The very first thing you need to do if you want to make money as an affiliate
marketer - whether you’re going to make money selling other people’s products or
your own (best to do both) - is that you need to figure out who you want to work
with and what niche you want to be part of.
• Who Do You Want to Work With?
One way to figure out the type of people you’d like to work with or help is to look
inside yourself to find your interests and passions. If you really enjoy being around
certain people and you know about their hopes, desires, and needs due to being
part of that audience yourself, that’s one way to do it as you will already have
insight.
However, don’t let this give you an excuse not to do your research. Your
experiences, even as part of your niche audience, are subjective and real results
may be very different than you imagine. Try describing your ideal customer in one
or two sentences to help you move forward.
• Who Serves That Audience Now?
Once you have identified a potential niche audience, it always helps to look at the
competition. After all, if this niche has no competition, is it really a profitable niche?
Some people will say that you should go for the low competition niches, but it's
better to go for the niche that offers enough potential customers for you to reach
your income goals if your conversion rate matches industry standards.
For example, if there are 1000 potential customers, and according to your research
there is a 4 to 7 percent conversion rate, and you know that you can get your
materials and information in front of those 1000 customers, you may get at most
70 customers from a campaign. Is your price point high enough for those 70
customers to make you profitable?
• What Skills and Solutions Can You Offer This Niche?
Do you have specialized education, experience, or knowledge that makes you
particularly suited for this niche? You don’t have to be part of the audience to do
well in a niche.
For example, if you have identified a niche that needs someone to advise them on
products to use for their love of camping which are different from what’s out there,
you can still learn about it and serve the audience even if you have no camping
experience or appreciation of camping. Maybe instead of direct experience, you
have resources that enable you to pay people with subject matter expertise to
create your business.
• What Makes You Different?
Always look at yourself too. What makes you different from your competition?
What skills can you offer to this niche that others can’t? How can you stand out
from the crowd? Are you going to approach the niche in a different way than the
others? For example, if you’re a business coach, are you buttoned up or a free
spirit? Whatever you are, you’re going to attract an entirely different segment of
your audience base than someone who is different from you.
• Check an Affiliate Network for Products That Serve That
Audience
The other thing you want to do is ensure that any niche you choose is profitable.
Asking yourself if it’s profitable is an important question. Just because you have
internet and passion doesn’t make it a profitable niche. What makes it profitable is
that the target audience exists in enough quantity and has enough money to buy
the solutions you create and offer.
Once you narrow down some options, the primary considerations are whether your
niche idea is profitable or not, and whether you have the skills to proceed or not -
either skills you learn or skills you buy from others. Choose a niche that you like
that can provide enough profit and that you know how to serve.
Once you create your own products for sale, it’s time to set up an affiliate program
of your own so that you can maximize your reach. Having your own affiliate
program is like having an army of salespeople on your site building your business
every single day. But finding the right affiliates takes a little thought and
consideration.
• Quality not Quantity
Having 1000 affiliates will not help you if they are not good salespeople. If the
people who want to promote your product use unscrupulous means to make sales,
that can also affect you very badly. By focusing on recruiting quality affiliates over
a lot of affiliates, you can avoid most of the problems that can come with affiliates
- namely fraud and spam.
• Their Website
Check out any applicants’ websites. Do they have an active blog? Does the content
fit your audience? Is the website secure? Are they following all the pertinent laws
for their country and yours regarding spam, privacy, and other issues? Do they
appear honest and confident based on the information you find on the website?
• Their Domain Name
One way to find out about the person behind the website is to do a "Who Is" search.
Some of the websites are going to have the information hidden. If that happens, do
a little more digging on to ensure that the people behind the site are honest people
that you’d want to deal with in person.
• Their Content and Information
When you go to the site and read the content and information, does it speak to
your audience such that they will choose to buy from them? What sort of keywords
do they use? Is the content and information direct and above board? Would you
feel safe sending your mother to that site to get information?
• Financial Validation
The other thing you will want to do when you get an affiliate is to ensure that they
fill out all the right legal forms required. Even if you are not going to send out 1099s
because you pay via third party like PayPal, getting that information is still
important because it establishes their legality and validates them in a way that
helps you keep your customers safe. Additionally, have they proven themselves to
be effective affiliate marketers?
When you are first starting out as a product seller, you may not be able to be too
picky about who becomes affiliates, but at the very least ensure that they are who
they say they are, that they are not criminals, and that they serve their customers
honestly and transparently. Just realize that if you choose people who are new to
affiliate marketing, you need to offer training and encouragement to them so that
they make more sales.
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