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INTRODUCTIONThe Internet is a gold mine for anyone who wants to pursue their own small business or find an additional income source. Whether you want to take up e-commerce, try dropshipping, offer remote digital services, or create content, with enough dedication, you can undoubtedly find your client and ensure a stable income.

One option that gains increasingly more attention with the ever-improving speed and area coverage is marketing – and affiliate marketing is an excellent choice for those who want to pursue it on a freelance basis. It is also highly flexible: depending on your experience and skill set, anyone can choose a type of affiliate marketing they can do best. The only things you absolutely need is passion, dedication, and some knowledge about the sphere of affiliate marketing: what it is, how it works, what different types of affiliate marketing there are and which one is your best bet, based on your preferences and expertise.

In this e-book, we’re going to introduce you to eight types of affiliate marketing, their similarities and differences. By getting to know each of them in-depth, you will be able to make an informed decision on which approach suits you best!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Approaches to Affiliate Marketing 4

Involved 5

Related 6

Unattached 7

Affiliate Marketing Tactics 8

Content Sites 9

Email/Newsletter 10

Social Media 11

Shopping Services 12

Incetivized Traffic 13

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APPROACHES TO AFFILIATE MARKETING

There are three basic approaches to affiliate marketing: involved, related, and unattached. How do you choose the one that’s right for you? Think about this:

• Do you already have an online presence and a formed audience?

• Are you an expert in a specific niche, or willing to become one?

• How much time and effort do you want to dedicate to affiliate marketing?

In the following sections, you will get to know each approach in more detail. This will allow you to make the best choice according to your preferences and individual circumstances.

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As the term itself suggests, this type of affiliate marketing requires you to get involved. This means you will personally try and test the product or service before recommending it to your readers or viewers. Naturally, this type of promotion requires creating content – a banner or a stand-alone link will not do. You can write or film a review, a demonstration, a reaction – anything you can think of. For example, if you want to promote a new kind of software, use screen share to show your audience just how simple and easy it is to use. If you want to promote a new smartphone, take them through the steps of unpacking and setup, so they know exactly what they’re getting with the purchase.

The idea is to build trust by letting the audience know you have actually tried the product – moreover, you find it useful and worth promoting. While successful involved affiliate marketing requires a lot more responsibility, time, and effort than just putting a basic ad up, it’s also more effective and rewarding. If your followers deem you as a trustworthy person who’s also an expert on the topic (which you are, if you have been creating related content for a while), they are usually quick to follow your recommendations. Furthermore, knowing your audience, you can personalize the content a bit, aiming at their goals, hobbies, or interests – and no banner could ever do that.

Involved affiliate marketing is a great option for educational tech solutions, as people are cautious with making training-related decisions. They want to make sure they don’t waste their time and money by taking a course that doesn’t help them grow personally and professionally, so they will prefer an actual review from someone who got to know the course firsthand from a resounding marketing slogan followed by a link. People need reassuring and authoritative suggestions on which courses to try and where to enroll, so building an audience in the niche of educational technology can be very rewarding and profitable.

INVOLVED

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If you already have some kind of online presence, be it a website, a popular social media page, a podcast, or a YouTube channel, you can also use it to promote products and services that are closely related to your niche, but you haven’t actually tried them. Let’s say you have a blog where you write about the newest restaurants in town. Knowing that your potential readers are most likely to be foodies, you can use the space for banners that advertise, let’s say, premium quality cutting boards, unique condiments, or recipe books.

While this type of affiliate marketing has its flaws, including the risk of damaging your image by unknowingly promoting something of rather low-quality, it is still very popular. The reason is simple: many affiliate marketers simply don’t have the time or willingness to try all of the products they promote. This is especially true for those to participate in a lot of affiliate marketing programs at once, and simply do not have enough hours in the day to personally try each and every product or service.

In most cases, an affiliate does try something a specific business offers but stops doing that personally once they feel confident they can trust it. For example, if you took a few courses created and presented by a particular instructor and you liked them a lot, you will probably trust their future production as well – why not recommend them without taking them themselves, right?

Some would say, if you want to make sure the job is done well, you should do it yourself. You cannot always trust the person or the company behind the product: some change their strategies along the way, some choose to sacrifice quality over quantity, and some simply try to bite off more than they can chew. If you don’t review your partner’s offers all the time, at least try to do it regularly, so you can notice if the quality starts to slip. Otherwise, you risk making bad recommendations – and when your audience sees that, they won’t put their trust in you.

RELATED

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Unattached affiliate marketing is just how it sounds: there are no strings attached. It is the easiest, simplest, and probably the most popular way. Why? Because you don’t need to work on creating an online presence, care a lot about your image, build relationships with your audience, or worry about becoming an expert in a specific niche. In fact, you don’t even need to pick a niche!

Unattached affiliate marketing requires no connection between the affiliate and their audience (potential consumers), and those who choose this strategy usually use pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, are not involved in any niche, and have no presence concerning the niche. In most cases, they merely embed a link via Facebook and Google ads and then wait for someone to click on it and buy the product. It’s that simple. No trying, no testing, no reviewing. You can, however, sometimes need to turn to paid media to make your links easier to notice.

Unattached affiliate marketing is really appealing because it’s easy: it doesn’t require much effort, building authority or reputation. Moreover, it is not time-consuming. Still, it does not create a connection or a relationship with your audience, and without their loyalty, your income might not be as stable as you would prefer. It’s also harder to distinguish yourself from other affiliates who participate in the same partnership programs and promote the same things.

UNATTACHED

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AFFILIATE MARKETING TACTICS

When you identify just how much time and effort you are willing to dedicate to affiliate marketing, you should choose a tactic that will allow you to spread your affiliate links, make them easy to notice and enticing to click. Consider the products or services you’re promoting and think of their target audience: what would they find the most attractive? Remember that you are not required to only pick and use one tactic: mixing and matching is often the most effective strategy that allows you to play to your strengths.

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If you decide to go with the invested or related affiliate marketing approach, a content site is a great place to do that. The name is pretty self-explanatory: you should have a website or a blog where you share your original content. You can include the promotions in the content itself (e.g., in the form of extensive reviews) or place clickable ads, banners or logos in the margins.

There are two basic types of content sites. Both of them have their pros and cons:

• You can create a general interest website that encompasses a lot of different topics in its content. As an author, you will feel the lack of topics to discuss, and you will also be able to promote various types of products or services. General interest sites often generate a great amount of traffic, too. On the other hand, they cannot guarantee impressive conversion rates, as no product is universal enough to appeal to a highly diverse audience.

• You can also choose a specific niche and only create related content. For example, if you picked programming as your main topic, you will not discuss cheap ways to travel or the latest fashion trends. Naturally, such a site will attract traffic of a smaller volume, but each visitor will have a strong interest in the particular niche you’ve chosen, so you’ll be able to enjoy much higher conversion rates. This is especially true for subjects that require authoritative knowledge, honest reviews, and suggestions – e.g., e-learning.

There’s no doubt that building your own website or blog will require some time and effort, and you won’t get a lot of traffic right away. However, as time passes, you will not only earn an income but also build a loyal audience and gain their trust by providing useful information. As an affiliate and a content creator, you will surely be able to use it to your advantage later.

CONTENT SITE

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If you have your own website or a blog, you probably have an email opt-in as well. If you don’t, however, you have missed a major part of Marketing 101! An email opt-in is providing the website’s visitor with an option to have their email address included in a mailing list. In most cases, it’s an input field where they can register their address so they can receive something: a newsletter, a discount, a downloadable resource – whatever you can think of. There are multiple online tools that can help you build an opt-in in the form of a banner or a pop-up for your website.

Once you have a solid mailing list, you can use it for marketing purposes. Most successful affiliates own databases and records of their target audience’s emails and regularly send out various offers, news, propositions, and suggestions in the form of a newsletter. It’s a very common and useful strategy that allows you to address a lot of people directly instead of hoping they will notice a banner or another type of ad on your website.

While using email marketing does require some time and effort, remember that your newsletters should not be very long. Boring your clients to death will not help you get those clicks. Choose an optimal length and stick to the point: no one likes to read texts that are way too long and contain so much irrelevant information they resemble spam. A well-written, catchy email can be very efficient. It also helps you build that personal connection with your customers, which is crucial in gaining their trust and shaping a relatable image. This can prove extremely valuable in areas like online learning: people take their education seriously and want to make the best decisions possible, so trust is definitely key.

EMAIL/NEWSLETTER

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If you don’t have a personal website or a blog, you need to look for a different strategy, and social media is a great option for affiliate marketing. To be honest, it’s a powerful tool for any kind of business (if handled properly). With billions of people logging in to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other networks every day, it’s an excellent opportunity to promote any brand or company with minimal effort.

Social media websites offer a wide range of possibilities for affiliates. You can create content pieces on your page, just like you would on your own website – however, having no chance to upload banners, the only option you will have is to include the promotions in the content. While earning money this way will take some time, you will surely achieve much higher conversion rates than you would by posting stuff in your personal account for your friends and relatives (who might not even find the particular niche interesting) to see. Remember, it’s more rewarding to have a highly-targeted small audience than a huge one with no interest and enthusiasm.

You can also do some research on pages, groups, and communities regarding a specific niche and promote the products and services there. Make sure not to overdo it, though: no one likes spammers, and most social media networks offer their users an option to report spam.

SOCIAL MEDIA

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If you are a bit more tech-savvy, you can choose another unique type of affiliate marketing and build a website specifically designed to promote online purchases. Good examples of such instances are PriceGrabber, ShopMania, and other comparison sites that allow the user to compare prices or features of different products. At first glance, they look like your usual e-shops – however, when a visitor picks a particular product, they are redirected to the merchant’s site to complete the purchase. In fact, a lot of people might not even realize the website is used by an affiliate to earn their commissions.

This option is great for those who have no issues with dedicating a bit of time to affiliate marketing but don’t want or have the skills needed to create exceptional content. We get it: not everyone is good with writing, filming, and other types of creative tasks. However, if you have some web programming skills, you might use it to your advantage as well. This type of website is not that technically challenging, either – you can even use Wordpress or a similar content management system.

SHOPPING SERVICES

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Incentivized traffic means compensating users for visiting a site or completing some kind of action (purchase, registration, subscription, etc.). These incentives are usually in the form of actual or virtual money – for example, you could offer someone five bucks to sign up to a certain website. It’s expensive – but is it worth your investment?

While totally legal, this tactic is deemed somewhat controversial, and not all affiliate marketing programs are on board with it. And for a good reason: while it can help you attract impressive traffic, it’s highly unlikely these visitors will be genuinely interested in your product or service – most of them will simply come to claim something that’s free (because why not) and move on. This means they will not become active clients and bring any profit to the company.

INCENTIVIZED TRAFFIC

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As you can see, affiliate marketing is not that complex – however, you need to do your homework by getting to know the best practices and making the right choices. If you’re still unsure about which approach or tactic to pick, here are a few questions that can help you decide?

• Would you be pleased with a decent amount of money made quite fast, or do you want to earn more, but in the long run and gradually?

• Are you open to the idea of spending money to possibly make more in the future? • How much time can you spend on promoting affiliate products? • Do you want to communicate with your audience regularly? • Do you like social media or more traditional ways of online promotion? • Are you good at writing and creating content? • What kind of tactic will work best for the niche you choose?

We hope this e-book helped you get on track to becoming an affiliate marketing professional! Knowing your options, you will definitely make better choices, create more effective campaigns, and reach success easier.

FINAL WORD

“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.”

– Bill Bradley