So I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines – ‘Passive Income is the new black”, “7 ways to make money while you sleep”, and so on. Where to start? Amazon FBA? Dropshipping? Crypto? All of these methods have their merits, but the one I’m into big time is Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate Marketing has the benefit of being a truly passive, set and style of income. You don’t have to deal with products, customers are unlikely to hassle you and you can do it from anywhere with an internet connection. That’s not to say its easy – far from it, and the biggest time gap will most likely be from the time you start until the time you make your first online dollar in commission. Having said that, it’s hugely scalable and an amazing science to learn.
There are many things to master when starting Affiliate Marketing and it’s easy to get overwhelmed and fall for “shiny object syndrome” where you switch on to whatever online fad is trending when you are paying attention. To simplify, I would break up the important skills into just a few areas – the first one is getting traffic, which basically means getting people’s eyes to your platform, be it a website, youtube channel, email list, or any other place where you can utilize an affiliate to the product you are affiliating.
The second area is conversion, where you are able to successfully convince someone that has visited your media that they shold click on your affiliate link and buy the product in question. This is where it’s important to understand the customer journey, and to get your customers to know, like and trust your content. Simple as it may sound, elements such as story-telling, sales copy and sharing your journey can have a profound effect in conversion. Other media such as video, the palatability of your offer, and design of your platform can have a say in the rate of your conversions.
Now you have traffic.
You’re converting the occasional customer and getting the commissions filtering in. So you are winning, right? Yes true – any sales are a massive win for your offer and efforts. But you can always be doing better. Optimisation of conversion is one area you can always improve on, but the third and sometimes neglected area of affiliate marketing is one I would label as retention. Think about it, if you have made the effort to get a customer know, like and trust your content to the extent that they have bought a product through your affiliate link – it makes sense to attempt to sell to that customer again. How do you do that? Well, for starters, you need a way to contact them. This is where it is of utmost importance to collect a customer’s email at some stage in the customer journey. You can then contact them at will, and get your offers in front of them at a moments notice. So how do you get a prospect to give you there email? Think lead magnet – there’s a great article here that explains the process in more detail.
Affiliate marketing can be a tough nut to crack, but master traffic, conversion and retention and you master your own universe. I recommend you get started – and bring in that first affiliate dollar.
