Are you struggling in our new world economy and you want to start monetizing your influence? Or, maybe you’re new to the world of marketing or blogging and you want some clever ideas to help monetize your content with affiliate marketing?
If so, then congratulations! I’ve been brainstorming and studying (and practicing) affiliate marketing for many years. I’m happy to share my top 5 critical tips for affiliate marketers of all levels in virtually any niche.
5 Critical Tips For Affiliate Marketing Beginners And Gurus Alike
- # 1 – Study Your Ideal Audience
- # 2 – Find The Perfect Affiliate Program
- # 3 – Try Your Best To Serve Your Fans
- # 4 – Build Your Email List
- # 5 – Write Evergreen Content
Here’s Why I Love These Affiliate Marketing Tips
I’ve been obsessed with affiliate marketing for longer than I care to admit. (Lol.) In that time, I’ve read so much ballyhoo, hype, and exaggeration in the world of affiliate marketing.
I’m happy and excited to share the 5 best tips that I think all beginners, influencers, bloggers, and gurus should know and practice.
# 1 – Study Your Ideal Audience
One of the most important marketing lessons that newbies overlook is that affiliate programs don’t matter one iota if you don’t know what your audience wants.
You might have access to the biggest audience and the best email list in the world – but if you don’t know much about the frustrations of the audience, then your affiliate marketing efforts will never reach their full potential.
Contrarily, if you know exactly what your audience wants, then it’s much simpler to brainstorm effective affiliate marketing campaigns that can help provide value to your audience.
Here Are A Few Key Ways To Study Your Ideal Audience:
- Invite your audience to ask you questions related to your niche
- Build a quiz funnel and poll your audience to learn more about their struggles
- Invite your email subscribers to reply to your emails so you can get to know them
- Don’t have an audience yet? No problem! Look on websites like Quora and Answer The Public to find out questions people in your niche frequently ask
- Look on blog comments in your niche to see what types of frustrations average users ask
- Read reviews of products in your niche that your competitors publish to find out what people like, and what they don’t like
This is just scratching the surface. Never stop studying your marketplace conditions!
At this point, it’s easy for me to brainstorm unlimited promotional ideas because of all of the interaction I’ve had with students, colleagues, clients, bosses, and other players in the marketing and blogging niches.
The point is to do your homework so you can figure out the exact affiliate products, services, and offers that would match with your audience wonderfully!
A lot of my students and colleagues have missed this tip. Don’t overlook the simple things in life!
# 2 – Find The Perfect Affiliate Program
I once sold a course that detailed dozens of affiliate programs. The course was easily one of my most popular courses – ever. However, one thing that’s more important than finding a unique affiliate program is first figuring out what your audience likes to buy. Also, find out what they need.
Once you know what your audience needs, then finding a good affiliate program is a piece of cake. I also have a massive list of affiliate programs that I’m going to share with you in a future post. But first, let’s think more about your target audience or your ideal prospect.
Once you can name the biggest sore points that your ideal audience experiences related to your niche, now’s the time to brainstorm like crazy to figure out what types of digital products, services, tools, and goodies that you can refer to them as an affiliate.
Ask Yourself These Questions To Figure Out The Ideal Affiliate Program That Matches Your Audience Like Gangbusters:
- What types of frustrations does your ideal audience encounter related to your niche?
- What types of online courses might your audience benefit from and enjoy?
- Does your audience use marketing software? Email marketing software, or other SaaS utilities?
- Does your audience need marketing services? What about other services?
- Does your audience like to buy physical products? What type of products do they like to buy?
- What books does your audience like to read?
- How often does your audience shop online? Where do they buy their stuff?
The more you understand your audience, the more straightforward it becomes to brainstorm for hours and make a massive list of potential affiliate programs that might be the perfect match.
I love to brainstorm this type of data in an Excel spreadsheet. That way, whenever I want to create a blog post, Podcast, or email newsletter, I can look carefully at the list of stuff that those in my niche might be interested in purchasing. This exercise can help you unlock potential content creation ideas.
Let your understanding of your audience pave the way for future content ideas and potential lead generation strategies. Food for thought!
# 3 – Try Your Best To Serve Your Fans
A lot of email marketers I’ve known over the years don’t give a hoot about the lives of their subscribers. This phenomenon was especially popular back in the day, where many email marketers lived by a “churn and burn” mentality upon which they hit their email lists hard with promotion after promotion.
I advise the opposite; I challenge you to care deeply for your subscribers and fans so that they want to follow you for a lifetime. Promote epic webinar marketing tips instead of fluff, overhyped content!
Also, consider the quality of products that you promote to your audience. Never promote anything that you wouldn’t share with your close family members and best friends.
Let me be blunt. I’m a snob when it comes to the quality of products these days. There’s a lot of fluff content and junk tools. That’s a massive affiliate marketing tip. Never promote junk to your audience, or you’ll lose them shortly thereafter.
Would you refer a product to your email subscribers, followers, or students if you knew for a fact that the software, tool, or product was a piece of junk?
Or, what if you knew that the product converted wonderfully well but the product wouldn’t help your email subscribers or readers?
One of the main reasons I don’t promote popular product launches that much these days is because I don’t like the quality of many products, lol.
My Unsatisfying Observations With Many Products Launched These Days:
- A lot of the software apps are “abandonware” that get abandoned shortly after the launch.
- A lot of instructors offer lousy customer support.
- A lot of online courses overpromise and underdeliver.
- Many widgets, software, tools, and apps are coded like junk and aren’t reliable.
- Some stuff is just overpriced when there are better alternatives.
I’m ludicrously picky about the courses, software, and apps that I use. So, why on Earth would I refer a piece of junk to anyone reading this blog or my email newsletter? It’s probably much wiser for me to focus on the quality of programs that I promote rather than the quantity.
I’d offer the same advice to you or anyone. That way, you don’t earn bad karma with your colleagues and fans – something that’s difficult to regain once it’s been lost.
# 4 – Build Your Email List
Most of the successful affiliate marketers I know love to build their email list. I could rant and rave about the power of email marketing for years but I’ll summarize the potential like this: email marketing is one of the cheapest ways you can market your business these days.
Back only a few years ago email marketing with a reliable tool or app would cost you a couple of bucks. Now you can use email marketing software apps like AWeber, MailChimp, or MailerLite without paying a single penny.
If you love to write, then email marketing is the single best way to build your audience in any niche, in my opinion at least.
Since it’s FREE to build an email newsletter these days, why not start collecting subscribers right now? Your email newsletter is a wonderful asset to build over time so you can establish yourself in your niche!
# 5 – Write Evergreen Content
I’m a passionate yet lazy writer! One of the smartest things I’ve ever done is make all of my email autoresponder content so that it’s evergreen.
That way, I can publish the content on a single occasion and then let the content ride indefinitely into the future. It doesn’t matter what type of content we’re talking about.
All Of My Content Is Evergreen:
- Digital books
- Digital courses
- Email courses
- Email autoresponders
- Drip campaigns
- Webinar content
- Podcast content
- Blog posts
- Bonus material
I think creating evergreen content is even more powerful if you’re a tiny one-person team like I am. When you write content every day plus work with other clients or work a job, it’s ludicrously easy to get exhausted.
When you’re exhausted, writer’s block can easily snag your creativity! That’s why I love evergreen content. Evergreen content lets you work hard and hustle when you have the desire, and then rest when you need to charge your batteries or focus elsewhere.
If you’re a mega rockstar guru with a 10-person content marketing team, then well-wishings! You can probably afford to create fresh content several times per day. However, the majority of bloggers and digital publishers cannot spare such expense!
Conclusion
I hope that this content finds you well! I’ve put a litany of consideration into these topics over the years and have been practicing affiliate marketing for a ludicrously long time.
I hope that you enjoyed the read and that you have a brilliant day!
Cordially and humbly yours,
Mike “Affiliate Newb” DeVincent
MrComputerScience.com