If you’re looking for secret affiliate marketing hacks, here’s a few of the ones I’ve discovered over the years. Affiliate marketing is a huge industry and there’s many ways to do it. So this is a compilation of some of the “secrets” I’ve discovered over several years as an affiliate marketer.
If I’d had this information earlier, it would have saved me a huge amount of wasted time. But, as an affiliate you learn from your mistakes. Plus there’s so much advice on the internet it’s difficult to know who to believe and who to trust. Everyone’s trying to sell you something – including me!
So here’s some of what I’ve learned which has worked for me. Everyone’s different though and will take a different path. As Bruce Lee said once: “take what’s useful, discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own”.
Secret Affiliate Marketing Hacks – Traffic
Every affiliate marketer needs traffic. To get traffic takes effort or money or both. Decide on a strategy which suits you personally. If you’ve no time, use money. If you’ve no money, use time. When I started out with affiliate marketing I had time but no money. So I choose free strategies to get people to my affiliate products. I used YouTube and blogging but ultimately blogging became my default “habit”.
I kept at it and still keep at it now. It’s a slow, long route, but if you choose a topic you’re passionate about it’s still not like real work – or a “real” job. My blogging strategy is one many affiliates use:
Find long tail keywords which offer less competition than most.
Then, set about creating some awesome content which is useful to the person who’s reading it.
Secret Affiliate Marketing Hacks – Long Tail Keywords
Since starting out affiliate marketing in the early 2000’s, I’ve seen a lot of changes. Penguin and Panda Google updates have seen many affiliates drop out. There’s huge competition for most topics now so you need to create content which is useful and offers value. Otherwise you won’t get a look in.
The long tail keyword strategy does still work. Find the long tail keywords using Google’s keyword planner which suit your particular business. Then write a long, quality article covering as much as you can about the topic. If the top ranking article on Google is 2000 words long, write 3000 words. Use an SEO plugin (Yoast SEO works for me) and make sure all your lights are green!
Content is king. There’s many variables and thousands of ranking factors Google and other search engines use to rank you content (or not). But your content is the biggest factor. So write some quality content and put the work in.
Many of your blog posts won’t get a high ranking. But some will. If you keep at it long enough, you’ll see some traffic. Over time traffic turns into leads and then sales.
Secret Affiliate Marketing Hacks – Paid Marketing
Of course paid marketing is far better than spending a lot of time creating content. But both have their downsides. Paid marketing is no good if you’re time rich but money poor. But if you’re time poor, paid is better. With paid marketing you’re risking your advertising budget. It takes time to figure it out too. So expect to spend money and lose at first. As you gain experience you’ll start to see what works and what doesn’t so you can streamline your marketing.
With paid marketing it can be very difficult to make a profit on low cost items. So ideally choose a high ticket affiliate program if you’re time poor. That way, you can more easily get the wheels turning and start generating sales. This brings the subject to kinds of affiliate products. With a paid marketing approach, you’ll need high value product in order to make your business profitable. With low cost products it’s hard and sometimes impossible to make a profit using paid marketing. So your business model will determine to some extent what marketing strategies you use.
Take a look at the above funnel. It’s a six figure business model. With high ticket digital products you can earn larger commissions than with low paying physical products like you’d find on Amazon, for example. Look at the rates Amazon pay their affiliates in the image below (from 0-11%).
With these kinds of commission it’s almost impossible to use paid marketing with your affiliate products. Plus you only sell one item at a time. With a product range, you can benefit from sales made later on to your referrals by a built in sales team. See SFM digital business system.
Recurring Commissions
Having a product which offers a recurring commission is a huge key to building a sustainable business online. Referring customers to one-off products isn’t as smart. You’ll need to keep selling in order to keep earning. But with subscription and membership products, you can earn from your previous sales. Each referral sale to a subscription products will give you an income, rather than just a commission.
Of course people drop off with subscriptions but, if you choose the right products, your customers can become lifetime members. With the right products a few sales can make you a lifetime income. Ideally use products which offer huge value. Products used for building online businesses are particularly good. This is because when a business owner needs a product, they’ll keep using it for life. See recurring income affiliate programs for some recommended products.
