Affiliate marketing can make for a fantastic way to earn a living, but with so many different tools, systems & methods, it can be hard to figure out how to get started.
What you need, especially as a beginner, is an affiliate marketing roadmap.
And by “roadmap”, we mean step-by-step actionable training based on a proven & replicable method for finding success with affiliate marketing.
That way, you can simply follow the steps in the roadmap & give yourself a surefire way of achieving success as an affiliate marketer, even as a complete beginner.
So to help you with exactly that, we’ve put together our very own affiliate marketing roadmap.
Let’s dive in & get to it.
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Affiliate Marketing Roadmap
The first step in any affiliate marketing roadmap should be to fully understand how affiliate marketing actually works, so let’s begin with that below.
1. Understanding How Affiliate Marketing Works
Affiliate marketing, in short, involves connecting people with the products or services that they’re looking for online in return for commissions that are paid out for successful sales.
So, as an example, let’s say you want to promote a product from Amazon to somebody.
First, you would need to sign up to Amazon’s affiliate program (known as the Amazon Associates program).
Then, you would be provided with a special link to the Amazon website known as an affiliate link & this link would contain an ID that’s unique to you.
This means that if anybody clicked on the link & made a purchase, Amazon would be able to determine that it was you that sent them there & they’d be able to reward you with a commission in return for generating the sale.
So your goal as an affiliate marketer would be to drive as many people through your affiliate links as possible, making sure to connect them with the products or services that are most relevant for them.
This is known as “driving targeted traffic” & targeted traffic is the key to success with affiliate marketing.
So long as you have targeted traffic & a relevant offer, you can make money (and potentially lots of it). In fact, you could even find yourself becoming a millionaire with affiliate marketing.
But driving targeted traffic is one of the things people struggle with & more often than not, it’s because they fail to drill down a specific niche.
So let’s look at what a niche is below & see why it’s so important in determining your success.
2. Understanding The Importance of a Niche
In short, a niche is a smaller segment of a larger industry. So, for example, within the “vacuums” industry, a niche could be “robot vacuums”.
And similarly, within the “pets” industry, a niche could be “tropical fishkeeping”.
So, from those 2 examples, you can likely see how niches are laser-targeted towards a specific audience, rather than focusing on a broader market.
And initially you might think this is counter-intuative. You may think it would be better to go broad because there would be more products to promote & therefore more money to make.
But that’s the big trap most people fall into.
It’s always better to narrow your audience to a specific niche because then it becomes much easier to convert your visitors into sales.
After all, you know exactly what they’re interested in… So you know exactly what products to promote.
And because you’ve kept your subject narrow, you also become seen as an “expert” on that particular niche, meaning you become the go-to destination.
But how do you find a niche? Well, the good news is we’ve put together an in-depth step-by-step guide on finding a profitable affiliate niche right here.
3. Understanding How To Find Affiliate Programs
After choosing a niche to begin your affiliate marketing journey with, the next step is to seek out affiliate programs & determine what kind of things you can promote.
The good news is that this step is pretty easy & it’s made even easier by Commission Academy because we’ve listed many of the best affiliate programs to join, such as:
- Best Instant Payout Affiliate Programs
- Best High-Ticket Affiliate Programs
- Best Recurring Commission Affiliate Programs
- …and more.
But in general, finding an affiliate program for your niche is as simple as typing your niche into Google search, along with the words “affiliate program”, like so:
And joining an affiliate program should always be free. You should never have to pay any money to sign up as an affiliate.
But some affiliate programs are better than others, so it’s important to know what to look for when comparing different programs.
Thankfully, we’ve put together a free guide on finding the best affiliate programs.
But in short, some of the main things you want to look for are:
And then once you’ve found some affiliate programs & got your affiliate links, you’ll be ready to start generating traffic & earning money.
4. Understanding How To Generate Traffic
Traffic is the key to success as an affiliate marketer. It doesn’t how good a website you have or how great the affiliate program is that you’ve joined, if you don’t have traffic, you won’t make money.
That’s because you need people clicking on your affiliate links & buying things to earn commissions.
And to earn big money, you need as many people clicking as possible. But more importantly, you need people clicking who are actually interested in what you’re offering.
This is known as targeted traffic.
Thankfully, there are many great ways to generate a stream of targeted traffic & we teach them in our free affiliate marketing course.
Two of our all-time favourite methods are:
- Content creation
- Paid advertising
And the best part is that you can do both of these without having to show your face.
So if you want to do affiliate marketing anonymously, you absolutely can. That’s one of the reasons as to why we believe affiliate marketing is one of the best side hustles.
But once you’ve got traffic, the next step involves learning how to convert those clicks into sales.
Let’s take a look at how it’s done.
5. Understanding How To Convert Clicks To Sales
Having traffic is great. It means that you’re ready to make money as an affiliate marketer… But to do so, you need to know how to convert the clicks into sales.
This is known as conversion rate optimization.
And the main steps for conversion rate optimization are:
- Making sure your offer is relevant to what your visitors are interested in
- Setting expectations
- Adding strong call-to-actions
- Leveraging follow-up marketing (such as building an email list)
This a process that typically involves trial & error. It will see you carrying out what are known as “A/B tests” and trying different things to see which converts the highest.
For example, you may send 50% of your visitors to Product A & the other 50% of your visitors to Product B & then, based on the date, choose the highest converting product to promote.
The great thing about conversion rate optimization is that it can result in instant increases in your income.
For example, if your funnel is converting at 10% but you manage to make a tweak that doubles it to 20%, that you would see you instantly doubling your income.
Of course, there’ll be a peak as to what conversion rate you can hit but once you’ve reached that, you can begin looking into other ways to scale your business.
6. Understanding How To Scale Your Business
Once you’ve got everything rolling & begun earning commissions on a consistent basis, your next step will be to begin scaling up your business.
Wondering how scaleable affiliate marketing actually is? We’ve answered that here.
But scaling your business can be done through various means, such as:
- Leveraging high-ticket affiliate marketing
- Introducing additional traffic sources
- Launching more websites
- Promoting affiliate programs recurring commissions
And the good news is that there is a LOT of potential to earn when it comes to affiliate marketing. In fact, affiliate marketing could even see you becoming rich.
Of course, achieving super affiliate status requires hard work & dedication but it’s certainly more than possible if you’re willing to put in the work.
So with the affiliate marketing roadmap outlined, let’s take a look at what your future could look like as an affiliate marketing entrepreneur.
Your Future As An Affiliate Marketer
By following the affiliate marketing roadmap that we’ve outlined above & leveraging our free affiliate marketing training course, you could find yourself becoming a highly successful affiliate.
This could see you achieving:
- Time freedom
- Money freedom
- Location freedom
In fact, we actually put together an entire blog post giving you an insight into the life of an affiliate marketer. If you haven’t already done so, you should definitely check it out.
But overall, the future of affiliate marketing is looking bright & there is more opportunity now than ever before, meaning affiliate marketing could prove to be a very lucrative career path for you.
And even if you don’t necessarily want to take it full-time, it can still prove to be a fantastic & highly rewarding side hustle.
That’s why we highly recommend affiliate marketing for students.
So, the question is, how can you start? Well, let’s take a look.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing For Free
Starting affiliate marketing doesn’t have to be difficult or costly. You can begin your journey with our free step-by-step affiliate marketing course.
Throughout the course, you’ll learn everything that was explained in the roadmap above along with lots of other golden nuggets that’ll help you to succeed.
Plus, alongside the training, you’ll also get access to some powerful tools & resources that’ll help you to rapidly skyrocket your success.
So if you haven’t already done so, we’d highly recommend signing up for our free affiliate marketing training before you leave.
But overall, whatever you decide to do, we hope that this affiliate marketing roadmap has helped you out & gave you a good idea of the steps for getting started.
If you happen to have any additional comments or questions, don’t hesitate to leave them below.
