Starting own affiliate business is good way to make money online. When you know what things you need to setup it is easy to create automated system that generates money. How high probability it will be successful that’s another part of story.
We will take you now step-by-step on how to start own affiliate business. We will going to cover what tools you need, how to use them and what things you need to notice in order to establish good foundation to your business.
If you don’t know anything about affiliate marketing then we recommend reading “What is Affiliate Marketing?” article. Also you don’t have to be person who has lots of information about Internet Marketing because this is for beginners. More advanced people in Internet Marketing might find some useful tips in establishing own affiliate business.
We are going to cover following points more deeply.
- Choose Action (Sale, Lead and etc.)
- Niche Research
- Marketplace Research
- Get an Affiliate Link
- Clickbank
- Commission Junction
- PayDotCom
- Test Your Niche Sale Potential
- PPC Advertising
- Build a website
- Pick up a good domain name
- Register for Web hosting
- Register for Blog or use regular website
- Drive Traffic
- PPC Advertising
- Social Media (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Digg, Del.icio.us)
- Article Submission
- Optimization of Website
- Video Marketing
- Forums
- Track Your Records
- Google Adwords Tracking Code
- Google Analytics
- Clickbank Tracking Feature
Step 1 – Choose Action (Sale, Lead and etc.)
First step in affiliate business is that you need to decide what would be the method that you want to establish your business on. There are lots of methods. Ask from yourself that do you want to make money by getting:
- Sales
- Leads
- Clicks
- Other way
If you decided to use “Sales”-method then move to the next step otherwise jump to Step 3.
Step 2 – Niche Research
Niche Research is one crucial but very important step. The way how you make research about niche is to find a good niche that has high potential sale and marketplace is not saturated. To do that you can use exactly same information that is available in “How to find a good Clickbank product to promote?” article. It covers marketplace issue. Also use questions that are included in that article.
Step 3 – Get an Affiliate Link
Getting an affiliate link is vital step in this process. We have listed here how to get your affiliate links in most popular affiliate networks.
Clickbank
- Login to your Clickbank account.
- Go to Marketplace (Click here to see screenshot).
- Find your product by selecting desired Category or enter Keyword.
- After you have found your product to promote click “Go”.
- Click “create HopLink”.
- New window will pop up. Enter your Clickbank Nickname. Tracking ID is recommended when you want to track your sales.
- After filling your information hit “Create”.
- Now you can choose two links. Different between them is that latter link is in HTML format. HTML link is ready generated for you if you want to use it. If you want to promote your product by using for example PPC Advertising method then you need to pick up the first link.
Commission Junction
- Login to your CJ account.
- If you use CJ service for first time then you need to apply to program which you want to promote. It must be approved by advertiser of that program. Go to “Get Links”.
- Choose Category of program that you want to promote.
- Tick all the programs that you want to apply for. You will be in pending mode when you have applied. This means that advertiser is checking your website or blog in order to see if it is related to program.
- After you have been approved you can go that specific program and then choose form that you want to use for promotion. Forms are usually banners.
PayDotCom
- Login to your PayDotCom account.
- Go to “Promote Products” (Click here to see screenshot).
- At “Create A New Campaign” select “From Marketplace”.
- Select Product Category from category list.
- Choose any product that you want to promote and click “Promote” link of that product.
- Choose any promotion form that you want to use.
Here’s an extra tip. Sometimes it is good to cloak your affiliate link because there are some people who will take your username out of your affiliate link and then use that new address to buy. This means that you don’t get any sale.
In order to do cloaking you can use TinyURL.com service. It is free and easy to use.
Step 4 – Test your Niche sale potential
This is good step to do and it is not compulsory however it will save you lots of time and money when you find how low or high sale potential your product or program will have. To do this step you need to use PPC Advertising. One of the best is Google Adwords. Use it to test your niche. Track your records and analyze them. Do split testing. After you have tested that niche about 14-30 days and it has good amount of sales so that you will earn more than you spend then start to promote that product.
Step 5 – Build a website
Pick up a good domain name
First step when building your website after you have gathered all necessary information that are above steps it is time to pick up a good domain name. For more information how to pick up a good domain name please read our article “How to pick up a good domain name?“.
Register for Web Hosting
When you have found your domain name it is time to register for web hosting company. Notice that you can register your domain with your hosting company and it is usually recommended because if you buy domain name from other company and web hosting from another company you need to transfer that domain to your web hosting account so that you can manage it.
Affiliate Marketing For All is recommending following web hosting companies because we have experience with.
- Blue Host (Cheap)
- Go Daddy (Cheap domain names)
- Host Gator (Very reliable)
- HostMonster
- InMotion Hosting (Great For Business)
Register for blog or use regular website
After signing up for web hosting it is time to make sure that all your information there are correct and also you can start to install a blog if you are in need of it. Usually Blogs can be installed in cPanel by using Fantastico Deluxe or other kind of script service.
Step 6 – Drive Traffic
Now that your website or blog has been built it is time to drive Traffic. Traffic is like blood for website and if you don’t get traffic it is useless to have a website. Why would you do your website if there is no one reading it?
Because this is long process we decided to write for each method own article which will cover how to get traffic. In those articles we will cover basics but also some great tips how to generate from them traffic.
Click each method to get more information of.
- Forums
- PPC Advertising
- Social Networks
- Video Marketing
- Writing Articles
- Website Optimization – Part 1
- Website Optimization – Part 2
Step 7 – Tracking Your Records
With this step we mean basically tracking all sales. However it is also good to track impressions and traffic that your website is getting. Reason for this is in order to success with split testing you need as much information as you can and it would be easier to analyze the results when you have more information about your website or blog.
Google Adwords Tracking Code
When using PPC Advertising there’s no question about using Google Adwords Tracking Code when you want to make research about your campaign to see how it is doing.
When you promote a product without using a website but just driving PPC targeted traffic to it you need to ask from Vendor to put your Google Adwords Tracking Code to their salepage. This can be done by copying your Google Adwords Tracking Code of that product from Google Adwords then send your code to vendor by email. Some of vendors will accept this kind of procedure but some not.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the best tools available to track visitors, content exposure, conversion rate and lots more. You can setup goals to your website. This is very great way to track your achievements.
Clickbank Tracking Feature
Clickbank has developed it’s own tracking feature called Integrated Service Reporting (ISR). It allows you to track successful ClickBank orders by integrating with Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and Yahoo! Search Marketing. In this way, you can follow the process of how visits flow into the ClickBank Order Form, and analyze the sales process to see where customers drop out of the process, what traffic sources are leading to sales, and more.
How to use it?
Please click here for more information.
