Beginner Affiliate Marketing Help
I was recently asked this famous question:
“I’m just starting in the industry with $500 bucks– what do I do?”
Here’s what I’d suggest:
1) What subject do you know the most about? Everyone is a specialist in something– do you know about guitars? Car washing cleaners? Web hosting? (Those are just 3 examples from people I’ve spoken with recently)
2) Find 4 products in your market that have affiliate programs that you can review on your site..
You can do a google search for “myhobby affiliate program”..
Join 3 or 4 of these affiliate programs/networks.
With most niches, you can find several interesting products to review.
3) Create a review site comparing these products. A review site provides helpful information to move the visitor closer to a buying decision. You can brand yourself as an expert on this topic and create an auto responder series which offers a free report and additional information about the topic.
(see keywordresearching.com or identitytheftkiller.com for an example of my review sites.)
4) Drive traffic to your site using Google Adwords. Bid on keywords such as the names of the products you are reviewing on your site. Remember, you can also bid on the domain names of these products as keywords in your Adwords campaign..
Google provides a free Adwords Learning Center
Although it may be a challenging, you will learn a lot about the two most important aspects of affiliate marketing: driving traffic and converting that traffic into sales.
You may also want to consider “direct linking” which is when you have no website and set up a Google ad which points directly to the offer you are promoting. This is also a good way to start since it will help you develop a better understanding of Adwords without having to create your own site.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
some aff. folks been banned from google for direct linking…
September 12th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Juice - Any evidence of Google banning an advertiser for direct linking?
How would Google even that it’s not your own website?
I’ve run dozens of direct linking campaigns as well as many people I know, and no one has been banned :)
However, I have heard of affiliates getting banned by the merchant or advertising network for direct linking because it violated their terms of service — So it’s definitely important to make sure you can use the advertiser’s URL as the display URL in the ad if you are direct linking.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I have used direct linking on Google AdWords by using fowarding and masked domains, and did not seem to have a problem with Google.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
[...] up by super affiliate Joshua in a recent post was that we are all affiliates. As he put it….Everyone is a specialist in something – he is now travelling the world on his affiliate income. Working from all over the world. [...]
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:19 am
Hi,
Nice to see your blog. I am Wei and I am working as an affiliate marketing specialist in a Chinese B2B trading company. I enjoyed your article about your experience in Beijing because I was born in this city and I am working here now lol.
I have some experience of being a Google Adwords consultant and now I have kicked off my career in affiliate marketing for 3 months. Hope to share some ideas with you in the future. Please take a look at my blog if you are interested: http://weicao1984.blogspot.com
Best Regards,
Wei Cao
September 28th, 2008 at 3:49 am
thanks I am saving up $500.
fantastic post
October 4th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Man can I do this for $200 only? I hate my boss and I want to fire him and doing affiliate marketing is one way to do that one of these days.