If you’re looking for an easy way to make extra cash, you’ve probably considered trying your hand at online marketing. With affiliate marketing, you set up shop at a retail store or website and then earn a commission whenever someone clicks a monetized link or buys a product that’s promoted on your site.
But while affiliate marketing can be a viable money-making strategy, it also has its pitfalls. One of the biggest is that you’ll need to keep up with constantly changing technologies as well as learn to navigate the various affiliate programs that are out there. If you’ve never done business online, it can be a little daunting figuring out where to start.
The Basics of Online Marketing
To save you time and money, I’ll go over the essentials of digital marketing and how they relate to making money online. If you’re ready to dive in, let’s get started.
Targeting The Right Audience
When you set up shop as an affiliate marketer, you’ll need to decide which audience you want to target. Do you want to attract mostly digital nomads who have lots of disposable income and are searching for the perfect gift for their significant other? Or do you want to go after the more traditional car shoppers who are looking for new tires for their vehicle?
Deciding which side of the digital marketing spectrum you want to pursue will largely depend on your own personal circumstances and the kind of products you’re promoting. For example, are you trying to generate online sales for a pet-related products business (like vetting services or pet food, for example) or are you promoting a digital nomad lifestyle brand?
What Are You Going To Promote?
After you’ve decided on your target audience, you’ll need to decide what you’ll be promoting. As I mentioned above, you’ll want to decide which products you’ll be promoting, such as pet food or accessories, medical services for animals, or transportation for those who own pets. This will depend on your particular industry and the strength of the consumer base in your target demographic.
Another important factor to consider is how much you’re willing to spend on each individual item you promote. Inexpensive items will generate higher profits than more expensive ones, but if you want to be able to recoup your investments and make a profit, you’ll need to target more expensive items. You can’t exactly optimize for free.
Where Do You Want To Publish Your Content?
Once you’ve decided what you’ll be promoting, the next step is to figure out where you’ll publish your content. There are a range of options from small and friendly, community-based platforms, to large, professionally-managed ones. Not all of these are created equal and you’ll need to consider how easy or how hard it will be to actually generate revenue from your efforts.
Inevitably, you’ll need to navigate a series of hoops to make a single sale and without the right tools, the whole process can be quite frustrating. If you’re looking for an easy and streamlined way to make a profit, I’d recommend a small, community-based platform similar to Reddit. Not only will this make it much easier to get started and build an audience, but it also has the potential to be more profitable than some of the larger platforms you might consider.
Creating The Product To Promote
Now that you have your audience, you need to create the product you’ll be promoting. If you’ve decided to go the pet food route, for example, you might want to create dog food reviews or cat food reviews. As an affiliate marketer, you won’t have to do much more than copy and paste the recipe/ingredients for the product you’ll be promoting and then add a few lines of descriptive text about each item.
The better the product, the better the chance of generating sales. If you have a knack for cooking, you can create a niche for yourself in the recipe review space and begin building a following. As you get more reviews, you can begin to build a reputation for yourself in your industry. Ultimately, these are the steps to follow if you want to make money online.