So you want to get into online marketing?

With more people embracing online shopping, this is the perfect time to start an online affiliate marketing business.

Online affiliate marketing involves getting commissions for sales made after referring new clients and customers to other online businesses or for marketing products or services for merchants on your website.

What you need

A website or a blog

You’ll be required to have a website/blog. You should choose a good domain name that communicates what the site is about. A good domain name may give you a better competitive advantage in terms of search engine ranking. A well-designed website/blog plus the domain name and hosting should cost you about Sh15,000.

Choose a niche

To be considered an expert in a field, you will have to choose a few products to sell on your site. You can choose to concentrate on health care products or furniture. Remember your success depends on picking the right products to market. It’s important that you focus on popular niches that are known to record high sales. Some of the popular niches include health and fitness, hobbies, leisure, and travel.

Choose an affiliate network

There are numerous affiliate networks to choose from. Amazon is the world’s largest affiliate program with a wide variety of products that you can sell while Rakuten Linkshare is one of the oldest affiliate partner networks.

Once you have identified an affiliate network, you will be required to sign up. If you qualify, you will be assigned links to place on your website that will direct a customer to buy the product from the seller. The special link will allow the merchant to track the people that click on your link.

Content

Your content will be based on reviewing the products. This means having a good knowledge of the products either from the actual buying and using or from researching on what other people are saying about the product online.

Creating content is a key activity in running an affiliate business. It is through content that buyers will be directed to your site and based on what they read, they will proceed to buy the products/services or not. Having the right content that pushes customers to add the items on their carts is very crucial to your success in the business.

Traffic

You’ll be required to drive traffic to your site. Having the right content with the right keywords will enable your site to rank highly on Google and other search engines.

Patience

Ranking and link building may take time. Most probably you won’t make your first sale overnight. You will, therefore, be required to be very patient and be consistent. However, with time, you will not regret as it will start paying off.

Example of Successful Amazon affiliate websites

ConsumerSearch.com

DogFoodAdvisor.com

BabyGearlab.com

What you don’t need

Huge capital

Besides the money to set up a website, you don’t require much money to get started. You don’t need to have produce, stock or ship product inventory, or deliver a service.[