Affiliate Marketing Advice for Beginners.

Retrospective Advice I Wish I’d had.

The best advice you can get is normally the advice you get when it is too late. I am hoping that some new Affiliate marketers will take the time to plan and map out the future of their business.

This also involves looking at the strengths and weaknesses of Affiliate Marketing overall. Part of this is looking for advice from people who have already “walked the walk”

This post covers general advice that I wish I had been given and is written 100% by me with no A.I content by chatGPT or any other A.I platform.

My Story.

A Little Background Information.

To give you a little background I was, and still am an ESL (English as a Second Language) Teacher. I live in Vietnam and have been here for 15 years and now have 2 schools that I own with my wife.

However, I am not as young as I once was and I realize that teaching is something I won’t, and don’t want, to do for the rest of my life. So at that stage, I decided to look around and see what I could do to supplement and replace my income.

After falling prey to a few less-than-scrupulous “making money online” platforms I finally came across Wealthy Affiliate, which in my opinion, is one of the few honest Affiliate marketing platforms. They have a 4.2-star trust pilot score for ethics and accountability in business. (Out of 5)

So I joined them, but this is about advice for you, not about Wealthy Affiliate. However, you can check them out (for free) by clicking on the above picture. Or, here at Wealthy Affiliate.

Reality Check.

Most of the time when you see work-at-home or work-online opportunities that need no start-up fees, it is really just a waste of time.

In my opinion and experience, it is those platforms that have a small start-up fee ( And/or an ongoing fee) are the ones that actually bring you value. If something looks too good to be true, it normally is. People do not do something for nothing.

Yes, I pay a small monthly fee that covers all the training and website hosting and I can truly say that it adds value to my business and life.

If you can relate to this then you might be ready to make a change to your life.

Things I Would Change.

The advice I give relates directly to Wealthy Affiliate but whatever platform you went with or even if you went alone ( I would not advise that for a newbie) this advice is standard across the board.

Training

The first and best thing I would recommend is to start the training and implement it as you learn. Whatever training you are following, it is best learned if you put it into practice straight away.

Go over the training at least 2 times as it will reinforce any points that may be difficult to absorb.

If you can get through the training in less than 3 months and/or there is no other training on offer you are not with a good group.

Start Small. 

Also, if I started again I would only build 1 website in the first year. I see a lot of people fall into the trap of building more than 1 website at the start of their new career. Concentrate on one thing at a time, the more websites you have the less you can provide to one audience.

The first few months should be spent on building your readership levels. If you diversify too much you will not have enough content on your website to attract readers.

Provide value content and write for yourself. I see so many new Affiliate marketers pumping out the same A.I generated information day after day. you can actually become adept at picking what is written by real people and what is written by “chatGPT” or its equivalent.

Once you. have mastered (Or at least improved) your writing skills you may wish to use AI, however being able to use AI means you should be competent in prompt engineering. Click here to find out more about “Prompt Engineering“

Research Your Niche.

Do your research on your niche (The market you will be focusing on) but make sure it is something you know about and love. Research the products you can sell, but do not sign up to any affiliate programs for the first 3-4 months. Concentrate on getting your content up, look at 50 posts before you promote any product.

For example, my first niche was teaching English as a Second language in Vietnam. I knew my market well as I had been teaching here for over 10 years. You should be going in with the attitude of helping people, not making sales. If you provide authentic, honest information with a good writing style you will quickly build your readership.

Learn more about finding your niche here at “What Is the Best Niche?“

Don’t Sell.

It sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? You have started an online business because you want to make money working for yourself at home. But if the first thing you do is try to sell any product or service before providing help, it will not help you.

There are thousands of websites and YouTube channels out there, and the only thing that makes any difference is the care and compassion of the website owner for the reader and potential customer.

And when you do start to sell products, be selective in what you sell, and do not try and sell everything or sign up for every affiliate product or platform out there. Also if you have hands-on experience with a product it will show when you try to sell it. Being able to show tips and tricks about a product that others do not know will give you a competitive edge.

Make Your Website SEO Friendly.

I have deliberately kept this post free from the usual acronyms that pop up with most Affiliate marketing websites, but SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the one thing that needs touching on.

Search Engine Optimization are the policies you use to help get your website into the eyes of the readers. This helps you improve the quality and quantity of traffic coming to your website. Google is the biggest “Search Engine” and it looks for websites that can satisfy the inquiries of its customers, which just happen to be your readers.

Do it properly and it will be a win-win situation for all parties.

SEO is not a one-time thing, but an ongoing strategy that requires constant monitoring and optimization. There are many factors that affect SEO, such as keywords, content, technical aspects, user experience, link building, and social media. To succeed in SEO, you need to understand how these factors work together and how to optimize them for your website. Source; Kool Affiliates “What Does SEO do for Your Website“

Make Your Website a Delightful Experience to Use.

Next, your website should be fast and easy to navigate. Use the resources in training to help with this, Google page insights, etc. There are certain plug-ins that you can get that will help with how fast your website loads. At the same time, you have to be careful not to have too many plug-ins which will slow down your website.

Yes, it is a balancing act that will keep you on your toes while you find that perfect balance, which may change with an algorithm update from Google.

Read more about “How to make the best online customer sales experience‘ here.

Socialize and Promote.

Promote your website and individual posts through the social platforms that you feel most comfortable with and where you can find others within the niche you are marketing.

Interact with others and try to offer sound advice on the niche you have chosen. At first, you think it will never happen but it won’t be long till you get people requesting your answer.

My favorite Social media platforms are Quora, Linkedin, and Pinterest. I also use Facebook and Facebook groups because that is where a lot of my ESL members hang out. For video, you can’t go past YouTube and I am currently exploring a new video platform called Rumble.

When using these platforms you can learn just as much as others by immersing yourself in conversations with others. This will automatically lead you into a growth spiral for your business. Interact with others on this platform and learn as much as you can.

And the one thing that could kill your business straight away is if you spam, so please do not spam. You know what it feels like so do not do it to others.

Consistency is King.

Write, write, and write some more. Try to write daily when you first start off and if you can’t do that, try to write at least twice a week.

Everything is new and exciting when you first start out but don’t burn yourself out as this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Final Thoughts.

Also, have as much fun as you can. The people you meet along the way will change your life and there will be days you wake up and feel like pinching yourself because of the amazing life you are leading.

Stephen Hey

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There will be no extra cost to you and at times due to my affiliation, you could actually save money. You can read our full affiliate disclosure here.