Part One
Part One - Overview of Affiliate Marketing
- What exactly is Affiliate Marketing?
There are so many definitions to what Affiliate Marketing really is. Well, you can scour the internet to search for the most accurate description of Affiliate Marketing if you like.
But to put it simply, Affiliate Marketing is all about promoting and selling other people’s products, while being rewarded with a commission.
That’s it.
Simple, huh?
Yeah, Affiliate Marketing is actually very simple when broken down into the most basic concept.
Of course, the skills needed to generate sales is the hard part.
- What kind of products can be sold via Affiliate Marketing?
Digital products - E-books, music, movies, satellite tv channels, softwares, audio & video programs, training manuals, etc.
Digital Services - Domain name registration, webhosting, writing services, design services, consultation, e-courses, paid-surveys, hotel bookings, travel services, programming, etc.
Physical Products - Anything and everything! A good example would be selling Amazon products via their affiliate program.
- Where and how do I start with Affiliate Marketing?
One way to start off with affiliate marketing is to find a niche which you are very familiar with. Let’s say, you are into logo design.
Simply go to Google and search for - ‘logo design affiliate programs’. You will find lots of logo design companies that offer affiliate programs for marketers. These affiliate programs are usually run internally.
Read their terms of services, build a website on logo design, get visitors to your website and refer them to the logo design company that you are affiliated to. If your visitors make a purchase or place an order, you will be credited with a percentage of the sales. Typically, these internal affiliate programs will pay you either via check or PayPal.
That’s all. Again, it sounds simple in theory.
The second way is to join Affiliate Networks like Clickbank, PayDotCom, Commission Junction, ShareASale, etc.
Affiliate Networks act as a middle party between the product vendor and the affiliate. Most affiliate networks will provide marketing tools for the affiliates to further enhance their marketing activities.
Affiliate networks will also handle all transactions and refunding procedures.
I strongly recommend going for the latter method if you are just starting out with Affiliate Marketing. In fact, I am going to get you to sign up with Clickbank as their payout is twice a month and they have more than 10,000 quality products to choose from.
- Task One - Sign up with Clickbank
Okay, finally time to get started.
Here is your first task as a newbie affiliate marketer.
- Go to Clickbank.
- Sign up as an Affiliate. (It’s Free!)
- Choose a nickname as your Clickbank ID.
- Go to the Marketplace.
- Go through the categories and sort the results by ‘High Gravity’
- Visit the top 5 of each category and determine how influential the sales page is. Make a quick note on how much the product is selling and the commission percentage.
- If you are tempted to buy the product, then perhaps it is a GOOD product to sell.
- Shortlist TEN products that you think is worth your time promoting.
- Now, you need to choose ONE single product to focus on.
How to choose the ONE product that you are going to focus on?
Customer satisfaction for a product is something that can tell you a lot about the quality and value that is offered. Products with high refund rates at Clickbank can mean that the product is very poor in quality.
Before you promote Clickbank products, you will want to determine what the refund rate is. Use the formula below to calculate the refund rate for a Clickbank product.
(Commission - $/Sale)/Commission = Average Refund Rate
Example: Ultimate Wealth Package
Product Price - $49.95
Commission - 75% ($37.46)
$/Sale - $27.29
Average Refund Rate = (37.46 - 27.29) / 37.46 = 0.25 = 25%
A refund rate of 15% or lower is a good indication that the product is of decent quality. Clickbank suggests that at least 5% of all refunds are provided to people committing fraud.
If a product has a refund rate lower than 15% you can draw the conclusion that it is a decent product to sell. With this being said, some products that have refund rates of 15% and above do convert at a very high rate. In this case it may still be highly profitable to promote such a product.
The refund % of a product will simply help you determine what the overall customer satisfaction is for the particular clickbank product.
This is just one of the simple techniques in identifying a profitable product to start with, as explained in the e-book ‘Who Loves Money‘ by Kyle and Carson.
Since you are going to dedicate a lot of time and effort in the next few weeks, I would suggest that you pick up a copy of this amazing guide for new affiliates immediately.
You can read the product review of ‘Who Loves Money‘ here.
When you are done, you can proceed to Part 2 - Keyword Research.