In today's video,
I'm going to be walking you through
how to start affiliate marketing for beginners
and this is going to go step by step.
This video has three parts.
The first part is going to talk about
the general overview of what affiliate marketing is,
then we'll quickly move into
what kind of options you have for building your platform
and getting traffic to it to make this affiliate marketing work,
this will be with a website or even without a website,
and then third,
we'll move into what kind of affiliate offers you should be focusing on,
there's both low ticket offers and there's high ticket offers
and we're going to talk about both.
By the end of this video,
you'll have everything you need to start affiliate marketing today.
So, without further ado, let's jump in the computer and get into this.
So, the very first thing that we need to discuss
and we need to be on the same page about is what affiliate marketing is.
If you have ever referred anyone to any business in the past,
someone asks you 'hey, do you have a good air-conditioner guy?'
'hey, do you have a good person that cuts your hair?'
Whatever it is and you refer them to your person,
that is effetively affiliate marketing.
All it is, is referring people to things that you know
and you like and you trust.
So, when you look at the actual definition
of how people explain affiliate marketing,
it's essentially commission based or performance based marketing
in which a business rewards you for bringing them a customer.
That's all it is.
So, you're not actually an employee,
you're not on payroll, you have no commitment,
you can work whenever you want to work,
and you only get paid when you drive them a new customer
or a new click, a new lead, whatever the affiliate offer is.
Now, you don't need to have crazy marketing experience for this.
What I'm going to show you in this video,
we'll go over how you can share
basically your knowledge and your experience
to lead other people down the same path that you went,
to make the same decisions and find the product that's right for them.
And by doing that and doing it this way,
you will actually get the commission on them making their purchase
or whatever they're buying.
So, now that we understand what affiliate marketing is,
I want to show you two examples of affiliate marketing websites.
One is really big, this is Expedia.com
There are a ton of examples of this,
but anytime you see mostly travel companies or cruise companies,
anyone who's a search engine helps you find a deal or something like that,
that is likely an affiliate marketing website.
So, for example with Expedia,
they give you all the tools in a search engine, everything you need.
This is what they put their money into building this tool here,
You can go on here, and it gives you all the information
to find the best option of available deals out there.
Expedia does not have an airline,
they do not have hotels.
They send you to a company that does,
and then they get a commission for sending you to that company.
So, this is a large-scale affiliate marketing website.
And then, this is another one.
This is a smaller scale, this is made by another YouTuber.
I just think it's a perfect example to use,
so, Odie I hope you don't mind me using this,
but this is an example of his website,
it's called RecordingNow.com
And basically, he's doing reviews of products that are on Amazon
and then he puts his affiliate link in there,
so, people know exactly what to expect
and then they can go buy it on Amazon and that's through his affiliate link.
So, it cost them nothing extra
and they know that they're getting the exact product that was reviewed
because they're using the link that was in the description,
and because of smart business happens to be an affiliate link,
so, that person making the review gets paid.
So, those are two examples of affiliate marketing websites,
one large scale and one smaller scale,
but that kind of leads us into
what kind of options do you have
when you're making an affiliate marketing business.
You don't have to have a website.
So, in this section I want to talk about
the four main options that you have
when you're starting affiliate marketing.
So, a lot of people when they're starting affiliate marketing,
they don't want to spend any money upfront,
they just want to try it out and see what happens.
So, if you are one of those people
you're probably not going to be able to make a website.
Now, I'm going to talk about making a website in a couple of minutes here,
but first, I want to appease the people
who don't want to spend any money at all.
If you are one of these people,
then these two options will be really good for you.
So, the first one is YouTube affiliate.
So, if you go on YouTube and you type in any type of product or service,
you will find a ton of videos and reviews about that topic.
So, for headphones, for example,
there's almost a million searches every single month about headphones,
and right here on YouTube,
you can see all of these videos that are reviewing headphones
and this is all affiliate marketing.
So, you can see my favorite wireless headphones 2018,
you can see top five best active noise-cancelling headphones,
and then as you look in the description previews
you can see that there are affiliate links right in the top.
So, these videos are reviewing products
and then sending you through the affiliate link to go purchase it.
So, almost all of these have affiliate links in the first two lines,
that's how you know that this affiliate marketing thing is real.
But what I'm getting at is you can make a free YouTube account
and If you're comfortable on camera,
you can film yourself reviewing product,
you can compare two different products,
any kind of product or service that you have used in the past
and they have an affiliate program.
Now, in the next section we're going to talk about how to find offers
and what kind of products you can review
that you can get affiliate commissions on.
However, in this section,
just know that you can make a video review on basically any product
especially if it's on Amazon,
and then you can send them down an affiliate link
and you can get commission when they buy.
So, some of you might be saying
well, I'm not comfortable being on camera
and that's completely understandable,
so, just know that you can make a PowerPoint presentation
and put it on YouTube.
It has the same effect.
Just know that it's more engaging to people
when it's actually a person on camera.
So, if you can get on camera and do the review live,
I definitely recommend doing that,
then uploading that video with your affiliate link in the description.
Now, for those of you who just absolutely want
nothing to do with the camera or YouTube,
and you still don't want to make a website
but you do want to get into affiliate marketing,
here's the second way.
So, this is over on Instagram.
This is actually an example of one of my pages
and it's actually based around print on demand.
So, I use a website called Teespring to fulfill orders,
so, it's kind of like a combination of drop shipping
and print on demand and affiliate marketing all-in-one.
However, the concept of this page and how it works
is exactly the same for affiliate marketing.
All you're doing is changing out the products
and the link of where people can buy it with your affiliate link.
So, I wanted to show you this page and just briefly
show you that you can post the product or you can post photos of the product,
cool quotes about the product,
any kind of specs or anything to hype up the product,
then you put your affiliate link in the description,
and you don't need a following to start this.
So, that's a lot of people's concerns.
Just know that when you make a post you can put in hashtags,
relevant niche hashtags.
So, with that being said,
if you want a tutorial on how to make a page like this on Instagram,
to start affiliate marketing with no website or anything,
I'll link a video up here that'll go through everything.
Now, that video is going to be based on print-on-demand,
but remember the concept is exactly the same for affiliate marketing.
Now, I want to move into the two main ways that I recommend
and this is with a website for affiliate marketing,
and what you're doing is creating a niche website,
so, this starts to rank in Google
and that's where you're going to get the bulk of your traffic.
So, when someone's searching for
something related to that niche or that product,
your website will come up in the rankings
and that's how you get your traffic.
So, although these two options Instagram and YouTube
are very good places for you to just start out and get a feel for it,
eventually, you're going to want to move into
a niche affiliate marketing website,
just because it's so much more powerful and scalable.
So, with that being said, to create a niche affiliate marketing website,
there's two main options that I recommend.
Now, there's a ton of website builders out there,
there's WordPress, there's Wix, there's Squarespace,
there's a million other ones.
However, after using so many of these I recommend you use one of two,
either Wix or WordPress.
So, building the website
is something that you're definitely going to want a tutorial on,
because you don't want to just wing it,
there's actually a process,
and there's a specific layout that you want to use,
and types of content you want to be posting to rank better in Google.
So, if you're interested in making a niche affiliate marketing website
with either Wix or WordPress,
I've made a lengthy tutorial for both of these.
So, this is the Wix one right here,
I'll link it down in the description, I'll link it up top here,
and there is one for WordPress,
so, I will link that one up top and then also down in the description.
And these two tutorials no matter which one you watch
will walk through everything.
All the way from looking into which niches
are going to rank the best on Google in the beginning,
to finding ideas for products to promote,
and then writing the content and publishing it, everything.
That's in both of these tutorials.
Now, the biggest difference between Wix and WordPress
is one the price and two the usability.
So, if you are brand new to making a website
and you've never made one before, that is where I would recommend Wix.
Wix is a little bit more expensive each month.
However, making the website is so simple.
You're watching the tutorial,
it's literally drag-and-drop and it'll save you all the frustration.
So, if you have a little bit extra money
or if you really are not tech savvy,
I would recommend going with Wix
just because it is so simple to set up.
Now, if you do have experience building websites and using WordPress,
and you want to save a couple of dollars each month,
then I would recommend going with WordPress.
It's just a little bit cheaper each month,
and although it has a heavy learning curve,
you can customize it
and do everything you need for the niche affiliate marketing website,
just like Wix, it's just a little bit cheaper each month.
So, that's the difference between the two,
no matter which one you watch you're going to be in good hands.
But just know that you can have a Wix website or a WordPress website,
or if you don't want a website at all and you just want to get started
and kind of get the feel for it,
you can make YouTube videos with yourself on camera or PowerPoint,
or you can make an Instagram page around that specific niche
and then use hashtags to get targeted traffic to your page.
Now that we have the options laid out and tutorials on how to make them,
now we need to move into what kind of offers can you promote,
where do you find these offers, which are the best offers,
so, that's where I want to start out here
and this is with Amazon associates.
This is what I recommend to everyone getting started in affiliate marketing
and that's because it is so beginner-friendly
and often leads to accidental success.
Now, allow me to explain that.
So, Amazon associates is the biggest
affiliate marketing program in the world
and that's by no surprise because it's by Amazon,
and essentially what it is, is you can sign up here,
you'd have to apply, so, you can join now for free,
go through the application, and once you're approved,
you can then go on Amazon and you can promote any product,
you can get a special link that has your affiliate tracking in it,
and you can get a link like that for any product on Amazon.
And as you Know, there is basically everything on Amazon
and how the commission structure breaks down is this.
So, it's by category.
So, whichever category the product falls in,
this is the commission that you would get,
so, this is the percent of whatever's in their cart when they check out,
it's how much you would get.
So, it's very important that we talk about that a bit before we move on
and what this is,
is basically whether you're making a YouTube video, Instagram page
or you have your own website,
you create this link and the link is good forever,
so, you can create it for any product you have it forever,
put it on your site and it's good forever,
for years to come people can click that.
Now, once someone clicks that link, it'll send them to Amazon
and it sets a cookie on their computer,
it just is basically your referral link,
so, Amazon knows that you sent the person there
and that cookie lasts for 24 hours.
So, if they buy anything on Amazon
in the next 24 hours after clicking that link
you will get a commission depending on whatever category that falls into.
So, if you're sending them to Amazon for a pair of shoes,
and then they end up not buying the shoes,
but the next morning within 24 hours they come back
and they buy a refrigerator or a vacuum cleaner,
you will get commission on whatever they bought
and it's everything that's in the cart.
So, if they bought your shoes but then they also bought ten other things,
you would get commission for every single product
that they checked out with.
So, this is where the accidental success comes,
a lot of people will send people to Amazon
and they don't end up buying that product
that they sent them to Amazon for,
but they buy other products within 24 hours
and the person who initially sent them there still has the cookie there,
so, they still get paid.
So, I definitely recommend to anyone
just starting out in affiliate marketing,
atleast apply to Amazon associates
and then you can recommend any product on Amazon.
So, a lot of what we saw here with the headphones,
these are all going to be Amazon associate affiliate links
So, these are considered low ticket affiliate items,
because you're only getting a small percentage,
you might get $10, you might get up to $100 on it
which would be really good,
but chances are if you're using the Amazon associates affiliate program
you're probably only going to get somewhere between $2
and maybe $50 will be the max average
on whatever you're sending someone to Amazon for.
Now, if you're recommending products like a MacBook
or something that's more expensive,
you will get more money each time you send someone there
and they make a purchase,
but most of the time you're relying on products like headphones
or something that might be a hundred or two hundred dollars,
and then the commission on that would be 6% for headphones,
so, you'd be looking at somewhere like 6 to 12 dollars,
every time someone went through your link
and made a purchase of those headphones.
Now, there's also high ticket affiliate items
and this is what I wanted to show you.
This is a website that I use, it's Pat Flynn's.
He's an amazing affiliate marketer,
and in past years he used to release an income report,
so, if you click this little graph right here,
it doesn't say anything about clicking it,
but if you click on it,
it shows you his income breakdown for the months
that he released in his income report,
and it shows you which affiliate offers he was promoting
and how much he made from those offers.
So, if you scroll down here and click on any of these,
a lot of them are a little bit old but the information still stays the same,
you just click on one of them
and scroll almost to the bottom of this page,
it's about three-quarters of the way down right here,
this is his income breakdown for that month.
So, as you can see in that month he grossed 167 thousand dollars
and these were the offers that he was promoting
and how much he made from each of these offers.
So, what that means for us is we can come through here
and we can click on these
and see if that product is something that we have used before
or something that we could do research on to recommend to people,
what kind of use cases they could use it, why they should use it,
compare two different products,
but essentially, this is a vetted list of affiliate programs
that you know are good and you know are converting
and are making a lot of money.
So, you can come through here and you can look through all of these,
and some of these will be 50, 60, 100, 200 dollars per person
that signs up when you send them there.
So, not many people will show you this list,
but just remember you go to smartpassiveincome.com
click on the income report
and these are all going to be vetted affiliate programs.
And the last couple of things that are really important
to know as a beginner in affiliate marketing are
if you're on the fence of doing a non website or a website
for your platform,
I definitely challenge you to push yourself to make a website.
Down the road, you will really thank yourself
because when you start ranking in Google
you just get flooded with all this organic traffic
that you don't have to pay for at all.
So, if you are strapped for cash,
then I recommend starting with WordPress website,
it's only a couple dollars per month,
if you confront that and get that going for a while,
then once you've ranked on Google, you will definitely be thanking yourself.
And the last big thing is,
I put a link down in the description
to a free affiliate marketing traffic guide
on how to get people to your website
and this is without paid advertising.
Down in the link is the only place you can get that,
I've put it in a couple videos,
but that link is the only place you can get that guide.
So, guys with all that information
you should definitely have a good start
and that should walk you through step by step
how to start affiliate marketing for beginners.
If you guys have any questions at all,
feel free to let me know in the comments,
I hope you guys enjoyed this video,
and it brought value to you guys,
and I'll see you guys in the next one.