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4 Beginner Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

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4 beginner affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid

Have you ever asked, why isn’t it working? Why am I not converting any sales?  It can be often frustrating when our Affiliate Marketing business isn’t achieving the goals we have set out.  In this post we will explore common beginner affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid.  Many of these are down to our mindset, but that doesn’t mean we cannot rescue the situation.  Affiliate Marketing is awesome business model for a work from home job, done correctly and avoiding these mistakes.

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE – One of the ways I try to cover the costs of maintaining Best Affiliate Marketing Tools is via a small number of affiliate partnerships (with tools I genuinely use) where I get a small percentage commission on sales made via referral. You don’t pay any more for purchasing via my affiliate links.  If you click one of my affiliate links, your support is really appreciated!  Learn more here.

Let’s get into the Mistakes to Avoid…

Irrelevant & Confusing Content

Staying highly relevant to your audience is paramount to succeeding in Affiliate Marketing.  It is also easy to be too broadIrrelevant & Confused Content when choosing a niche.  The narrower you can choose a niche the more likely you will start to see better traffic and conversions.  But many when starting out think they have chosen a ‘Niche” when actually they have chosen a category.  For example, they choose home appliances and create loads of content about too many different types of home appliances – kitchen, lounge, smart tech, lighting, etc.  When someone clicks on their website and sees a lot of content that has a loose connection, it can show that the website owner is just clutching at anything.  The reader gets confused about the message and decides to look elsewhere.  So, a key element is narrowing the niche down as much as possible:

  • Home Appliances
    • Kitchen
      • Food Preparation
        • Microwaves
        • Oven
          • Oven Cleaners
          • Oven Gloves

The narrower you can start, the better you will find becoming an authority site on that niche.

Also, consider the fact that when someone clicks on a link about a given subject, that is what they will find.  I find it very frustrating when you click on a link about something, and the web page just has a load of ads and nothing to do with what I was looking for.  You need to ensure you put your reader first in all decisions.

Selling Instead of Helping

Selling not HelpingI have never liked going into a showroom and having a sales advisor selling a product to me. I would rather check out everything and then if I had any questions, I would ask a sales advisor.  It is the same online, people are looking for help online.  Whether it be a problem they have (which you have the answer to) or help understanding a product.  Readers want to know what the product is, what benefits there are to that product, your opinion on that product before they can make up their own mind.

If you constantly sell to their readers without answering these questions you will find you fail.  Help them with these questions and conversions will happen.

Ineffective Introductions & Conclusions

Let’s be honest, not many people will read every paragraph in your post.  You have 2 opportunities to grab their attention and inspire them to read the rest.  If the first paragraph (introduction) does not grab them, then you have no chance.  You have about 30 seconds to get them to want to read the rest and respect your opinion.  That is your Featured Image (needs to be highly relevant to what they are looking for) and a couple of sentences that make them believe they will get the answers they want.

If you grab this attention, you need to ensure the conclusion to the post is a succinct review of the post with a clear message.

I notice I do it with Video Game reviews, I read the intro and check out the final verdict. Then I decide whether I will dig into more of the article.  We cannot help it, our attention spans are not designed to sit there and read a massive volume of text, unless it grabs our attention.  This is key to ensuring you avoid these mistakes.

Not Doing Keyword Research

I recently wrote a great post on the importance of doing keyword research, check it out for more detailed information.  But if you are not doing effective keyword research for your posts, how will you get any traffic.

Writing Content is only part of the process, without any traffic you will find it very hard to succeed at Affiliate Marketing.  Ensure you complete keyword research and choose keywords that will help you get traffic, I like the low-hanging-fruit technique, check out more here.

Take this post, if I used the keyword ‘Affiliate Marketing Mistakes’ I could only hope to get a chunk of what is only 40 searches a month, with 200 competing posts for the same keyword.  By choosing a better keyword “beginner affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid” that changes the dynamic completely, over 100 monthly searches with 13 competing posts.

Being Impatient & Cutting Corners

Success in Affiliate Marketing is about the long game, it will not become a success overnight.  It takes time and effort, but where newbies get it wrong is they get impatient and start cutting corners.  Watch out for these as they can end up destroying your chances of becoming successful.

Using a Low-Quality Website with Duplicate Content

It can be easy to buy into these ideas where they sell you the idea of a website where you do not need to create any content.  It is all done for you, and you just need to sit there and watch the money come in…  Yeah, I wish.

Duplicate ContentThese will not make you any money.  The search engines (like Google) have ways to identify duplicate content and will penalise the website with it on.  Meaning you will not appear in the search results = meaning no conversions.

Your website needs to part of your brand, so it needs to be high quality with content that is unique and created by you on your given niche helping people – that is how you succeed at Affiliate Marketing.

Buying ‘Fake’ Traffic

If you search online, there are opportunities to buy traffic.  They promise it is real traffic with real people.  I have tried it in the past.  Fake

Your Google Analytics lights up with loads of traffic, and it might help with rankings (a little).  But what I found was, there was no cut through with this traffic and it had more of a detrimental effect once you have stopped buying the traffic as your traffic drastically drops.  And, none of this traffic actually is real – as they didn’t interact with the posts or join the email list, etc.

So, I would focus more on getting natural rankings and interactions, this will help your conversions much better.

Following the Herd (Shiny Object Syndrome)

What I mean by this, and I have been guilty of it in the past, is trying something too early because everyone is doing it.  I’ll give you an example, as part of my Wealthy Affiliate membership there is weekly webinars and the last couple of weeks has been about Managing Website Design through CSS.

Following the HerdThis is great training, don’t get me wrong, But I could go away and spend ages on messing with the design of my websites – but at the end of the day, it is the content that is important in the early days.  So what I am saying is focus on creating relevant content, don’t add an email list until you are getting plenty of traffic (it is another feature you need to keep checking on, that gets in the way of creating content). Video is great, but if you are not sure how to do it and you are not getting a lot of traffic, then focus on written content.

There are plenty of examples where an experienced Affiliate Marketer will be doing something, and you think it would be great to do in your business (shiny object – it is working for them, so I will do it).  But most of these things are for when you are scaling your business.  That is key, when you start converting sales, that is when you can start exploring these different aspects.

Our Own Expectations

There are a few bits with Affiliate Marketing, where we need to hard on ourselves when it comes to our expectations:

  • Passive Income – yes, but only when it has started converting sales
  • Timelines – the time it takes to start converting
  • Effort – the effort required to turn it into a scalable business

BusinessMost people looking for ways to earn money online comes down to the dislike of their day job.  So, it is understandable that they want to build this business as quickly as possible to leave their day job.  The problem comes from the fact that searching online you can find so many promises of a system that can turn you into a millionaire overnight.  Whilst these are typically scamming people, it doesn’t stop people believing them and falling into the traps.

Affiliate Marketing is a very legitimate way of earning money – but it is a business and not a past-time.

We also need to consider our expectations with how much we can earn.  I recently read a great post about how a fellow affiliate marketer’s first goal was to earn $33 a day.  It doesn’t sound much, but that is $990/month.

If one of your goals is paying off debt towards being able to work from home, that is a massive step forward.  But when you think $33, it doesn’t seem much.

Most brick businesses will not turn a profit within 12 months, I know the overheads are lower with an online business, but I didn’t earn anything online for 6 months.

You need to stay motivated that the conversions will come.  Set yourself your first financial target (keep it realistic), then once you achieve it you can target a higher target.

Ultimately Not Treating It Like a Business!

Affiliate Marketing is a business model and not something you can play at!  To avoid these mistakes, that is the number one piece of advice I can give you.

Highly relevant Quality Content on a Quality Website that Helps People will always win out against the rest.

It is a great way of earning money online, but requires time, effort and focus to reap the benefits of it.  If you would like an awesome step-by-step guide that takes you through the correct steps for starting an online affiliate marketing business, I recommend you read my Wealthy Affiliate review.

If you are struggling with affiliate marketing, it might be down to a number of the reasons we have gone through in this post, there may be others.  But I am hoping you have a better understanding of the main reasons, and that is down to our mindset with it.

Starting a business takes a lot out of us and losing patience with it is easily done.  But remain focused on the reason why you want to succeed at Affiliate Marketing – My reasons are it will allow me more time to spend with my family.

I am sure you will have your own reasons, share them with me in the comments below.

If you need any help or advice to do with affiliate marketing or you need help getting out of the rut of your current business – drop me a note below in the comments and I will try to help in any way I can.

What is Keyword Research in SEO & How to Master it Like a Pro

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What is Keyword Research in SEO

Keyword research and SEO are one of the first things you need to grasp when starting out in the online world, getting your website found by the search engines and getting it to page one are key steps in any new online business.

This post will go into what is keyword research in SEO and how to master it like a pro in a simple way for anyone to understand.

Let’s start with what is SEO and what it has to do with Keyword Research.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is around ensuring your website, your content and anything else on your website is optimised ready for search engines to find it. This is typically achieved through a plugin like ‘All-in-one SEO’ or Yoast. A plug-in like this will tell the search engines about your website so it can get ranked.

But when it comes to your content, then that is where keyword research is important. But what is a keyword?

What is a Keyword?

The first thing to get your head around is it can be more than one word – any word or phrase that you type into a search engine – Google, Bing, YouTube is a keyword.  When you type in that keyword, the search engines respond with a list of the most relevant content for that given keyword.

What is a Keyword?

When you submit content to a search engine, it is checked for relevance to the keyword, the quality of the content and one of the major recent changes is that it is checked against being mobile friendly.  It also changes against traffic, the more traffic a post gets the higher it will be up in the rankings.

The main reason why you need to do keyword research is down to the fact that a common keyword will already be swamped with authority sites that mean you will find it very hard to rank high against these sites to begin with.

What is Keyword Research?

Keyword Research with the right tool, will make your job so much easier.  Rather than typing up a great article against a highly competitive keyword and getting no results. You could put that same article against a lucrative low-hanging-fruit keyword and it gets you on page one of the search results.  This means people are more likely to click on your link.

Keyword research is all about understanding the number of searches there are for a given keyword and also how much competition you will have against that given keyword.

To show you an example, I have typed “what is keyword research” into my chosen keyword research tool, Jaaxy.

Keyword Research in Jaaxy

You can see that there are a number of columns, lets first go into what they all mean.

Avg – This is the average number of searches for that keyword in a given month on Google.

Traffic – How many clicks you can expect if you are ranking at the top of page one

QSR – these stands for Quality Score Results, the number of websites you will be up against (Your Competition)

KQI – Keyword Quality Indicator, Green is great, yellow ok and avoid the red ones.

SEO – A score based on traffic and competition, the higher the number the more likely you are to rank higher.

Domains – this will let you know if that keyword is available as a domain name.

Let’s go back to the results for that keyword, if I had chosen the top one ‘what is keyword research’ it has an amazing number of monthly searches and traffic, but I would be competing against 223 other websites for this keyword that is why the SEO score is lower.  This is not impossible to rank for, but definitely will make it a lot harder for a new website owner to compete for.

By choosing “What is Keyword Research in SEO” as my keyword, from the scores I might not get as much traffic, but I am actually more likely to get ranked higher for it as I only need to make sure my content is better than 43 competing websites.

So, I am more likely to rank on page one of Google with the longer keyword than the one with more monthly searches.

Ranking top spot on page one of Google is the holy grail for website owners.  Statistically not many will go to page 2 or 3 for searches.  Most will only check out the top one!

Long-tail keywords and low-hanging-fruit keywords

Using a keyword research tool allows you to highlight opportunities with long tail keywords.  People type into the search engines what they are searching for, not just short words.  They can be quite specific as it is really easy to type in a specific problem, i.e. “How do I fix a Broken Link on a Website?”

Keyword Research Jaaxy

Typing this in shows that specific keyword does not get a lot of traffic, but the second one down shows that on average 64 people are looking for a way of fixing this problem but there are no sites targeting that keyword – this is what we call a low-hanging fruit.

At the moment, if you put that keyword term into Google, Google will show the next best answer for that keyword.

But if your niche was targeting that keyword and wrote an awesome post on it, you could get that top spot easily as there is no competition.  Google searches content for relevance as well!

That is why Keyword Research is so important to Website Owners, Affiliate Marketers and Bloggers – Anyone with an online business!

The ideal figures are typically an Average score of over 100 (searches) and a QSR of less than 50 if you are just starting out and building up your authority, once you have become an authority you can start targeting more keywords.

Once you have started ranking, you may find you can change these goal posts, as sometimes when you do the research of what others have posted against those keywords – you might be able to write a better post that would be better received by readers.

Key Advice for Keyword Research

At the end of the day, your content needs to be read by someone, so there are a couple of things you need to make sure you do when doing keyword research:

  1. Use keywords or keyword phrases that make sense. The keyword you want might have a great score, but if it doesn’t make sense it will put someone off clicking your link
  2. Do not keyword stuff – as in put it into every paragraph.  I suggest you use a keyword in the title, mention it in the first paragraph and then again in the conclusion.

How to Master Keyword Research

Keyword Research is a vital part of your online business and deserves respect and the right tool to help you not only get the right keywords but also make it easy to do on a scale.  Starting out, one of the mistakes I did was find a keyword and then write an article, then find another keyword and so on.  This is so inefficient and means you do not publish as many posts as you would like.

When starting out, if you can get keyword research done right and publish content on a regular basis you will find your rankings will definitely get a boost.

There are a few free keyword research tools out there, but they do not all stack up really.

Google do offer a free keyword tool as part of their AdWords (advertising) platform, but as this is aimed at PPC (Pay-Per-Click) unless you have a lot of money to play with this will not be enough to target SEO properly.

My recommended Keyword Research Tool is Jaaxy.

The best strategy for keyword research is to sit there and research keywords until you have around 50 low-hanging-fruit keywords to target.  There you have 50 article ideas to write about.  Get in the habit of doing some keyword research, doing some article research, then when you are ready to write articles – focus on putting everything else away (especially social media) and write.

It will definitely make you more efficient.  Anyway, back to keyword research.

One of the main reasons behind my Recommendation of Jaaxy is I genuinely use it and feel it is a worthwhile investment into my business.

Without Keyword Research there would really be no point – but a recent report shows 60% of keywords are not being fully utilised so it shows how important you get your research correct and also shows the opportunity out there for those who do it seriously.

Recommended Keyword Research Tool – Jaaxy is for Pros!

Any professional online business owner will tell you how important a keyword research tool is.  They all may use a different one, but I would like to share with you the reasons behind why I recommend Jaaxy to a beginner and why it will transform your keyword research and make you work like a pro too.

Professionals use Jaaxy as well as it being ideal for beginners due to simplicity of the platform.  Easy to Use, Quick Results & Awesome Tools.

Jaaxy + Wealthy Affiliate

Jaaxy is owned by the guys behind Wealthy Affiliate, it is incorporated into their WA platform for Premium Members.  This has the added advantage of being part of the make-up of a training platform that has all of the tools required for an online business in one place.  It also means that there are numerous training videos on how to master Keyword Research with Jaaxy.

Jaaxy is More than just a Keyword Research Tool

One of the key things I needed when starting out with my first website was a way of keeping an eye on my niche, also what were people searching for in my niche.  Jaaxy has a couple of great features that help you with this.

Alphabet Soup Technique – Type you chosen keyword into this and it will generate the A-Z of what people have been searching for.  This gives you many different ideas of what you could target for content.

Search Analysis – Check out what other websites are also targeting that keyword you are after, get some great detail about their website.

Search Results - Jaaxy

Affiliate Programs – Affiliate Marketing is an awesome of earning income online, but know what programs are out there (that are genuine) in your given niche will be listed under this tab.

SiteRank – Know where your website is ranking for a given keyword with this tool.

How Much Does Jaaxy Cost?

A professional tool will always cost something, but the guys behind Jaaxy want you to experience it yourself before making any decision about investing money.  The Starter membership allows you to do 30 keyword searches, no charge (no credit card required). Make up your own mind about whether Jaaxy is for you.

Jaaxy Prices

If you find Jaaxy is the keyword research tool for you, then there are a couple of membership offers.  If you are new to online business and want to benefit from an awesome keyword research tool and all the help and support and tools that Wealthy Affiliate offer, then I do suggest you read my Wealthy Affiliate review.

Jaaxy is built into WA and when you scale up your business the enterprise membership is half price too.

But if you are starting out and want to benefit from awesome training, tools to build up a website and an excellent keyword research tool – Wealthy Affiliate has it all.

Final Word on Keyword Research & SEO

The foundations of building an online business rely heavily and good keyword research that is SEO friendly.  Highly relevant content that is engaging and useful to the readers is really key, but if you do not do any keyword research it will be pot luck as to whether you rank for a post.

If you are still learning the ropes of an online business, you will find that there are many different options out there for a keyword research tool – so why should Jaaxy be any different to the others you may have found or are using, and the simple answer is the help and support that comes with it.  Joining Wealthy Affiliate doesn’t just get you a keyword tool, it gives you access to a community of internet entrepreneurs that you can bounce ideas off of and ask for help at any time.  Whether it be Keyword Research, SEO topics, WordPress, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Selling Your Own Products online.  There is so much on there to help you, including an awesome keyword research tool with some other abilities that make brainstorming ideas for your business so easy.

If you would like to try Jaaxy with some keywords, please try the plugin below – you will get 30 searches to make up your own mind:

If you would love to learn more about Wealthy Affiliate, here is my extensive review for you to learn more.
If you have any questions about keyword research or anything to do with an online business, please drop them in the comments below and I will definitely get back to you to help.

How to Add Google Analytics to WordPress – It’s Easier Than You Think!

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How to Add Google Analytics to WordPress

Are you looking for an easy to follow guide that shows you How to Add Google Analytics to WordPress?  Then you’ve definitely landed in the right place.   Google has over two thirds of the traffic online, so if you want to know how to ensure your blog fits your target audience, or even help understanding who is visiting your site, you need to have it installed on your site.

Read more

How to Make Money Online with Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

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How to Make Money Online with Affiliate marketing for beginners

Hey everyone,

We will be exploring a common subject for those starting out online and that is how to monetise your blog with (mainly) Affiliate Marketing.  If you are going to invest your time and effort into creating an online presence, you might as well be able to make some money at it.

I mention blogging, as there are some that state you do not need a website to do affiliate marketing, but I will disagree a little.  Social Media is very important to your online business, but advertising on only one does restrict your reach and not all social media types are great depending on your niche.

Whilst I explore how to make money online with affiliate marketing for beginners, there are a couple of other routes you could take to monetise your blog.

How do you Make Money Blogging?

Blogging allows you to express your opinions, help your audience and grow your audience. Then you can start earningHow do you start a blog money by:

  • Joining Ad Networks (for example, AdSense). By offering up space on your website, you can earn revenue through interaction from your audience.
  • Sell Physical or Digital Products.
  • Consult & Hold Events

But the most popular is Affiliate Marketing.  One of the key benefits of affiliate marketing is you control what you promote.

You can never really control what adverts are shown on your website. AdSense tries to make it relevant to the user based on their google interactions, but I refuse to use most of them as they could put my audience off.

If you have your own products, then great you could definitely follow this route, but I would typically say most are turning towards Affiliate Marketing.

But What is Affiliate Marketing?

There are 3 parties involved in Affiliate Marketing.  You (the affiliate), the Company (Has the Product) and the Customer (Buyer).

Affiliate MarketingLet’s use Amazon as an example – they have an affiliate program called Amazon Associates. You sign up for a free account and choose a product that is very relevant to your blog.

Let’s say you have a blog on the home.

You write a well-written review on that product (a toaster). You include your affiliate link in that review which when the reader clicks on that link, they are sent to Amazon and Amazon knows you were the one who sent them to that product.

They buy that toaster for $100.  You will have earned 6% commission, earning $6.

Let’s break that down into a simple graphic:

That figure might not seem much but imagine if you had 100 people read your review and buy a toaster through your affiliate link, that is $600 through what is a passive income type.

If you would like to know more about Affiliate Marketing, check out my post “How Does Affiliate Marketing Really Work?”.

How Do I Find Products or Services in Your Niche?

This will depend on the niche you have set your blog up on. To help find products there are 2 ways you could find the right products or services in your niche.

Affiliate Networks

Affiliate Networks have multiple products and services available giving you access to plenty of options with just one account.  I would suggest you be careful with what you pick (depending on your niche) In the Make Money Online niche, there are also a few undesirable products in them, but if you do your research correctly, you can also use the product as a “watch-out” post.

Some of the top Affiliate Networks are:

  1. Awin.com
  2. Shareasale
  3. CJ Affiliates (formerly Commission Junction)
  4. Rakuten (formerly LinkShare)
  5. Click Bank

Awin is the largest in the world and gives you access to a lot of products and services. It also helps give you ideas for content and reviews too.

Affiliate Programs

An alternative way is to sign up with individual companies via affiliate program.  Just type in Google “Product + Affiliate Program” and you will see if they have one and the website details.  You will be surprised how many companies are joining the affiliate program format.

But when searching for products or services, you do need to make sure it is a natural fit for your audience.

On average, 42% of Affiliate Marketers promote between one and 10 products.

Natural Fit to Your Audience

Commission rates differ massively across the affiliate marketing field, but that doesn’t mean we can just go for something that doesn’t fit with your website.  Take this site, it is about affiliate marketing and affiliate marketing tools, imagine if there were banners and posts about stuff that was nothing to do with it, i.e. a toaster.  Do you think I would get any traction from that??  It might actually put readers off, as it looks like I am not taking them seriously.

I’ll go back to the amazon example, it might only be 6% but if the website is right, content is right, I help that person with their questions and then they buy it and I am helping more and more people all the time, then you will earn the same as a 60% commission product where it is only bought once or twice a year?

Keep it Relevant.

How Much Will I Get Paid?

Commission rates vary depending on the type of product and service.

Physical products have a lower commission rate due to the cost of producing it and shipping it, Digital products or services tend to have higher commission rates.

The average would tend to sit around 30-50%.  Amazon has a wide variety of products to use, however their commission rate sits around 6-10%

Will I Always Be Accepted to the Affiliate Programs?

This again depends on the program or network.

A small number will want to see proof of traffic to your blog and others will need you to earn a number of referrals to stay in the program.

I found this with Amazon if you do not earn a referral in 6 months, they do take you out of the program, but you can instantly reapply.

Others will let you join without much hassle, for example Click Bank aren’t particular about who can join their affiliate program.

Top Niches Ideas for Affiliate Marketing

If you are a little stuck on a niche to use, below are the topics people are seeking help in:

  • Health/Fitness Related Niches
    • Losing Weight
    • Health & Beauty
    • Reduce Stress
  • Technology/Gaming
    • Smart Devices (is huge at the moment)
  • Lifestyle/Home/Garden
    • Fashion
    • High-End Luxury
    • Travel
    • Sports & Outdoors
  • Online Jobs/Make Money Online
    • Business
    • Finance & Insurance Advice

Creating Awesome Content to Drive Sales

Awesome Content

Creating content is the key to any blog, let alone with affiliate marketing.  There are plenty of opportunities for creating content that will help you monetise your website:

  • Genuine Product Reviews
  • Blog Posts that:
    • Solve Problems in the given Niche
    • Answer Questions
  • In text Content Links
  • Email Promotions
  • Social Media Promotions
  • Create added value for those using your affiliate links
    • Free eBooks
    • An exclusive Facebook groups
  • Supplementing resources to support with any product you promote

Can I Compete with Established Affiliate Marketers?

Of course, you can! Affiliate Marketing is a major growth area at the moment – with revenue going from $3billion in 2016 to Can I Compete Online?$6billion in 2018 and yet there it is still growing.

Many companies are realising how expensive it is to have massive marketing campaigns, but if they use the affiliate marketing route – they will get more exposure and pay a lot less in commissions.

Some niches are more competitive than others, but again if you target the right keywords with awesome content you can easily benefit from Affiliate Marketing.

Keeping Everything Legit

There are obviously some things to consider when it comes to the legal side of affiliate marketing.

Honesty & Transparency

This is also key to building up a trust with the reader, if they trust you they will consider buying off of you.  Be honest with them about the use of affiliate links. Add a disclaimer – see mine below:

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE

“One of the ways I try to cover the costs of maintaining Best Affiliate Marketing Tools and offer free courses to my audience is via a small number of affiliate partnerships (with tools I genuinely use) where I get a small percentage commission on sales made via referral. You don’t pay any more for purchasing via my affiliate links – in fact in some cases you will even receive a discount. If you click one of my affiliate links, your support is really appreciated!  Learn more here”.

By placing a disclaimer in your website, it helps with your honesty, it also helps with the legal side of affiliate marketing.  There are stringent laws in place. You will need to add an affiliate disclosure page to your website.

Conclusion

There you go, how to make money with affiliate marketing for beginners.  I would be lying it was as simple as that.  I would not have been successful with affiliate marketing if it hadn’t been for the help and support of Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate is a training platform, specialising in Affiliate Marketing with Affiliate Marketing Tools, Website Builder and Expert Help & Support.

I joined about 2 years ago and have not looked back. If you do want to start the right way in Affiliate Marketing, I do advise you to read my Wealthy Affiliate Review and make your own decision on whether their platform will help you.

If you have any questions about Affiliate Marketing, getting started or you are struggling with Affiliate Marketing in general – please get in touch, leave me a comment below and I promise to get back to you as soon as.  I am here to help anyone I can.

Thanks for reading

John

Essential Affiliate Marketing Tools for Beginners

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Essential Affiliate Marketing Tools for Beginners

Affiliate Marketing is a great way of earning income online.  Getting started can seem a bit daunting without the right help and support, but I want to offer you that right now with this post.

There will be many posts out there trying to sell you a load of tools that promise success by handing over a load of money, then you realise that you still need to invest a load of time and effort and you would have been better off just doing it properly in the first place…

I want to share with you my essential affiliate marketing tools for beginners, many are free and aid me in my affiliate marketing business.  There are a couple of paid ones, but I will be clear and upfront – I will also tell you why I paid for them and the benefits they gave me.

Depending on where you are with your affiliate marketing adventure, the most important ingredient is a website.

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE

One of the ways I try to cover the costs of maintaining Best Affiliate Marketing Tools and offer help and advice to my audience is via a small number of affiliate partnerships (with tools I genuinely use) where I get a small percentage commission on sales made via referral. You don’t pay any more for purchasing via my affiliate links – in fact in some cases you will even receive a discount. If you click one of my affiliate links, your support is really appreciated!  Learn more here.

Website & Hosting – Get the Right One!

Search the internet and you will stumble on many free website builders, this is an option but not necessarily the right option. Let me explain why.

One of the key factors you are trying to build with a reader is TRUST.  But many of these free website builders give you a minimal website with their branding all over it – and when you actually want to start adding features to it, you need to pay.  I have found that WordPress is a great option for affiliate marketing, it is really easy to use and is customisable through plugins to get the look and feel for your website.

My personal recommendation for hosting is SiteRubix. The guys behind Wealthy Affiliate (I’ll get onto this in a moment) have built SiteRubix into a great hosting option for WordPress website owners. I host all of my websites on their hosting, as it comes with some great benefits.

Full Domain Websites hosted on Wealthy Affiliate’s SiteRubix benefit from:

  • Free SSL Certificates (usually $100 per website)
  • Site Speed – Their hosting allows websites to be 20x the speed of usual websites
  • Site Protect – Instead of using a plugin to stop spam, they do it at the server, meaning it doesn’t slow your website down
  • Site Security – Suite of website security features to stop hacking, malware and bot-nets.
  • They always run 2 versions of your site to ensure it doesn’t go down.

Now I do pay for Wealthy Affiliate as a Premium Member and I get these benefits on up to 25 full domains and 25 subdomains.  So, I could have 25 full domain websites with SSL (which could cost $2500 a year) for $49/month or $359/year. All I pay on top is the domain name, which is usual anywhere.

Now, I know you might be thinking “I am just starting out, that is expensive”. I do appreciate that, but there is much more to Wealthy Affiliate and I am not expecting you to spend a dime. Their Starter Membership is designed to let you make your own decision about their platform but let me share with you what else they offer:

  • Step-by-Step Guides on all elements of Affiliate Marketing, Online Business, Search Engines, Social Engagement & Media, Website Building & Design, Getting Free Traffic, Creating Content, Google Analytics & Webmaster, Bing Webmaster, Email Marketing, Video Marketing and much more
  • WordPress Website Builder with Hosting included
  • Keyword Research Tool
  • Website Engagement Tools
  • Expert Help & Support

It is a community of internet entrepreneurs all with a similar vision of building an online business within affiliate marketing.  Networking is really key online, and we offer our help and support at all times. The training is great for beginners to ensure they achieve their goals without paying some of the silly prices out there on “Push Button Systems”.

Their free starter membership is great for you to see if you would benefit yourself.

Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool

jaaxy keyword research tool

Keyword research is so important nowadays.  Just writing content will not do the trick, you need to know that you can rank for a given keyword. If you are unsure what a keyword is, I will explain.  When you typed something into google today “Affiliate Marketing Tools” that is the keyword.  It doesn’t have to be one word, it can be a phrase.  When you create content for your website you want to target a low competition keyword as you are just starting out.  If you pick a keyword with too much competition, it will be impossible for you to achieve the first page on the search engines.  There is no point if you cannot get on the first page, as people will not typically see your website (post).

The keyword research tool I use is Jaaxy.  It has some great features and was built by the people behind Wealthy Affiliate.  As well as keyword research, it also includes tools to do:

  • Track your website rankings for keywords
  • Search Analysis – analyse your competition and SEO trends
  • Alphabet Soup – Uncover millions of niches and keywords
  • Brainstorm HQ – find trending, popular and lucrative ideas
  • Affiliate Programs – search and find relevant affiliate programs in your niche

Jaaxy is actually included in a premium Wealthy Affiliate membership, give me full access to this great research tool.

If you would like to try Jaaxy and see if it is right for you, they offer a free version which will allow you to do 30 searches.  They would prefer you make your own decision about their platform before spending any money.

Start your free searches here

I benefit every day from Wealthy Affiliate and Jaaxy, but there are also some other Tools I find really useful and integral to my business.  They are free tools, but are great to use.

Google Suite

Google have a suite of useful free tools to help you monitor your website and its traffic. To use these tools, you will require a google account. Once signed up you can use this for a number of different features:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great tool all around how the visitors to your website behave.  Do they engage with your website, do they stay on your posts or leave straightaway? You can monitor:

  • Demographics and Age ranges of your visitors
  • Content Engagement
  • New Users vs recurring users
  • Real Time Users

I’ll be doing a more detailed post on google analytics shortly, but it is a powerful tool that you need to use to understand how your website is going.

Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console)

Google is great at finding new content, but this allows you to connect your site (via a sitemap) to google to ensure they know when you have created content and get it ranked. It also allows you to explore where your content is ranking, how many impressions (people have seen it but not clicked on it) you have. It is another great feature Google offer.

Google Alerts

Keep up to date with the latest news in your niche straight to your inbox. It is impossible to find everything related to your niche without a little help.

Canva – Logos, Graphics, Infographics

Canva

Canva is a great online tool for graphics.  We are not all graphic designers, but this website gives you a lot of functionality even on the free version.  I used it for my logo, each of my featured images is designed on it.  Infographics are easy to design on it.  It is an essential tool for your website.

Lumen5 – Video Creator

Not everyone is great in front of the camera, and yet video is so important these days.  Youtube has become the second biggest search engine after Google (who own Youtube).  Lumen5 is a great little tool that creates videos from your content, example of this post is below.

The free version does have limitations, but I have not come into a situation where I wasn’t happy with the results.

Conclusion

There are many tools, don’t get it wrong there are many paid tools out there that do seem to be a real benefit, but without a foundation (website) and traffic (readers) there is no point investing money in them yet.  There is no “push button system’ where you will instantly earn money.  Many that promise it are scams, the others seem unreliable.  The only system I do recommend is Wealthy Affiliate due to the benefits I have gained from them.

The starter membership allows people to make their own decision and many starter members earn from it and then upgrade later on. But with a great website builder, great hosting, awesome training on all aspects of an online business, Jaaxy keyword tool – they help people get online the right way.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post, if you have any questions about affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing tools or Wealthy Affiliate – please leave me a comment below and I promise to get back to you.

5 Qualities for Success with Affiliate Marketing – Avoid The Most Common Mistakes!

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Qualities For Success with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a great choice for an online business, but many people wrongly assume it is an easy option to earning money online.  The premise is very simple, but the execution of the business will determine how successful you are.

In this post I am going to go through 5 Qualities for Success in Affiliate Marketing that I have found very useful to building my online business up.  Let’s start with what is Affiliate Marketing first…

What is Affiliate Marketing?

If you would like a full explanation of what affiliate marketing, then read my post “How Does Affiliate Marketing Really Work“.

But in short, with affiliate marketing you have 3 parties.  You (the affiliate), a product/service (company selling it) and the potential buyer (consumer).

Signing up with an affiliate program allows you to promote a product or service on your blog or through social media and if the buyer purchases it, you get a commission. The affiliate program gives you a unique link that tells them it was you who introduced them and then you get paid.

The actual process for Affiliate Marketing is simple, someone clicks your link and you benefit from a percentage of the sale.  But, people think this will happen really quickly, as in a couple of days or weeks and that is simply not the case.

It would be great if it could, but the truth about it is the time needed to build up trust with the search engines and the readers who will be visiting your blog.

These 5 qualities we will be discussing are all aimed at both being successful but also understanding what is required and the time needed to see it through.

Let’s get on with the 5 Qualities for Success in Affiliate Marketing.

A Willingness to Invest Time & Effort

Let’s be honest, any true affiliate marketer will tell you that it will take a lot of time and effort to build a business up to aA Willingness to Invest Time & Effort point where you are earning a living from it. The key word there is Business.

Any business owner will tell you that you need to build a strategy, a business plan and invest in the time and effort in the beginning to get it started and out there in the public domain.

Affiliate Marketing is a passive income stream, but that doesn’t mean you sit back and do nothing.

The statement that it is passive, gives many an impression that you can sit back and watch the money come in.  But the only reason it is passive, is you do not need to present to oversee the sale.

Without traffic to your website, you will not see any of these sales and that is where you need to invest time in research, creating content, connecting with others in your niche, monitoring traffic and which strategies work and which don’t.

Creating quality content requires time and effort, constantly reviewing it to see whether your readers like it or not, does it help them, does it answer a question?

Do not expect Affiliate Marketing to be a quick win or an easy route to earning money at the start. Don’t get me wrong, when you do nail a strategy and it starts earning money it could continue to earn you money for years to come, with minimal tweaking – but you consistently need to find ways of keeping your business fresh and up-to-date with the competition.

A Constant Desire to Learn

This one came from an Affiliate Marketing expert who has 15 years’ experience, never stop learning!

A Constant Desire to LearnThink about how quick technology changes, any given business industry is constantly improving things, and this means there are new things to learn.

New techniques, new strategies, new systems.  Google gave just updated their webmaster tools, so this meant I needed to get my head around it to get the best out of the platform and the data it represents.

There is also the fact that there are other elements that you will need to learn to be successful:

There are many factors to an online business and it is key that you keep learning to become an authority in your niche.

I found a platform that has a step-by-step guide to building an online business with affiliate marketing and I have found them integral to my online business.

Wealthy Affiliate is a training platform with awesome tools to help build a business with a community of experts in affiliate marketing.

But whilst they will give you the tools, you need to utilise the 5 qualities to make it a success!

Self-Determination

Are you determined to become successful? Can you keep determined that the content you provide will be useful to the reader and help them with a problem or help them decide to make a purchase (with your affiliate link).

Consumers are very wary when it comes to things online and want to feel that there is a real person behind the website.  If Self-Determinationyou write poor content but loads of it – you will have a lot of content, but it doesn’t help you grow your business as the readers switch.

You need to make sure the content you write is the best you can do with helpful information that helps the reader.

It is also worth noting that when you are writing, you should be writing for one person.  Write it as though you were talking to one person, that is the art of blogging and helping people.  They want to feel like they have wrote it for you!

But it can also be easy to just sell – writing content that says “buy this”.

This doesn’t help them, they are searching online because they want to know whether it is the right product to buy for their circumstances, is there a better alternative.  If they knew they were going to buy something, they would have already bought it.

Be determined that your business will offer the best advice, the best support and the best products to buy.  Strive to help people, first and foremost and the sales will follow.  Never go and try and do it the other way around

Self-Discipline

The single most important fact about Affiliate Marketing is: If you play at it, you will never be successful!

The only way that you will turn it into a full-time earning career is to run it like a business.  If you are going to start it as a side gig for now, then you need to be strict about how much time you set aside each week to achieve your goals.

Many Affiliate Marketers started their business on the side of a full-time job, including myself.

The only way you can do it is to have a schedule – time to complete training, time to do keyword research, time to write an article, time to market on social media, etc.

It will be tough at first, but one you achieve your goals you will get a lot more time to spend on your business and enjoy a better work life balance and see the family more.

The other side to consider with self-discipline is self-control with distractions.

Think about how many times yourself or someone you know spends on their phone or social media.

Social Media is a fantastic tool to growing your business, but it is also one of the biggest distractions taking you away from doing tasks on your business, like creating that article you were going to write or that video you were going to record promoting your latest product review, instead you spend an hour going through Pinterest or going on Facebook.

It might be a good idea to write down a list of distractions, those that you can avoid and those you cannot avoid.  For example, your day job and your family (I have a 6-year-old) would be classed as distractions that you cannot avoid. It’s called life.

But social media, catching up on a tv show could be called avoidable distractions.

Some Optimism

The last quality, Optimism is perhaps the most important and the most difficult to keep in mind.

A lot of people are searching online for ways to earn money from home and they can get carried away with the many ways of doing it (at first glance). There are many ‘Get Rich Quick” schemes out there that are predominantly scams and can really affect the confidence people have of finding a way to earn money online.

Then many find something called Affiliate Marketing – It is a great way of earning money online and is billed as a ‘Passive Income’ method.

But the reason you need optimism with any online business is you will not see the rewards straightaway.  With one of my online businesses I did not see a return for 6 months, what if I had given up after 3 months as I hadn’t earned anything in that time.  It is key that you believe in yourself and your business.

Think of why you want to earn money online, not just to earn money.  I am talking about the lifestyle that this income can bring – I wanted to spend more time with my family, as well as get rid of the money worries I had.

In Summary

Done right, Affiliate Marketing is a very sound business model and can be very rewarding.

Helping others learn Affiliate Marketing and get started in affiliate marketing and all about the right tools in affiliate marketing is awesome and something I am very passionate about.

Harnessing these 5 qualities for Affiliate Marketing Online has been key to building up a profitable business and that is why I recommend them to anyone wanting to get started or struggling with their online business regardless of whether it is an affiliate marketing business or not.

Are you struggling to find a rhythm with your affiliate marketing business?  Do you want to ensure you start on the right foot?  I can help and I offer it willingly, if you want to get the best training out there for affiliate marketing with expert help and support.  Then I highly recommend you read my Wealthy Affiliate Review – See what fantastic tools and training they offer.

If you have any questions about affiliate marketing or need any help or support, just let me know. Drop me a comment below and I’ll get you an answer.

About Us

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about-john-gem

Hi, Welcome to Best Affiliate Marketing Tools!

Our blog is our way of documenting our online journey towards finding a way of making money online, through our top recommended business model called Affiliate Marketing.  This will include us finding and reviewing the different affiliate marketing training platforms and affiliate tools, and sharing our opinions on these on our blog! 

The biggest thing we have found is that there are a ton of scams out there, so we wanted to help others avoid these traps, and help keep you safe online and find only legitimate ways to make money online.

Our Story

First off, let us introduce ourselves.  We’re John and Gem.  We have been married for 13 years, although we actually got together when we went to the same school together, so have just celebrated being together for 22 years… I know, it’s a really long time…

Our online journey began when our son came along.  His name is Will, he is 8-years-old and he is our world.  But like most parents, when you have children you start to realise how much time you spend at work and you start to miss a lot of the key moments as he grows up.

I was missing out on so much of his life, and something needed to change…

Gem and I sat down and realised if we wanted to spend more time together as a family, and get out of the usual humdrum of work, we needed to find a “PASSIVE INCOME”.

I think everyone would love to find a passive income, where you could earn money even whilst you sleep…

It hasn’t been an easy journey, I’ve fallen into a couple of scams and it was because I tried to rush finding a way to make money, and that was my fatal flaw.

However…

Having gone through that experience I learned a lot, but I also vowed to try and help as many people as I could avoid those scams.  Get people to understand that those Get-Rich-Schemes only made the owners of those programs become richer, and that was at the expense of those looking for ways to make money online.

That is why we created this blog, to help you avoid those scams, understand the amount of effort that is required to achieve that passive income.  And it’s also to help you get started on a legitimate way to make money online, and offer some help and support when you need it.

Like I said, I did get caught out by a scam… but it did lead me to a legit way to make money online.  So, I can’t talk too badly about it as if I had never got caught up I would never have heard about a business model.  The business model we now use to make money.

That business model was called Affiliate Marketing, and finding it along with the training platform we used to learn everything about it, transformed our lives…  If you’ve never heard of it before, don’t worry we can go through exactly what it is.

But the potentials of it are endless… We’re still learning, we’re still finding ways to improve our strategies, but when you have help like we do, it becomes much easier to get results.

But when you can earn $175 in one day (which happened whilst we slept), you know that with the right strategy you can soon start planning for when you’re going to give up your day job and spent more time doing what you love…

Affiliate Marketing Income Example

But the biggest thing you need to remember is that whilst this is passive income, it doesn’t mean that you’ll not be required to put in some effort.  It took us 6 months to see our first sale.  It all depends on how much time you can spend on it.

But, what’s this affiliate marketing?  How does it work? 

Let’s go through that briefly now…

What's Affiliate Marketing?

I didn’t even know what Affiliate Marketing was, when I first landed on a blogpost about the subject.  But when I had got my head around it, I was surprised at how often I had been involved as a customer to the process, without even realising it…

In the simplest terms, it’s a “refer a friend” process.  If you’ve ever used an Uber or got a voucher through to give to a friend to use in return for a reduced fare, that is a version of Affiliate Marketing.

Online, it’s as simple as when you’re looking for whether to buy a product or not, you tend to look for reviews.  You land on a review that gives you valuable insight into that product, then you make a decision as to whether to buy it or not.

You click on the link that the reviewer includes that takes you to the merchant website and buy it.

You get the product you wanted, the owner of the product gets the sale.  And the Affiliate gets a commission for introducing a buyer to a seller.

It very much looks like this in action:

how-does-affiliate-marketing-really-work-

That same blog also recommended a training platform, that offered training, tools, support and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs to help us get started… That recommendation led us to joining the best training platform for those who want to get started with affiliate marketing…

It was a great and honest review of what affiliate marketing was, and how they had benefitted from a training platform.  I wanted to read more and read their Wealthy Affiliate Review.

The first thing I felt when researching Wealthy Affiliate and having been a member for over 2 years is the fact that it was full of honest people.

From the owners, to the thousands of active members everyone is honest about the work you are needing to put in to be successful with Affiliate Marketing.

It is often something that we don’t want to hear, because we are often looking for a way out.  Whether that is a way out of debt or a worthless job, we want a quick way out.

But one thing I can guarantee, is that if you go away from here and keep looking for a quicker route you will sit there in 6 months no nearer an escape.  And yet you could have had your very own Affiliate Marketing website starting to earn money at that point with the right help and support.

What Help Can We Provide You...

The one thing I would want to emphasis we can help you with is not just getting started, in a sense that is relatively easy.  But we’re not just about getting you started and then leaving you to it.

The help we want to provide is the ability to contact us at any time and we’re help you with the specific problem you have at that moment.

This isn’t a quick and easy route to making money.  I want to stress that, as you won’t just launch a blog and then see sales straightaway.  Wealthy Affiliate can help you follow the right strategy, with their training program.  They offer support from the community.  But there are times you want a specific answer to a specific question, and that’s what we will help you with…

There are many elements to affiliate marketing, and we’ll help you at every step of the way.

Affiliate Marketing is not a quick route to earning money online but done right it can easily exceed any financial goals you set and more.

That is what I loved about joining Wealthy Affiliate.  I had help to get started and help to achieve my goals of earning money and helping other people.

From what I have learned, it has helped us develop Gem’s wedding stationary business into a profitable business.

We all need to get started somewhere, but you need to be ready to grab your opportunity.

Are You Ready to Get Started...?

Taking the first step, is often the hardest part.  I bet you’re still not convinced at this point and that is perfectly understandable.  But that’s why we recommend Wealthy Affiliate as it’s completely free to get started.

With no credit card needed, you’ll get access to 10 free lessons, a free website, and our support.  The community will also be there to support you.  Take Wealthy Affiliate for a test drive and see if this is really the direction you wish to go with to achieving your goals.

The final thought I want to leave you with is that you will need to take action if you want to be successful!  If you want to find financial freedom and earn passive income, then you need to take action and keep taking action.

Like I said, we can offer you help, support every step of the way, but you’ll be required to be the one who takes action…

If you would like to learn a little more before you make your decision, here are a few useful posts that you will want to review first:

But if you want to get started with the best training platform you could find to get started, then click the button below to join Wealthy Affiliate with a FREE STARTER MEMBERSHIP:

wealthy-affiliate-free-sign-up
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Learn How to Create Your Own Passive Income Making Machine – 4 Steps to Success

Get Our 7-Day Passive Income Bootcamp For Beginners,
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The Free 7-Day Course + Our Blueprint will be sent to the email address you submit below:

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