This Is How You Make Your First Affiliate Sale (Step By Step)

I’ll never forget my first affiliate sale.

It felt like I’d won the lottery!

It was only a $1.20 commission but I was dancing in my room and punching the air like a total madman 🤑

Why?

Because I had proof of concept and I knew if I could do it once, I could do it again…

And again…

And again…

This is what I want for you.

Not just your first sale, but the first of many.

So I’ve broken the whole process of making your first affiliate sale down into 5 bite-size steps.

And these steps aren’t old and antiquated techniques that worked 20 years ago, this is the exact same process I follow today in 2024 to make $100,000s per year in affiliate commissions.

Follow These 5 Steps To Make Your First Affiliate Sale

1. Identify Your Target Audience
2. Figure Out What Your Audience Wants
3. Find The Right Affiliate Programs
4. Launch Your Affiliate Marketing Hub
5. Focus On Buyer-Intent Keywords

Step 1. Identify Your Target Audience

Affiliate marketing success comes down to matching the right people with the right products.

That’s it!

So the first thing you need to achieve your mission of making your first sale is to identify a target audience or niche.

A niche is just a group of people with are interested in the same thing.

Maybe it’s…

• Newbie guitarists
• Men who want to start bodybuilding
• Teenagers suffering with acne
• Nervous first-time mums
• Paddleboarding enthusiasts

And the best way to choose a niche is to choose something you are interested in too.

That way, you’ll know how to talk to and connect with your target audience and you’ll understand what makes them tick.

Step 2. Figure Out What Your Audience Wants

Before we can match these people with the right products we need to figure out their goals and aspirations, struggles and frustrations.

This is because people don’t buy products – people buy solutions.

And if you can figure out what their problems are and offer them the best solutions, you’ll earn $30k a month in passive income with affiliate marketing in no time.

Let’s take the newbie guitarist for example:

Their goal is to get good at playing the guitar. Maybe they want to learn the guide online and they want to make sure they’ve got the right gear.

Maybe they’re struggling with knowing where to start when it comes to online guitar courses and are overwhelmed by the vast array of guitars, pedals, amps and so on.

Men who want to start bodybuilding want:

• A clear workout program
• A way of tracking progress
• Workout gear, belts and straps
• Supplements

Teenagers suffering with acne want:

• Advice on how to clear it up
• Skincare products

Nervous first-time mums want:

• Baby clothes
• Car seats, Moses baskets and safety gates
• Toys and books
• Bottle sterilisers

Paddleboarding enthusiasts want:

• Paddleboards
• Paddles
• Wetsuits

Tap into the psyche of your target audience, give them what they want and making sales is a foregone conclusion.

Step 3. Find The Right Affiliate Programs

Now you know who your audience is and what they want, it’s time to find affiliate products to promote.

You do this by joining affiliate programs that’ll give you a unique affiliate link to these products.

If we go back to the newbie guitarist example, a good starting point would be musical instrument affiliate programs like:

• Guitar Center (gear)
• Guitar Tricks (online course)

And there’s more than one way to find relevant affiliate programs for your target audience.

You can:

a) Use the Wealthy Affiliate Affiliate Program Search
b) Browse the Commission Academy blog
c) Join affiliate networks like ShareASale and Clickbank
d) Search Google for “(your topic) affiliate programs”

Watch this video for a click-by-click walkthrough:

Step 4. Launch Your Affiliate Marketing Hub

To sell products, you need a store.

And to sell products online, you need an online store.

But don’t worry, this isn’t dropshipping where you have to pay $399 a month for Shopify.

All you need to drive traffic, get clicks and generate sales is an affiliate marketing website.

That means investing in a domain name and web hosting, which is only $49 a month with a platform like Wealthy Affiliate.

And if you take the Commission Academy course here, we’ll guide you through the entire process of making your first affiliate sale and beyond.

Step 5. Focus On Buyer-Intent Keywords

You’ve narrowed down your target audience, you know what products they want, you’ve found your affiliate programs and you’ve got your website set up.

Everything is ready to go – now you just need traffic.

And keywords are by far the best way to drive that traffic.

Keywords are just terms and questions people search for in Google.

So if we think back to when we identified our audience’s aspirations and pain points in step 2, we can kinda get an idea of what they’ll search for in Google.

And if we use a keyword tool like Mangools, we can see exactly how many searches that keyword gets.

For example, we can see “best online guitar lessons” gets searched 4,900 times a month:

That’s A LOT of searches!

And if you put in the time upfront to create epic content that targets this keyword then you’d go on to not just make one sale, but multiple sales of each and every day.

How can I be so sure?

Because this keyword has buyer search intent.

The searcher has already decided they want to book online guitar lessons. They just need someone like you to come along and show them the best way (via your affiliate link of course 😉)

Other keywords with buyer search intent would be terms like:

• Best electric guitar pedals (160 searches/mo)
• Top 10 protein bars (180 searches/mo)
• What treatment is best for acne? (1,500 searches/mo)
• How much does a paddleboard cost? (350 searches/mo)

So brainstorm keyword ideas and build out your new affiliate marketing website with traffic-attracting, income-generating content and it’s just a matter of time before your first sale comes in.

⚠️WARNING: Make Your First Sale & You’re Hooked

I’m serious!

Affiliate marketing is incredibly addictive.

Make that first sale and you see what is possible and you want more.

Because it gives you a glimpse into what your future life could look like.

So join Commission Academy now (it’s free) and let’s make sure this is your first affiliate sale of many.