Nowadays, people can find thousands of ways to make money from their homes. But, when you think about how long those ways will still be active, you will exclude the majority of them.
The wrong way to earn an income is by selling a one-time product and spending lots of work and money to get ROI. That’s why focusing on these ways is not the best way to start a successful affiliate marketing business.
At the same time, there is no residual income formula that you can apply and guarantee the result. Everything is relative and depends on your effort and knowledge.
However, you can follow some basic, but effective, ways to build an affiliate business that achieves your financial freedom when you’re just working from home. But, remember that everything needs hard work, and there is no way to succeed without work and a small investment, at least.
Affiliate marketing tips for beginners
Create a website or Blog
Even if you don’t have any knowledge about creating blogs, you have to try WordPress. It’s not only the best blogging platform but the easiest way to build sites. The main reason you should have a website is that you need to have a fixed base of content. That’s what will drive traffic from search engines and social media.
No matter if you have $20 or a fortune to invest in advertising, Google AdWords is a real war of bidding between companies. At the same time, the single click costs will cost from dozens to hundreds of dollars in some cases.
Advertising will bring sales if you have affiliate products to promote. But, you can’t spend money on days without sales. You will find yourself losing money later when the spending is bigger than the profit. It’s a big risk if you don’t have a website that lets you make money blogging and helps you with free traffic.
That’s why owning a good site is the best way to generate smart income, even if you don’t have the money to advertise.
To create a good blog with content, you need a web hosting provider, and I recommend WP Engine, and only them. Also, you need a theme and the time to create content and articles that help readers.
To create all that, you need at least six months, to two years. Or simply, get your own affiliate system ready to use from Mark Ling and his team; it’s called AffiloJetpack, where you get:
- A website with its tools
- Web hosting for a full year
- 90 professional emails with a ready autoresponder system
- And all the training and tips for creating the right content that ranks in search engines without using the spam way that newbies are using.
Build your list of subscribers
Now that you have the idea that you need to have a website, you need to start building your email list. Don’t neglect your few visitors, in the beginning; even if you have a little traffic, you have to offer an email newsletter subscription. The visitor who leaves your site will never come back again, and you can make him a returning visitor and a future customer.
OptinMonster is the fastest premium plugin that lets you capture emails and builds your email list multiple times faster than using any other tool. You can give it a try, and you will be amazed by the results.
Of course, you need an email and Internet marketing service that works professionally like Aweber, and make sure to create a good welcome email to your new subscribers. It’s not necessary, but it’s recommended if you can. Expect a full year to build a list that can generate sales.
It’s just an estimation, based on medium size blogs. However, if you have real subscribers who engage with your emails and open them, you can start making money with a few hundred subscribers.
Spend six months writing helpful content
Until now, we have been talking about the website and the email marketing list. But, all that cannot be a great way to generate sales if you don’t have good content. To create an optimized article, you need one hour at least, but it can be 8 hours or more in other cases. It’s all about the patience and the energy that you want to put into that article.
You can talk about how to solve a problem and explain step by step, or create an honest review about a product that you’ve purchased, and explain what are its positive and negative points to your readers.
You have to add value and never copy and paste the reviews like many. The content needs to be original and helpful, then, it will rank in Google and the other search engines.
If you have a good product or service related to your post, you can recommend it, but make sure that it’s really good and will solve problems.
Promote trusted affiliate products
This is the most important step when you want to earn a residual income that is still for years. When you recommend trusted products from well-known sources, you will increase the probability of sales. But make sure that you only promote products that are updated periodically.
Remember, we are talking about residual income, and that means making money from the work that you do once.
If the product that you’ve promoted is dead, then, the full post that contains the review will also be, nothing. That’s why I always recommend promoting products from established companies and sellers who run a business for years.
Take the example of WP Engine, it’s the number one web hosting for WordPress sites, and it generates millions of dollars in sales; their site is well designed, and they run a successful business. So, promoting their hosting service and making $200 per sign-up is a great way to earn income.
On the other hand, imagine if you want to promote a new company that no one knows, and they have an ugly design and poor quality services. You’re just wasting your time in this case, and that’s why going with the best products and services is the only way to succeed with affiliate marketing.
Use banner advertising: optional
This is an option if you have money to invest. Please make sure that you use less than 5% of your monthly income to advertise some affiliate products. It’s a risk, and you can’t guarantee the sales, but, if you advertise in the right place, the result will be better.
To add your 300*250 Banner Ad on a medium-size website for a full month, you need between $80 and $150, and it’s just an estimated price for good sites. You can contact bloggers and webmasters directly and ask for an Ad, or simply use one of the
You can contact bloggers and webmasters directly and ask for an Ad, or simply use one of the banner advertising marketplaces like BuySellAds.com. They are a trusted company, and no worries about them.
However, you need to make sure that you advertise with frequently updated sites with fresh content. That’s a single activity and real traffic, and of course, verify the site Alexa traffic rank that should never be below 300,000 to have visitors.
Earn a passive income
When you have a website that generates traffic from search engines and social media networks, with a good email list, and the right products to promote, you can start earning passive income and forget your actual job.
Please take into consideration that you need real work, time, and money to invest in your business. You can’t start a website without a domain name that costs a few dollars, and you can’t make cash without an autoresponder and web hosting that makes your website load fast.
To promote your best products in your email list, separate your offers by 3 days, at least, and never bombard your subscribers with sales pages. They need your help to fix their problems, and you can help with tips and guides, even, with no affiliate links.
Treat your new subscribers as friends, and do the same when they will be old subscribers. But the only difference is that you should never send offers to new subscribers unless they’ve at least 3 weeks on your marketing list.
You need to build trust with them and not sell products from the first email. Ask people if they want you to create specific guides or posts, and you will find free ideas from your readers.
When you see that you have a few hundred organic visits, you can apply for a Google Adsense account if you want. It’s not a big source of income nowadays, but that can help you with web hosting costs, and it’s a good method to build multiple streams of income.
The easy work from home is just a myth that no one will believe in the future. Everything needs work and money.
Conclusion
As you can see, to be able to earn a real residual income from affiliate marketing, you need to spend time and money. Both are not options nowadays; the traffic itself will not make money if the website is loading slowly. That needs fast hosting and many other options to be configured.
At the same time, making money with an affiliate business can bring millions of dollars in the long term, and that’s why giving it a try is not for lazy people.
I hope that this helped to make things clear about starting a business with affiliate marketing. It’s not easy, but not hard. At the same time, it all depends on your time and patience. Nothing can make a person a millionaire overnight, but nothing also will separate him from that goal.
