You’ve decided to make a real go of this make money online thing and become an affiliate marketer.
Maybe you’ve already found the exact affiliate programs and products you want to promote.
Now all you need is eyeballs on your links!
Because let’s face it – if you want to make those affiliate commissions you need traffic.
You need people to come to your site, consume your content then click through and buy.
So in this article, we’re going to walk you through the 9 main ways you can get an audience for affiliate marketing.
9 Ways To Get An Audience For Affiliate Marketing
1. Define Your Target Audience
2. Start An Affiliate Website
3. Create A Content Plan
4. Keep Adding New Content
5. Collect Email Addresses
6. Give Youtube A Shot
7. Collaborate With Other Bloggers & Youtubers
8. Get Social
9. Run Paid Ads
Fair warning: Not all of these are quick fixes and some may take a bit of groundwork but do it right and you’ll never have to worry about where your traffic is going to come from again.
Lucky for you, here at Commission Academy we have a full and free step-by-step course that will show you how to build a solid affiliate marketing business from the ground up so check it out if you want the complete click-by-click.
1. Define Your Target Audience
This first step seems like a no-brainer but I see so many people get this wrong.
A common newbie mistake is to pick a niche that’s too broad or too narrow and with both extremes you’re going to struggle.
Another thing beginners do is try and mash different niches together. You’ll see them promoting random, unrelated stuff like golf products on a cooking site.
It’s going to be hard to build a targeted audience that way. Remember, when we talk about getting an audience for affiliate marketing we’re talking about drawing a target group of people who have similar interests and goals.
So take your time to figure this out. It’s important and foundational to your affiliate marketing success going forward.
Why?
Because then you’ll know exactly what they want, what their questions are and what products or services they want to buy. You’re going to be able to get higher click-throughs and make more money.
So get to the point where if someone asks you who your target audience is, you can just come right out and say it. It’s clear in your mind:
“I’m going to help (this group of people) with (this particular topic).”
2. Create An Affiliate Website
Another massive affiliate marketing no-no is trying to get an audience for your affiliate marketing business on platforms you neither own nor have any control over.
You’re not going to become an affiliate millionaire by spamming your links in Facebook groups so don’t even waste your time.
Once you’ve specified your niche, it’s time to create a website around that niche. This is the single best way to build an audience for affiliate marketing because before too long, this website of yours is going to attract 1,000s of buyer-ready visitors daily.
And if starting a website sounds scary technical, don’t worry it’s not. Just follow our training and we’ll show you just how simple it is and get you up and running in the next 30 minutes.
3. Create A Content Plan
OK, so now already you’re well on your way. You’ve got your website all set up. Now it’s time to pack it with content and include your affiliate links so you can start generating income.
And the first step is what’s called keyword research.
Using a keyword tool like Mangools, you can see how many times a month a specific phrase gets searched so you can create a content plan based on what your target audience is asking.
And with each post, you’re gonna target one specific keyword – a term or question people search for in Google and other search engines.
So open up an excel spreadsheet or use Google Sheets and make a list of all the keywords with a good amount of average monthly searches.
You could start with 30 keywords or go all-in and create a content p[lan for the whole year – either way, you’re never going to be stuck on what to create content about.
4. Keep Adding New Content
You could publish:
- Response posts (answering questions)
- Tutorials and how-to guides
- Product reviews
- Top 10 lists
And over time these posts are going to rise in the search results and drive a large audience to your affiliate marketing website.
And each time you hit publish on a new piece of content, that’s another chance to rank and make sales.
Ultimately, the more content you add to your site, the more affiliate commissions you will make.
You can do this yourself to start with (that’s what I did) and once the money starts flowing you can reinvest that into hiring writers to write it for you.
And there’s no limit to this. That’s why affiliate marketing is infinitely scalable.
Your site could become an absolute beast in your niche. It’s just a case of how many times you rinse and repeat.
5. Collect Email Addresses
Complete steps 1-4 and you’re going to have 1,000s or even 10,000s of people coming to your website daily.
You will already have an audience, now you just need to convert them into customers and keep them coming back.
Building an email list is the best way I know to do that.
So sign up to AWeber, create an email list sign-up form and start building a list of email subscribers and keep in regular contact with them.
You could send them your latest blog posts, create a follow-up series or promote products directly.
6. Give Youtube A Shot
I put off starting a Youtube channel for so long but I shouldn’t have…
I get it, looking into the lens of a camera feels like you’re staring death in the face but the more you do it, the more you’ll feel comfortable and get good at it.
Starting a Youtube channel helps you get an audience for affiliate marketing in two ways:
- With 14.3 billion searches a month, it helps you expand your reach
- Embed your videos into your website content and it increases traffic to your site
Plus it’s another way people can subscribe to you which is what you want – getting an audience is easy – it’s keeping them and turning them into loyal fans that’s going to up your conversions.
7. Collaborate With Other Bloggers & Youtubers
People always ask us how competitive affiliate marketing is and I get the reason behind the question…
I just tend to think of so-called “competitors” in terms of “potential collaborators” because working with other major influencers in your space is one of the best ways to double your audience overnight.
So reach out to fellow affiliate marketers and offer to:
- Do a link exchange
- Send out one of his emails to your list if he’ll do the same for you
- Write a guest post for their site
- Do a text-based interview
- Go live or create video content for each other’s YouTube channels
It’ll be a win for you and a win for the person you’re collaborating with.
8. Get Social
You can be successful at affiliate marketing without social media but that doesn’t mean you can’t use these platforms to get a bigger audience.
You can post affiliate links on sites like:
Each social site works differently so maybe just focus on one social media site, to begin with, and master it before moving on to the next.
Just make sure to track the traffic coming to your website to make sure you’re not spending too much time on these sites and getting distracted.
9. Run Paid Ads
I left this one ’til last on purpose. Don’t ever run paid ads unless you’re already doing all of the above.
Why?
Because running paid ads as a beginner is a surefire way to burn through cash quicker than you can say “I wish I would have listed to what that Commission Academy guy said!”
But follow the steps as I’ve outlined in this article and you’ll already have mastered critical income-generating skills like SEO and keyword research, content marketing, email marketing and social media marketing.
You’ll know what you’re doing and most importantly, you’ll have the vital data you need to go the paid ads route like what posts and pages on your site convert the best, where your traffic is coming from and what affiliate products are most popular with your audience.
Then and only then are paid ads ever a good option.
Which is why we only cover it in our Advanced Training.
That being said, it’s at this point you can increase the size of your audience by running campaigns on:
And so on…
Get an ads campaign profitable and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Let’s Start Driving Traffic Together!
In this post, I’ve given you a quick overview of how you can get traffic and build an audience as an affiliate marketer.
I’ve given you a rundown of how to build your very own affiliate marketing ecosystem that attracts traffic, turns them into buying customers and keeps them coming back for more.
If you want the in-depth click-by-click walkthroughs of how to do all of this, simply head on over to our free Commission Academy course.
In it, you’ll get easy-to-understand video training on all this and more so you can get an audience for affiliate marketing, make a ton of sales and build a strong and long-lasting business.
