Introduction

So you think affiliate marketing is easy hey! You like the idea and think it’s something you can just enter into, and take over the world at. Who am I to suggest you can’t do this!

I will advise though, there are some snippets of information that you may find invaluable. Tips that may make or break you going forward. Would you like to know the biggest affiliate marketing tip for beginners that I can suggest? I’ll tell you in just a second, along with 25 others affiliate marketing tips that you will find interesting.

I’ve been doing this since 2014, so I understand the ups and downs of this field. I’ve made loads of mistakes and will try to help you avoid many of these. So let’s go with my number one affiliate marketing tip for beginners, getting educated.

#Tip 1 – Getting Educated

I know from my own experience that doing it on your own is hard work. No doubt you understand how good the affiliate marketing opportunity is, just about every company has an affiliate program these days.

Navigating good advice from poor advice can be tiresome and frustrating. I began with no training and winged it for about a year before I pulled my head in. There’s no substitute for getting the right training in the correct order.

I figure I wasted about 9 months of my first year because I didn’t know what I was doing. Sure, I did learn a lot, but I would have learned it a lot faster had I been trained properly.

The first course I took was Chris Farrell membership. Chris is a brilliant teacher for newbies, but I believe that once you get past the very early beginner stage, it’s missing a lot of the components required to progress. It also lacks some of the tools that other platforms encompass.

I tried Affilorama, but wasn’t a big fan. The next course I came across was Wealthy Affiliate, which is the bees knees of affiliate marketing platforms. I won’t go into it now, but you can read my Wealthy Affiliate review here. Needless to say, I’m still a member there because I enjoy the community of like minded people. Although there’s a monthly fee, you can check it out for free for a week.

I’ve since taken another course because I wanted to review it. It’s called Affiliate Secrets 2.0, run by a guy named Spencer Mecham. This is also a wonderful course, it just doesn’t include all the tools and hosting that WA does. You pay a set fee rather than monthly subscription, and it’s a course I’d also recommend.

You can attempt to pick up stuff from YouTube as you’re going along, but it’s very possible that you’ll stumble across half cocked advice at times. I remember searching things on YouTube but I’d only get half the information, then have to Google the rest.

Just get it right from the start. Sign up and get yourself educated. This is my No.1 affiliate marketing tip for beginners.

And 25 More Tips…..

Yep, I promised you more than one affiliate marketing tip, so here’s a bunch more.

#Tip 2 – Be Patient

I gave up this affiliate marketing thing several times before learning what it takes to become successful. I would begin a website after getting all excited that ‘this will be the one’, only to give it up within 3 months.

Why? Because I wasn’t willing to put in the effort. I figured that if I wrote 10 articles in 3 months, they should rank highly and I’d get lots of website traffic. How naive was I?

I didn’t stop to think that all those affiliate marketers before me would have better ranked articles. And so it should be the case, because they have what Moz calls ‘Domain Authority’. Google see’s their sites as more authoritative as mine, as they’ve been around a lot longer.

This is why you need to be patient. Sure, it’s certainly possible to be making money with affiliate marketing within 3 months, but more likely 6 months. You need to understand that this is a long term strategy. It’s building a website that will make you money over and over for years to come, but you need to get past the novice stage like everyone else.

So be patient, and be willing to invest in yourself. If I got through this barrier, I’m sure you can.

#Tip 3 – You Need a Website

Is it a necessity that you need a website to be an affiliate marketer? Well, not really but it is advised. It’s possible to be a YouTube affiliate marketer, as affiliate links are accepted by YouTube. Quite possibly other social networks also accept affiliate links.

However, I believe that owning your own asset like a website is more tangible, and you can take it any direction you want. You’re also not relying on a separate platform to host all your promotions. It’s a better idea to diversify.

Ideally you’ll have your own website, and be conversant in several social channels. You can still use YouTube to use as a promotional tool, but you can also embed your videos into your website, giving you 2 mediums for visitors to stumble upon.

In my opinion, yes, a website is an added necessity.

#Tip 4 – What is Your Niche

Knowing what you want to write about is a critical element to go forward with an affiliate marketing career. A niche is basically a topic or subject that you’ll build a website around, and it needs to be interesting to yourself before anyone else.

If you are going to get bored with what your website is about, then the chances of continuing on for years to come will diminish. Not only does it have to keep you captivated, but you need to find enough material to write about.

There are loads of topics to choose from, and so much information you can research to write about. So finding that ideal niche shouldn’t be too difficult, just make sure it will serve you well mentally.

Also, don’t go too broad with your niche. It will only mean you’re competing with the big boys and will be much harder to rank. For instance, choosing ‘sport’ or even a particular sport will pit you against ESPN, Fox Sports, newspapers etc.

It’s best to narrow your niche even further to something like ‘football for armchair critics’ or ‘golf for left-handers’. Once you have a foothold in your chosen niche, you can always branch out further into a relevant field.

#Tip 5 – Know Who You Are Targeting

Do you have a target audience in mind? If not, you really should. We all know that millions of people are searching the internet concurrently, but they’re not all looking for the same thing. Although some people that search one thing, do go off on tangents when they see something different, it’s more rare than typical.

So you really want those that are interested in what you have to say, to be the ones that see your articles. Keeping this target audience in mind is like keeping focus. If you start writing about something completely different, your readers will think your website has become sporadic, and look for somewhere else more consistent.

#Tip 6 – Keywords Are Key

If you’re about to enter the affiliate marketing world and you don’t know what keywords are, you’re going to have to learn fairly quickly. Keywords as basically search terms that are entered into the search bar.

Google and Bing are two search engines, of which there are several others. They find relevant articles when you enter a keyword term into their search bars. Without having done some keyword research, you are going in blindly as to getting your articles ranked.

Keyword research can be done with a keyword tool, such as Jaaxy or Google keyword Planner. I’ve always found Google’s keyword tool not the easiest to use, so I steer clear of this. Jaaxy is a very adequate keyword tool for blogger level, and it comes free if you sign up to Wealthy Affiliate, as they own it.

There’s other high end keyword tools such as Ahrefs and Moz, but their plans are based more towards high end companies, hence their fees.

Understanding the use of keywords is definitely a big tip.

#Tip 7 – Writing Creates Great Content

When I began this journey into affiliate marketing I looked for any possible way to get traction without having to write content. As far as I was concerned, I was not a very good writer, and I didn’t enjoy it.

However, it quickly dawned on me that ranking in search engines would only come from Google spider-ing my content, and approving it. By this I mean writing content that is informative, and helps people with what they’re searching for.

The better your content is, the higher ranking you’ll achieve. This only makes sense really, and I did surprise myself by becoming a better writer.

After getting over my denial, I dug in. I began writing more and more, and as my writing increased, the better I got at it. I suppose it’s like anything really, practice makes perfect.

So just keep in mind that informative content is what will gain you free website traffic, and you may need to work on this skill. The best part, anyone will get better at writing if you constantly try. Even me!

#Tip 8 – Be Consistent, Not Complacent

Good things come to those that work at it. I’m not saying you need to work your arse off everyday, but you do need to be a consistent contributor in Google’s eyes. If that means writing on a daily basis, so be it. However, it doesn’t have to be that dramatic.

If you’re struggling to find time (a lot more people DO have time currently because of COVID-19 social lockdowns), you can still write once every couple of days, or even twice a week. It’s up to you, just make it consistent.

Complacency can creep in easily as motivation wanes. This is one of the biggest hurdles to get over, and an essential affiliate marketing tip to keep in mind. Stake stock of what you’re writing and keep a log. I keep a spreadsheet of every article I’ve written, which includes the keyword and monthly searches for that term. This keeps me motivated to write more.

I also track how many articles I do per month, and my monthly analytic statistics. This way I can see my website traffic rising over time, and it motivates me to keep going.

Consistency is a big key to success.

#Tip 9 – Other SEO Essentials

Obviously you begin with keyword research, as this is part of your SEO strategy. For those that have no idea what I’m talking about, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. These are the small details you need to add to your articles to make them appear higher in the search engines.

Without these SEO techniques, you’re reliant on social media or paid advertising to get website traffic. The best form of web traffic by a long way is FREE traffic, and appearing in the search results is how you get it.

You may be of the opinion that it takes too long to rank in the search engines, and that the competition is too tough. Well I’ll tell you this. The competition all started where you are, at the beginning, and worked their way up. You just need to get tougher.

Sure, it may take you time to rank, but this just makes it more satisfying when you ARE ranking highly after putting in the effort. It’s then up to other newbies to catch you.

So learn SEO and get started ranking highly. The sooner you do it the easier will get.

#Tip 10 – Plan Your Route

It always helps to plan things out, and coming up with a simple plan is not that difficult. I’ve stated how I use a spreadsheet to keep an article index, and this is done via Google Sheets. So yes, it doesn’t cost me anything because Google offers Sheets and Docs free as part of your Google account.

All my articles are written with a new Google Doc, I then simply copy and paste it to a new WordPress post when complete. So using these free options are ideal for just about all of us.

Basically, you just want to keep a record of what you plan to do, how you’re going to implement it and what you’ve done. Part of this comes with education, and the experience that comes with it.

I’d urge you to get on top of this and not disregard it like I did when I started. It took me a couple of years before I learned to do this, and a plan would have helped much earlier.

#Tip 11 – No Shiny Objects

I’ve fallen for this, and I really don’t want you too. But I have no doubt that to some extent, you will. It’s called the ‘shiny object syndrome’, and it hits most people looking for an opportunity to make money online.

You choose a course to follow, maybe it’s the Affiliate Secret’s course, or maybe you choose to run an online dropshipping store and choose to follow the advice of Ricky Hayes. Whatever it is, don’t deviate.

It happens all the time, we start something good until a new shiny object comes along which seems like it will work even better. The original course is exactly what you’re after, but you are too impatient to give it time.

Online wealth doesn’t come easy, and all these opportunities take time and effort. Don’t be one of those to give up within a couple of months and go on to the next best thing. You’ll just be chasing your tail, and will end up paying more money with course after course.

Many of these educational courses are great, and do work. The issue is not taking action for long enough. So, choose a great course, stick to it and keep focused on achieving the intended target.

#Tip 12 – Don’t Listen to The Outside World

Family can be great, but they can also be the most unsupportive when you attempt a new project like this. Because affiliate marketing is not a traditional job with a consistent wage, some people don’t think it’s realistic.

It’s as if affiliate marketing is some kind of black magic or hocus pocus that normal people don’t attempt. The reality is far from abnormal though, and you only need to look at the statistics.

There’s over 4.5 billion people with internet access, and an estimated 1.8 billion people make purchases online. With over 80% of companies now with an affiliate program, it just goes to show the force of which this industry is growing.

However, because earnings are not instant, it’s still considered a pie in the sky opportunity. You’ll often get no support from friends or family because it’s considered unpredictable, but as long as you’ll follow the tips in this article, you will be successful.

And there’s nothing better than proving everyone wrong!

#Tip 13 – Failure Is Part of learning

Will you fail before becoming successful? Probably, but maybe not. I can’t really say whether you will or not, and the chances will be minimized if you follow these affiliate marketing tips.

I failed several times. I think I tried close to 20 websites before I finally cracked the code of consistency and patience. I also gained valuable experience from every failure, and I consider this as part of my success.

Not everyone needs to fail before cracking it big time. I know of several WA community members who began their first website, followed the formula and never looked back. So don’t think you need to fail before triumph, this was just my route.

#Tip 14 – Include Disclaimers

When it comes to your affiliate marketing website, make sure you include your legal pages. The main ones include an income disclaimer and privacy policy. These are critical, and they can be copied from a simple template.

In fact there are dedicated websites where you can input your website name, and a full privacy policy will be generated for you. These can save you a lot of time and are easy to use.

If you go to Google and type in ‘free privacy policy template’, a plethora of different privacy policy generators will appear in the search results. I don’t really have a preferred program for this, most will do the job suitably.

Make sure you add these pages for your piece of mind. The chances are that nobody is going to complain about anything, but these pages cover certain aspects and show that you’re not just playing around with a hobby blog.

#Tip 15 – More Than One Main Offer

It’s fine to have one main offer that you intend to send your audience to, but putting all your eggs in the one basket has never been a good idea.

Obviously if you have a great promotion that either brings in a high commission or recurring commissions, this is ideal. But what if that company ceases to exist for some reason, and all your affiliate links point to that company.

You could be left with a large portion of your income gone immediately, with very little backup.

I like to include 3 or 4 main promotional sites with several smaller ones that I recommend. This way my income is diversified and I won’t be left high and dry should one of the companies fold.

There’s no better example of this than in this current climate of a pandemic. If you’re reading this post after the pandemic of 2020, you’ll get the idea.

Many companies have gone out of business because the economic impact has been so severe. If your promotions are diversified then there’s a good chance you’ll be fine. If you decided to only promote Disneyland, you could be in strife.

#Tip 16 – Join Quality Affiliate Programs

Look for affiliate programs that have been around for some time, and have consistently paid decent commissions to their affiliates. It’s easy to go and join every affiliate program that comes along, but try to keep some level of quality.

Look for programs or products that you would purchase yourself. If you can’t recommend a service because you’d advise against it, I wouldn’t necessarily join that program.

I also like the idea of sticking to a select few affiliate networks. Affiliate networks work on behalf of companies to host their affiliate program. So they may have hundreds of affiliate programs on their books. If you stick to 3-4 affiliate networks, it’s easier to control your income commissions, and know where these commissions have come from.

#Tip 17 – Don’t Be Shy

It pays to put yourself out there. This is a hurdle that many people find difficult, and I was one such person.

Giving people a face behind your online business gives comfort and credibility to your audience. I understand the want for keeping inconspicuous, but you may lose a lot of trust if you cannot show people who you are.

This doesn’t mean you need to give your full name to people so they can search who you are. A nickname or alias can be used, like me for instance. Although my first name is Nigel, I’ve had the nickname Nudge since I was 6 years old.

So you may have to come out of your comfort level a little to gain the trust of others. This is a good thing.

#Tip 18 – Social Helps

Nobody is good at everything, especially all social media channels. But, social interaction and posting will boost your presence with people.

I believe that learning 2 or 3 social platforms to get your brand out there helps with a boosted image, which means more sales commissions. Those younger marketers may choose Snapchat or TikTok, while Facebook and Instagram are still popular.

If you can post your articles on social media every time you post on your website, this can help with backlinks. In turn, this can also help with your articles ranking.

So just be aware that social media can play a big part in your affiliate marketing journey, but it’s not essential to learn them all.

#Tip 19 – A Head-start in Advertising

I mentioned that it can take a little time to get high rankings in the search engines, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do more to gain sales early on. Social media is going to help with this, and so can paid advertising.

Facebook ads, Google ads, these can help boost your brand and presence if you learn to use these tools well. Again, there’s a bit of a learning curve for beginners but everyone starts somewhere.

Using Facebook to gain likes to your business page is a great way to start things off. Spend a relatively small amount of dollars to gain a good amount of followers. Then whenever you submit a new article on your website, you also post it on your FB business page. Those following you will see your new posts.

If you’ve done an exceptional article, then give is a boost by paying for it to appear in people’s feeds. You’ve probably seen this before, with ‘sponsored’ beneath the post.

Sales commissions can be obtained with a little forethought.

#Tip 20 – Make it Last Longtime

What I mean by this, is make your content relevant for years to come. I’ve made this mistake before, and you need to understand that ‘evergreen’ content is so much easier to keep up with.

Evergreen trees have leaves throughout the year, and your content should be similar in that the content is always applicable. This is what makes people click on your articles everyday, month after month, year after year.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean. My first website was sports related, and I decided to place sports fixtures on it. Because of this, I couldn’t concentrate because my mind was spinning. Sports fixtures are constantly changing, so all my fixtures required constant modification.

It so overwhelming to constantly monitor a moving target like this. Writing evergreen content means that once you’ve written and published it, you can leave it. Unless you decide to update the article with more relevant information, and Google does like this.

#Tip 21 – YouTube Is a Friend

I’ve talked about how social media is going to be important going forward, but I wanted to touch on YouTube in particular.

By creating YouTube videos, you can rank in Google quicker. You may have noticed this with Google searches yourself, so keep this in mind.

Another great aspect of YouTube is the allowance for affiliate links. This is not like all other social mediums which seem to change their rules in relation to this from time to time. You’ll have the ability to use affiliate links in your video description which is awesome.

As I suggested earlier, it’s not necessary to have a website, but is advisable. But, some people have succeeded by just using YouTube for creating awesome videos and using an affiliate link. Just keep in mind that you’re reliant on YouTube being active for commissions to roll in.

#Tip 22 – Do Not Lie or Make it Up

It’s great to become an authoritative figure after gaining knowledge of a particular subject, but don’t lie to your audience. As you work on your website and research more about your niche, you’ll become educated as you go.

This will be noticeable in your articles as you write, and there’s no rush to show people of your knowledge.

If you do lie and you’re found out, this will reflect poorly on you, and you may get a poor reputation.

The same goes for making stuff up because you have a hunch. Do your research and make certain of what you’re writing. It’s okay to say ‘I believe to be the case’. This gives an opinion, but also leaves you opinion open.

Keeping things real will resonate with your readers, and you’ll feel a lot better for doing so.

#Tip 23 – Don’t Go On Different Tangents

You’ve chosen your niche, and you need to stick to it. Initially at least, so your readers and Google understands what your site is about.

It’s critical that Google knows what your site is about, and can display the search results depending on what people are searching. Keep your articles on track, without veering into different territory.

If your site is about baking, don’t write about BBQ’s. Once you’ve done lots of baking articles, you may introduce a BBQ related article, but keeping focused on your niche is going to help those targeted articles rank well.

#Tip 24 – Banner Ads Aren’t Everything

Lots of people think that placing banner ads over your website is a great idea. While you may find it beneficial to insert them in a sidebar or more inconspicuous location, the truth is that banner ads rarely get clicked on.

The most clicked on affiliate links are text links. This is where your affiliate link is placed within written content, and is highlighted in a different color.

Keep in mind that writing informative content and placing your affiliate links within this text, is the best chance of attracting sales.

#Tip 25 – Build a List When Possible

When I say a list, I mean a list of email addresses. Why? Because this allows you another form of promotions down the track. It’s basically like having more free traffic with the more emails you have in your list.

To do this, you require the use of an autoresponder service. It’s not something you need to do as a beginner, but down the track once you’re getting more traffic it is advisable.

You’ll often hear experts suggest ‘the money is in the list’. Which basically means once you have an email list, your promotions through emailing will earn you money.

#Tip 26 – Keep At It

And finally, the affiliate marketing tip of all tips. Keep working at your goal and don’t give up. I must admit, I gave up on a few occasions when I was first starting out.

I wasn’t satisfied though, and needed to succeed at this. I didn’t want regrets, or to look back in a couple of years time and wonder ‘what if’.

Persistence, consistency and motivation are 3 traits you want to be good at. They are not even skills you need to learn, but they are just as important to reach your affiliate marketing goals. There’s no real secret to making money online, it’s just takes some motivation and effort.

Wrapping Up

I hope these affiliate marketing tips help you out, and give you some inspiration to make it big time. If you’d like to read more about how I made it, read on below.