How Can One Start and Succeed in Affiliate/Network Marketing Business [2020 Guide]

It’s a lucrative business, to just start an affiliate/network marketing business today.

Yes, just join my team and we can make a ton of money…

These are common things you’ll hear from random people online nowadays…

Well, they’re not entirely false.

It is a good business to get into only if you know what to do exactly!

And I’ll be revealing the seven steps to get you started in affiliate/network marketing:

1. What is affiliate/network marketing?
2. Decide on a platform
3. Choose your niche
4. Find affiliate programs/network marketing company to join
5. Create awesome contents
6. Drive traffic to your affiliate/network marketing website
7. Get clicks on your affiliate/referral links
8. Convert those clicks to sales

Let’s begin with some real basic knowledge…

What is affiliate/network marketing?

There are many ways to explain, but I prefer to see it as earning commissions by promoting other people’s products.

Generally, affiliate marketing and network marketing businesses are pretty much the same.

Except that network marketing/MLM business can earn extra commissions if you build a team of salespeople to help you promote together.

One could say that network marketing business can earn a lot more, but then you could say the same for affiliate marketing business as well.

It all depends on the number of commissions given by the companies you’re helping promoting.

So now that we got the basics covered, let’s move onto the real deal…

Decide on a platform

This platform is referring to the places you’re planning to promote your affiliate/network marketing products.

With modern technology advancements, you can literally pick any social media platforms like Facebook, instagram, and YouTube (…and a bunch more).

However, they may have some issues of their own from the companies you’re trying to promote.

Thus, I prefer to build a website (some like to call it a blog, but I’ll explain later) to be my platform because I actually own it and I can do whatever I want on it!

So, the rest of this article will be focused on the website.

Choose your niche

Generally a niche is a specific topic rather than a broad one.

For example, beauty products vs face cleansing machine that is waterproof.

The more specific the topic you’re gonna write about, the easier for you to be found on search engines.

Now, it’s easier to choose a topic that you’re mostly interested as that will be driving you to product more contents.

So, it’s crucial to pick a program that’s right for you.

Find affiliate program/network marketing company to join

Continuing from the last section where we talked about choosing a niche that most suits you.

We now need to look for an affiliate program / network marketing company to join.

First, let’s talk about the types of affiliate programs out there…

High paying, low volume 

affiliate program is something like a SASS (software as a service) program where they pay you monthly commission up to 50%.

The most popular ones are likes of ClickFunnels, and Drip. 

The former is a landing page builder software, whereas the latter is an email service provider / customer relationship management program.

Although it’s more tempting to take on projects like promoting such programs, it is a lot more difficult as there are many people competing to rank for these keywords.

Low paying, high volume 

affiliate program is something like Amazon associate account, where they’re paying you maximum 8% per purchase.

These are somewhat easier to do than the previous kind of affiliate program.

Since you can just write out a piece of contents that you’re really interested in (such as video game), and then people would just click on the link that goes to Amazon store.

Better yet, if the visitors add other products in their cart, you’ll get a commission for the entire purchase!

High paying, high volume

Affiliate program is generally made by big corporations.

A very good example is a credit card.

The card is something that everyone uses every day, and they don’t usually change companies for a long time.

However, this requires a lot of work and experience in promoting online.

So, let’s skip this for another time.

What kind of network marketing companies are there?

Well, from my years of experience joining different network marketing companies, most of them have similar payout structures.

Binary – or two-legged structure, which requires you to have two downlines on both sides with equal sales volume in order to get paid.

Occasionally, you’ll have companies that have a linear payout structure, which pays you commissions as long as you sell the products (or your downlines did).

However, most of the companies out there have a really annoying rule.

That is, they all require you to be on a monthly payment plan in order for you to get paid.

It’s super frustrating because you have to keep buying products you’ll never use and it’s one of the many reasons people quit their network marketing businesses.

Luckily, I have found and join this company that doesn’t require me to pay those pesky monthly payments and I don’t need to stock up on products I don’t need.

Click here to find out

Create great content

Now that you’ve chosen the affiliate program and/or the network marketing company you want to join, it’s time to create content that will attract people.

I like to use weight management as my example since I’ve been working out for the past month.

A lot of times when we just started writing a blog, we often just take other people’s contents and then kinda change a few words and make them our own.

I admit that was something I used to do but clearly got out of that bad habit now.

Anyways, I have since figured out a way to write better content using some of my SEO skills to plan out my articles and here’s how I do it…

1. Choose a topic and make sure it’s got several search results back
2. Use the main keyword to write a hook
   1. How to ___ without ___
3. First body paragraph talks about conquering the difficulty
4. The second body talks about additional things that can support the first point
5. Third body briefly introduces the products we want to promote and incorporate them into the main topics
6. Conclusion re-emphasizes the main topics, the three key points, and briefly ask them to opt-in for the freebie.

As I said, this is my way of doing things.

Drive traffic to your website

There are generally two types of traffic: Paid and Organic.

Simply put, paid traffic requires you to dish out money to gain tractions into your website.

Whereas organic traffic is totally free.

Since this article is a beginner’s guide of affiliate/network marketing, I don’t suggest going with paid traffic.

So, let’s focus on how to get organic traffic to your website.

First and foremost, when you finished writing your blog post, you’d want to share this post on every single social media channel you’re on.

Why’s this important you might ask?

The best answer is that these social media channels have much higher exposure than your new website.

So, no matter what, this is the most important first step to gain organic traffic to your website.

Let’s start by creating these social media accounts and share your blog post on there whenever you finished writing them.

Get clicks to the affiliate links

Your contents really mean nothing if you can’t get any clicks to those affiliate/network marketing products.

Well, it’s not entirely true…

You’re supposed to be writing to give values to your readers.

And only if you provide enough help and value to them, you can then offer them something “extra” that can further help them.

In this case, it’s your affiliate/network marketing product.

So the best way to get more clicks to the affiliate link is to write fun and useful blog posts that will subtly guide them to the products.

Convert the clicks to purchases

You’re almost there!

There are more people reading your blog posts and clicking on your affiliate links more frequently.

However, when you look into your company dashboards, you see nothing but disappointments.

What happened?!

Why aren’t those clicks turning into purchases?

It’s impossible to know what these potential leads’ journeys after they land on the company’s product page.

So does that mean there’s nothing else you can do?

Well, not quite…

You can actually try to acquire leads’ info (email address) before redirecting them to the affiliate link.

Then, you can send them automated emails that will help you sell those products.

For example, you can send the first email that describes what the product will do to help improve the leads’ lives.

The second email will include past product users’ testimonials that will act as social proofs to further enhance the leads’ confidence in buying the product.

The third email (generally the last) will offer a time-sensitive incentive to the leads when they purchase the product right now.

These emails are created with my favorite Email Service Provider & Customer Relationship Management Software – Drip, and surely they helped me earned more commissions than ever.

Conclusion

So far, you’ve gone through my entire overall process of starting and succeeding in affiliate/network marketing business.

It’s only meant to be a general beginner’s guide.

I’m preparing a complete guide that will talk in detail of every single step needed.

When you’re ready for it, click here to read it.

Now, I’ve put together a checklist of everything I mentioned in this post:

• The kind of affiliate/network marketing companies I am personally in
• The tools I used to build my website
• The automated email tool I use to generate more sales

If you want to get access to this list, just click here to fill in your email address below and I’ll send it to you right away.

Until next time!