How To Start Affiliate Marketing

So, affiliate marketing is a great source of passive income, we’ve all heard this. But how do you start affiliate marketing? 

As is our nature, we’re here with the answers you seek, so without any preamble, let’s get into how to get started in affiliate marketing. 

Choose your Industry

The first and most logical step when getting started as an affiliate is to choose the industry you want to work in. There are some very popular industries for affiliates, but these are not necessarily the ones to aim for. 

This is partly, obviously, due to the scale of competition in these sectors, but also because laws have changed due to unsavoury activity by some affiliates, iGaming in the UK, for example, is it as tempting as it once was. 

Your best bet is to find a growing industry, something that’s swiftly becoming popular but is relatively new, so there is still space for new affiliates. 

Another thing to ensure is that it is an industry you’re actually interested in. If you are not passionate about the industry you are writing about, that will come across to your readers, passion adds dimension. Also, you don’t want to be spending your time writing about an industry you don’t care about, because, frankly, it’s boring to do so! 

Choose Your Niche

You don’t want to write about every aspect of an industry, firstly because it takes a lot of research, but mainly because it will dilute the quality of your content. When your site is full of all the possible information, people struggle to know where to look for what they want, and you’re unlikely to be able to spend the time necessary on writing about every topic. 

Instead, find a small part of that industry you want to focus on and learn everything there is to know about it. If you can become people’s go-to specialist on a certain subject, it’ll do wonders for your marketability. 

Research Affiliate Programs

The most successful affiliate marketing sites are those that have affiliate links to various sites in a particular industry but not into all of them. 

What you want is to find sites with a combination of top quality products and generous affiliate programs, these are your holy grail. 

Basically, this means that both you and your readers get the most possible out of your affiliate sites, which is what you want. 

Choose Your Content

There are countless ways you can focus on content for your affiliate sites. As mentioned above, it’s best not to try and do everything, so try and isolate a few of the best types of content for your industry. 

For quick links, news is always a good choice, but this comes with a severe downside if it’s all you have. Evergreen content is the best kind of content, and news has an obvious shelf life. 

That doesn’t mean that news isn’t worth doing, it definitely is, but try and combine it with a couple of other forms of content. For affiliate links, product reviews are probably the best way, allowing you to ink to direct products organically. Guides also go a long way, whether this is a guide to how to find the best products, or how to use them once you’ve found them. 

Take Time on your Sites

The one thing you don’t want is for your affiliate sites to feel like they are only there to make you money. 

You know these sites as soon as you see them, barebones design, limited content, and links everywhere. Readers see through this immediately. 

Instead, take the time in creating your sites, make them look good, work on the design, create an eye-catching logo, and ensure that your content has the perfect combination of quality and quantity. 

When you put together a top-quality affiliate site, it makes a huge difference to your revenue stream. 

Once you’ve taken these steps, you are underway. After that, it’s just about marketing, maintaining a social media presence, updating your content regularly, and you’re good to go!