Your Next Steps

byphil1944

8.6K followers

Updated 7 months ago

Your Next Steps

(Image generated by the new ChatGPT 4o)

I recently posted Avoid Distractions, urging WA members to focus on the basics and not be distracted by extraneous matters that did nothing to advance their online business.

This was triggered by some of the questions appearing in Live Chat that had nothing to do with creating a solid foundation but that sought (for example) help with a totally unnecessary plugin.

The First 7 Steps

In that post, I laid out the first 7 steps that everyone starting out with affiliate marketing should follow:

1. Select a niche that you will maintain interest in over the long term and that has affiliate vendors with quality products and decent commission.
2. Get a relevant .com domain name.
3. Build a website on that domain name. Don't fuss about theme. Understand that you can change it at any time, but you won't see much of an effect until your site is properly structured with header and footer menus, sidebar, logo and general "look and feel".
4. Add the legal pages to your footer menu.
5. Create About Me and Contact Me pages and add them, along with Home, to the header menu.
6. You can use Hubs to help with this, but learn how to build your website directly. Understand that your hub is not your website. It's just an aid to building it and creating content.
7. Create content, specifically blog posts providing useful information in your niche. Include categories in your blog posts. Add images, but resize them to the actual size to be used first.

A lot of the feedback I received basically asked "OK, what comes next?" So...

What Comes Next?

1. Once you've got a dozen or so blog posts providing useful information in your niche and have added a Categories item to your header menu, start applying to vendors to become an affiliate.
2. Check out platforms like CJ and ClickBank, but find vendors directly by searching for [niche] affiliates. Avoid Warrior Plus and JVZoo. Most vendors there use long funnels full of upsells and will aggressively pursue any purchases with more and more offers. It's a sure way to lose your visitors' trust.
3. Apply directly to vendors with products you'll be happy to recommend and who offer a decent commission rate. They WILL look at your website, so it needs to be attractive, relevant and content rich. If they ask how you will promote them, answer SEO, Social Media and PPC Advertising such as Facebook and Google Ads. If they ask for a traffic estimate, tell them what you are aiming for in 12 months time. In other words, an aspirational figure.
4. If you are rejected immediately, understand that it's been done by gatekeeper software. Use their contact facility to contact them and make your case. That often results in acceptance.
5. Create a landing page for each product you want to promote. These can be for a single product or for a review of (typically) three competing products. The landing page should expound on how the product (or each product, in the case of a review) delivers what the visitor wants or alleviates the pain they are suffering. But don't be afraid to discuss negatives as well. They will increase your trust and credibility. The landing page also contains your affiliate link(s), ideally attached to both the product image and text such as "Find Out More...".
6. Write blog posts focused on specific wants or pain points that are addressed by the products you are promoting. Include links to the corresponding landing pages in the blog posts.
7. Given the uncertainty surrounding SEO, consider a small PPC campaign to test the waters. Use a low daily budget and run the campaign for a specific time. An example would be $10 a day for a week, so that you know your outlay will be around $70. Identify your target audience as narrowly as possible and analyse your results carefully.

What Comes Next Next?

OK, that was 7 more.

In the next follow up post, I'll cover the most important "advanced" topic.

Building your own email list, starting with creating a Lead Magnet and offering it in exchange for your visitor's name and email address.

A simple enough concept but, as always, the devil is in the details.