What is The Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing (New Guide)

Do you want to know what the best way to do affiliate marketing is?

I started my affiliate marketing business in 2014, but I didn't know the best way to do it at the beginning.

Do you know what I was doing?

I was following the old form of affiliate marketing without knowing about the advanced method of it.

This caused me to waste my money on traffic, such as Facebook ads, without making consistent sales.

This question was on my mind all the time, and it was, "Why do top affiliate marketers go from zero to hero, but I struggle with my business?"

Long story short...

In 2017, I found that top affiliate marketers capture leads and build a big email list that allows them to make sales consistently without paying for the traffic repeatedly and relying on Facebook advertising.

This method of affiliate marketing is called advanced affiliate marketing. And it's the secret of the top internet marketing millionaires.

In this article, I walk you through the advanced affiliate marketing process step by step.

It helps you build a long-lasting relationship with your audience and make sales frequently.

Before starting your advanced affiliate marketing journey, it's very important to pick your niche.

What is a niche?

A niche is a specific segment of a big market.

For example, if digital marketing is a market, email marketing for e-commerce is a niche. Next, if health is a market, skin care for women is a niche.

You can choose your niche according to your passion, knowledge, and expertise. But be aware that selecting a niche around your passion can not always be profitable.

For example, if your passion is volleyball, there's usually not much demand for volleyball shirts, shoes, and balls. There aren't many products and offers around this type of sport to promote and make money.

See the example on Google Trends below, which shows the least amount of demand for volleyball shirts worldwide.

The best way to find a profitable affiliate marketing niche is to decide based on data and statistics.

There are four important tools that can help you find your niche for affiliate marketing.

All of these give you correct data and statistics to decide on your niche on what to create as content creator and what to promote as an affiliate marketer.

However, there are many keyword research tools for finding a niche such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and Ubbersugest, but none of them give you correct data, because search engines like Google and YouTube don't share the date with them directly.

Let's explain each of the four tools one by one below for better understanding.

Google Trends is a website from Google itself that shows the popularity of specific keywords and what is trending right now on Google and YouTube as well.

Most affiliate marketers don't focus on this free platform for their market research to get accurate data.

But they pay for expensive keyword research tools like Ahrefs or Semrush that they think may help them better in terms of SEO, content creation, and ranking.

I have learned and experienced that paid keyword research tools don't reveal the real data like Google Trends does.

Moreover, I have been using Google Trends for a long time now, and it has helped a lot in terms of getting new topics for my YouTube channel and my blog.

Here's how to use Google Trends to find your niche:

Go to Google Trends and add your favourite keyword terms to see if people are interested in them or not.

Google Trends determined the level of interest for a specific keyword between 25 and 100 marks. Therefore, if your favourite keywords got above 50, that's fine.

Additionally, Google Trends allows you to compare two or more keywords at the same time to see which is popular and trending right now.

For example,

I compared email marketing and affiliate marketing on Google Trends to see which one was more popular to choose as a niche for my blog.

As a result, I found that email marketing is more popular than affiliate marketing.

Do you want to discover the search volume for specific keywords?

You can try the Google Keyword Planner. It's a free tool that helps you with the three important things:

1. Search volume for keywords.

2. It helps you discover new keyword ideas.

3. Allow you to know the competition level.

For example, I used the keywords "Keto Diet" in the Google keyword planner, and it gave me the following data:

1. Average Monthly Searches (100k-1M).

2. Competition Level (Medium)

3. Keyword Ideas ( Keto Gummies)

See the image below for a better understanding:

Youtube is the second-largest search engine, and people come to YouTube to find a solution to their problems.

You can find a profitable niche on YouTube by entering your keywords in the search bar and seeing the number of views for a few related videos.

If the number of views is more than 50,000 for more than 10–20 videos, it shows there's demand for that keyword or niche.

Moreover, you can go deeper in your research. Choose 5–10 YouTube channels to get some ideas from your competitors.

See the example below for a better understanding.

Udemy is the biggest online course platform and people come to udemy to learn something new.

Udemy offers thousands of courses on various topics, ranging from photography and programming to business and marketing. This means you can explore a wide range of interests and industries to find potential niches.

Here is to find a profitable niche on Udemy:

Step 1: Go to Udemy.com

Step 2: Open Categorie Menue

Step 3: Choose a Categorie

Step 4: Select a sub-categorie

Step 5: Choose your favourite topic from the sub-categories.

Then, look at the number of students and reviews for popular courses. If the number of students is more than 500 for at least 10 courses, it indicates the demand for that topic, and that could be a profitable niche market to start with.

Moreover, look at the content of courses, such as the table of contents, to get ideas on what they created and how you can make it better.

What is a content platform? It's a platform that allows you to create helpful content for your target audience and promote your affiliate products.

Here are 9 examples of content platforms:

1. Instagram

2. Facebook

3. Twitter

4. YouTube

5. TikTok

6. Website

7. Blog

8. Podcast

9. Email Newsletter

Choose a content platform according to your passion, interest, and skill. For example, if you're interested in writing, you can start a blog and create helpful articles around your niche.

If you're good with cameras, you can start a YouTube channel and make useful videos for your target audience.

After choosing a content platform, now it's time to create valuable content around your niche.

But, before creating any piece of content, make sure to do market research to find the top trending topics for your niche that people will love and engage with.

You can follow step number one that I mentioned above in order to start step-by-step market research to find hot topics for creating helpful content for your target audience.

Moreover, always create content on a consistent basis, because it helps your audience get to know your brand better and build a strong relationship with you.

Once the relationship is built, people will trust you more and purchase from you whenever you promote an affiliate product to them.

If your content platform is YouTube, make sure to publish at least two videos per week at the beginning.

If your content platform is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok, it's good to publish at least two helpful pieces of content per day because it helps these platforms grow your page faster. Moreover, engage with your audience and reply to their likes and comments quickly.

Creating value-based content helps you get free traffic to your affiliate marketing business.

After creating helpful content for your chosen platform, it's time to join affiliate programmes to monetize your content.

Here are the top 10 affiliate networks you can join to choose affiliate products to promote and make money.

1. ClickBank

2. CJ Affiliate

3. Amazon Associates

4. ShareASale

5. Rakuten

6. FlexOffers

7. JVZoo

8. Awin

I have been using Clickbank for more than 6 years now, and it's very beginner-friendly. There are thousands of digital and physical affiliate products available to promote.

Everyone can join Clickbank's affiliate network for free. If you want to join an affiliate programme as a beginner, I recommend joining Clickbank.

Make sure to choose an affiliate product according to your niche and target audience's interests and preferences.

Don't promote your affiliate product or offer every day on your chosen content platform because your target audience will think of you as a salesman. Try to promote after 3–4 days of good content creation.

When you promote a product, make sure to mention the benefits of the product, share testimonials, and share success stories. because it helps your audience trust your affiliate product and purchase it.

What is an email list? It's a list of email subscribers who opt-in to join your email list to receive your contents via email.

Building an email list is the foundation of affiliate marketing because it helps you make sales consistently without relying on paid ads.

Moreover, an email list protects your business if Facebook or Google ban your ad accounts.

My Facebook ad accounts were suspended more than three times in 2018 and 2019, but my email list allowed me to communicate with my audience alternatively.

Most affiliate marketers don't' build their email ists.

They drive traffic directly to the affiliate offer without capturing the leads, which causes them to spend money from time to time without getting a satisfactory result from the affiliate business.

See the difference between conventional affiliate marketing and advanced affiliate marketing in the image below:

Your email list is a digital asset; no one can take it from you, and you have complete ownership over it.

You need 4 things to build your email list:

1. Email Marketing Software

2. Opt-in Page

3. Thank-You Page

4. Traffic

An email marketing software like Systeme.io allows you to build your opt-in page and thank-you page for free.

In order to motivate people to join your email list, you need to give them a free gift called a lead magnet on your opt-in page. A free gift can be an e-book, a free report, video training, a free course, or a membership.

I love to use a free book as a lead magnet for my opt-in page because it looks valuable and encourages people to give me their email addresses.

You can get access to lead magnets for free by going to a website called IDPLR.com.

Make sure to choose the lead magnet according to your niche and target audience.

For example, if your target audience is Keto Diet, you should choose a Keto Diet-related lead magnet.

SpeedWealth is a proven affiliate marketing system that teaches you how to build your email list quickly, step-by-step.

Moreover, this system gives you access to pre-built opt-in pages, top affiliate offers, and traffic to build your email list fast, even in 24 hours.

In the next step (step 6), I show you how to drive traffic to your opt-in page and affiliate offer.

There are two types of traffic you can drive to your opt-in page and affiliate offer.

1. Free Traffic

2. Paid Traffic

Free traffic is traffic that you can get organically from your chosen content platform, such as Facebook, a blog, or Youtube. But you should optimise your content titles and meta descriptions with related keywords to get traffic.

For example,

If you publish an article about "The Best Diet for Reducing Belly Fat" on your blog, use related keywords such as best diet and belly fat in your title and description. This helps the search engines recognise the purpose of your content and rank it.

Additionally, if you create content on social media sites like Instagram, make sure to include your keywords in the captions and hashtags to allow the algorithm to recommend your content to related audiences.

If you have enough money, you can use paid ads such as Facebook ads, Google ads, and Instagram ads to drive traffic to your opt-in page or affiliate offer.

But make sure to write compelling ad copies and optimise your opt-in page or landing page for better conversions.

Solo ad is my favourite paid traffic source because it helps me build my email list very quickly. Moreover, it doesn't require any technical skills, like running ads on Facebook or Google.

Disclosing your affiliate relationships is very important in affiliate marketing because it shows transparency and trust with your audience.

It's a way of letting your audience know that you may earn a commission if they make a purchase through your affiliate links.

5 Benefits of Disclosing Your Affiliate Relationships

1. Maintains Trust: Disclosing your affiliate relationships builds trust with your audience by being transparent about your motives for promoting products. It shows that you value honesty and integrity.

2. Compliance with Regulations: Many jurisdictions require affiliates to disclose their relationships with advertisers to comply with consumer protection laws and regulations.

3. Avoids Deception: Without disclosure, your audience may feel deceived if they discover that you're earning a commission from products you recommend without their knowledge.

4. Enhances Credibility: Being transparent about your affiliate relationships enhances your credibility as a trustworthy source of information. It shows that you're honest about your affiliations and recommendations.

5. Long-term Relationships: Disclosing your affiliate relationships fosters long-term relationships with your audience. When they know you're upfront about your affiliations, they're more likely to continue trusting and engaging with your content.

How to Disclose Your Affiliate Relationships:

1. Clear Disclosure Statement: Include a clear and conspicuous disclosure statement on your website, blog post, social media post, or video description. Use simple language that explicitly states your relationship with the products or services you're promoting.

2. Prominent Placement: Place the disclosure statement where it's easily noticeable, such as at the beginning of your content or near affiliate links.

3. Use of Disclosures in Social Media: On platforms like Instagram or Twitter, use hashtags like #ad, #affiliate, or #sponsored to disclose your affiliate relationships.

Now you know what the best way to do affiliate marketing is. Therefore, I encourage you to follow the steps one by one.

These step-by-step guides helped to build a strong foundation for my affiliate marketing business.

Choosing a profitable niche, doing step-by-step market research for content creation, and building your email list are the most important parts of affiliate marketing.

If you want to learn the advanced method of affiliate marketing for consistent sales and recurring commissions, I recommend my favourite Affiliate Marketing Course here...