affiliate marketing for beginners complete a z tut with timestamps YoutubeScribe.com

[0:00] Business Insider found that around 15%
of the digital media industry's revenue
[0:05] comes from affiliate marketing.
[0:06] But that was in 2016, and the topic of affiliate
marketing has only become more popular.
[0:12] So if you're a beginner to affiliate marketing
and you want to learn how to tap into this
[0:16] billion-dollar industry, keep watching because
I'm going to show you what it is, how it works,
[0:21] and how to get started without the hype.
[0:24] Stay tuned.
[0:24] [music]
[0:28] What's up hustlers?
[0:29] Sam Oh here with Ahrefs, the SEO tool that
helps you grow your search traffic, research
[0:33] your competitors and dominate your niche.
[0:36] We have a lot of ground to cover today and
I genuinely want you aspiring affiliate marketers
[0:41] to actually build a site that's not only profitable,
but something you're proud to create.
[0:46] So warm and fuzzies aside, let's get to the tutorial.
[0:49] So what is affiliate marketing and how does it work?
[0:52] Affiliate marketing is when you promote other
people's or companies' products.
[0:56] When someone makes a purchase through your
affiliate link, you're compensated with a commission.
[1:01] Now, in order for the affiliate company to
attribute sales to the right people, the merchant
[1:05] usually uses a unique link that looks something like this.
[1:09] And when a visitor clicks that link from your blog,
[1:12] website, or wherever, a cookie is stored on their device.
[1:15] And an affiliate cookie does two main things.
[1:18] First, it helps the merchant attribute
the sale back to the right person.
[1:22] And second, cookies usually hold an expiration
date, meaning people don't need to immediately
[1:27] purchase the product after clicking your link.
[1:30] Let's run through an example, so everything 
is crystal clear.
[1:33] Let's say a visitor comes to your post about
gardening hoses and clicks on one of your
[1:37] affiliate links.
[1:39] This takes them to a product page on Amazon.
[1:41] But wait...they have to go and pick up their
kids from soccer practice.
[1:45] So they do that, they have dinner, and then go
back to Amazon.com in their web browser.
[1:50] They find the product again and then purchase
it along with this PS4 controller.
[1:55] Since they clicked on your affiliate link,
a cookie was stored on their device.
[1:59] And because Amazon has a 24-hour cookie duration,
you would still get compensated a percentage
[2:04] for both the garden hose and the PS4 controller,
even though you weren't promoting it.
[2:09] Now, how much money can you make as
an affiliate marketer?
[2:12] The simple answer to that is that there is no limit.
[2:15] For example, Pat Flynn used to share his income reports
[2:18] and made over $100,000 in affiliate commissions
in December 2017.
[2:23] Ryan Robinson also shares his income reports.
[2:26] And in October, 2019, he reported over $19,000
in affiliate revenue.
[2:31] Both of these gentlemen have done an exellent job
[2:34] building their brand and it's taken a lot of
hard work and time.
[2:38] But the reality?
[2:39] Your checks might look more like this.
[2:41] At least when you're just starting out.
[2:43] Alright, so let's quickly go over the things you'll
need to get started with affiliate marketing.
[2:48] First, you'll need a platform where you can
use affiliate links.
[2:51] So the two places I recommend are through
a blog or YouTube channel.
[2:55] Starting a blog is easier and cheaper than ever.
[2:58] There are plenty of tutorials around the web and it'll
cost anywhere from a dollar to ten dollars per month.
[3:03] You're then free to add your links in your
content whenever and wherever.
[3:07] The other platform you can use is YouTube, where
you can create content and to my best knowledge,
[3:13] include affiliate links within the description.
[3:15] From my experience, you'll get more clicks
from a blog than a YouTube video.
[3:19] So for that reason, most of the examples going
forward will be for a blog,
[3:23] but the principle still remain the same.
[3:25] Alright, the next thing you need to do is choose a niche.
[3:28] When you're choosing a niche, remember you're
choosing a niche, not an industry.
[3:33] And for that reason, I recommend choosing
a topic that focuses on a specific category.
[3:39] For example, rather than going after the topic
of "food" as a whole, try starting with something
[3:45] a bit more specific like "grilling food."
[3:48] And as you cover this category and build traffic
to these pages, you can start expanding out
[3:53] into other related categories like "desserts"
or "vegetarian foods."
[3:58] Keeping your topics tight can help you build a more
focused audience and rank higher in search engines.
[4:04] Now, if you're going to be the one creating the content,
[4:06] choose something that you're interested in.
[4:08] Reason being, I see so many affiliate sites die
due to lack of consistency and on top of that,
[4:15] they spread false and inaccurate information.
[4:18] Even if you're not an expert in the field,
documenting your learnings can make great
[4:22] content and build an audience.
[4:25] Now, if you're outsourcing the content,
[4:26] then I recommend looking for writers
that are seasoned experts in the niche.
[4:30] This will help you create better-quality work,
which can lead to more traffic, engaged visitors,
[4:35] and hopefully more affiliate sales.
[4:37] And I'll expand on the importance of content
quality in a bit.
[4:41] And the last thing you'll need are affiliate
programs to join.
[4:44] Now, when it comes to choosing affiliate programs,
there are generally two models I've seen and used.
[4:49] And both come with their own shares of pros and cons.
[4:52] The first is high-paying low-volume affiliate programs.
[4:57] The obvious pro is that they'll pay you more
for each sale, ranging anywhere from $50 to
[5:01] $500 to thousands of dollars per referral.
[5:05] The cons that come with these programs is
that there's generally more competition.
[5:09] Meaning, it'll be tough for newbies to make
a meaningful amount of money since they'll
[5:13] be competing with more skilled digital
marketers with deep pockets.
[5:17] The second model is low-paying high-volume
affiliate programs.
[5:21] The positive things about these programs is that
there are often lots of products to choose from.
[5:26] Think Amazon.
[5:28] And you'll often get commissions on the entire
value of the purchase
[5:31] rather than just the product you recommended.
[5:33] As for cons, unless you're actually generating
a ton of traffic and affiliate sales, it'll be tough
[5:39] to generate a decent income.
[5:41] There are tons of affiliate programs you can
choose from.
[5:44] And the programs you join will likely come
down to your niche and level of expertise.
[5:48] If you're targeting consumers, you'll likely
go with the second model of low commissions
[5:52] and higher sales volume.
[5:54] A couple of popular affiliate programs you
might want to check out are Amazon Associates
[5:59] and Commission Junction.
[6:01] And if you're going after more of a B2B audience
you'll likely go with the first model, high-paying,
[6:06] low-sales volume programs.
[6:08] The most common programs I see here are for
software and web hosting related products.
[6:13] Usually, I find that the best way to find affiliate
programs is to just search for them in Google.
[6:18] Now, there's actually one more category of
affiliate programs that I didn't really touch on,
[6:22] but it's important that you're aware they exist.
[6:25] And those are the high-volume, high-paying
affiliate programs.
[6:29] These will always be super-competitive and
over-saturated with experienced marketers.
[6:34] We're talking about things like credit cards,
loans, and gambling-related offers.
[6:39] I won't go deeper into this since this is
an affiliate marketing tutorial for beginners.
[6:44] Now, I'm sure you know you can't just post
links on your blog and expect people to click it.
[6:49] You need to create high-quality content where
your affiliate links will fit naturally.
[6:54] Information has never been so accessible in
the history of the world.
[6:58] So the way people make buying decisions today
is very different from 20 years ago.
[7:04] For example, I was recently in the market for a
smartwatch, but I didn't know which one to get.
[7:08] So I did what everyone does, search for information.
[7:12] I went to Google and searched for "best smart watches."
[7:16] The Apple Watch was on every list, so naturally,
it was top of mind.
[7:20] And when the Series 5 watch was released,
[7:22] I did another search for "apple series 5 watch review."
[7:26] And another for "series 5 vs. series 3 watch."
[7:30] And the content led me to my final purchasing decision.
[7:33] Now, the one commonality you'll see in quality
content is that the information helps users
[7:39] solve a problem.
[7:41] So rather than going to Amazon and finding the
top 5 best sellers to promote, I highly recommend
[7:46] going the extra mile to make your content superb.
[7:50] That might mean to purchase an item and give
a hands-on review.
[7:53] Even if you don't have the money to buy every
product, start with what you have in your home.
[7:58] For example, if I had a tech blog, I could
create killer reviews on Apple Airpods,
[8:03] Bose QC35 headphones or an Amazon Echo since
I've owned these products for a while now.
[8:08] Bottomline, make your content stand out because
it'll help build brand and trust over the long haul.
[8:14] Alright, we've got the fundamentals of affiliate
marketing down, let's get into a basic formula
[8:19] to actually make money from your affiliate site.
[8:22] And the formula looks something like this:
[8:24] Traffic + clicks + conversions = revenue.
[8:29] If any of these are missing, it'll be impossible
to get any kind of commission.
[8:34] So let's dissect each part of the formula.
[8:36] First, let's talk about getting traffic to your affiliate site.
[8:39] And there are a ton of ways to do this but
let's talk about the three most popular ways.
[8:44] First is to buy ads through platforms like
Google, Bing, and Facebook.
[8:49] Paid traffic is awesome because the moment you start paying, you'll immediately get traffic to your site.
[8:55] But there are two huge downsides to this.
[8:58] #1. Running ads will dig into your profits.
[9:01] In fact, it's quite normal for advertisers to lose
money before they make it...if they ever do.
[9:07] From my experience, this can work well if
you're part of a high-paying affiliate program.
[9:12] For lower-commission programs like Amazon
Associates, I wouldn't bother trying to run ads.
[9:17] And #2. When you stop paying for ads, your 
traffic comes to a halt.
[9:22] I'm all for using ads to drive relevant traffic,
[9:24] but if you're a beginner, I wouldn't recommend
trying it right away.
[9:28] The risk will usually be too high for the
reward.
[9:31] The next traffic source is organic social traffic.
[9:34] With most social networks, you need followers
to actually get a decent amount of traffic.
[9:39] And even if you do have followers, what you'll often find
[9:42] is that you'll get traffic spikes that look like this.
[9:45] But shortly after, the traffic fades to nothing.
[9:49] This is what some refer to as "the spike
of hope" and "the flatline of nope."
[9:54] Since we're talking about building sustainable
affiliate sites, I wouldn't recommend relying
[9:59] on social as a main source of traffic.
[10:02] And this brings us to the final traffic source - SEO,
which stands for search engine optimization.
[10:08] SEO is the practice of optimizing pages to
rank high in search engines, like Google.
[10:13] Best of all, it has the complete opposite
effect of paid ads and social traffic.
[10:18] Free, consistent, and passive traffic that
doesn't fade over time.
[10:23] On a basic level, SEO comes down to your content
and other websites linking to it.
[10:28] Now, in order to find topics worth writing about for
an affiliate site, you'll need a keyword research tool.
[10:34] The one that I'm using here is Ahrefs'
Keywords Explorer.
[10:37] So assuming my niche site was gardening, I'll
start off by adding a couple of broad keywords
[10:41] related to my niche, like "gardening," "garden,"
"plants," and "flowers."
[10:47] Next, I'll go to the Phrase match report,
which gives us around 7 million keyword ideas
[10:52] that contain any of these words.
[10:55] Now again, with affiliate content you want
to look for topics where you can organically
[10:59] insert different product recommendations.
[11:02] For example, "what do garden snakes eat" might
be a good topic to cover to get traffic,
[11:07] but it's unlikely you'll be able to include any
product recommendations.
[11:11] So we need to filter these results down using
keyword modifiers.
[11:14] A modifier is an add-on to a base keyword.
[11:17] So a few common ones that work well for affiliate
sites might be "best," "top," "vs," or "review."
[11:25] So I'm back in the Keyword ideas report and
I'll click on the Include search box.
[11:29] Next, I'll click on the Any word tab, then add
a few so-called "affiliate modifiers" here.
[11:35] And now we have a lot of great topics to cover like "best indoor plants," "best garden hose," "best house plants,"
[11:42] "metal garden hose reviews," and more.
[11:45] And based on Ahrefs' Keyword Difficulty score,
most of these should be pretty easy to rank for.
[11:50] Now, I won't go any further into keyword research
[11:52] because we have a bunch of tutorials
that go a lot deeper into this process.
[11:56] So I'll link those up in the description.
[11:58] Now, assuming you've created some epic content,
the second part of SEO, is to get other websites
[12:04] to link to your page.
[12:05] The main way SEOs do this is through something
called link building.
[12:09] This usually requires reaching out to other
bloggers and website owners and asking them
[12:13] to link to your page for a good reason.
[12:16] Going further on this topic would only extend
this video for an unreasonable amount of time,
[12:21] so I'll link up our playlist on link building
as well as my recommendations
[12:25] for building links to a new website.
[12:27] You'll definitely want to check those out.
[12:29] Let's move onto the second part of the formula,
which is to drive clicks to your affiliate links.
[12:34] There are a few things to consider.
[12:36] First is link placement, meaning the position
of links on your page.
[12:40] If they're all buried at the bottom of the page
where only 10% of your visitors might go,
[12:45] then they probably won't get clicked.
[12:47] Go the other extreme and make every other
word a link in your introduction, and your
[12:51] contents can look spammy.
[12:53] So you'll want to balance link placement with
the next consideration, which is context.
[12:59] You want to link to product pages contextually.
[13:01] For example, let's say you were writing an article
called "The Best Chef Knives for Under $50."
[13:07] You probably wouldn't want to add links in
your introduction where you say:
[13:10] "Today, I'm reviewing the best chef knives."
where you have 3 links to different products.
[13:15] There's no context and it just looks spammy.
[13:18] Instead, you might say, "Today, I'm reviewing three
different chef knives you can buy on Amazon
[13:23] for under $50.
[13:24] These are: product name 1, product name 2,
and product name 3.
[13:29] Lastly, are using callouts like buttons, tables,
and boxes.
[13:34] As you can see here on the WireCutter, anytime
they share one of their picks,
[13:38] they use eye-catchy boxes, with buttons inside.
[13:41] PC Mag uses a comparison table like this,
with buttons inside.
[13:45] These kinds of callouts attract your readers'
attention and make the post more skimmable.
[13:50] The last ingredient in our formula is conversion.
[13:53] With affiliate marketing, two conversions need
to take place in order for you to make money.
[13:58] The first is the click.
[13:59] You're in control and responsible for this action.
[14:02] And the second conversion is the visitor actually
purchasing a product on the affiliate partner's site.
[14:08] In this case, the merchant controls the checkout
and should be committed to high conversion rates.
[14:13] We've already gone through a few tips to increase
clicks, so it comes down to finding affiliate programs
[14:18] that convert decently well.
[14:20] The first way to know whether an affiliate program
converts is to look for public income reports.
[14:25] If people are making good money from an affiliate
program, then chances are, the products converts
[14:30] or there's at least enough sales volume to
make a decent income.
[14:34] For example, if I search for "income report
amazon affiliate" in Google, you'll see this post
[14:39] called, "How I made $22,000 from my blog."
[14:43] And on that page you'll see that she broke
down where her income came from.
[14:48] And it looks like around $7,300 came from
Amazon affiliate commissions in one month.
[14:53] Another way is to simply join the affiliate
program, get accepted and ask the affiliate
[14:58] manager some questions.
[15:00] You might ask what their average conversion
rates are and/or a ballpark range of top earners
[15:04] monthly commissions.
[15:06] Normally, I'll do this for smaller affiliate
programs when I already have existing traffic
[15:11] I can use as leverage in my email.
[15:13] And I haven't had anyone avoid the question.
[15:16] Finally, use some common sense.
[15:18] If the program or product you're promoting feels
"off" and you would never recommend that product
[15:23] to an interested friend or family member, run.
[15:27] It's clear that a lot of affiliate sites lack authenticity.
[15:30] And in my opinion, referring people to products
that they'll actually love is a lot more valuable
[15:35] from a personal and brand perspective.
[15:38] The final piece of advice that I have is to
actually go and experiment.
[15:43] Don't expect perfection or a life-changing
income that happens overnight.
[15:47] It doesn't happen that way, otherwise, we'd
all be billionaires.
[15:51] Focus on making that first affiliate sale.
[15:53] And as your site grows, set new reachable
goals rather than settling for a one-off hustle.
[15:58] Now, I have a question for you.
[16:00] Would it be helpful if I built an affiliate
site from scratch and documented everything
[16:05] for you on our YouTube channel?
[16:06] Let me know in the comments and use the hashtag
"affiliate marketing."
[16:10] And if you enjoyed this video make sure to
like, share and subscribe for more actionable
[16:14] marketing tutorials.
[16:15] So keep grinding away, get that affiliate
site up and running,
[16:19] and I'll see you in the next tutorial.

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