The Complete Guide to Affiliate Marketing (NEW Strategies for Blogs)

hey guys ricky here look over the last three years i've made about a half a million dollars just from affiliate marketing and it's been almost entirely passive which is super cool but a lot of things have changed recently in affiliate marketing which is part of why i wanted to make this video another reason is this i sent out a poll a little bit of a survey to you viewers of our youtube channel just just yesterday actually from the time i'm filming this and uh here's some of the feedback i got one person says i've got little traffic a couple clicks on my affiliate links and no affiliate didn't come at all another person says just started affiliate marketing no idea how to get people to buy though and i find that to be the issue over and over and over again that really is the real reason that i wanted to make this video but when i decided to make it i knew i had to get anna involved here anna's really been kind of living the blogger life every day it's part of what she does here in addition to working with project 24 members she's working on blogging all the time and she's really helped as we've taken the things that we've we've been doing and developing internally and turning it into an actual strategy that we can teach and that can be repeated by you so she had to be here but i just really want to give you our tried and true approach in this video so that you can actually succeed with affiliate income um right from the start no matter where you're at in your affiliate marketing journey so if you're ready let's get started all right so it is completely reasonable for you to make far more than what you are now with affiliate marketing using our strategies and that's even if you're just getting started and even if you have no traffic at all lawyers are going to tell us that we're not allowed to like promise you a certain amount of income which is why we say more than you are now the reality is that with any business it's going to take your effort your work and your skill and actually implementing these things but what we found is that these methods are really repeatable we have a lot of members in project 24 who as they use the methodologies we're teaching here and they do even if they don't realize they're using it for affiliate marketing the overall methodology is driving a lot of traffic and a lot of income for these people and one of the things i love about affiliate marketing is how passive of an income stream it is once you create the content it's there it's out there and if it's reasonably evergreen meaning the content isn't like out of date within a short period of time you can continue to earn a great income from it for years not just you know for a few months so now we're going to talk about the most common misconceptions about how to do affiliate marketing well and the first one is product focused content and that is focusing primarily on the products first that is the reason why you are writing the articles specifically but we really want to start thinking about who our audience is first and the traffic that would be coming to your article before we start thinking about the products exactly a lot of people feel like they just have to write product reviews if i want to make money as an affiliate i have to review products that's like that's like attacking the problem straight on if everybody does that then what ends up being the most competitive topics on the web product reviews for high ticket items that's there's so many of them but they're usually not done that well i'm not going to say don't ever do a product review but what we are going to say is if we if we don't start with the product if we start with the information first the content first the topic first then even a straight on product review can end up working on our site we're gonna get into this more but it's a misconception if you start with the product and then try to create content around it you're probably not going to do it right okay so the next one is a step up and that is a comparison that you might have two or more products that you're comparing and this is kind of an issue because if you're not actually getting your hands on the products and you haven't actually really compared them you're just doing your analysis based on maybe amazon reviews or what's already on the web that's problematic and of course just like the other one it's also problematic because we're not focusing on what our reader actually needs and what the problems are and how we can fix those issues we call this the wire cutter ripoff so if you've been in this game for a little while you're probably familiar with the wire cutter it's a website it's actually now owned by the new york times i think um but it's a website that has for several years now done a fantastic job of product reviews and comparisons and they it's very very successful at it so you're looking at me saying you're telling me don't write product reviews that's exactly what they do and it totally works i know that and we're actually going to tell you exactly how to do a successful product review a little bit later in this video but what they're doing is very different what most people are doing is a rip-off version of that what the wire cutter does is they go by the whole product line of something they'll go buy like 10 vlogging cameras spend days testing these different cameras and all the different aspects of them and characteristics and features and then they'll write an article comparing them and they'll help you make a decision about which one you should buy not necessarily saying this one is over all the best but if you're on a budget this one's the best one for the money etc they'll usually provide various different solutions so that you depending on what your situation is can find the right solution for you if instead you get all of your information about the different products by reading reviews off of amazon you're probably not going to be able to come i'm going to say you're definitely not going to be able to provide the same level of information the same quality of information the same helpfulness of information that someone who's had their hands on the camera can do that's the wire cutter rip off and this is the misconception we tend to attack affiliate marketing head on product reviews product oriented content that's not the right way so what is the best approach to affiliate marketing says like a billion of you commenting on our videos over the years well we're going to talk about that the right approach to affiliate marketing is whatever the right approach is for the content we don't start product first if we start product first what we're doing is we're saying this is a product i want to sell now what content can i create around that product the problem with this approach in addition to typically tending to have a much more pushy feel in the content it's obvious you're just like advertising a product not necessarily providing an unbiased review but the other problem is it doesn't do a good job of taking into account search intent search intent is what the internet is all about if you want actual organic search traffic from the search engines from google you need to actually write content that answers a question that a searcher is looking for product first doesn't lead to that content first does so let's work through a few examples here let's say i've done my search analysis or as most people call it keyword research i've done my search analysis and i've found an informational type article that i should probably write how do i turn this into an affiliate post or rather how do i add affiliate links to this post so informational content here would be like niche specific information that we write in response to specific search queries we're going to use the niche of wood carving i love it okay something i don't know very much about but um i find it interesting so let's say we came up with the question that people are actually searching how long does it take to carve a face into wood now the best type of information to write would be like here's how long it typically takes me to do it as an experienced wood carver to do a project but you might also want to answer the question how long does it take for a beginner to be able to learn how to carve a face into wood this isn't like an hours long thing this is like a months long thing like oh well it typically takes most beginners about 12 months if they whatever do these sorts of things i don't actually know how long it takes so how are we going to turn this into an affiliate post well obviously we could get our hands on some products and obviously if you are somewhat of an expert you probably already do have those products around but even if you're not that's okay you could start with a kit for beginners you could offer those links to those products in your article organically so it's natural and the reader doesn't you know look at it and be like oh that was out of place but it just fits very naturally and if someone is coming to that article as a beginner they're curious about woodworking and carving into wood then they're probably going to be interested in a beginner's wood carving kit yeah absolutely so what we're not saying here is we have to now suddenly have a whole segment of the article that's like okay but now let me review my uh my favorite kit for beginners no it's it's more like hey you know what i know about this you came to my article because i have some knowledge and authority in this subject i'm answering your question for you but also here let me conveniently point out if you want to learn how to carve faces this is the perfect kit that you should get started with this is the type of wood that you should buy and here's a place where you can go buy a block of that wood that i find is ideal for carving faces we're conveniently providing links to the products they're going to need this is not a pushy sell at all it's helpful if my neighbor came up to me and asked how long does it take to carve a face into wood i would say i have no idea go ask somebody else no but if i did know i would want to provide them with that information and i'd say but you know what like you want to learn how to do this right don't go buy that kit this is the one you got to get my neighbor would be like oh wow thank you you know thank you for telling me but think about how much easier this is than focusing on that product first and then how am i going to get the traffic there the competition for these kinds of topics by the way way lower but also these are the kinds of things most people are actually looking for there are a lot of people that are searching what's the best vlogging camera but there are a lot of other people asking so many other questions and we find we are able to get so much more traffic by answering those other questions okay the next one how about tutorial content like a how-to blog post um how to do a specific task or specific product these are all over the place there's entire websites like wikihow dedicated to exactly how to do like everything right and so within your niche let's say wood carving again you're going to write a tutorial on how to carve a face into a block of wood you know maybe it is focused on the beginner and so it's like the basics of how to carve a basic face into a block of wood now what do we do obviously if they're interested in carving a face into a block of wood and they're maybe a beginner they might be interested in tools and accessories that go along with this process so why not include that up at the top of the article so it's right there and they have it in mind as they are reading the article and maybe by the end they're like yeah i want to give this a try and you know what i need these tools anyway i need these accessories i need the kinds of knives what kind do you use to carve um a face into a block of wood and hey i met this article already this person i trust i trust their opinion so why not purchase it through their link what we find is that the more helpful the content is the higher the amount of trust that the reader has in the content and so if you provide a very helpful tutorial on how to do this and then you say also if you're trying to do this and follow along with me these are the tools and materials you're going to need you've seen this before i'm sure if you've like looked up how-to stuff there are a lot of bloggers that do a decent job of this some some far better than others who just include a good tools and materials list and each one is a link and even better if you if you go create like a shopping list on amazon and link directly to that whole list they can add the whole list to their cart and then everything they need is just included there now sometimes for these kinds of things it's the tools like the wood carving really what do i need the carving tools and the wood but there are a lot of like projects where it's well you're gonna need a box of screws and a hammer and you know and it's like it doesn't necessarily matter which screws but you do need ones that are this long and that are this type maybe it's wood screws and you probably shouldn't go by drywall screws etc and so what you're going to do is just have those products conveniently available in a list with links to them so that the person can just get everything they need for the project in one place get it ordered and then they can come back and follow through with the tutorial how convenient and helpful is that yeah and obviously if they're starting that project they're not going to want to go look at the specs and all the different details that they're gonna need you wanna go to the hardware store and it's like oh my god is it this the right screw right so all the information is there in specifically what they need for that project then it's just very convenient for them absolutely okay the next example that i want to work through is back to kind of the wire cutter type content this is decision content helping the user actually find the best solution to their problem notice i didn't say like the best product the best solution to their problem when people go searching for information they're looking for a solution not necessarily always a product and so it could be that the product is the solution oftentimes it could be a service it could be additional information sometimes that you could sell in the form of an info product that you make yourself instead of being an affiliate for somebody else or an info product that you are an affiliate for either way they're looking for a solution so what do we do now uh here's an example from the wood carving space again and really there are a lot we could come up with you could do like the best wood carving kit for beginners we've talked about the kits quite a bit but this one what's the best kind of wood for carving faces different woods have different grains and some of them this this is enough that i do know some of them as you're trying to carve into them will tend to like chunk out more and so you're not going to get fine detail and so for a face where you want to have some fine detail some types of wood are not going to work as well as others so how do we make that an affiliate post and actually do a good job and the other thing that i wanted to add about that is someone who's a beginner might not know that you can't just go grab a chunk of wood anywhere in the woods maybe you can but it's probably better for you especially as a beginner to get something that is made for this type of project exactly so when we create this kind of content we can't just go look up reviews on amazon i know that feels like you know that's the easy way and what am i going to do go buy like all the different kinds of wood yes the right thing to do would be to get your hands on the different at least the different types of carving woods that are commonly available and say you know these are the typical woods that people use to carve these are some of the carbs or cuts i need to do in order to do a face and when i do this one look it chunks out when i do this one you know it's actually this wood's a bit too hard it's gonna it's gonna just make it take three times as long don't use this kind i mean again i don't know all the specifics here i'm kind of making it up but when we actually do the work and show it the credibility goes through the roof and we're actually adding additional value to the web as opposed to when we just aggregate information that other people have already said on the web and put it into a product review or a decision type post well now we're not adding anything new to the web and that leads to other problems which actually i'm going to talk about in a few minutes this is the way that we go about it so in the end what it comes down to is we take a content first approach when we create content for our websites rarely am i thinking about how exactly am i going to monetize this article that actually is easy to add later what i'm thinking about is what content what specific topics are people actually searching for and are we likely to be able to actually rank for meaning the competition's low enough that as a new site i have the potential to create a sufficient resource to rank number one on google that's the goal every single time and as we gain more authority the competition becomes less relevant and we're able to to tackle those bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger topics if we take that approach first and then we create the content that actually is going to get eyeballs on it then making the sale actually becomes easy you just don't have to take the direct approach we match the approach that we want to use for affiliate marketing to the content we don't create content to sell products so we asked you recently what your questions were about affiliate marketing because we want to know how we can help you and answer them the best so we actually have a few questions that we're going to answer for you right now all right so the first question that i got was how do i get approved by affiliate programs when my traffic is low this is actually a big hurdle for a lot of people there are some affiliate programs that don't care about your traffic level amazon is one of them the only thing with amazon is you do have to make a few sales within your first six months otherwise they then reject your application and you just have to start over you just have to apply again which isn't that big of a deal but you do want to make sure you're getting some traffic it's nice to be able to just get approved the first time a few sales within the first six months shouldn't be that hard but if it's your first time blogging especially if you're doing it wrong and uh creating product focused content first i've seen a lot of people just totally miss that six-month target there are many other affiliate programs on the other hand who do want to see that you have a reasonable or a sizable following some of them um are a bit arbitrary about that you'll apply and they'll say nope sorry and the rejection email will have a list of reasons why people get rejected and one of them is your traffic might not be high enough and they won't tell you how much they want what we want to do to give ourselves the best chance to get approved by those affiliate programs is make a case and so for each affiliate program you apply for oftentimes they'll ask for like a description of your site how you're going to market their links that type of a thing and what you're going to want to do is actually take the time to thoroughly write that out explain what you do and how your content why your content is so helpful if you have had success with uh another affiliate program even if it was like amazon you've had some pretty good success you might talk about how your conversion rates are particularly high you definitely want to talk about how you're going to monetize your content so they're used to people what they what they do is just like posting their links all over social media maybe sending out email campaigns with their links in them they're used to people using all these methods that kind of just spam the links all over the place you might say i take a very organic approach i drive a lot of traffic to my website through helpful informational content and then i provide them with helpful links to good products and that's why my conversion rate is so high so that's going to give you the best chance now if you're still getting rejected there are other options i'll actually put a link below in this video to a service called skimlinks skimlinks is uh it's kind of like amazon's affiliate program but for like all the others and so really you're going to link to products all over the web on various retailers websites and if skimlinks is an affiliate with them then what will happen is when people click on that link it'll direct them through skimlinks and then to the product and skimlinks will give you the commission they'll just take 20 of it and so there is a cost there not an upfront cost they only make money when you do but it's a great way to get access to affiliate programs that maybe would turn you down but and to still be able to earn a good commission from them and it's a great alternative to just having amazon on your site the next question what if i don't have access to affiliate programs because i don't live in the u.s well that's actually a pretty big misconception a lot of the affiliate programs share sale a lot of these networks clickbank it seems like maybe they they won't work with you but really they often will and so they they will require you to fill out a tax form and by default they're going to have you fill out the w9 which is a u.s tax form but if you're not a us citizen you don't fill out that form if you just do a google search for you know share sale for people outside the u.s i actually just did this search and they have a link to where you can find the tax forms for other people and then you'll say yes but i don't have a us-based bank account so how are they going to pay me share a sale specifically partners with payoneer which is a service that allows you to get paid overseas a lot of these other companies instead of maybe partnering with one of those they'll still work with a bank account for payoneer or wise which is another great service for this basically what they do is they provide you with banking details in the u.s not an actual dedicated bank account but details a routing number and a bank account number and a bank name and address and everything where you'll get paid and then that money will just immediately be put into your account with payoneer or transferwise and then you can transfer that money to your own personal bank account convert it into your currency etc so really unless you live in a country that specifically prohibits you from working with them most of these companies will actually work with you no matter where you are in the world are there minimum traffic requirements to do affiliate marketing no um we just talked about how some affiliate programs uh are just going to reject newer sites smaller sites etc but there are not traffic requirements that prevent you from doing it and i would say you know because the next question here's when should i start doing affiliate marketing let's ride along with it i think you should start from the beginning um again if we take the approaches that we've talked about in this video then you're going to be just fine which goes into the next question will affiliate links impact google's assessment of my site a lot of people have seen that in recent times this has actually been getting like more and more over time google is starting to sort of de-prioritize sites that go real heavy on the affiliate links people say well i don't want to put too many affiliate links on my site and you shouldn't put too many on your site but what google's actually really wanting to de-prioritize are content that doesn't add anything of value to the web so we talked about this a little bit earlier if you're just aggregating amazon reviews and taking the product specs from two different products and saying well these are the specs side by side make your decision you know like okay thank you um for nothing because that was already available to me on the manufacturer's websites in fact what i would do in that case if i just wanted to compare specs is i'd actually go to the manufacturer who has even more of the specs than you put in your article i would open one of the products in one tab and then i would open another window and i would have the other product and i'd put one on half my screen one on the other half of my screen and i'd scroll down and look at all the specs yeah and what google is really doing is not really penalizing as much but it's rewarding creators who create really helpful content that is really trying to find the solution to whatever that problem is and then and then some it's like trying to make that one-stop shop for the reader if your content isn't any better than what's already readily available google has no reason to put it anywhere in the search results like at all sometimes google will not even index content that doesn't add value to the web what we need to do is when we're doing affiliate marketing we need to create original helpful content that helps somebody in some way and then the affiliate link is part of it it's actually part of the solution not a pushy sell but actually a solution to their problem an answer to their question okay the next question i have here somebody asked the terms for an affiliate program they signed up for say affiliates will not bid on google adwords being yahoo youtube or any other form of web traffic that may compete with company name in any way what does that mean i mentioned earlier that some people because they create content that doesn't do well in organic search because well nobody's searching that or because it doesn't add anything of value so it doesn't rank and so what do they do they pay for ads to get their content to show up um you know in the search results but it's a paid spot or they pay for ads to get to show up on facebook that type of a thing here's the problem the actual company that makes the product is probably also paying to advertise that product on the same platforms so let's say i want to advertise a specific computer and the maker of that computer is also advertising that computer so i they're paying for an ad to sell the computer and i'm paying for an ad to get people to come to my article and my ad competes with their ad so i steal some of the traffic that they paid to get to come to my article so they'll click a link so that the company will then have to pay me even more money after just wasting money on ads that's not something that they want to do they don't want to be competing with their own affiliates in advertising so what they want you to do is actually create organic helpful content that drives traffic organically either through search results or social media is totally fine too but they want it to drive new audiences new people or for people who already know about the product but aren't sure they're on the fence they want you to help push that person sort of over and push them over the fence get them over the line get them get them to want to buy the product don't push people over the fence that's me what this all comes down to again answering all these questions is we create good content first forget about affiliate marketing and then after you've created the content remember about affiliate marketing and come up with the right approach for that piece of content now in project 24 we have launched a brand new course on affiliate marketing it's in there now it just launched yesterday and it teaches actually four specific and distinct approaches to affiliate marketing and how to get those links in your content as well as all the nuts and bolts everything like from the very beginning how to sign up on amazon how to get with other affiliate networks we have a new affiliate plugin that's for project 24 members only at this point all sorts of cool stuff it's in the affiliate marketing course anything you want to add about the affiliate marketing course we'll see you in there we would love to see you in there we have all sorts of helpful content in there for you and on top of that we have the community as well as virtual masterminds that we do weekly um and podcasts we have several times a month so we will keep you updated on all of the most recent trends if you're not in project 24 you're missing out on a whole bunch [Music]

Channel: Income School

Views: 32,460

Keywords: internet marketing, passive income, website, seo, content marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, youtube creators

Id: z3HRNRe1a9M

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021