Taking Initial Steps towards Affiliate Marketing

by David J. Marketing Manager

Many people just dream of making money while they are sleeping, some actually do it by starting with a passive income and then gradually growing into a full business using affiliate marketing. You can do also do, and in fact, everyone can "Start" doing it but everyone is not able to successfully "End" it. The difference is of patience, hard work and persistence affiliate marketing requires taking it to the goal of success.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a cycle of three parties namely

· Product owner

· Marketer or affiliate

· Consumer

A fourth party is also sometimes encountered which is of marketing network which lies between the product owner and marketer.

Affiliate Marketing actually works on the old marketing model of a commission agent who worked on a percentage of commission for each customer he brought to his client. The same model is modified for the online marketplace as affiliate marketing in which the affiliate is doing the same job over the internet in return for a revenue-sharing contract with the product owner.

Initial steps towards affiliate marketing

When one talks about starting an affiliate marketing business, main parties involved are the product owner and the affiliate whereas the end customer may or may not know if he is part of an affiliate network (depends on the affiliate).

Affiliate marketing is a process of becoming an affiliate or a product owner from being a simple end user or consumer. A consumer is a party which actually consumes the product and knows all the pros and cons of any product, so it is always the consumer who comes forward and decides to be a part of an affiliate marketing network by either introducing a newly improved outcome in the market of joining a marketing campaign for already existing product.

A Product owner or an Affiliate

An excellent way to start is as an affiliate if you don't have enough capital and skills in the field and gradually get into the process of designing your own products. Choosing a product and getting along with it is indeed possible but challenging in the start especially if you have limited or no starting capital.

Let us check the initial steps one may take to start an affiliate marketing business as a product owner or an affiliate marketer.

Starting as a product owner:

· Choosing a niche and having a unique product design idea

· Validate your idea by pre-launching it in the market to gather initial capital and response data

· Creation and launch of your product

· Find affiliates to market your product

· you can opt to use an affiliate network platform for the purpose

Starting as an affiliate:

· Choose a niche and start reviewing products in your niche

· Build your audience through quality content

· Build an email list of your audience

· Use video reviews, webinars to persuade your audience

· Using paid advertising to boost your sales

One of the best ways to start an online business in affiliate marketing and staring as an affiliate is a cheaper and affordable way to make you ready for launching a product later at some stage.