Starting with affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing? Which types of affiliates are the most successful? How do you start an affiliate website? How do you choose a topic?

This article answers a number of important questions if you plan to start an affiliate website.

Table of contents
– What is affiliate marketing?
– Which types of affiliates are the most successful?
– Successful affiliate sites
– Why are these affiliate sites big?
– How do you start an affiliate website?
– How do you choose a topic?
– How do you get visitors?

What is affiliate marketing?

If you start with affiliate marketing you can easily start a collaboration with a webshop. You place an advertisement from an advertiser on your affiliate website.

This can be in the form of a text link, banner or product feed. If a visitor of your website clicks on the promotional material, it will be forwarded to the webshop.

At the moment the forwarded visitor buys something you will receive a commission as an affiliate. You are responsible for making a purchasing customer. In exchange for this you receive a fixed amount or a percentage of the turnover of the product or service.

Which types of affiliates are the most successful?

Successful affiliates are close to the sale (at the bottom of the sales funnel). They do not focus on people who are in the orientation process. But on potential customers who are about to make a purchase.

You will receive a commission if you are responsible for the last placed affiliate click before the transaction is closed.

This method of measurement is also called last cookie counts. The affiliate who last places a cookie receives the affiliate commission.

This is currently the most commonly used measurement of an affiliate transaction. There are web shops (advertisers) active who distribute the affiliate commission over multiple affiliates (conversion attribution)

If several parties are responsible for 1 transaction, the commission is divided among all these affiliates.

Successful affiliate sites

Below are 3 examples of successful affiliate sites

Review / rating affiliate sites

These are affiliate websites that collect customer experiences about products and / or webshops. Many people look for experiences from other customers before making a purchase.

They want to know for sure that the company they are going to transfer money to is reliable. Or they want to know the experiences of other customers about a specific product.

They visit a review or review website before they finalize the purchase.

Cashback affiliates

Cashback affiliates return part of the affiliate commission that they receive to their members. These members make all their online purchases through the affiliate links of the cashback party.

The cashback members save money in this way. Cashback parties often have large membership files. This allows them to reach large groups of consumers in a short time.

Comparison affiliate sites

Product comparison sites, insurance comparison sites, phone subscription comparison sites. A lot of these websites are using affiliate marketing.

You can quickly find and order the best and cheapest deal through these websites.

Why are these affiliate sites big?

As mentioned before, these affiliate types are successful because they focus on people who are about to make an online purchase.

Another reason for success is that these affiliates do something that webshops can not do. Example: They compare all providers in the market. They help consumers make better and faster decision about a future purchase.

The cashback affiliate distinguishes itself by collecting a large group of consumers. These members are loyal because they get a financial benefit on every purchase.

The key to success is that your affiliate project adds value to the consumer.

How do you start an affiliate website?

Starting a website can be relatively easy. By using wordpress software you have a website online within a few clicks.

If you want to start a cashback site you will have to be technically skilled. However, there are also parties that offer whitelabel cashback software. You can then use the technique in exchange for a part of the commission.

A comparison site is built by means of product feeds. You combine data from different advertisers and present this in a clear way to your visitors. Being handy with the internet and building websites is a requirement if you want to build a comparison site yourself.

There are also affiliate networks that build comparison tools that you can place on your affiliate site without technical knowledge.

The easiest thing is to start a blog. It is advisable to write about a topic that interests you or is close to you.

How do you choose a topic?

As indicated, it is good to choose a topic that is close to you. However, other variables are also important.

Some important questions:

– How big is the group for which you are creating an affiliate site?
– How much do these people spend on average?
– How big is the competition in google for converting keywords?
– How high is the average affiliate commission?

By getting a complete picture of the market you can make better informed choices. It is important to do good research to discover the opportunities in the market.

How do you get visitors?

The key to success is get as much relevant visitors as possible. If people with a purchase intention find your affiliate site / project, then the commissions come automatically.

But how do you manage that? At this point all (online) marketing disciplines come together: SEO, SEA, Social, Content Creation, Linkbuilding, Branding etc. It is not easy to answer this question easily. 

But here are some things that can help you to get visitors to your affiliate site.
 

1 – Make use of the free Yoast SEO tool. This is the most used SEO tool on wordpress. This wordpress plugin checks whether the content is written according to the correct SEO guidelines.

2 – Become an authority within your field. Do research within your industry. Interview the most important pioneers. Give presentations at trade fairs and schools etc.

3 – Do research and send a press release to relevant websites and trade magazines about this research. Try to get into the national media.

4 – Investigate whether you can get extra attention for your affiliate project through the use of guerrilla marketing.

5 -Write guest blogs for websites that are leading in the market. 

If your affiliate site does not yield enough then you have learned a lot 🙂

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