How to Succeed with Affiliate Marketing: 11 Tips for Success [Ultimate Guide]

Do you want to understand all that it takes to succeed with affiliate marketing fast and with ease?

It’s not as challenging as you might think. In fact, you can begin now and be at the top of the file in the next few months.

But what does affiliate marketing requires?

Which tools do you need?

What mindset shift do you require?

I have taken the time to research and think through some of the best insights on how to succeed with affiliate marketing.

Read every word below.  

Understanding affiliate marketing

Let’s start from the basics and understand how affiliate marketing work. I understand that you are just starting out and want to understand this make-money-online business model clearly.

Well, it’s merely promoting other peoples’ products for affiliate commissions. Yes, the merchant pays affiliate partners commissions based on the number of conversions you bring to their products.  

Isn’t that cool?

They usually pay based on sales. However, others pay based on sign-ups and clicks. So, it’s worth noting that before setting sail.

Types of Affiliate Programs

Well, there are several types of affiliate marketing programs to promote based on the commission rates and the volume of the products (it can be high volume affiliate programs or low volume):

Low-ticket affiliate programs

Some programs are pretty popular but pay less in affiliate commission. That means you will have to sell more to generate significant revenue online.

But the fact that people know about them makes them easy to sell. You will have a lower marketing budget and easy to close off leads.  

Amazon affiliate program is an excellent example of a low-ticket program since it has a lot of popular products but barely pays out 10% in affiliate commissions.

Therefore, if you have a product worth $30 on Amazon and the commission is 5%, you will need to bring in 100 sales to make $150.

It might be hard to come by, but imagine someone making 10 sales in a day reviewing Amazon products.

High-ticket affiliate programs

These products pay higher in affiliate commissions and are pretty new; hence might not be familiar to most people.

As a result, the marketing budget tends to be higher when promoting such products. However, you might make much more decent money since the affiliate commission is high.

If you ask me, I could say that ClickFunnels and 15 Days online business builder challenge can be good examples of companies with their own affiliate program.  

ClickFunnels pay over $100 for each sale of their sales funnel software and more on their educational resources such as books and courses. The challenge pays out more than $100, too.

That means if you want to make $10k a month, you will only need to bring in 100 sales.

Why you need to try out affiliate marketing

Anybody can begin and be successful in affiliate campaigns. Do you know why? Well, I have a few reasons here:

It’s cost-effective to start

You don’t need a lot to start an affiliate site. Most people start for free. Yes, with a free blog and the right affiliate products, you can’t fail to get sales after creating a ton of helpful blog content and relying on search engines’ web traffic.

Some have even opted to promote their affiliate products purely on social media. They create long, helpful posts regularly and ensure they are active on Facebook groups. You can also come up with a YouTube channel and create video reviews of products.

All these platforms are free to join.

You are not limited on the number and type of products to promote

With affiliate marketing, you can promote any product you like. As long as it’s listed in your affiliate program, it’s possible to make sales promoting it to the right people.

Some affiliates choose to begin with one main product and slowly add others. That can be an excellent approach for a beginner.

You can even choose to promote two or more categories of products. That means you will be experimenting with several niches and ultimately decide to focus more on one that gives more results.

You can join several affiliate programs

You will find a ton of affiliate sites on the internet, depending on your niche. Amazon, for example, has products in almost all the categories you can think of.

ClickBank and Commission Junction also has a good affiliate marketing program to make an income online.

The thing is, all these affiliate programs have different commission rates. Clickbank, for example, gives up to 70% commission on every sale. Amazon affiliate network offers about 10%, but it’s popular hence easy to make sales.

It doesn’t require a lot of experience

No. In fact, you don’t have to be an expert to make it as an affiliate marketer. Most of us started without knowing a lot and learned the industry’s ropes as time passed.

You can do the same and learn through experience. And something learned through experience is harder to forget than watching a YouTube video.

So, start a blog, learn a thing or two about SEO and implement a few practices. Create a YouTube channel, post videos, and see traffic trickle in. You don’t need a bucketload of information to start; just make the first step.

Easier to scale

You can scale an affiliate marketing business faster than other businesses, such as a hotel.

Since there isn’t any inventory or labor cost, you just need to invest in several affiliate marketing tools to automate your tasks, and you are set.

You can also decide to hire people to do most of your work.

Can you combine it with other marketing activities?

Yes, you can.

Think about it; you can achieve faster growth if you blend affiliate marketing with other marketing activities like Facebook or email marketing.

You can decide to leverage SEO for organic traffic and pay traffic with some temporary offers such as high-ticket webinars.

Email marketing is also essential when it comes to affiliate marketing. With a sizeable email list, you can grow sales quickly and easily.

How can you start affiliate marketing?

Want to get started as an affiliate marketer? It is not a daunting task. You don’t even need a lot of money to start. Most people start for free.

Here is how to do it:

Find your niche

Niching down is essential. You can’t spread too thin because it doesn’t equal sales. In fact, spreading too thin will make it hard for you to achieve authority status in a specific niche.

So, the first thing is to write down niches you think could fit you. Choose among the ones you have the most information about because they will be easier to sell.

For example, you can decide to promote mattresses on Amazon. Just start a blog and create as many posts as you can relating to sleep and insert your links in these posts.

Choose the right affiliate products

The products you choose to promote will determine the overall affiliate income you make in a month. That means you have to give it a lot of thought.

Do your calculations. They should be valuable products you have used, too. Think about it; it will be much easier to promote a product you have used to a target audience than promote one you have less information about.

Identify a traffic channel

There are many traffic channels to leverage for your new affiliate marketing business. And since each of them has its perks, take your time to decide on one.

You can opt for search engine optimization (SEO), influencer marketing, landing pages, email marketing, or create social media posts on social media platforms.

There are also several free blogging sites such as Quora and Medium. These sites have a high DA and can help you drive traffic fast.

SEO might take time, but it’s the best for passive affiliate revenue. You can also choose to combine all of them and earn a decent income online. 

Create content consistently

Be consistent if you want to build a profitable affiliate marketing business. No successful business has ever been built in a day.

It is through consistency that you can see great results in your newfound business. So, write high-quality content every day, week, or for two weeks and upload them to your blog.

Post on social, too. If you post on your profile almost every day, the chances are that someone can click on your links and land on your posts. Whichever the case, create and post content consistently to see results.  

Scale your business

Keep on scaling your business every day. If you had three blog posts today, ensure you have 6 blog posts next week. That’s the same thing with videos and posting on social – increase your posting frequency.

You should also spend money on tools that make the work easier for you and increase customer satisfaction or hire a VA to handle most of your daily business processes.

You can make much more sales and achieve more in life by upgrading.

11 Tips on how to succeed with Affiliate Marketing?

I have compiled a list of tips I think your need to succeed as a new affiliate marketer. Read out the list below: 

1.      Learn all you can about the products you are promoting

The first tip and almost always the most important is to learn as much as you can about the product you are promoting.

Think about it; you will be telling people about this product. The term ‘information is power’ might be a cliché, but it is true. The more you know about a product, the easier it is to sell.

2.      Work on your mindset

It all stems from the mindset. Yes, all ideas, beliefs, willpower, and the determination to do something result from the kind of mindset you are cultivating.

The difference between a successful marketer and someone yet to move the needle is often the mindset. Think about it; half of the work is done if you can only work on your mindset. The rest will only be the application part.

You have to set your mind for success. Otherwise, if you set it for failure, you will fail. You also have to develop the willpower to do things when you feel you don’t want to. You have to develop discipline. Just work on your mindset and attract success as an affiliate marketer.

3.      Go in with the idea of helping others

The problem with most new affiliate marketers is they go in with the idea of making as much money as another affiliate. They go in with the money mentality.

And when they fail to get positive returns during the first few months, they give up and say it didn’t work for them.

Most successful affiliates started it as a hobby and kept on doing it. They aimed to help people make the right decision when selecting products and ended up getting famous in the process.

When your main goal is to recommend products that will help someone else make more, they will develop trust in any other product you recommend to them.

In the end, they won’t try out a product unless they get your views first; and that’s how most top affiliate marketers came to be.  

4.      Build your email list

You have heard the popular saying that money is on the list. It’s true. Based on my research and the research of many other successful affiliate marketers, email marketing gives forth insanely high returns.

That means with a massive email list of about 10,000 subscribers, you can make income from affiliate commissions easily. The problem is always building that email list. You can leverage my techniques here.

Start as early as possible in your affiliate marketing career. You can start for free with GetResponse. They have a free-forever plan. Create opt-in forms, and collect email addresses.

5.      Niche down

Another secret tip is to niche down. You can even dedicate one website to a particular product worth promoting and merely add others to substitute your income.

Here is how to do it;

Suppose you have a single product giving you $1,000 commission on every sale and others giving you $500 and $100, respectively.

Such that product A = $1,000

Product B = $500

Product C = $100

You can decide to dedicate 50% of your marketing efforts (creating content) to product A, 30% to product B, and 20% to product C. In that, you will have niched down and easy to become an authority in the same niche. 

6.      Be consistent

Nothing great has ever been attained without some sense of consistency. You can master a skill, build a system, and establish a revenue stream with consistency.

You can also build a profitable affiliate marketing business through consistency. You should be consistent in creating content, marketing, sending out emails to your subscribers, and trying out new products.

To have that form of consistency, you will need to set goals and do your best to achieve them. By setting goals and deadlines, you can develop the strength to complete them.

7.      Treat it like a business

Treat your affiliate marketing as a business if you want to make money from it. You can’t be doing it as a hobby without any plans on how you will market your products, fish customers, and fulfill your offers.

In fact, when starting out, you will need a comprehensive business plan that will act as a roadmap for you. Treat it as any other brick-and-mortar business for it to succeed.

That’s the difference between successful affiliates and others. They are not only in the game but also in the competition. They sit down and develop winning strategies for their affiliate marketing businesses.

8.      Network

You can learn a lot from other affiliate marketers. When you read their stories and case studies, you can pick a thing or two that can enable you to get going fast.

So, join Facebook groups related to the products you are promoting, join forums, and answer as many questions as possible.

A good example is the ClickFunnels official Facebook group. Most of the people in that group are not only ClickFunnels users but also affiliates.

That’s just one example. There are forums on Reddit and other social forums dedicated to particular products. Join them and network.

9.      Research tools to make your work easy

Automation will help you a lot as a growing affiliate. You can save a lot of time and get a lot done in a short time.

You can start with email marketing. It automates your lead acquisition to sales on autopilot. Choose a good email marketing service, write compelling emails, and include your offers.

10.  Never stop learning

Keep learning every day. Be updated about the current affiliate marketing strategies, techniques, and methods to simplify the entire affiliate marketing process.

Learning will ensure you take advantage of opportunities fast before other people and hence avoid competition.

For example, SEO practices are changing every day. That means if you are always at per with top affiliate marketers, you will grow traffic fast and hence your business.

I constantly update my list of current tools in the resource section; you might want to check it out.

11.  Set goals and achieve them

You need goals as a growing affiliate marketer. Otherwise, you will just be drifting around with no real plan on how to achieve your affiliate marketing goals.

Goals act as guidelines and a road map in your journey. It is not about what you can do that matters; it’s about what you choose not to do.

Setting the right affiliate marketing goals will help you focus on doing the appropriate activities and grow fast.

Some of the people making it as affiliates

Most renowned affiliate marketers make over $1M in affiliate sales. These are people with established blogs and huge email lists that keep making money for them.

We can believe that it’s all possible by learning some of their success stories. Let’s learn about some of them: 

David Sharpe

If you have researched a lot of information about affiliate marketing online, you must have come across this name. He is one of the world’s-leading affiliate marketers and speakers.

A self-confessed drug addict, David started the art of affiliate marketing at a young age. After several years of learning and tweaking his results for even better results, he made his first five figures in affiliate revenue.

Five became six, and six became seven. Before soon, he was making about eight figures in revenue. He is also a public speaker and owns Legendary Marketer – a company that harbors resources and training to help new affiliates establish and grow their affiliate marketing businesses.

David Sharpe also runs regular masterminds and webinars and created the popular 15-Days Online Businesses Builder Challenge, which I recommend to all new affiliate marketers.

John Chow

If you have ever come across John Chow’s blog, you might be among the 200,000 people who visit his blog daily. In 2021, he was awarded the ‘best marketing affiliate blog’ of the year.

John Chow is dub as a blogger, an affiliate marketer, and an ardent public speaker who talks and speaks on major international events. His books are among the best-selling on Amazon.

He started blogging many years ago and ended up making over $40,000 after only working on his blog for a few years.

If you read his story on his blog, watch his interviews, and join his email list, you can learn much more about this affiliate marketing guru.

Zac Johnson

One of Zac’s mantra is to develop consistency. He explains that you might never make it as a new affiliate without consistency and developing a thick skin. Zac advises new affiliates to put all their energy into building a profitable affiliate marketing business.

Zac started his affiliate marketing journey on Amazon and was making consistent revenue by referring people to purchase Amazon products. After some time, he discovered other affiliate programs, such as OnResponse, which were paying significantly higher affiliate commissions.

He started a blog and promoted some of the products in these affiliate networks. Before long, he had already hit six figures in affiliate revenue.

Pat Flynn

In 2008, Pat Flynn was laid off from his job. That was an eye-opener for him because he learned a thing or two about affiliate marketing and decided to try it out.

It wasn’t long before his LEED blog got an offer from someone who wanted him to sell his book and earn a commission; that was the beginning of his affiliate marketing journey.

Since he was already making money from his blog through Google AdSense, he decided to couple that with a little bit of affiliate marketing.

Before long, he was making six figures passive stream of income from the services offered. In 2013 alone, Pat Flynn made over $50,000 in affiliate revenue.

His blog Smart Passive Income is a huge success. He talks about affiliate marketing and other businesses from which anyone can begin and profit. He also has a podcast with over 400 episodes on different topics.

Missy Ward

If you are a stay-at-home mom, Missy Ward could probably give you some inspiration so that you can break the ceiling and achieve success in affiliate marketing.

In 2003, Missy Ward invested $400 with Shawn Collins into developing Affiliate Summit Corporation, which provides large businesses and other entrepreneurs opportunities to grow their revenue through trade shows, magazines, and conferences.

The corporation was a massive success for her, and she even decided to go solo on it. Before long, the business took off and was generating passive affiliate revenue. You can read her blog to understand he thoughts on affiliate marketing and the summit.

Affiliate marketing vs other types of monetization

Apart from affiliate marketing, there are several ways to market products or offers online. Let’s look at some of these ways:

Sponsored posts

A sponsored post is one that another person pays to get published on an authority blog. It’s meant to bring in revenue by leveraging the traffic from that blog.

This model is different from affiliate marketing, but it can help new affiliates with no reliable traffic source. So, try it out.

Banner Ads

Most of these can really mislead you into thinking that you are building traffic for your affiliate site, but it’s merely full of bots rather than prospects.

The difference with affiliate marketing is that it focuses on getting prospects who will end up purchasing the product. For example, affiliate SEO is all about targeting organic visitors with the right search intent.

Email marketing

The difference between affiliate marketing and email marketing is that the latter focuses on marketing offers to a warm audience and hence more sales.

Affiliate marketing is about promoting products and inviting people into your sales funnels. Email marketing engages with people already in your funnels.

Topics & Questions

Let’s answer some of the most common questions people have regarding affiliate marketing:

Conclusion

If you’re just starting out in affiliate marketing, these tips will help you on your way to success. Learn as much as possible about the product and how it can benefit consumers.

Understand what needs to be done in order to reach your goals, and stay consistent with your efforts. Helping others and building an email list are both essential components of a thriving affiliate marketing business. Keep learning so that you can continue growing, and never give up!

Are you ready to get started? Sign up for the 15-day online business challenge that will show you how to become successful affiliate marketers and it comes with lots of resources. Check out today and see what others are saying about this challenge.

Thanks for reading!