Looking for ways to earn sustainable income with affiliate marketing?
One of them is to run a profitable affiliate marketing website.
It’s an asset that you control. It works for free 24/7. It’s simple to create and maintain.
It’s, in fact, a right way to think about an affiliate marketing business.
In theory, affiliate marketing is simple.
- You join an affiliate program in your niche.
- You start a partnership with advertisers to get a special link that will track sales.
- You start promoting the product on your blog.
- You promote your blog posts and get conversions.
Really these same steps earn some affiliates some money… but it’s just the basis… and as is, it’s not consistent.
Here’s what you need to build a profitable affiliate website.
Table Of Contents
5 Must-Haves To Run A Profitable Affiliate Site
Sometimes, there is no shortcut to a profitable business. You have to follow a plan that works.
Let’s see what you must have to build a profitable website that earns you affiliate commissions.
1.- A target audience
A crucial step, to build any profitable online business, is to clearly define who your target audience is.
Who is you working for? Where they are? What do they want?
I made the mistake to skip that step. I made keyword research without thinking about who searched such key phrases.
And I wasted a ton of time.
I had to see months with earnings and months with nothing. My sales were random. So, I could not count on it as an income source.
And Finally, I got to split my website into two separate ones. The result is a lot of tasks that could be avoided.
I forgot one thing.
Affiliate marketing is all about helping others and having their trust for genuine recommendations.
If you don’t know who you serve, you can’t simply help them, or earn their trust.
You don’t know what they’re struggling with and what they want.
The truth is: If you try to please everyone and not a target audience, you please nobody.
So, take the time to pick an audience you can stick to.
It helps also to focus your effort to drive specific and higher results.
To define an audience, think about a specific person you’d want to help.
By example: I’ll write for people like John who want to make money with an affiliate site but who don’t know where to start.
The next step is to make sure there are enough people like John so you can build a business with that niche. And double-check that people like John invest to get rid of their trouble.
If you don’t take time to have a clear target, you will reach the wrong people and never build a lucrative affiliate site online. In fact, you can reach people who consume your content but never buy.
2.- A conversion-optimized website
This point is as crucial as defining audience well.
To make money with affiliate marketing, you need a website optimized for conversion.
User interface is important. But, No. It’s not all about visual.
You need that the landing page of your affiliate converts. But the most important is that YOU optimize your website so it calls to action.
Otherwise, you may help a lot of people to come to know about a product. But they’ll need to do further searches; and you’ll not be the one who will be credited for the sale.
It has to do with how affiliate marketing works. Often, only the affiliate whom link is followed last gets the commission.
A buyer will go through a journey because they decide to buy.
Awareness of the problem -> Consideration of possible solutions -> Decision to buy a product solving the problem.
An affiliate marketing site optimized for conversion has a lot to do with:
- design that makes users feel comfortable, yes.
- but, more importantly, content that teaches how your affiliate product solve the problems.
I dig more into creating optimal experience for user and what kind of content drive most affiliate sales on another post.
While I promise you an easy-to-follow guide through those posts, let’s give the focus to our main concern now: our must-haves to build profitable affiliate marketing sites. I’ll list resources at the end of the post.
Let’s jump to an ingredient that makes your website converts.
3.- A solution to your audience problem
Do you know why reviews, lists and tutorials convert better into affiliate sales?
Just because they solve someone’s problem at the right time in their journey to buy something.
The reviews and tutorials teach the users how to solve a problem and guide them to the right tool.
The lists and comparisons help the reader in taking a final decision.
To build a profitable affiliate marketing business, you need to identify your audience problem, first. Then, you have to come up with a solution.
If you’re targeting enthusiasts, you need to identify what motivates them, and what makes them proud. It’s what they will invest for.
By example, if your audience can’t pick legit affiliate networks to build a profitable affiliate marketing site, help them with a comparison or a descriptive list of your known affiliate networks. Just an example as only a few affiliate networks pay per referral so we can complete step four.
4.- Affiliate programs and tools to fix that problem
Obviously, you make money from the products you recommend in your posts as affiliate.
As an affiliate, you need affiliate programs you can use to fix your audience problems; so, you can make money.
The key is to look for high converting products. Specially the ones that you use and know well.
This is the right moment to dig into high paying affiliates products. They can be one-time payment or residual income affiliate programs on which you can build a business.
PS: The first, and perhaps the only affiliate programs you should recommend is the one that you use personally.
It’s then easier to convince with results and get conversion. You will earn your audience’s trust faster resulting in bigger sales.
As someone who fix problems, you influence your audience. If you pick too much products in the same category, they are just confusing and don’t take any action.
But if you only recommend your most loved products, they’ll love them and use them too.
By example, for affiliate marketing, you can refer ShareASale. For email marketing, you can recommend only aweber and so on… But not more than two products per category.
Just rembember that the right audience is the audience the product is intended to. Look in forums for problems users are facing and how the affiliate product can fix them and write about the solution.
5.- A traffic strategy
How to fix the biggest problem most affiliate marketers face: not getting traffic that converts?
How to get more people with buying-intent to your website?
In fact, you need a traffic strategy.
Traffic is the very one thing, if you don’t have it, you have problem. You can say goodbye to your dream about building a profitable affiliate website.
Getting traffic is one of the thing I teach on AskEustache. From experience, I can tell you that organic traffic converts well.
One: The most valuable affiliate traffic come from search engines and forums.
Two: You can educate your visitors to convert any kind of traffic.
So, go promote your affiliate website and get email address of people not ready to buy.
How to build an email list is the topic of another post.
Go Build Your Profitable Affiliate Marketing Site
Now, you know the five must-haves to run your profitable affiliate marketing site. what’s next?
Don’t procrastinate, act today. Perhaps you’ve read a lot about affiliate marketing already, but, you never applied what you’ve learned.
The best advice I can give you is: Run your profitable affiliate website NOW.
I hope you enjoyed the article.
