How To Make Your First Affiliate Sale
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If you are curious about affiliate marketing, allow me to show you a process for how to make your first affiliate sale.
One of the best ways for website owners and bloggers to make money is through affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing can be one of the most lucrative blog monetization methods.
It offers an amazing way for website owners, new or old, to make passive income in the thousands every month. Even if your blog has low pageviews.
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To learn how to make money with affiliate marketing, read this: Ultimate Guide To Making Affiliate Sales.
How To Make Your First Affiliate Sale – Easy Guide For Beginners
Welcome to the exciting world of affiliate marketing! If you’re reading this, you’re likely interested in diving into this lucrative field but may be wondering where to start.
“How To Make Your First Affiliate Sale” is your comprehensive guide to breaking into the affiliate marketing arena.
This article is designed to walk you through the essential steps needed to secure your first sale.
Whether you’re a blogger, a social media influencer, or just someone with a passion for marketing and sales, you’ll find valuable insights here.
We’ll cover everything from choosing the right affiliate program to strategies for promoting products effectively.
So, let’s unlock the potential of affiliate marketing for your business growth today.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where a business rewards affiliates for each customer brought in by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
Affiliates, often bloggers, content creators, or influencers, promote a company’s products or services using unique links or codes. When someone clicks on these links and makes a purchase or completes a desired action, the affiliate earns a commission.
This model benefits both the affiliate and the business. For businesses, it’s a cost-effective way to market their products since they only pay for successful transactions.
For affiliates, it offers an opportunity to earn income by promoting products they like or believe in.
Affiliate marketing relies heavily on trust and authenticity. Successful affiliates typically choose to promote products that align with their personal brand or the interests of their audience. This ensures a genuine and organic promotion, increasing the likelihood of conversions.
With the growth of digital marketing and social media, affiliate marketing has become increasingly popular, offering a mutually beneficial way for brands and individuals to collaborate and generate revenue.
In a nutshell: If there is a product that you use and love, you can sign up to be an ‘affiliate’. Once you have been approved as an affiliate you are given a unique link to that product’s sales page. You can display this link in your blog posts, on social media, in emails (not Amazon links though) or your own courses and eBooks. Then if someone clicks on your link and purchases a product you will get a percentage of the sale, without it costing the purchaser anymore.
Luckily there is an affiliate program for practically every product out there you can think of so no matter what niche you’re in there is something you can be an affiliate for.
Amazon even has its own affiliate program and I can’t think of any niche that cannot promote something that Amazon sells.
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How I Made My First $100 In Affiliate Sales
I’ve always had a passion for digital marketing and technology, which led me to create my first monetized blog in 2017. (before that, my websites were just hobbies).
I launched that site with 10 articles, where wrote about tech trends, website development, and online marketing strategies.
On each blog post, I included my affiliate links to the brands I was recommending.
I started my affiliate marketing journey by writing a comprehensive review of the web hosting company that I used. I shared my personal experience, emphasizing the benefits and features I found most useful.
It was a well-regarded web hosting company, with a reputation for reliable service and excellent customer support. So it was an easy sell for me, and was in perfect harmony with my blog’s ethos.
I also crafted a step-by-step guide on setting up a website with their service, aiming to help my readers who were newcomers to website creation.
Then, I spent an hour each morning for a week posting my blog post links in Facebook groups for business owners. As every website owner needs a good web host for their site.
I actively promoted my review and guide on social media, engaging with my followers and answering their web hosting queries.
Within the first month I had made my first $100 in affiliate sales, after 3 people bought the web host I recommended, at $40 commission each.
Take a look at all of these affiliate sites that are available to buy.
To maximize the reach of my posts, I leveraged my SEO skills. I researched and integrated relevant keywords to boost my content’s search engine rankings.
My hard work began to bear fruit as I noticed an uptick in clicks on my affiliate links as weeks went on.
My transparent and helpful content resonated with my audience, and many started using the web hosting service through my blog.
I watched my affiliate dashboard closely, thrilled as the sales numbers gradually increased.
Encouraged by this success, I delved deeper into affiliate marketing, always ensuring I selected products and services that matched my blog’s theme and my audience’s interests.
Earning my first $100 in affiliate sales was just the beginning of what I knew would be an exciting and rewarding journey in the digital marketing world.
Using Pinterest to Increase Affiliate Sales
Did you know you can share affiliate links directly to Pinterest? Yes you can!
Making money from affiliated marketing on Pinterest, or even Facebook if you prefer, is really easy and you could even do it without a website for free.
For more explanation on this, read: How to use Pinterest to increase affiliate sales.
Action Tips For Getting Your First Affiliate Sale
Step One: Write some amazing content like an in-depth tutorial about a product you’re an affiliate for.
Without good content, no one is going to be clicking any links because they won’t trust your opinion on what is good to buy and what isn’t!
Step Two: Don’t just write content around affiliate links. Make sure you have plenty of other actionable content on your site that helps solve the reader’s problems.
Then where appropriate insert links to things you are an affiliate for.
Step Three: Join Facebook groups appropriate to your niche, and help people there!
Dropping your blog post link on those share threads just isn’t worth it in my opinion. You end up with a bunch of inauthentic engagement and not much else.
Instead, see what people need help and then actually help them. If you’ve got a blog post that will help them out, even better, share it with them.
Just make sure all your blog posts are optimized with affiliate links so when people start reading your awesome content they will click on your links as well!
This is how I made two of my affiliate sales so you know it works!
Step Four: Email list, email list, email list and make sure you give them value.
Your email list is like gold dust. You need to treat them like the exclusive members they truly are.
Give them actual value that they can take away and use. Only use affiliate links where appropriate because you don’t want your email list to feel like you are just using them to sell to.
Treating your email list like gold and then only sharing affiliate links where appropriate will result in sales. Trust me, it’s how I did it.
Step Five: Pin affiliate links directly into Pinterest and set up a good strategy to promote them.
I would recommend you read a few posts on how to use affiliate links on Pinterest.
How To Make Your First Affiliate Sale – Conclusion
So there you have it, the exact way I made my first $100 from my blog.
Congratulations on taking this important step towards making your first affiliate sale! By now, you should be equipped with the knowledge and strategies necessary to succeed in the vibrant world of affiliate marketing.
Remember, the journey to your first affiliate sale is a learning experience filled with experimentation and discovery. Stay persistent, keep refining your approach, and don’t be afraid to try new techniques.
With dedication and patience, you’ll not only achieve your first sale but also pave the way for many more.
How did you find the post? Have you made your first $100 in affiliate sales yet? If so tell us in the comments below how you did it.
If not let us know which action tips you plan to implement or if you have any questions!
This is really inspiring – thanks for sharing.
I think the key takeaway of your affiliate marketing to-date, especially from the four Siteground sales and the eBook sale, is to diversify. It’s important not to rely on sales from one source, so it’s great that you’ve actively written content, emails, and social media posts around your affiliate promotions to try and get as many sales as possible. Other than that, I’d say persistence is another key requirement which you seem to have in spades. Good job!
Thanks again, and keep up the great work.
Jonathan
Hi Jonathan!
No problem at all. Yes I do think diversification can really help, especially for new bloggers who don’t yet have an establish audience!
And of course patience and persistence! 🙂
My first goal this year is to make $10,000 in affiliate sales. It’s lofty, considering I’ve only made about $150 over six months…but I also haven’t been ‘pushing it’ with the brands. I was more focused on learning and creating great content! Now, I think I have a solid enough background to where I can genuinely use affiliate marketing to get my side hustle rolling and turn it into a legit business!
Great article and wonderful tips! I’m learning to serve my audience and provide them with items or resources that I truly love and use, and tell them WHY they are great, rather than just dropping links in and hoping they’ll convert. My website is largely educational, so I want to provide the best for my readers!
Thanks!
Great goal!! I really agree with you about how important it is to serve your audience telling them about products that you truly love and use. Rather than just dropping links and hoping for the best!!!
If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask!