Si Quan Ong
Content marketer @ Ahrefs. I've been in digital marketing for the past 6 years and have spoken at some of the industry’s largest conferences in Asia (TIECon and Digital Marketing Skill Share.) I also write about my curiosities on my Substack.
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Affiliate marketing is where you promote another company’s product or service in exchange for a commission. When people click your link and buy the product or service, you makemoney. It is absolutely not ascam. Many websites earn money this way, including major ones like the New York Times, The Verge, NerdWallet, andmore. The real question is… is it worth yourtime? Given that it’s the monetization method most people have succeeded with, it seems the answer isyes. There are plenty of examples of folks making fat stacks with affiliate marketing, too. That said, it’s no get-rich-quick scheme. The process is simple, but not easy. It takes tons of investment and time before you start earning anything, and you need to know what you’re doing, especially when it comes to SEO. But if you’re willing and able to dedicate your time, energy, and money to affiliate marketing, it can be worthit. Further reading Affiliate marketing itself is not a scam, but like any industry, it has its share of fraudulent activities. Here are three major ones to look outfor: As its name suggests, you have to pay a fee to join these affiliate programs. Don’t. Real affiliate programs are always free to join. After all, there is no downside for the merchant, as they only pay you for eachsale. In the affiliate marketing industry, fake gurus are people who sell courses on how to do affiliate marketing (or make money online) but have no real-world experience. Their main money maker is not affiliate marketing but the course they’re selling you. As a result, these courses or training programs are typically underwhelming, generic, and likely do not deliver on their promises. For example, years ago, before I started working as a digital marketer, I read Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek and became interested in making money online. So, I signed up for a two-day offline workshop for a hefty sum in Singapore. The workshop was incredibly underwhelming. Most of the participants needed help even double-clicking icons. I wasted two days on what could have easily been a three-hour workshop. For the price I paid, it was indeed a scam. True enough, later on, I found out the instructor was a well-known “fake” guru (I was green and didn’t know it backthen). I want to help you avoid my fate, so here are some red flags tospot: To find good instructors and courses, invert everything above and find instructors that: It’s tempting to promote a product just because it offers high commissions. But you’ll be damaging your reputation if you end up promoting subpar, low-quality, or worse, products that don’texist. For example, My Top Tier Business (MTTB) was a product that many affiliate marketers used to promote. In 2018, the FTC charged MOBE (the parent company) with fraud and halted the entire business. Some of the prominent affiliate marketers for that company were even charged. MOBE eventually settled with theFTC. So, as much as possible, you’ll want to avoid promoting terrible stuff. Here’s how to avoid the dodgyones: Convinced that affiliate marketing is worth your time? Here are the basics to get you started: A niche is your area of focus. For example, while it’s not my idea of fun, your website could be all about vacuum cleaners. An ideal affiliate niche has four qualities: How do you find a niche that matches all four? Here’s oneway: Sidenote. Domain Rating is our website authority metric, and the presence of a site ranking in the top 10 with a low DR suggests the topic may be low competition. Looking at the report, we can see that the niche we’re interested in (“vacuum cleaners”) is a decent niche because: I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you fulfill the final quality of interest in vacuum cleaners. Further reading While you can do affiliate marketing on any platform (e.g., YouTube, TikTok), I recommend building a website and focusing on search engine optimization (SEO). This post lists 8 reasons why SEO is important, but the biggest one is that search traffic is passive and consistent. This is important because consistent traffic translates to consistent clicks on your affiliate links. Further reading The easiest affiliate programs to join are Amazon Associates and those from big-box retailers like Target. You can also find programs on popular affiliate networks like AvantLink, ShareASale, and Commission Junction. If you already use a product, see if they have an affiliate program. If they don’t, ask if they would be willing to build an affiliate relationship withyou. Further reading You already know what content you need to create from your niche research. For example, for our hypothetical vacuum cleaner site, you’ll definitely want to create content around the “best vacuum cleaners,” “best pet vacuums,” “dyson cordless vacuum review,” etc. Make sure you’re actually testing these products and not simply copy-pasting from other articles. In their Helpful content guidelines, Google explicitly states that’s what they’re looking for: It’ll be easy to create articles for those topics and call it a day. But that’s not enough. One reason: Links. They’re an important Google ranking factor, and in the real world, you’ll find it difficult to get other websites to link to such pages (also known as “money pages”). For that reason, you also want to create other types of content. These could be linkbait or informational content. In fact, when I interviewed Dustin Christiansen, the founder of Territory Supply, years ago, he told me that was his affiliate site’s content strategy: […] we also do a lot of content that isn’t related to products or affiliate marketing at all - like hiking and camping guides that include the best locations to explore in different areas. These articles are research-intensive and we try to find writers who live in or explore the areas we write about so that they have real, accurate value for our readers. We do so much more than just product-based content that I think it helps find an audience that a lot of affiliate sites might miss outon. Dustin Christiensen, Founder Territory Supply One quick way to find informational topics to target is to enter your niche into Keywords Explorer, go to the Matching terms report, and switch the toggle to Questions. Eyeball the list and target the topics that are relevant to yoursite. Further reading Want to learn more about affiliate marketing? We have tons of resources, so check themout:Pay-to-join affiliate programs
Fake gurus, courses, and training programs
Dodgy, low-quality, or scam products
1. Choose yourniche
2. Decide on your platform
3. Find affiliate programs tojoin
4. Create high-quality content
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