9 Legit Tips For Affiliate Marketing

Chris, Chief Editor & WFH Expert

• Updated

Mar 13, 2023

If you are new to affiliate marketing and want to learn how to succeed in this digital marketing space step-by-step, then you’re in the right place.

As a seasoned affiliate marketer and a SEO consultant, I’ve gathered real-life tips from my own personal experience on how to make the most out of your efforts and increase your affiliate commissions. 

Note that affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme (by a long-shot), BUT it’s one of the most legitimate way to make money online by far.

These are my key tips that I’ll cover in detail that you simply don’t want to miss out on!

My Affiliate Marketing Journey: A Short Story

Although affiliate marketing seemed overwhelming at first, it turned out to be the best online income source for me.

After trying (and failing) various methods such as self publishing and print-on-demand, I found the most success with making affiliate sales.

Learning the Basics

A significant factor in my success was learning the basics of how affiliate marketing works, such as product selection, growth strategies, marketing tools, and tracking metrics.

I took a few affiliate marketing program courses to gain a better understanding of these concepts, which was taught by real millionaires who had already accomplished major success in affiliate marketing.

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So everything I know is credited towards my mentors, my network and my own experience and experimentation with affiliate marketing.

Pivoting and testing a lot

I discovered that finding a niche that you have success in is all about staying flexible, testing different sub-topics and pivoting into what works.

I spent time publishing affiliate content in various niches that I either know about or have insights in, until I found what works for me and that gets results!

This led me to position my brand to anything related to working from home and making money online, which I enjoy dabbling with.

Monetizing the real way (not ads)

Initially, people didn’t seem to click my affiliate links, and it was challenging, but I didn’t give up. If you takeaway only one thing from this article is this:

STAY CONSISTENT for a really long time.

I continued making changes to my strategies and tweaking my methods, and soon I started earning more affiliate income than I ever thought possible.

Being a content creator is a lucrative income source for anyone with hard work and determination.

It allows you to recommend the right products for the right people, while also bringing in a steady stream of income.

How much can you realistically earn with affiliate marketing?

How much you can earn with affiliate marketing primarily depends on the products you promote and the commission rates set by the retailers.

Some programs offer low commission rates like the Amazon affiliate network with only 1-3%, while others offer as much as 50% or more!

High-ticket is definitely the way to go but don’t write off Amazon just yet, as I found it to be very consistent.

There is no fixed income for affiliate websites as it depends on various factors, but successful affiliates who create a strong brand and know their audience well earn thousands of dollars per month.

And that’s only scraping the surface.

However, it’s important to note that just promoting a few affiliate links here and there won’t earn you much money at all.

Instead, you need to be consistent with your affiliate marketing campaigns, create engaging content, and have the mindset of building a long-lasting brand with your affiliate partners.

Affiliate Marketing Facts You Should Know

• Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing where a business rewards affiliates for each referral they bring in through their marketing efforts.
• Successful affiliate marketers typically have some niche or target audience they cater to.
• Choosing high-ticket affiliate programs to promote is crucial for success in affiliate marketing.
• Transparency and honesty in promoting affiliate products is important for building trust with your audience.
• Building an email list is a very effective way to promote affiliate products, but requires the know-how to pull it off.
• Some of the highest paying affiliate programs are in the technology, finance, and health industries.
• Affiliate marketing is a great source of passive income, but it requires a ton of upfront work and consistent effort together with strategic planning.
• Many popular bloggers and marketing websites rely on affiliate marketing as a major source of income.
• Affiliate marketers use various channels such as social media, email marketing, and blogs to promote new products.

Affiliate Marketing Tips For Real Success

It can be overwhelming to get started with affiliate marketing, but fret not as these real-life tips will help you to get on the right track, and avoid wasting precious time. 

Let’s dive in and learn more!

1. How to choose the “right niche” for your affiliate marketing business

One of the most common pieces of advice for affiliate marketers is to pick a specific niche and stick to it.

While this can certainly work for some people who want to build a niche site, it’s not the only approach to make money as a new affiliate.

Instead of limiting yourself to a single niche, consider building the brand of you.

This means leveraging your unique skills, experiences, and personality to create a brand that people are naturally drawn to, which goes hand in hand with inbound marketing and the nature of affiliate marketing.

When you focus on building your brand, you open yourself up to a wide range of affiliate marketing opportunities!

You’re not limited to promoting products in a specific niche—you can find partnerships that align with your values, interests, and expertise.

Additionally, building your brand allows you to pivot and adapt to changes in the market, which actually is key for staying in this game long enough without having to start over every time.

Instead of feeling stuck in a specific niche or product line, you’re free to explore new opportunities and pivot into what works.

You can even create your own podcast or ecommerce store with the same brand down the line.

2. How to Build Your Brand, the brand of yourself

Building your brand starts with identifying your unique strengths and what makes you stand out. Ask yourself:

• What skills and experiences do I bring to the table?
• What topics or industries do I have a deep knowledge of?
• What unique perspective or voice can I bring to my content?

Once you’ve identified these key factors, you can start building your brand by creating a consistent message and visual identity. This might involve:

• Creating a website or blog with a clear angle or take
• Aligning your social media presence with a unique voice and style
• Creating visual branding elements like logos, color schemes, and graphics
• Crafting a compelling personal bio or “about me” section

Remember, building your brand is an ongoing process. As you continue to grow and evolve, so should your brand messaging and visual identity.

I’ve probably remade my own brand identity over 5 times in the last 2 years and I’m still evolving!

Remember, you’re not just promoting products—you’re promoting yourself as a trusted authority in your industry. By building your brand and cultivating your audience, you’re setting yourself up for long-term success in affiliate marketing.

3. Maximizing your profits with high-paying affiliate programs

I know it’s super obvious but don’t be surprised when most affiliates end up promotion low-end stuff anyways, sometimes logic goes out the window!

One of the best ways to maximize your profits with affiliate marketing is to join high-paying affiliate programs. These programs offer higher commissions per sale, which can significantly increase your earnings.

Research different affiliate programs in your niche to find those that offer higher payouts. Look for programs that provide at least a 20% commission per sale, or even higher if possible.

You also want to consider promoting products or services that have a higher price point. While the commission may be the same percentage or even lower, a higher-priced item makes up for it big time and leads to larger payout.

An example of this is in the finance space and recommending investing portfolios, where a payout can be $20.000 for a single comission depending on the size of the investment!

There is also the interesting case with software, as they have the element of recurring income. 

Most of these SaaS brands are subscription based meaning you’ll get comissions every month as long as a customer stays subscribed.

While the base revenue you get is lower that physical products, these comissions can compound over time.

4. Understanding search intent to promote without being pushy

One of the biggest mistakes beginner affiliate marketers make is being too pushy with their promotions. Instead, focus on providing value and offering helpful solutions to their problems.

One strategy is to create content around the product you are promoting and demonstrating how it can help your audience. This can be through blog posts, videos, or social media posts that showcase the product in action.

Most people only buy something if it hits home on one of two things:

• They have a problem and buy something to fix that problem
• They have a desire and buy something to help them reach the desire

In other words, you need to understand the search intent of whatever people are interested in, and WHY they are interested.

For example, someone interested in buying a drill is not necessarily interested in tools. Maybe they only want to put up something on the wall so the wife stops complaining.

There’s no use showcasing all of the features of a drill and how man RPM’s it can turn in a minute, no it should be cheap, fast and do the job in minutes.

Understand search intent and shoot up your conversion rates!

5. Content Marketing: The Foundation of Affiliate Marketing

When it comes to affiliate marketing, one of the most important things to keep in mind is that people need to know you exist in order for you to recommend something for them to buy. This is where content marketing comes in.

By creating valuable content that resonates with your audience, you can position yourself as an expert in your niche and gain their trust.

But what exactly is content marketing? Simply put, it’s the practice of creating and sharing valuable content with the goal of attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience, mostly through organic traffic or inbound lead generation as it’s called.

The key to successful content marketing is to focus on providing value to your audience. This means creating content that educates, entertains, or solves a problem for them. 

Types of Content to Create

When it comes to creating content for your affiliate marketing strategy, there are several types that work particularly well:

• Product reviews: Writing detailed, honest reviews of products or services in your niche helps your followers make informed purchasing decisions.
• Tutorials: Creating how-to guides or instructional videos can be a great way to provide value to your audience while showcasing your expertise.
• Informative blog posts: Writing blog posts that educate your readers on a particular topic can help you attract more traffic to your website, just like this article you’re reading right now.

Promoting Your Content

Creating great content is just one part of the equation when it comes to successful content marketing. You also need to promote your content to ensure that it’s reaching your audience. Some effective ways to do this include:

• Search Engine Optimization: Optimizing your content for search engines can help you attract more traffic to your website and increase visibility for your brand.
• Social media: Sharing your content on social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Twitter helps you reach a wider audience and encourage engagement with your followers.
• Email marketing: Building an email list and sending regular newsletters or promotional emails is be an effective way to keep your audience engaged and informed about new content you’ve published.

Content marketing is an essential part of any successful affiliate marketing strategy, it’s the lifeblood of the business. 

6. Easy tips for creating engaging and converting affiliate product reviews

7. Overcoming Common Fears for Starting an Affiliate Marketing Business

Starting an affiliate marketing business can be intimidating, especially if you’re new to the industry. And while fears and doubts are normal when beginning any new venture, it’s important to recognize them and address them early-on.

Let’s explore some common fears that may be holding you back and provide tips on how to overcome them.

Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is the feeling that you’re not qualified or knowledgeable enough about a topic. This fear can be especially prevalent for those new to affiliate marketing, as there is a lot to learn and a lot of competition in the industry.

However, it’s important to remember that everyone starts somewhere and that even the most successful marketers had to start from scratch, myself being a prime example.

To overcome imposter syndrome, focus on building your knowledge and skills. Take courses, watch videos, and follow industry leaders to gain confidence in your abilities.

Slowly but surely you’ll get to a point where you’re knowledgable enough to not give a f**k about anyones opinion about you.

In fact there is a quote I like that perfectly summs this up:

Do not fear failure, fear being in the exact same place next year.

Remember that everyone has areas they can improve in and that mistakes and failures are a natural part of the learning process. Fail forward!

Fear of Rejection When Reaching out to Brands

One of the biggest challenges of affiliate marketing is reaching out to brands and pitching your services. This may be if you want to land a guest post for your blogging business, or a sponorship deal for your YouTube video.

It can be scary to put yourself out there and risk rejection, but it’s important to remember that rejection is not a reflection of your worth or abilities.

People are simply busy minding their own business, and to be honest they don’t care about your thoughts or your feelings. Fear is simply something made up in your own mind and is not actually real.

To overcome this fear, focus on building relationships with brands rather than solely focusing on the sale.

Start by researching the brands you’re interested in and engaging with them on social media. Show them that you’re invested in their products and that you have a genuine interest in working with them.

When you do reach out, personalize your pitch and be sure to highlight how you can benefit their brand and bring value to them.

In the worst case, they’ll simply not even bother to answer. But the best case is way more exciting! 

Running it Like a Business Not a Hobby

Finally, it’s important to treat your affiliate marketing business like a business, rather than a hobby.

This means establishing clear goals, developing a strategy, and investing in your own growth. Don’t be afraid to spend money on courses, tools, and resources that can help you become more successful.

There’s no use reinventing the wheel when it already exists!

Remember that affiliate marketing is a legitimate way to earn a living, but it takes hard work and dedication. Treat it like a business and take it seriously, build a long-lasting brand, and you’ll be well on your way to success.

8. The importance of keyword research and SEO for affiliate marketing success

Keyword research and SEO are crucial when it comes to affiliate marketing success, as it’s how your content gets discovered. If people don’t know that you excist, how on earth will they ever consume your content?

And it’s not just about any random traffic, but targeted customers search for specific solutions to problems, it’s what inbound marketing is all about. 

It’s essential to identify the keywords that potential customers are using when searching for products, and optimize your content accordingly towards that.

By utilizing SEO techniques, such as building quality backlinks and doing on-page SEO for high-quality content, you can improve your search engine rankings and increase visibility.

There’s a lot to discuss when it comes to SEO and it’s a little bit beyond the scope of this article, so make sure to read my other resources for that.

9. Expert advice for scaling your affiliate marketing business for long-term success

If you want to scale your affiliate marketing business for long-term success, follow these tips as a rule of thumb:

• Expand Your Audience: find new and creative ways to reach new customers and target different demographics. Even new trends and keywords can be ways to tap into new audiences.
• Diversify Your Offers: to avoid relying on a single product or affiliate program, promote multiple offers and test what works best. What products convert the best and overall increase your bottom line?
• Build Relationships with Partners: establish strong relationships with merchants and other affiliates to gain access to exclusive offers and higher commission rates. Negotiating the rates are the most secure way of increasing your revenue.
• Track Results and Optimize: regularly monitor your keywords or campaigns, track the results, and optimize your offers to improve their performance. Lean into what works and you get success in, and double down!
• Invest in Your Business: invest both time and resources in learning new skills, testing new tools, improving your website, and creating high-quality content to attract more visitors and conversions.

“Remember, building a successful affiliate marketing business takes time, effort, and patience. But if you are consistent and follow these tips, you can achieve long-term success and earn more money as an affiliate marketer.”

Is affiliate marketing a legitimate way to make money online?

Absolutely! Affiliate marketing is a legitimate way to make money online.

Many companies offer affiliate programs where they pay commissions to affiliates who promote their products or services and generate sales.

Did you know that actually over 81% of software brands rely on affiliate programs to attract customers? This is especially true for startups, as this is how they generate buzz around a product launch.

However, it’s important to do your research and only promote products or services that you truly believe, use yourself, or isa good fit for your audience if you have one.

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About the author, Chris