Are you wondering “what does an affiliate marketer do“? An affiliate’s job is to sell affiliate products online. This can be done in a number of ways according to the strategy an affiliate uses. Some affiliates are bloggers whereas other use video. Some affiliates run paid advertising and others create online content. Videos, blog posts or social media platforms can all be used to attract an audience.
Most affiliates will however build an email list of subscribers. This is so they can automate an email marketing campaign and send out emails “en-mass” to an ever growing audience. To build their email list they provide some kind of value driven content (or run ads) in order to encourage people to join it. Here’s an example of an ebook I created to help people learn about affiliate marketing. It’s also known as a “lead magnet” because I give it away when people join my email list.
What Does An Affiliate Marketer Do?
Not all affiliate marketers create content like this, though. Some affiliates aren’t interested in blogging or creating their own content. They join affiliate programs which give them ready made content which they can use. They can then run paid advertising campaigns promoting that content.
Many affiliate programs offer products, images, video content and even pre-built email marketing campaigns which are already set up to help the affiliate. The affiliate only needs to set up their systems for selling online, and promote it through paid marketing. This can still take some time, but with pre-made sales materials it can be a lot simpler than creating lots of content yourself.
Learn more about this in the video (click on image below).
What Do Affiliate Marketers Do – Email Marketing
An autoresponder is key to success for an affiliate marketer; most successful affiliates will use one. An autoresponder allows affiliates to collect email details from prospective customers and build a relationship with them over time.
From a website, a visitor only has a small amount of time to buy something. But once someone has entered their email address into a landing page or website, the affiliate can follow up with them, emailing them regularly. This process can be automated; email autoresponders can be programmed to send out messages over weeks, months and even years.
Once someone enters their name and email into a form on a website, this process starts automatically. The affiliate marketer simply builds the systems which do the selling for them in an automated way. The affiliate might test and measure out their messages to see how well their system works. Often affiliate marketers will cross test their email systems with a set number of subscribers to determine which ones work the best.
Once they find a winning email marketing campaign which works, they can leave it running and concentrate on driving traffic into their automated sales funnel.
What Does An Affiliate Marketer Do? – Traffic Generation
One of the main activities which affiliate marketers do is driving traffic towards their sales funnel. A sales funnel is a landing page which collects subscriber’s information and delivers automated email messages with affiliate products attached. Here’s an example of what a landing page looks like:
Once a sales funnel is set up, it’s all automated. So you only need to drive targeted traffic into it in order to generate sales of your affiliate products. This can done through multiple different strategies. Not every affiliate chooses the same path:
- Blogging – creating written content on a website. See how to earn money through blogging.
- Video blogging – Uploading videos to YouTube or TikTok, for example.
- Social Media platforms – both free and paid options are available.
- Paid marketing platforms – Adwords, Facebook, YouTube etc.
See also 22 ways to promote affiliate products.
This article is an example of a blog post. By writing many blog posts and targeting specific keywords, bloggers can attract an audience from multiple different platforms:
- Organically through the search engines: Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo and Google
- Through sharing content on social media
- By using share buttons on their content and getting shares from visitors
- Through link building from other blogs, videos or websites.
Bloggers can also target their content specifically to people who are likely to be interested in their products. One strategy I use as a blogger is to find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. SEO means search engine optimisation. Optimising content for the search engines can give you more chance of ranking your content for free on the search engines. If you do this well, you can get free traffic! See also get traffic to your website FREE!
What Does An Affiliate Marketer Do? Work From Anywhere!
One of the main attractions to affiliate marketing is the ability to work from anywhere and become both financially and geographically free! Successful affiliates can earn money from their content and marketing, and earn a passive income which grows over time.
With recurring income affiliate programs, and through systems and automation, affiliates can generate an income which is unconnected to the hours they put in! To get to this stage takes some time and commitment though; but ultimately the path of affiliate marketing can give you a lot of freedom!
This means affiliates can create lives with a lot of freedom and flexibility. They don’t need employment and can ditch the commute, the boss and the job! Many affiliates decide to relocate to other countries because of the freedom they can achieve when their business becomes successful.
Using Paid Marketing
The affiliates who have less time often opt for using paid marketing to drive traffic into their sales funnel. This can be done through a number of platforms:
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Google Adwords
- YouTube
- etc.
With a paid marketing platform, the affiliate starts out with a small budget and tests out their sales funnel. By testing and measuring their marketing and driving traffic to a landing page, they can determine whether a particular marketing campaign is successful or not.
Once a marketing strategy is working, delivering a regular profit, it can be slowly scaled up. More budget is then spent daily to send more traffic towards their landing page. In the early days of testing, you should stick to a smaller budget to learn. But as you get more data, you can spend more; knowing that your sales funnel is profitable.
What Makes A Good Affiliate?
To become successful as an affiliate marketer you will need a lot of drive and focus. Ideally you will be good at working on your own and setting work schedules to keep you on track.
Affiliate marketing can give you a lot of freedom, but it does take some time and commitment to make it work. To put the necessary work in, you will need a big reason! Generally those who succeed are determined and driven. Often too, they are wanting to escape from difficult circumstances and create more time and financial freedom in their lives.
If this sounds like you, access a free video series here to learn more.
Summary
Affiliate marketing can take many different paths; there’s not a “one size fits all” approach. Some affiliates are good a blogging, but others prefer to use video. Some affiliates prefer to be anonymous and use email marketing and/or run paid advertising. If you have a lot of time, you can take the content marketing approach. If you work long hours, paid marketing will probably be a better approach.
Affiliate marketing is not for everyone, and many who attempt it give up. It can be tough. But it can also be hugely rewarding both personally and financially. Helping others to earn online is massively rewarding too – which is what some affiliates do too! Here’s a picture of a Q & A session, I attended, in which an affiliate coach is helping other affiliates.
If you’re serious about learning affiliate marketing, access a free video series here.
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