Now that you know the whole theory, let's go to what you and I like: practice. In this part of the post I am going to introduce you the Affiliate Monetization System In 8 Steps.
Simple, replicable and automatable.
Let's go for it!
#1 CHOOSE THE RIGHT NICHE
That does not work.
A profitable niche for you will be the one that meets these 4 pillars:
1. A Subject That You Are Passionate About
There are still many people who think that an Internet business only consists of opening a page, choosing 3 products and starting to sell. Ask yourself a question: Where do you think customers are going to come from?If you are starting, your budget is limited and you will not be able to invest in advertising onFacebook Ads or Adwords .
To get clients you have to develop a content strategy. You will have to write to attract your ideal readers , your future clients.
And that involves a lot of work:
• Find new ideas for posts
• Write epic content
• Conduct interviews with influencers in your sector
• Answer comments
Can you imagine doing all that on a topic you don't like?
Before you earned a single euro you would have already abandoned.
2. Solve The Need For A Collective
A market is nothing more than a group of people who have a common need. They have a problem, but not the solution.This is what Americans call a pain factor . The more a wound hurts, the sooner we want to heal it, right? The key to the sale has always been and will be to detect what are the problems of an audience so that you can offer them a solution.
Never sell a product that you don't know is going to improve the daily lives of many people 100%. If you do, you will kill your credibility and all your selling power.
3. Market Size
The bigger a market, the more put options there are. But also more competition.If you are a dummie, there is no point in you fighting giants; ideally, you segment within your market. To give you an idea, I am going to give you several examples of market sizes in the subject of health in Spain.
Diet To Lose Weight: 27,100 searches per month (market).
Purifying Diet: 8,100 visits per month (niche).
Diets To Gain Weight: 2,400 visits per month (micro-niche).
4. We Don't Want To Invent New Markets
A very typical mistake when you start with Internet business is finding a revolutionary product. A product that nobody knows, but that you think will change the world.Take my advice when I tell you this is a waste of time 99.99% of the time. A new product implies that there is no market in itself. There are still no customers who have that need or are aware that they have that problem.
This means that there is no current demand for your product, so you would have to invest the budget you do not have in making it known to customers. Don't complicate yourself and don't try to open new markets. This is advice that I always give to my students. Unless you are a large multinational, this is a waste of time.
What you have to do is attack a market that is developing.
#2 CHOOSE THE PRODUCT
Now that you have decided which niche you are going to work in, it's time to see what products you are going to sell.What everyone does - our dear Mister Z among them - is to choose only the products for which he will receive the most commission.
I insist on the idea from before: this is complete idiocy since the only products that are sold are those that are useful, not those that have the highest price.
To decide which product to sell you have to look at these 4 points.
1. Expensive Product V/S Cheap Product
When it comes to making a profit from selling products, you have 2 possible strategies to follow:✓ Product with a low price and sell many units.
✓ Product with a high price and sell fewer units.
I recommend the 2nd option for a simple question of numbers. Imagine that you sell a product of € 200 with a commission of 50% per sale.
With 100 visits and 1% conversion, you would charge € 100.
However, with a product of € 10 and with that same level of commission, look at what would happen. With those same 100 visits, even if we increased the conversion to 10% (almost impossible when you start), you would charge € 50.
But I never get tired of saying it, these calculations will not make any sense if you choose the products without seeing if they are relevant to your audience . In that case, it will not matter if they are cheap or expensive, you will not sell anything.
2. Product From Which Many Contents Can Be Written
Your customer attraction system is based on the content you can create talking about the product.If you choose an article of which only 10 posts can be written, you will be limited when it comes to achieving visibility.
Do a little Google analysis to review the content that has already been written. It will only take you about 5 minutes to realize the route the product may have.
Tip: If it fits your audience, choose items that have multiple accessories. So you can also write about them.
3. What Is Already Selling?
Remember what I was saying before: your objective must be to attack already developed markets.And within these, you have to choose the products that you know are already working.To find out, you have 3 options:
Option A. Amazon
Amazon is one of the great monsters of e-commerce and one of the best-known affiliate networks in the world. To find out which are the best-selling items, you have it very simple.You just have to enter the option "all departments", and there, click inside "best sellers" . And voila.
In the photo you are seeing the best-selling items on the theme (market) health. But as you can see, you have other subdivisions (niches) from which to extract information.
Option B. ClickBank
ClickBank is one of the largest and best-known affiliation platforms that exist and that gives you the option of marketing many products on different topics.To see all the articles, you just have to browse through the categories. What is it going to show you that a product is interested.
Severity is a ClickBank own statistic that tells you how many affiliates have sold that product in the last 3 months . This data is important for 2 reasons:
It is an item that has already been sold.
The level of competition that may exist.
Do not stop researching your niche in ClickBank, since it will allow you to have a global vision of everything that is sold in your sector and what works.
Option C. Udemy
is an e-learning platform that gives good proof that the Internet knowledge market is in full development.
Like the other 2, you will be able to see which are the topics that are most in demand in each niche.
In addition to the stars, you will also see the number of votes they have obtained, which will indicate the demand. If you are thinking of creating an infoproduct , Udemy will also be very useful for finding ideas.4. Evaluate Keywords
One of the most effective ways to analyze whether a product is in demand is Google itself.The first thing you have to do is locate the most interesting keywords in your sector. For this you have many tools:
• Google Keyword Planner
• Ubersuggest
• Keywordshitter
• Keywoordtool.io
• Answer the Public
• SEMrush
When you already have a fairly large list of keywords, it will be your turn to check what their search volume is.
Keep in mind that the idea is always repeated: the more sold or the more searches you have, the greater the competition.
"But Franck, the planner doesn't work anymore."
No, the scheduler has never stopped working. What Google has done is layer the tool so that it only gives us search forks and not the exact amount.
How is it arranged?
You just have to create a campaign in Adwords, the cost of the cheapest being € 1 . It's not a big investment either, is it?
#3 DO YOUR COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
One of the big challenges you face as an affiliate is the competition to get organic traffic.To know if you have options to rank for a product, it is important that you analyze the rest of the websites that you are going to fight against to get the love of Google.
To do it in a very basic way without knowing anything about SEO you just have to download an extension in your browser: the Mozbar. This extension is very useful, since every time you do a search it will indicate the following information:
DA: indicates how much authority the entire web has.
PA: shows the authority of the page you are going to compete against.
Number of inbound links - How many links are pointing to that page.
For a beginning blog, competing against a website with a PA and a number of links greater than 20 would be very difficult to overcome.
Note that this "SEO analysis" is very general. If you want to do a deeper SEO analysis, I recommendthis article from my friend Dean Romero.
#4 HOW DO YOU BECOME AN AFFILIATE?
By now you have not only chosen your niche, but you also know what products you are going to sell according to these 3 criteria:• Relevance to your audience.
• Demand.
• SEO competition.
With this clear, you have almost everything ready to start mounting your project. And if I say almost, it is because you still lack an essential detail: becoming an affiliate.
• To do this you have 3 options:
• Affiliate platform.
• Direct affiliation of a company.
• Affiliate programs like Amazon or Ebay.
Let me exolain these 3 in brief..
1. Affiliate Platforms
These are companies where you can access multiple products with many themes. We talked about ClickBank before, but there are many others:• ShareASale.
• Zanox
• Commission Junction
• Public Ideas
Some are even specialized in certain themes.
Brands They Sell: Some only distribute lesser-known brands, which implies greater difficulty in selling.
Payment Methods: They may require that you have achieved minimum sales in order to generate an invoice and thus receive the money.
When It Is Charged: There are many that pay within 30 days, but there are others that even reach 60. Also check the opinions of other affiliates, since many of these companies are behind in payments.
Entry Requirements: There are platforms that require the blog to have a certain age or a minimum level of visits to allow it to register.
Resources: The platforms provide you with some materials to facilitate the sale, such as banners. In some you have many resources, while in others there are hardly any.
Before choosing one, be sure to check which one offers you the best conditions according to the products you have decided to market.
2. Direct Affiliation Of A Company
There are many companies that already have their own affiliate network, allowing you to be able tomarket their products quickly and easily.For example, in the world of blogging it is very common to recommend the hosting provider in which you have hosted your blog. And it is that all these companies offer you the possibility of promoting their services when you become their client.
But it is not the only case, there are many tools that offer sales commissions. They can be WordPress templates, the software to manage social networks or plugins to create forms that improve conversion.
Almost all of these companies have their own affiliate marketing system.
Of course, do not forget that you must know very well what you recommend. There is no greater mistake than offering something that gives a bad result. The credibility that has cost you so much time to gain would vanish in an instant.
3. Affiliate Programs
Without a doubt, Amazon and Ebay are the 2 great affiliate programs, especially the first.The advantages of working with Amazon are obvious.
It is not only that the product catalog is huge , but you know that their customer service is very good. If a person buys something through your blog and it turns out to be faulty, you can rest assured that Amazon will respond.
Also, while some platforms require a minimum number of visits to register, on Amazon or Ebay you do not have that problem. But everything has its B-side and Amazon also has it. The main one is in the commissions you pay. The commissions of some of the most attractive products to sell (technology) have dropped and are around 3.5%.
#5 ASSEMBLE OF BLOG
In this post you have all the necessary information to be able to create your blog, so now we are only going to do a Fast Track of everything you need:• Domain ( Namecheap )
• Hosting ( Raiola Networks )
• WordPress ( WordPress.org )
• WordPress template ( Studiopress )
• Email Marketing Platform ( Mailchimp )
And thats it .
Here you have all the infrastructure you need to start your blog and start squeezing your affiliate links.
#6 OPTIMIZE YOUR SEO
By analyzing your competition, you already saw that you were going to have to exercise all yourpunch in your fight to get organic traffic.If you want to maximize sales with affiliate marketing, you have to improve your positioning to the maximum. For that you have to play with 3 variables:
1. SEO On Page
These are all the resources that you can optimize within the page itself . Every time Google spiders visit you, they check if your blog meets a series of parameters.Some of the most important are the following:
• Loading speed
• Web architecture
• User experience
• Internal linking
All this is up to you alone, so it's up to you to get down to business and get Google to give you an honorary registration on your first exam.
2. SEO And Content Writing
Within SEO On Page, it also influences how the contents of your blog are written. Although your priority should always be your readers, it does not hurt that you also learn to seduce Google with your words .But copywriting is a very important point when it comes to selling by affiliation and not just by SEO.If you want to recommend a product and get people to buy it, you're going to have to write a great tutorial about it .
Never forget to incorporate all these points:
• Who is it interesting for and who is not.
• Its pros and cons.
• Advantages compared to other similar articles.
• Your experience with the product (this is better on video).
• Testimonials from other people who have used it.
Your main concern when writing a product review should always be to include as much practical information as you can.
Do not lose focus on what your customer's need is and show in relation to that all its benefits.
3. SEO Off Page
On this side we have all the external factors that affect your blog , which mainly reduces to the incoming links that you have received.Please do not buy link packs on Fiverr or the like. Before you know it, Google will have plunged you into the darkness of SEO.
A 100% legal and white hat way to get links is by making guest posts . When you make a guest article, you have the option of incorporating a link to your website, which will breathe gas into your SEO.
#7 CREATING A METHOD
Now you already have your entire platform.Your blog is working, it is optimized for SEO and you already know which are the ideal products for your audience. It seems you don't need anything else anymore, right?
Error.
You are missing one of the most important questions: strategy.
To sell with affiliate marketing without losing focus, you need to be clear about your roadmap:
1. Traffic Generation
Your first goal on this path is to achieve a Minimum Viable Audience . Or what is the same, 100 visits per day of qualified traffic.Why is this so important?
Until you reach that number, you won't be able to get enough feedback from your readers to know what their needs are . And without that the possibilities of offering a product that does not interest are very high.
2. Convert Traffic
A reader who does not subscribe is a person with whom you cannot establish a relationship. You cannot talk to her, nor can you ask her what her problems are.And as you may have already imagined, that implies that you cannot offer a solution either. You cannot sell him.
But also, when a person subscribes to your blog you have the option to show them that you can still add more value. Thanks to email marketing and sales funnels you will earn their trust.
This means that when you recommend a product, you will have enough credibility to value your opinion.
3. AutoResponder
Here you have your tireless seller. The one who never sleeps, never stops smiling and always answers the customer what you want: the autoresponder .Combining a sales funnel with an automated email sequence is the most effective way to sell affiliate products or your own.
4. Start Over
Of course. Do not forget that the person who has already bought you is the one with whom you have the most options to re-sell.Be sure to add complementary products and create new sales funnels by means of an autoresponder.
#8 THE ABC OF EMAIL MARKETING
Since I don't want to see any of my readers become a Mister Z, I'm going to show you the basics of what a winning email marketing strategy is.Don't get lost and remember the money is in the list.
1. Types Of Emails
When planning your email sequence you have to be clear about what types of emails you can play with. Here I explain 4 variants:Newsletter: Be sure you know it. This is the typical reminder email in which they explain what has happened in those days on the blog. It is usually sent one a week.
Compilation of Your Best Emails: In addition to deriving traffic to those posts, it is a way to demonstrate everything you know about your topic. Little by little you will position yourself as an expert in your sector.
Soft Selling: 95% of email content is dedicated to adding value, but in the end you already introduce a "wedge" about the product. It's about starting to publicize the item, not closing a sale.
Hard selling: Here we are going to sell. The person has to understand that what they need to solve their problem is what you are offering them in that email.
Although it seems to you that the most important thing is this last email, the reality is that if with your other shipments you have not contributed anything of value or earned your trust, you will not sell anything at all.
2. The Bases Of Copywriting
Copywriting is selling thanks to words. If you're not good at writing, ideally, you should hire a professional to create the email sequence for you.However, I leave you a series of tips to encourage sales with your emails.
Benefits and not features: it does not matter if you sell affiliate products or your own, what the client wants to know is how you are going to improve his life or to what extent you are going to fix his problem. Forget about explaining characteristics, focus on the benefit that the person will receive.
Urgency: "I have this, it's very good and I'm only going to slice it for 3 hours." Emphasize it with a watch with a countdown.
Social Evidence: Post testimonials from people who have already used the product and explain how I help them.
If you have been wanting to know more about how to use copywriting to sell, I recommend that you read this other post.
3. AutoResponder Sequence Example
As I was saying before, the power of an autoresponder is unlimited, as long as you do it well.So that you have a reference with which to start working, I show you one of the funnels that I have used.
Day 1: Email presentation. You explain why you created the blog and how you can help it.
Day 2 to 5: Emails where you add value. The goal of these emails is to earn the reader's trust and to establish a relationship with her. It is also important that the subject of these emails revolves around some of the benefits of the product you want to sell.
Day 6/7: Enter soft sell emails , but don't forget that now the goal is not to sell. This is somewhat more subtle, you are "heating up" the sale.
Day 8: This is something that has always worked very well for me. It is about launching a frequently asked questions email before the final sale email. Here you can clear many possible objections and build trust.
Day 9: The time has come for the sale. In this email you have to apply everything we have seen about copywriting.
Another issue that works very well is to send a reminder email 2 days after the sale email. It is an ideal opportunity for you to sharpen the sense of urgency.
