Table of contents
If you’re looking for an easy and straightforward guide to affiliate marketing for beginners, you’ve come to the right place.
The truth is that most of the affiliate marketing content out there can be quite overwhelming, and it isn’t very useful if you’re just starting out. Much of it is unnecessary and will just get you to procrastinate.
This guide is here to help you get started making money online quickly, and we’ll achieve that by focusing on the important things. This is because there are actually only a limited number of things you need to prioritize to get started.
Prioritize the right channels
Marketing blogs and “gurus” get attention by constantly talking about the latest and fanciest new channels. However, the easy affiliate money doesn’t lie in the “new and exciting stuff”, but in the old and proven stuff.
And when it comes to proven channels for getting people to click on your affiliate links, nothing beats email, or comes even close. This is for two reasons. First of all, email has the highest conversion rates, bar none. And secondly, it is the only channel where you own the leads, but more on that later.
Now, that isn’t to say you shouldn’t use other channels to attract the leads in the first place. So let me clarify. Let’s say that you’re highly passionate about creating educational content on YouTube and you were planning to make a lot of affiliate income by promoting products there.
The problem is that you don’t own those leads
Let’s say that your idea is to produce a lot of affiliate commissions by mentioning an affiliate link in your videos. There are several things you have to remember however.
A person doesn’t just buy from you (or your affiliate link) the first time they come in contact with your content. You need to build up a relationship of trust. In the case of an acquisition channel like YouTube, they need to be watching your videos regularly. However, getting people to see your videos is out of your control.
Unlike an email list, your subscriber base on YouTube (or followers list on Social Media) is not really your own list. You don’t own it, nor get to decide what they see and don’t see. The corporation behind the channel does, and they can (and do) just switch algorithms willy-nilly on a whim.
One day putting up a post or video on a channel means that 5k people will see it, the next day posting on there means 0 people will get it in their feed. And all of this is completely outside of your control.
This is unlike an email list where you own the list. If a person gave you an email address to hear from you, then you can send them information and promotions at will, and you decide what to send when and who will receive it.
So what is the solution then?
It is rather simple. You want to treat email as your “conversion channel” and everything else as merely an “email address acquisition channel”. Now, this isn’t to say you can’t mention affiliate offers in the posts and videos themselves. I’m just saying that it is a poor investment on your part.
It is much better to prioritize getting people to sign up for your email list, and then let the email system automatically convert these leads into affiliate commissions.
Get the right partner on your side
Not to get too cliche on you, but I have some bad news and good news in terms of affiliate marketing. As it turns out a lot of platforms out there are quite hostile to affiliate marketing. In fact, don’t be surprised if your accounts get locked, banned or penalized when you promote affiliate offers.
This includes the different channels that we discussed earlier. On some channels you have no choice other than promoting your email list as an intermediary. This is because they don’t even let you promote affiliate links directly.
You would think the situation is better when it comes to email platforms. The sad fact is that most email platforms aren’t very friendly to affiliate marketers and their attitude tends to range anywhere from openly hostile to “they will tolerate you”.
The good news is that there exists a platform that fully embraces affiliate email marketing. And you’re looking at it right now. Many years ago Emercury was actually founded to serve all the affiliate marketers being mistreated at other platforms. And while today we’re far more than just an affiliate marketer’s platform, we’re still the most affiliate friendly platform you can find.
This goes beyond just letting you do affiliate marketing. At Emercury you have a team which loves to work with you and help you get the best results and profits that you can get from email.
In order to get a sense for this kind of experience, consider booking a free demo here. At the very least, get yourself a lifetime forever-free account while we still have those.
Pick the right niche (and verticals)
I’m about to reveal a huge secret to higher affiliate marketing profits. It is one that not many people talk about, yet it lies behind most profits made online.
Most commissions are made by promoting different and complementary niches and products to your list. That is, just because your leads sign up for your list because of one given topic, it doesn’t mean this is the only thing they will spend money on. Makes sense right?
And in this context, when I say “topic” I mean “the niche that your list is based around”. This is why the person gave you their email address, and what they have confirmed their interest in.
However, an email address is a valuable commodity and you want to go past that if you really want to maximize your profits. You want to send them offers that are related to the main topic of your list, and even cross-promote with other lists.
To learn more about this idea and how to choose your niches as an affiliate marketer, check out our super popular guide on the best niches for affiliate marketing.
Understand the tools of the trade
Most marketing gurus oversimplify or over-complicate email marketing. And in both cases it is because their job is to sell more marketing courses, not to get you results.
Our function and goal is a bit different. Our mission is to help you get the most out of a platform like Emercury. This is so that you keep using the platform, make more money, and keep upgrading to higher tiers as your highly-profitable list keeps growing.
This is why we always have a laser-like focus on giving you exactly what you need. And that is focusing on the core concepts necessary to quickly get the best results.
Some of these are obvious, others not quite as much
Depending on what you’ve encountered up until now, you might or might not be familiar with the role of broadcasts and automations in affiliate email marketing.
And if you really want to become a master of turning emails into affiliate commissions real quick, you will want to understand these two. You need to know what role each one of them plays. As well as how they complement each other.
Fortunately, we have a guide about broadcasts vs automations that will help get you up to speed.
The other secret I am going to tell you will save you a decade, literally
This is something that most beginners miss and only learn about after they’ve been doing email marketing for a decade. And once they learn about this one thing, they all wish they had known about it since day one. This is because getting this one thing right will multiply your profits, even if everything else stays the same.
The thing I’m talking about is email deliverability. It is somewhat of a “secret” amongst email veterans because most people don’t even bring it up. And most platforms kind of keep it on the low. They tell you how many of your emails they have sent out. But they don’t even mention that a “send” isn’t the same thing as a delivery.
Why does this matter? Well an email that never reaches an inbox cannot produce clicks for an affiliate offer now can it? And how much can these non-delivered emails contribute to your monthly commissions? That’s right, a grand total of zero dollars and zero cents.
Fortunately, there is nothing stopping you from starting on the right foot from day one. You can focus on and factor-in deliverability from the get-go. This means that you will make a lot more money than the typical beginner. This is because most won’t even learn about this concept until much later on.
And the best news is that if you get an Emercury account, we are here to answer all of your deliverability questions. If you want to learn more about this, consider booking a free demo.
Avoid looking like a spammer, it’s easy and it boosts conversions
Do you know what is the number one way to boost your conversions? It is simply to personalize your emails. And I don’t mean hyper-personalization where you treat every subscriber as an audience-of-one. It just means not sending the exact same email to all of your subscribers all at once.
While it is true that the more you personalize, the more you earn, you still have to prioritize. There is still a case of diminishing returns and a 90/10 rule going on. Especially as it pertains to affiliate marketing.
Just segmenting your list and sending different offers and copy to each segment does wonders. It will also drastically improve your deliverability. Additional personalization above that will give additional benefits. However, it’s a good idea to focus on mastering segments first. You can add the fancier personalization tricks over time.
I know I’m being a bit vague here, but this is just a general guide. In order to give you some more specific recommendations I’d have to look at what you are trying to accomplish. Let us talk one-on-one and see if Emercury can’t help you personalize better. Just request a free demo while I can still do those.
Implement things the right way
Look, a platform like Emercury is very powerful. And if you start looking at the advanced features you might get a bit overwhelmed. I’m talking about things like the incoming and outgoing webhooks, the different kinds of automation modules, the custom events and actions and so forth.
We’re just as excited about seeing you use all of the cutting-edge features as you are. In fact, that’s why we even developed these features. However, I’d rather see you making profits rather than seeing you stuck in a sense of overwhelm.
And that is why I generally recommend to new affiliate marketers that they develop somewhat of an implementation plan. You want to prioritize things and take it one step at a time.
In this guide we are talking about getting the best return-on-investment as a new affiliate marketer. For that, I would say that you will want to prioritize segmentation, building basic automations, and understand the different broadcasting settings and features. Aside from that, we have a pretty great onboarding process. This process will get you on the right foot and help you set up correctly.
If you haven’t gotten your forever-free account yet, go ahead and do that over here. The onboarding process will lead you to setting things up correctly. After that, feel free to look at the help center.
However, to be honest, the best thing you can do is have a mentor or guide. An actual person who will guide you and help you implement things the right way. Some of our plans formally include this kind of personalized and hands-on assistance and strategy.
However, our team is quite helpful in general as well. So don’t be surprised if we go out of our way to help you with implementation to a greater level than you would expect, even with one of the lower plans. In any case, you can request a free demo to get a sense for the experience, and get a great insight that will help you get started on the right foot when it comes to affiliate marketing.
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