Internet Affiliate Marketing Training

Internet Affiliate Marketing Training

Internet Affiliate Marketing Training

When you are starting a bricks and mortar business, you don’t just pick a thing and dive right in without knowing what you are doing, right?  The exact same principle applies with your online business – you’re going to need some Internet Affiliate Marketing Training.

If you don’t learn about your business, even a little bit, you can find yourself heading off down into rabbit holes that lead nowhere fast, or worse – making a poor, uneducated decision and losing money!

Can you learn Affiliate Marketing on your own?  Sure you can!  It all depends on how much time you want to take learning – and where will you find the resources to teach you what you need to know?

So what is there to learn about Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing Elements

You know, it isn’t hard, but there is actually a fair bit to learn to get the fundamentals right when you are starting your Affiliate Marketing online business.

And you don’t want to waste too much time starting up your business – your precious time really needs to be spent on building up your business.

If you’ve read my story, you’ll know that I spent months and months trying to learn how to start my Affiliate Marketing online business, and how to do that on my own.

I read countless articles and researched endlessly – in short, I wasted a lot of time looking for resources to teach me, when I could have already had my first website up and running and getting indexed and ranked in Google!

Free Courses
Free Courses

6 Steps to Learn Affiliate Marketing

In previous posts I’ve laid down the 6 Steps you need to follow to get started with your Affiliate Marketing business:

  • Step 1: Find Your Niche
  • Step 2: Build A Website
  • Step 3: Start Writing Your Content
  • Step 4: Join Affiliate Marketing Programs
  • Step 5: Add Affiliate Links to Your Content
  • Step 6: Drive Traffic to Your Website

Ok, so those are the 6 steps.  But how do you accomplish these?

I’ve talked in previous posts about finding your niche, and how you can get your first website for free.

If you have done those things, you will have a beautiful, empty website – waiting for you to build it up by following steps 3, 4, 5, and 6 – and if not – you haven’t started yet!

Assuming that you are ready to move on with your business, this is where you really do need some guidance – I sure did.

When it comes to fully understanding what you are doing and putting what you learn into action, I urge you to get some quality training – and I’m recommending exactly what I did to get that training and mentoring, from people just like me.

Where do I get Affiliate Marketing Training?

My genuine recommendation is to do what I did, and head over to Wealthy Affiliate and open a free account.

Then you can do 20 courses for free which will cover off the fundamentals of how Affiliate Marketing works and how to get started.

Have a look at the whole platform for yourself and see if you think it is legitimate, and see if you think it will work for you and be helpful for you in starting your business.

It’s exactly what I did, and I’ve been on the platform for 3 years now.  People like me don’t hang around for 3 years if it isn’t worthwhile, and I am still learning today.

All you need is an email address.  There is no credit card information required to sign up for a free membership, so there aren’t any hidden anythings at all.

20 Free Courses - No credit card required, no hidden anythings at all

After 7 days of free membership, you will be offered a discounted $19 Premium membership for one month.  This is what happens for everyone that signs up with a free account.

If you want to know all about the training at Wealthy Affiliate, and everything the platform offers as a Premium member, go ahead and read my full Wealthy Affiliate Review.

If you take up the $19 offer – then do as much training as you can in that month!  It’s a very small investment for what you are going to learn.

Then you can decide if you want to continue, or not – the choice is entirely yours.

Just below, I’ve put in a link to a completely free course module that you don’t even need to sign up for – just click on the link and do the course and I’m sure you’ll be interested in doing some more!

 Do This REAL Course Module FREE Now!

Just Click on the image to do this FREE Lesson anonymously NOW. 

There are no signups, email addresses or logins required.

This Lesson “Understanding How to Make Money Online” is FREE – along with 19 other course modules just like this!

Free Course

This FULL course module explains HOW Affiliate Marketing Works and HOW to Make Money using Affiliate Marketing on Your website.

This Lesson provides REAL LIFE examples of simple, LIVE websites making profits via Affiliate Marketing right now!

Want More FREE Training?

YES, I WANT FREE TRAINING
YES, I WANT FREE TRAINING
Stand Out from the Crowd

What is Niche Marketing About?

What is Niche Marketing About?

In the picture above, we have one white rubber duck that stands out amongst all the regular yellow rubber ducks.

That white duck is a niche rubber duck!

In fact, when I was looking for an image to represent niche marketing, I found photos of many different types of rubber ducks – these are very cute and popular toys for children and adults alike.

I expect there are people out there who collect rubber ducks and are on the lookout for unusual and specific variations – there’s a niche market right there!

Regular vs Niche Rubber Ducks:

Yellow Duck
Hawaiian Duck
Batman Duck

How to Define a Niche Market

A niche market is a segment of a larger market that has a unique difference that sets it apart from the larger market.

Let’s take shoes for example.

We all need them so there’s always going to be a profit to be made from shoes. Shoes are a HUGE Market.

Right away, there are 3 LARGE market segments within the market for shoes:

  • Womens Shoes
  • Mens Shoes
  • Kids Shoes

Let’s focus on Womens Shoes and break down this large market a little further into smaller market segments:

  • Dress Shoes
  • Casual Shoes
  • Boots
  • Sports Shoes

Each of these smaller market segments could also be broken down into even smaller segments – like stiletto shoes, mocassins, western boots and gym shoes.

You get the point. 

These are niche markets.  It looks like this:

Niche Marketing

So by focusing on a niche market segment, you are targeting those people who are specifically looking for the products in your niche.

This is niche marketing.

Remember that in Affiliate Marketing overall, your potential customer base typically already knows what they are looking to buy when they do a search on Google or in another search engine.

By targeting this specific group of people, you are aiming to gain search engine rankings in your niche so that when they do their searching, your content is listed in the results, they go to your site to read your content, and they make a purchase based on your recommendations!

A Niche can also be set apart by other factors

It’s not just the product itself that can represent a niche.

It could be a specific element of a product or service that sets it apart and defines your niche market.  For example:

  • Product Pricing – luxury, mid-range or discounted
  • Product Quality – premium, handmade, economical
  • Demographics – gender, age range, income, education
  • Psychographics – personal values or interests
  • Geographical – people who live in a particular place

For example, your niche market could be home gym equipment for seniors.

Or high quality, handmade furniture for people who live in your city or country.

Or affordable, eco-friendly products for the home.

You get the drift.  By choosing a niche you get an advantage straight away – your market is not so crowded so your established competition will be smaller!

Niche Market

Don't be too broad with your Niche Market

When choosing your niche, you need to be sure it actually is a niche market, and not too broad.

For example, we went through the exercise of breaking down the market for shoes.

Shoes is a MASSIVE market and way too broad.

Womens Shoes is a LARGE market and also way too broad – after all you are not a shoe retailer here.

Boots is a smaller segment and possibly OK, but there would still be a lot of competition there with large retailers.

Western boots is a niche market and there would be potential here to target that specific audience of women who like to wear cowboy boots!

And just for the record – I am not in any way recommending these as a good choice for a niche market – this is purely an example of not being too broad when choosing your niche.

Make sure your Niche is potentially profitable

One trap you don’t want to fall into is finding out that there really isn’t enough of a market for your niche to make it profitable.

Whilst you might be really interested in a specific thing, you want to be sure there are enough other people in the world interested in or wanting that same thing so that you will actually get visitors to your website!

Some of this should really just be common sense, but do some research and see how many other sites are marketing your niche – and see if there are affiliate programs for your niche that you can join.

You might have found the latest and greatest of something that no-one else has found yet – and that would be fantastic! 

Just be sure that there really is a genuine market out there, and that there are affiliate marketing opportunities for you to make money!

Become an Expert in your Niche

You are also going to need to become an “expert” in your niche so that people trust your content and they find it compelling to read.

Your purpose in niche marketing is to give your potential customers the information they are looking for, and for them to find your content interesting and helpful to them.

So it really should be something that you are genuinely interested in or wanting to learn more about yourself.  Your niche has to be sustainable.

If you are going to run out of information for your niche after a couple of posts then I’d suggest you want to choose something else – we are in this business to build an income after all!

Affiliate Marketing Training
Affiliate Marketing Training
Find Your Niche

How Do I Start Affiliate Marketing?

How Do I Start Affiliate Marketing?

My very first commission from Affiliate Marketing was $1.49 – and I was so excited to see that what I had learned to do and put into action was really working!

So How Do I Start Affiliate Marketing?  My number one recommendation is to get some quality training and support and start step-by-step. I did exactly that after many months of trying to piece it all together on my own, and wasting a lot of time reading and researching.

It takes time and work and you won’t make money straight away – but if you are willing to put in the effort it WILL work and you WILL earn commisions – and that’s passive income!

In this article, I’m going to cover off the 6 BASIC steps you need to follow to get started with Affiliate Marketing.

FIND OUT HOW I STARTED!
FIND OUT HOW I STARTED!

6 Steps to Start Affiliate Marketing

Step 1: Start by Choosing Your Niche

The first thing you are going to have to do is to decide on your niche – or, in other words, the area of interest you are going to be targeting.

You’re going to be writing a lot about your niche and promoting products or services complementary to your niche, so you need to choose something that is sustainble for you.

If you haven’t decided on this already, the best place to start is with something you are interested in, or that you are knowledgable about, or even a hobby.

Niche Products

When choosing your niche, make sure you are not too general – for example “books” or “music” are too broad for a niche.

Using the examples above, you could narrow your niche down to be “self-development books” or “country music”.

You can really enjoy building your business if you choose something that you are passionate about – any niche can be profitable!

Niche Market

Step 2: Build a Website

The majority of Affiliate Marketers start out with a website – this is the best place to start to build your business and attract your affiliate marketing customers.

It could be a good idea for you to start with a free site, and once you are more comfortable with what you are doing, you can register your very own web domain and move your content over.

I recommend SiteRubix because they offer free WordPress site building – and I highly recommend WordPress as it is the most flexible site platform out there and your site can be easily moved from place to place.

Starting free is a really good way to get a grip on the basics before you commit to your own domain and hosting.

Don’t go with “page builder” site offers as these are usually unique systems and it is very difficult to get your site off one of these.

Get Free Affiliate Marketing Training
Get Free Training

Step 3: Start Writing your Content

You’re going to have to build out your website with content before you can start joining Affiliate Marketing programs and making money.

Most Affiliate Marketers will actually look at your site and potentially your traffic before they will approve your application to join.

So, there’s going to need to be some meaningful content on your site – you’ll need content relevant to your niche that your audience is going to find compelling and useful.

And you’ll want to write some content with reviews around products and services that are specific to your niche too – you can add affiliate links to these later.

Here’s an example from one of my own affiliate marketing sites in the high quality toys niche:

Product Review Sample
Product Review Sample

I’d recommend a great home page and at least 4-6 unique blog posts or articles before you go ahead and try to join any programs.

If you need help and inspiration in doing this, I urge you to do exactly what I did and get some training and support.  I’ve been a Premium Member of Wealthy Affiliate since February 2017 and that’s where I started and continue to learn.

Read my Review of Wealthy Affiliate for 2020 and see if you think this could work for you too.

Step 4: Join Affiliate Marketing Programs

Affiliate Marketing Networks

Once you’re happy with your content, you’ll need to find affiliate marketing programs that are relevant to your niche.

Don’t worry – there’s thousands and thousands of affiliate programs and networks you can join.

Let’s say your niche is “kitchen gadgets”.

Type into Google “kitchen gadgets + affiliate program” and you’ll get something like this:

Kitchen Gadgets

What I’m showing you there is just the very top result in pages and pages of results!

The same thing works if you have a specific merchant in mind – let’s say KitchenAid for example.

Type into Google “KitchenAid + affiliate program” and you’ll see the results here:

KitchenAid Affiliate Program

In the example above, you’ll see that the first result is actually a site called Viglink.

This is an Affiliate Marketing Network and there are hundreds of these networks that manage the affiliate marketing for thousands upon thousands of merchants.

By joining a single network, you gain access to all of these affiliate programs in one place and you can narrow down directly to your niche once you have joined.

Some of the most well known Affiliate Networks are:

  • Commission Junction
  • Rakuten
  • ShareASale
  • LinkShare
  • Digital River

Of course, I can’t NOT mention the Amazon Affiliate Program here as they provide a marketplace for MILLIONS of products from just about every niche known to man.

Apparently Amazon has over 500,000,000 products on their website – and although they don’t pay huge commissions, so many people around the world shop at Amazon that you really should join the party!

Step 5: Add Affiliate Links to Your Content

Now that you’ve joined some Affiliate Programs, you’ve got access to products to promote.

This is how you are going to make money from your site.

You need to write content around these products or services and add your affiliate links so you can sell them to your audience.

When a reader clicks on one of those links in your content and makes a purchase – you get the commission!

You can add your affiliate links in text or images, and affiliate programs often have banners and ads that you can also add to your site.

In the example below from my own toys site, you can see I have affiliate links in the highlighted text, the image of the wooden jeep, and there is also a Banner Ad in the sidebar.

Affiliate Links

The affiliate links are provided to you in several ways by the merchant and they are unique to your affiliate account.

There is usually a general link that covers the entire site, a link for every individual product, and links that apply specifically to banner ads.

No matter what though, WHATEVER your customer buys from the affiliate site, you get a commission from the sale.

So it doesn’t matter that I have a specific link above to the Fagus Wooden Jeep – if the customer clicks the link and ends up buying ANYTHING from that site, I still get the commission.

This is pretty cool, and particularly with programs like Amazon where people might just buy a fridge even though they got there through your link to a wooden toy!

Your affiliate link will place a cookie in your customers browser so that even if they don’t buy anything straight away, if they go back the next day or the next week and buy something from that site – you still get the commission.

The life cycle of these cookies varies from 24 hours to 30 days or longer, each program will tell you this when you join.

START WITH FREE TRAINING
START WITH FREE TRAINING

Step 6: Drive Traffic to Your Website

There’s no point building your website if nobody can find it – and you have to have traffic in order to make sales.

What you want is for people to find your site and the content you have written when they do searches in Google and other search engines for information about your niche.

Rankings lead to traffic and making commissions.

If your content is ranked on Page 10 of search results, then very few people are going to be finding those results.

To get good rankings in search results, you need to build your site using Search Engine Optimization techniques and tools.

The most relevant technique you should be using straight away are Keywords.

SEO Keywords

Your keywords also need to be well-researched so that a search engine shows it as a top ranking result – you don’t want too much competition.

For example, my toys site is in the niche for high quality and handmade toys – if I just wrote content around the keyword “toys”, then the competition would be massive!

So, I want my pages to rank high when someone types into the search engine the exact phrase – “handmade toys”. Other keywords could be “wooden toys” or “handmade wooden toys” or “Fagus Wooden Jeep”.

You need to write your content around the exact keywords you want to rank for – and they need to be specific.

AND You want to be sure you are using White Hat SEO or you’ll be penalised by the search engines!

SEO

How Do I Research Keywords?

The easiest way is by using a keyword research tool.  

You simply type in your keyword and the analysis tells you how often the keyword is searched for, the amount of competition (ie. how many others are already using that keyword on their sites), and the likely traffic it may generate.

I use a keyword research tool called Jaaxy because I get it for free as part of my membership of Wealthy Affiliate. It’s a fantastic tool and offers much much more than just keyword research.

In the screenshot below you can see what Jaaxy has told me about the keyword “wooden toys” – from this I can see that this keyword is searched on average 8,554 times a month!

That’s all potential traffic – but there’s a fair amount of competition too. 

Jaaxy Search

From these results, I would probably fine tune my keyword to something even more specific, like “handmade wooden toys” or “wooden toy trucks” – this is why you need a tool like this!

For a free tool, you could also use the Google Keywords Planner – it does the job, however to get started with that you need a Google Adsense account which makes accessing it a bit tricky.

I have tried Google’s tool myself to see if I was missing something – lots of people use it and it is definitely useful – I just find that Jaaxy is so much better!

Researching and finding keywords and how to implement them into your content takes time, trial and error.

In fact, earning an income through Affiliate Marketing is a constant learning experience, and there are plenty of strategies too that will come into your plans once you’ve got the basics set up.

What I’ve tried to do here is give you an outline of how to actually start – once your business is actually online, it’s an exciting journey and can take you down many different roads!

What Are The Key Steps To Start Affiliate Marketing?

  • Step 1: Find Your Niche
  • Step 2: Build A Website
  • Step 3: Start Writing Your Content
  • Step 4: Join Affiliate Marketing Programs
  • Step 5: Add Affiliate Links to Your Content
  • Step 6: Drive Traffic to Your Website

WAIT - There's One More Step!

Next Step: You need to GET STARTED!

The 6 steps to Start Affiliate Marketing I’ve outlined in this post really are the basics for getting started in Affiliate Marketing, but pulling all this off without any guidance along the way is tough – I know because I tried that myself!

If you’ve read my story then you’ll know that I spent months searching and wasting time trying to find out how I could do all of this on my own.

And during that time, I didn’t START anything – I was just looking for a way to begin. I wasted a lot of time looking!

I highly recommend that you do exactly what I eventually did – get yourself some training and support to get up and running with the fundamentals.

After reading countless reviews and doing endless research, I finally joined Wealthy Affiliate in February 2017 and I haven’t looked back since.

Start Now

You can start with a free account at Wealthy Affiliate and you don’t even need a credit card for that. This will give you access to 10 lessons for free in 2 streams (so 20 free lessons!), and if you’re like me, you’ll want to continue on.

If you choose to go Premium, your first month membership will be only $19 and this will give you access to a HUGE training resource – that’s a very small investment for a whole month’s worth of invaluable education.

Read my review of Wealthy Affiliate for 2020 and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what’s on offer.

It worked for me, and it might just work for you too!

Either way, my final piece of advice is to stop thinking, and GET STARTED TODAY.

"You are one decision away from a completely different life" ~ Mel Robbins

CREATE A FREE ACCOUNT AT WEALTHY AFFILIATE NOW
CREATE A FREE ACCOUNT NOW
Niche Products

Product Reviews the Right Way

Product Reviews the Right Way

Your Reviews Are Your Content. They Are Your Brand.

Blog Post courtesy of Kyle, Co- Founder of Wealthy Affiliate

Today I want to touch on a topic that is very much “near and dear” to all authority bloggers, affiliate marketers, and up and coming marketers alike, REVIEWS.

There is a misconception these days about reviews as misinformation online continues to run prevalent across a breadth of industries.

I want to help by offering some clarity in proper practices for reviewing products/services and hopefully offer you insights into the broader concept…

Read More
Read more

This is a feautured post from the Wealthy Affiliate Blog.  There are so many awesome blog articles in there that I wanted to find a way to share!

Just click on the button above to go to the full article inside Wealthy Affiliate.

Marketing Strategy

What Successful Affiliate Marketers Do

What Successful Affiliate Marketers Do

The 4 Attributes of Successful Affiliate Marketers

Blog Post courtesy of Kyle, Co- Founder of Wealthy Affiliate

Over the years I have worked with well over a million people in this space here within Wealthy Affiliate.

I have seen just about every walk of life imaginable from someone struggling with their current situation, to a business that needs help within the online world, to doctors and lawyers that simply don’t love their careers and want an escape.

Regardless of the situation, there are several attributes that I can see in people that indicate to me whether they have a really good chance of success or failure.

Instead of my focusing on the negative here, I would rather focus on the positive and what I see within those that I know will have success in their future.

There are FOUR “success” attributes in particular that I would like to discuss and focus on here…

Read More
Read more

This is a feautured post from the Wealthy Affiliate Blog.  There are so many awesome blog articles in there that I wanted to find a way to share!

Just click on the button above to go to the full article inside Wealthy Affiliate.

Success Ahead

What are the chances of Success?

There are key things that you are going to want to do if you seriously want to create a successful business online, and I want to give you a detailed implementation plan for 6 key focus areas.