How to Become a Social Media Affiliate Marketer

dropship mistakesTimes are hard, at least that what’s being rammed down our throat, right…?

Times are as hard as you want them to be, it’s your choice, you can either jump on the whining wagon of misery and hardship or be different. ‘Make your own luck’.

Don’t you find that those that spend the best part of their lives moaning about governments, tax’s and gas prices are generally those that are least prepared to bust a gut or work their fingers to the bone. In other words, get off their backside and do something about it.

If you are a perpetual moaner but do try to do something about your situation, then I apologize for my rant. My experiences of these people has more than been justified, several times over, I can assure you. Rant over

A question.. would you buy a gold watch off of someone you had never met?

Chances are, probably not. But. If we were to build a relationship first and you like my watch’s then maybe or probably yes.

Affiliate marketing first and foremost is about making a connection with your audience – engaging with them. You can offer those on your website the greatest offer the internet has ever seen but if you don’t first gain their trust so that they actually listen when you speak, it will all be in vain. They will click off your site at lightning speed.

With this said, your are going to need to network with other like minded people, try making contact with similar bloggers or business owners in your niche and invite them to view your stuff. In return, tell them that you will too spread the word of what they offer. I say this with some caution. Be sure to like the content they provide and approve of their work ethic. You don’t want to be associated with someone who provides poor content or worse still is going to spam you or your followers with mindless garbage.

When I first set out to build a site, be it a niche or high authority site I never look to monetize it until I know it’s well optimized and climbing the rankings. In fact, I will not monetize it until it’ just approaching page 1 of google. This benefits my site in many ways:-

It forces me to work hard on providing good content
It also forces me to not be lazy with my on-site SEO
It enables me to get a good amount of content uploaded to the site before the traffic turns up.
This time that passes is time to tweak, make changes, iron out the cracks.

Okay, so your site is now all good you’re ready to go, what next?

When writing your content be sure to include your affiliate links when mentioning a product or service that can help your readers see the same results. I try never to promote a product that I haven’t tried myself. The exception to this is when someone I trust profusely recommends something that I am yet to try for myself. I always end up buying the product too though as I find promoting just any old garbage to be immoral. I like many of you in many moments of weakness have been caught up in the bull-shit that unfortunately plagues our industry. I call it, “Shinny Shite”.
Gone slightly off track here – include links in your posts, and include images/banners where you can. Not too much though, remember your stuff needs to engage not disengage.

Social media has changed the way we do Affiliate Marketing forever. It gives you the platform to promote your stuff for free. All you have to do is again provide some value, in return for another subscriber to your blog or like your fanpage. I see so many ‘newbie’ and surprisingly experienced marketers miss the fundamentals of social media with regards to affiliate marketing. They try to make the sale. Of course you need to make sales to make any money. But, try selling directly on facebook, twitter or indeed any social platform is a sure fire way to lose what credibility you have with them running in the opposite direction.

Tragically, too many have been led to think that once you place a website on the Net, millions of people will flock to it. You rarely hear it directly in those words, but unfortunately there are those who *have* said exactly that
and those who have bought it.

The cow didn’t *really* jump over the moon.

But you certainly have been told that there are millions of prospects on the internet (true.) You’ve read that if you sell someone’s ebook you’ll get a sales-proven website to use (again, true.) Countless times, you’ve been shown fabulous MLM compensation charts that demonstrate how much money you’ll make selling for them (conditionally true.) That’s where most stop and pitch their close.

What they don’t tell you is how to effectively attract buyers; OR if they do tell you, they don’t show you.

There are reliable, proven ways to attract visitors and turn them into buyers. There are different strategies for sales than there are for free sites, membership sites and product
or service branding. Strategies predict or attempt to predict the outcome.

With a marketing plan and objective you can *know* what your desired goal is and have a pre-defined, achievable destination mapped out. Tactics are the tools for carrying out your plan and arriving at your objective.

Chart your objective. Do it in writing. Knowing your business and your goals is the first step to marketing success.

Commitment is a vital ingredient to the success of your marketing plan. The mistake made by most budding entrepreneurs is to assume that the internet will bring automatic success.

99-44/100% of the time internet marketing *success* is purely commitment and ‘stick-to-it-tiveness.’ See your project through and don’t dump your venture (unless you discover some inherent fatal flaw.) Test, test, test.

See your marketing tactics and testing as the fascinating process that it is rather than a drudgery. Almost certainly there will be temporary setbacks but stick to your marketing plan and goals! In simplest terms *this* is the formula for success.

With that formula, you won’t be wandering in the dark singing “Hey Diddle Diddle, The Cat and the Fiddle.”

Look out for my next post that will be sharing some of the strategies that I use.