche and a clear audience to target. Once you get the ball rolling you might want to venture out into new segments and niches, and this will also require you to find an audience that fits your niches. A good tip regarding audiences is to segment them clearly. By this we mean that you need to make sure that you do not spam your audience with a huge load of varying offers, but that you send the right offer to the right audience with the right message. Knowing and continuously researching your audiences will make sure that you know who to target with what. For example: How likely is a 15-20 year old man following a Twitch stream to buy baby products? Obviously not likely. Would it be better to target this audience with say electronics, the newest (related to the stream!) games or similar?
To segment your target audience you need to find out what the audience is interested in. This can be done in several ways, and one is to research the brand of the product/service you want to sell. Check the social media of these products and see who the people engaging there are.
Finding offers
Once you’ve made the above points clear to yourself and you have a plan you can find an abundance of offers to promote. There are several networks you can use and to set up your own ad media with us, simply sign up or check out these tutorial videos. When it comes to actually promoting the product/service you have chosen to the audience you have chosen, make sure to do so in a smart way. Nobody likes to be bombarded with hyperbole like “Lose all your fat in 24 hours”. Don’t underestimate your audience! People are smarter than that and will not react positively to these sorts of messages. Instead we recommend to provide your audience with good, relatable information about the selected niche and selected product/service.
Final remarks
By following these general guidelines you can work towards getting high-quality traffic to your links. By high-quality traffic we are not only talking about clicks, but of clicks that actually convert. Anyone can buy thousands of clicks, but making sure these clicks actually provide the advertiser with sales and you with commissions for these sales is what we are gunning for here.
Finally, remember to always keep evolving: Keep an interest in your audiences, follow them to see how they change over time, and be sure to keep up with them. The same obviously goes for the products/services you market and for your topics and niches in general. With these general ideas we hope that the concept of becoming an affiliate marketer is a bit more easy for you. Also remember to use free resources that are available to you – We at Circlewise would be more than happy to discuss these and other topics with you. You could check out this success story from one of our finance affiliates. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions regarding this topic or other topics as well!
