Affiliate marketing has been one of the most popular ways for even non-tech savvy individuals to make money online for many years now. Nothing has changed in this respect.
There are many ways for affiliates to make money. While most use a website or multiple websites to help them earn revenue, this isn’t actually necessary. There are ways to succeed at online affiliate marketing without a website.
There’s no denying that having a website comes with many advantages. Especially when it comes to affiliate marketing. That being said, if you’re looking for ways to expand your outreach or need to get started right away, then there are other options.
While it’s almost always best to eventually move to using a site in addition to these various strategies, if you really need to get started without your own website then read on for everything you need to know!
Understanding Affiliate Marketing Strategy
There’s plenty of work that goes into building a successful affiliate sales funnel long before the first sale ever takes place.
Understanding how affiliate marketing works and the strategies and mindsets you need to succeed is crucial. Learn the crucial foundational information inside and out, and you’ll thrive. Try shortcuts to skip all that, you’re likely to fall flat on your face.
Understanding good marketing strategy is all the more important without a website. A good website can overcome some flaws. If you’re diving into affiliate marketing without a website, then your understanding of good marketing needs to be that much more on point. At least if you want the best chance of success.
Three Pillars of Affiliate Marketing
There are many different tricks, tips, and strategies to pick up along the way. Don’t ignore these, they all have value. Especially if they help you improve your bottom line. After all, you didn’t get interested in learning how to promote products as an affiliate to not make any sales.
The three main things you need to focus on for affiliate marketing are: traffic, trust, and conversion rates.
Whether you’re a complete beginner or someone with experience, it never hurts to come back to those three points. Without them, you are going to struggle.
Traffic
This is a no-brainer.
Traffic is life when it comes to affiliate marketing. If you have zero visitors, you can’t make a sale. Pretty simple.
Getting traffic, driving traffic, getting the right kind of traffic – that takes skill and work.
To some extent affiliate marketing is a numbers game. You get enough traffic and at some point you’ll make a sale even if you’re mediocre at online marketing. If you’re average skill or better as an affiliate marketer, you can make some decent money. Depending on the amount of views, of course.
This is one of the major reasons that many affiliates choose to go with a website. This gives them an online space they can control and drive traffic to.
This opens up other strategies. Quora doesn’t accept affiliate links, but they can be a massive traffic driver. That makes Quora a resource for affiliate marketing if you can drive traffic from there to your website.
Understanding the importance of traffic will help you stay the course when you are working to get those affiliate qualifying sales without driving traffic to a static website.
Groups of YouTube videos that get massive amounts of traffic can be used to make affiliate conversions. As can any place where you’re allowed to put a link to earn money via affiliate sales.
How much traffic can you get to the links? How much of that traffic will be quality traffic? These are important questions because they play a huge part in whether you succeed or fail no matter what your specific affiliate strategies are.
Building Trust
Nobody clicks on spammy links anymore, because no one trusts spammers. Spam emails, messages, and links have been problems for two decades now. But if your best friend sends you a link you’ll click it if you actually are sure it’s from them. You’re likely to click on an Amazon link to a fishing rod if a professional angler recommends it. Why? Trust.
Building trust can be difficult in the most ideal of situations, which is why you should think of trust as a synonym to “providing value.” Whether it’s by being a participating member of forums known for delivering incredible posts, creating outstanding YouTube videos that get massive amounts of traffic, or creating incredible Pins on Pinterest that get thousands of people paying attention, value is the name of the game.
Conversion Rates
Traffic and trust together are the basis for a good conversion rate. The conversion rate is simply what percentage of clicks buy. This can vary based on niche, traffic source, cost of the item, online rankings, and a variety of other factors.
This is important to track on everything because it can give you a wealth of information that teaches you how to be more effective.
Does forum traffic convert better than social media?
Do Amazon products convert twice as well as links from smaller more independent sources? Do YouTube videos get less clicks but a much higher conversion rate?
This information can help to paint a picture of what is working well and what is just causing you to waste time.
The key is to look at how the data focuses on the big picture. This tells you what programs, items, and methods work best. At that point when you have your winners you can then make small changes or alterations to see what makes a difference. Sometimes really small changes can move a conversion rate from 6% to 8%, or a similar amount.
