There is no better business online for a one man operation than Affiliate Marketing. If done correctly, with content driven marketing, the chances of success and a full time income are excellent. If you are looking into an affiliate marketing business and aren’t sure where to start, keep reading, I will cover this in detail below.
Why Content Driven Marketing?
Content driven marketing is the most effective way to get your products and services out in front of customers and get them in the mood to buy. It’s the gentle, more subtle method to promote and provides value to end users. The old school methods of intrusive, in your face advertising, such as banners, popups and sales pitches become less and less cost effective as time passes. Why?
More and more users online are employing ad blockers for one thing. Also, there is the phenomenon known as ad blindness, people simply don’t see banners because they mentally tune them out. Everyone is bombarded with information all day long and they filter, or tune out, what they have discovered over time, is useless to them.
Content Driven Affiliate Marketing – The Brave New World
Why do people go to search engines? Very few people go to Google, Bing, or Yahoo with the intention of buying something, they go there to find information. The major search engines know this and are making great strides to ensure their customers find what they are looking for, quality information.
With the approach of informing, engaging and providing value to end users you gain trust. With trust, comes a much higher chance people will buy based on your recommendations. This is how content driven marketing works and it is very effective if employed correctly.
Providing quality information means higher ranking in search engines. Where there is traffic, there is the potential for sales. Provide that traffic good content and it creates trust. So the overall formula of content driven marketing is quality, informative information that builds trust, mixed with strategically placed affiliate links, equates to sales.
The Present And Future
Almost all major brand names you are familiar with utilize some form of content marketing. These giants learned long ago that useful, informative content designed to educate users and provide value, attracts buyers. They also learned that this type of marketing is much less expensive to produce and maintain.
With reduced costs and better results, it was natural that content marketing became the norm with the big names. This method is also becoming much more common among one man operations, such as affiliate marketers.
Content driven marketing is the future. With good content, you can be assured high rank in the major search engines and steady, reliable, targeted traffic. You, as an affiliate marketer, can utilize the tricks of the heavies very easily. You can also benefit from it just like they do if you know how.
Content Marketing For the Affiliate
The most common way the little guy gets into content marketing is with a blog type website. These are easier to set up than ever before with CMS’s (Content Management Systems) like WordPress. All the heavy lifting like appearance, organization and even SEO is taken care of by the CMS software.
You don’t need a lot of technical knowledge or even coding skills to utilize a CMS. Learning to use one is fairly simple like learning to use Windows or OSX. Most of the details are hidden, you get to concentrate on content creation and marketing and less on the technical details.
So, how do you get started if you have no experience?
Steps To Content Marketing For Affiliates
Here are the basic steps to get started. Later in this article, I will show you how to solve the issues often run into by beginners like web hosting expense, learning the skills, niche selection and the sheer overwhelming feelings of getting started. For now, just the steps themselves will be laid out, I’ll cover the solutions shortly.
Step 1 – Niche Selection
You need to select a niche to focus on. By this I mean you need to find a market that isn’t
too broad. Anything you can think of that interests you will do, but if it’s too broad, it will be much more difficult to target efficiently. There are affiliate programs for absolutely everything you can imagine so don’t worry if your niche seem esoteric.
Pick something you are passionate about. This makes content creation fun instead of a dreaded
chore and reduces the chance of burn out. Even if you aren’t an expert on your subject today, you will be in the near future. So, go with something you love and will remain interested in so your desire to put in the work stays with you.
Step 2 – Website Hosting
Website hosting is vital and where to get it is often a perplexing issue to the beginner. There are so many choices of hosting companies and plans to select from.
This is often one of your biggest expenses as a marketer so it’s an important one to be wise about.
For a site suited to your purposes, often with WordPress preinstalled, it is common for the pricing to be around $100 to $150 a month.
Don’t get discouraged yet, there is a solution I will offer at the end of this article that will greatly reduce this expense and make it much more practical for anyone on a budget.
Step 3 – Learning To Use WordPress
Once you have a niche and website, you need to learn the ins and outs of WordPress. There are many online resources available to help you learn this CMS for free. WordPress itself has its own site with lots of reference materials for this purpose. Using the CMS isn’t that hard, but it can seem daunting if you are new to the concept.
There are thousands of themes and plug-ins you can utilize free of charge to enhance and customize the look and function of your site. Try to plan what you want to do in advance, then select a theme that is fairly simple and suited to your purposes. You can change the theme later, but this sometimes creates problems, so try to pick a simple one that has a clean look and suits a blog style site.
Step 4 – Creating Good Content
Many believe you have to have awesome writing skills to do this sort of thing but that isn’t true. Your content should be in a conversational style anyhow.
Just create articles much like you would if you were writing a private document for a friend. People prefer to read content written this way because it’s easier to digest and understand.
Your content should be created with your target keywords in mind. Select keywords that aren’t super high competition, with enough content, you will attract a lot of traffic with time. Your writing should contain good spelling and grammar, these factors will affect how your content is ranked, so take care to check this before you publish. WordPress helps with this as well, be sure to utilize at least spell check.
Step 5 – Get Indexed
Once you have created content, you need to get it indexed in the big three search engines. WordPress has a facility for this which is automatically triggered whenever you publish something new. However, you should also setup both Google and Bing Webmaster tools, create a sitemap and submit it to both. Once this is done, the search engines will have an easier time crawling your site.
Step 6 – Social Media
Social media goes a long way with your rankings in both Google and Bing. If your content gets mentioned in the major social media spots, the search engines will rank you higher in the end. Use them wisely because this can be overdone and have the opposite effect on your rankings.
Overwhelmed Yet?
So, I laid out the basic steps, but didn’t really offer any solutions to a lot of issues that are probably running through your head right now. There is a lot to getting set up and running an affiliate business based on content driven marketing. I get it, I was where you are at one time so I can relate.
I got started by getting the right education, tools, hosting and support all in one place. There is a website called Wealthy Affiliate that teaches this very subject from top to bottom and is designed for beginners.
The absolute best part, you can try it for free, then decide later if you want to subscribe. You don’t have to provide a credit card number to try the program, just your name and email address. Give it a try!
==> Click Here To Check Out Wealthy Affiliate <==
Feel free to post your comment below. An email address is required but it will not be shared with anyone, put on any list, or used for any kind of marketing, just to alert you if there are any replies. Thanks and happy hunting!
PlanetBizOp.com
->Steven
I used to believe ads compaign is a great promotion to drive people to purchase,like Facebook or google ads, but things go like if you just focus on how many people will be engaged or how many people will see your products, it doesn’t work well. so I. tried another way, just the same as what you said, now I totally agree with your point, content will drive attract people to buy products, it is because you give them better service, to compare with simple picture and description about products, people will be more touched by long and details introduction.
This is the direction marketing is moving because it is less expensive and much more effective. Banners and even PPC are giving way to content as a way to sell just about everything.
Thanks for the comment Ariel!
This is a very comprehensive article on content driven marketing. You have walked us through every aspect of developing an affiliate marketing business and very convincingly led ultimately into Wealthy Affiliate as an ideal way to get started and learn all you need to know.
This is a great easy to follow site with some very useful information.
Thanks Judy. Glad you got something useful from it!
Great article regarding content marketing. I love content marketing because this is where you can really learn about a particular product and how someone has really benefited from it by reading of their experiences with it. The sky is really the limit with content and marketing and like you said regarding ads, people are really starting to tune them out. How has content marketing benefited you?
The benefits I have found with content marketing are it works. Everything else I have tried results in mediocre results at best. Banners and the like just don’t produce results and cost way too much for the return.
Thanks for the comment Brian.
Thank you for your article about content driven marketing. My wife and I are retired Realtors® and know the importance of having relevant content on our websites. Realtors® rely heavily on repeat clients and referrals from those clients. Keeping current articles about the RE market and continuing to offer valuable information for them to make informed decisions is key.
Wishing you continued success in your niche!
Jim
Thanks Jim. I have known a few Realtors and they have told me the exact same thing. Seems like you are definitely in your element.
Best of luck and thanks for the input!
Wealthy Affiliate seems like one of the few companies today that are focused on content driven marketing. Others, they just dump people lessons on how to buy traffic using solo ads, all of which are burning people’s pockets with only few are succeeding. As I was browsing Google looking for make money online opportunities, I noticed most of the top search results are dominated by blogs with content featuring Wealthy Affiliate. So, with that, I must agree with you that this company (WA) is really doing great training for people on how to win in search engines using content driven marketing.
The search results speak for themselves. Wealthy Affiliate is probably the best site to learn content marketing overall and includes everything you need to succeed.
Thanks for the comment Gomer.
Thanks for the advice!
I’m especially interested in setting up a sitemap! How is this done?? I don’t know how to set one up.
I’m also curious how you bring traffic to your social media. How do you get attention there?? Is this possible without paying for ads?
Thanks again!
If you are using a CMS like WordPress there are plugins to help with sitemaps. If you are using an SEO plugin like All In One SEO there is a setting to create a sitemap in that as well. You should definitely set up your sitemap and submit it to both Google and Bing. There is a lot of information on the subject if you do a quick search online.
Social media is really just a matter of being active on the platform you want to get traffic from. So, if you mean facebook, just like, comment and share… Do what the platform was intended for and you will get attention over time. Avoid shortcuts and be patient, it will happen.
Thanks for the comment Jordan!
Thanks so much for the help! I will definitely look into the sitemap right away.
I’m also encouraged about the social media aspect of blogging, which so far has been really stagnant for me, and I’ve been hesitant to get my feet wet. So essentially, you start to like, share, or comment on OTHER existing content on social media that’s in your respective niche, and with time this will tend to lead to attention, responses, and likes to your own?
Thanks!
You got it! Be active in social media and you will get positive attention from others. Then, you will start getting targeted, free traffic to your site that rivals the search engines.
Hey Steven,
I absolutely agree with you that content driven marketing strategy is important nowadays because it offers value to your potential clients, builds their trust in your brand and moves them into action to interact with the brand.
Among the advantages of a content-driven strategy are:
1. Increases search engine result rankings
2. More visitors to your website or blogs
3. Increases tweets and ‘Likes’
4. Increased client acquisition
5. Brand awareness
6. Builds trust and loyalty in the brand
Channels to drive your content strategy
1. Website – articles, press releases
2. Social media
3. Industry blogs
4. Client case studies
5. eNewsletters
6.Videos
7. Whitepapers
8. Industry updates
9. Events
To become a successful Content Strategist, you need to upskill and have an understanding of emerging technologies and how to use them to deliver the brand’s story to the market, in which as recommended by Steven, Wealthy Affiliate is the best place to study all these.
Thank you.
Shuihyen
Wealthy Affiliate is one of the best places to learn the needed skills to be successful at content marketing. You’re correct that trust is the key to all of this, without that, you can’t make many sales.
Thanks for the comment Shuihyen!
Steven,
Great article on content driven marketing and how it is so useful. You hit the nail right on the head – most people are going to do an online search in order to find information. Once they find useful information on something they will then perhaps go on to make a purchase. Great!
You’ve done a wonderful job of explaining thoroughly how great online marketing and affiliate marketing is and how to get from step A – step income. I love your comment of “overwhelmed yet?” because it can be a lot to take in! You’ve done a great job of explaining and providing a good resource – WA.
Thanks!
Mat A.
Glad you got some good information out of it!
Thanks for the comment Mat!
After losing so much money in Google AdWords I am ready to learn how to do content marketing. This encouraged me a lot to get started.
I was wanting to know how do you write enough to fill up a website without running out of ideas?
How do you keep motivated to write even when there are less instant results like Advertising provides?
You just mentioned the two biggest obstacles to success in content marketing!
You need to publish at least 3 new articles a week of about 1500 words each to keep your SEO on track. Not impossible, but daunting to some. You could always outsource some of the writing. Articles of this length aren’t terribly expensive to have written.
I get a lot of fresh ideas from my keyword research and just poking around on Google on my topic. You don’t have to be terribly original about your topics, just don’t copy other’s articles. Every subject, written from a different perspective, is valuable even if it has been documented to death.
Thanks for the input Peter!
Indeed,content driven marketing is the way to go if you want to generate consistent income online. I’ve been working on my site for a couple of years and finally seeing some positive results. This shows that what’s taught by Wealthy Affiliate really works. With that said, you must put in your hard work as well.
This business does take a lot of patience and some effort. That explains why everyone isn’t doing it. I am happy to hear you are finally getting some reward from your hard work.
Thanks for the comment Kenny!
Well this is the perfect website for me to look at as this is exactly what I am trying to do but as a newbie I am with WA but it is still very difficult and very time consuming and I think people need to be aware of that as I find I have to do a lot of searching for the right training for my specific need and comprehension ….. I find this not near as easy as everybody makes it out to be
Yeah. It does seem easy on paper, but in practice, it can be very frustrating waiting for it to pay off. Hang in there, if you stick to the plan and follow the training, it will pay off I promise.
Thanks for the comment Sammy!
I really like the way you have these steps laid out. It can be super intimidating starting a blog for the first time. When I started my first blog I had very little direction and really had no idea what I was doing or how to succeed.
I came across Wealthy Affiliate while I was struggling to make my blog work and I ended up starting a new blog that is moving in the right direction much more quickly.
Great post.
It’s good to hear you got useful information out of the article.
Thanks for the kind words Briana!