Affiliate Marketing for Dummies

This post is Affiliate Marketing for Dummies (in a friendly context, of course)
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Did you know that there is an easy way that you can get paid while you focus on building the business you’ve always wanted? You don’t have to take a second job, or get involved in any pyramid scheme. Instead, you can make your growing business work double duty with affiliate marketing. This simple “affiliate marketing for dummies” guide will show you how.

What is affiliate marketing?

Simply put, affiliate marketing is acting as a matchmaker between consumers and the products or businesses that could be most helpful to them. You have an audience at your own business. That audience could be “people who love makeup,” or “people who are doing home renovations,” or any other group; each group would benefit from being introduced to the best relevant products in your niche. You provide links to those affiliate products in your content; every time someone clicks on your link and buys a product, you get a commission. Think of it as your matchmaker’s fee.

Choose a Niche

If your business doesn’t already have a natural niche, then you need to narrow your focus. You can choose to provide links to dozens of random affiliate products, but that wouldn’t allow you to focus on providing the best service to both your audience and your affiliate partners. In any “affiliate marketing for dummies” article you can find, finding your niche is the number one piece of advice for that very reason.

Choose something you are already interested in or passionate about. Love to travel and want to do it more often? Become an affiliate partner with a line of hotels, and spend your time staying in and reviewing them.

Choose Your Method

There are several methods for promoting your affiliate products. You can simply drop your affiliate links onto a page of content and leave it at that. If a reader clicks, great; if not, you didn’t have to expend any energy. This is the most passive form of “affiliate marketing for dummies”, and is great for those who are trying to build their own business and make a little cash on the side.

You can also take a more familiar approach. Review the affiliate products you are promoting, and establish yourself as an expert in the product. This type of marketing will require more time and effort on your part; your business name and credibility will also be tied up in how well that product actually works, so you have to be careful to choose products you actually believe in.

Find Affiliate Products Through a Network

The easiest way to get started with “affiliate marketing for dummies” is to search affiliate networks for the right products. Instead of searching for affiliate programs on your own, you can simply go to a network like Clickbank, Linkshare, Commission Junction, or Shareasale, to find the right products.

You can also go directly to a merchant website if you already know specifically what you want to promote. Let’s say that you’ve already discussed a specific skin care line on your YouTube channel; you can go to that company’s website to find out if they have an affiliate program to take advantage of the content you’ve already created.

Content is King

The content that you’re using to promote affiliate links are important for two reasons: your content must be valuable. Internet readers are looking for real information that they can put to good use, and filler is quickly skipped over. The second reason is location. Affiliate links on side bars are skipped over just as quickly; your links should be within your content whenever possible.

By following these “affiliate marketing for dummies” tips, you can use your website or Internet presence to generate money while you focus on building the business you’ve always wanted.