TOP 7 WAYS OF DRIVING TRAFFIC TO YOUR AFFILIATE OFFER – BEGINNERS GUIDE TO AFFILIATE MARKETING 2022

Across a multiple of articles, the answers to questions like what is the best online business a beginner should consider when starting out. How to pick the right niche, the proven categories a beginner should start from and many more have been addressed in this blog.

Now it is time for the most interesting part of the whole business model. Thus making money.

You could be the best person in joining the most profitable ROI marketplace, choosing the best offer and creating of beautiful and great content around the product but if you cannot find eyeballs to see all that you have in stock, there is an absolute zero chance of you making a single sale and hence rendering every other effort not worthwhile.

For this and many other reasons, we are writing to address this issue of how to get and drive peoples attentions to wherever your affiliate links are.

Many successful affiliates use multiple methods to drive traffic to their offers. Some are simple whilst others take a bit of a learning curve to master over time. Among all these the most effective ones involve building an audience and promoting offers to them.

This audience strategy is great because, you get a targeted and not so much people who trust you give them the best of advice. Hence they would not listen to any great name in the industry over your recommendations because they would feel absolutely connected to your life and would want to always share a part.

In the next few paragraphs, we would be discussing the seven ways to drive traffic to your affiliate offers easily. This is not a complete list hence you are not limited to them. But of course, this gives you a head start as to what direction and initiative to take first. It should be mentioned that this seven ways are proven methods that most successful affiliates have used to build their very own businesses.

The methods or ways are

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

2. YouTube channel

3. Social Media

4. Guest blogging

5. Quora

6. Paid advertising

7. Email marketing

OVERVIEW OF THE SEVEN METHODS

As said earlier, there are affiliates who succeed using each of these approaches. We will learn the basics of what these methods are and then in the end we would inform you of the basic method we here at FartMan use for driving traffic to our website.

Now let’s dive straight into them.

1. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) WEBSITES

A statistic from Google as at 2019 revealed that, Google processes over 3.5 billion searches a day around the world. Imagine how much it has doubled or increased over the last two years now. It has become a go-to website when people want to ask any questions or find answers and solutions to a specific problem or challenge.

This isn’t so much of a surprise to me because, a few years ago people would have naturally asked their parents, friends, relatives, co-workers among others for help and assistance but with the statistics and also your personal life experiences, you can testify to the fact that you would rather feel a 100X better asking google for answers rather than going to a neighbor.

Maybe this could be trust issues or whatever but in reality, that is what it is and as an affiliate, this is the perfect opportunity to jump on. Help them find what they want and in addition, recommend your affiliate offers to them.

Since you have initially provided them with great value. They would feel really comfortable in clicking your link to find out what other information they may be missing out on yet.

CASE STUDY

If someone types “best Christmas gifts for mum” and another “best golf course 2022” in their search bar. They is a very high and good chance that they are looking for a gift or course to buy. The websites which appear at the top of those search results would probably be the ones they check out. With thousands of people searching for those keywords every day of periodically, it implies that those websites will get a lot of traffic and in effect, more sales.

Because of this significant volume of traffic Google generates, ranking at the top of keywords with buyer intent like the examples we sighted can generate a lot of traffic to your website. As an affiliate, you are already on your way to bigger paydays.

HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE TO RANK HIGHER

This whole concept of making your websites rank on the first page and in the #1 spot in the search results is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Affiliate marketers as you are in the making, use website or blogs that are optimized for SEO to promote their offers. This blog article is an example of SEO for promotion. The most common approach we are using and has been used by other affiliates is to create a blog and post articles that target particular keywords. These articles usually are educational, reviews, comparisons or listicles.

Another example, suppose you have a blog that’s all about women health. In this case, you might believe your readers could be interested in a weight loss. You might publish an article to target the keyword “best weight loss supplement of women”. That’s a popular keyword, and this means there’s a lot of competition to rank it for. You might therefore want to publish an article which would be more specific with its keyword targeting like “Best weight loss supplement for women over 50 on Amazon.” These type of longer keywords are searched less often, which means you can potential rank easier for it.

THE DOWNSIDE

The upside of creating SEO websites is that you can generate a substantial amount of revenue once you start ranking for keywords. The drawback is that it takes a lot of time to rank for most keywords. During that time, you won’t generate much revenue, which can be very discouraging.

Another downside is you also don’t have an opportunity to build an ongoing relationship with this SEO approach of driving traffic unless you combine it with one of the other methods we would be discussing.

2. YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Average people still till day view YouTube as just one of the other social media platforms. But we at Fartman are one of the other people around the world of affiliate marketing who draw a distinction between the two. This is a more reason why we are treating them separately.

YouTube is the second largest website on the internet. On record and this gaining more and more attraction, people watch over 1 billion hours of video every day. The best part is the fact that YouTube is increasingly replacing television in people’s viewing habits, and its growth is showing no signs of slowing down.

When it comes to barriers of entry, YouTube is much lower than a traditional television network. Anyone with a smartphone and an inexpensive software can start a channel and build an audience.

As affiliate once again, YouTube opens onto us a great opportunity. If you create a video and release them regularly, you can build a channel and an audience. Similarly to SEO, you can monetize the audience by promoting offers. While there are some rules regulating how you present affiliate offers, this is a popular way for many YouTube creators to monetize their channels.

Physical products in best when promoted with video. Remember any product you show on camera makes a good demonstration, review, unboxing or comparison video. Entire channels have been built around just showing off products.

The key is consistency. You need to commit to creating and publishing videos always. The videos also need to be of good quality, and the listings should be optimized for Youtube’s algorithm. None of these things are technically challenging. The biggest challenge is with how consistent we can be as affiliates.

DRAWBACK

Consequently, YouTube may also take a substantial amount of time to see results. You won’t just put a couple of videos and start making money. Dan Locke, an expert says, you need to hit 50 videos on your channel before YouTube takes notice of you and start promoting your videos.

Unfortunately, most YouTubers do not get that far, so if you can stick it all out, you would slice of YouTube’s pie in no time.

Let me help you with a tool we use to research and confirm our next video is ever going to have a chance to rank before we ever create a next video. [It saves a lot of time and efforts]

3. SOCIAL MEDIA

“Social media” in our context here is a large tent that includes multiple platforms. At the time of this writing, Instagram (Reels), Pinterest and Facebook Groups are the most viable social media platforms for affiliate marketers. However, social media changes so fast that other platforms might be more viable now that you are reading this article.

Social media allows marketers to connect with people and communicate with them on an ongoing basis. Many brands have built up audiences and promoted affiliate programs to them on one or more of these platforms.

While there’s a potential for affiliate marketing on social media, there are a few cautions I would want to disclose.

First, social media platforms amplify certain messages and muffle others with their algorithm: This basically means, different social media platforms support different types of content. Hence how which platform would best suite your offers. Also, for an example if you build a Facebook group with a thousand followers, only a small percentage of them will see each message you post. Actually, there is nothing you can do about it as they would want you to boost the posts by paying.

Secondly, Social media platforms are continually changing their rules, often than notice: If you are primarily using any social media platform to build your affiliate marketing, then you are encouraged to stay on top of the changes which comes up regularly. Otherwise you would risk losing all the audience you have work so hard to build.

Lastly, social media platforms are not thrilled about affiliate marketing: All the various social media platforms have a similar goal of getting the viewer to stay on their platform as much and long as possible. This has made them skeptical about links that would generally drive people away from their platform to other places and affiliate links and offer are no exception. While some platforms accept certain kinds of affiliate offers, it might be tough to break through.

As a beginner, social media could give you the headstart in building your affiliate marketing efforts. Yet, we suggest you do not rely solely or primarily on social media as your biggest source of traffic. That said, we use social media to complement one of the source we are discussing and you can do same.

Learn about the primary source of traffic for us here at FartMan Blog.

NB: Unlike the first three traffic sources we have discussed already, the next three a less direct. Assuming you are using one of the first three to build and audience, the next three would help you double your efforts and increase conversion. Let’s start

4. GUEST BLOGGING

Earlier, we discussed about how starting a website or blog and optimizing it for search engines have the potential to generate for your affiliate programs and how it’s downside was the significant amount of time it takes to pay off. So, what if you could get your message out on a blog that someone has already built up? Sounds interesting right? Then it is absolutely possible.

That is all guest blogging entails. It works exactly as the name implies. You find a blog that has an audience which is similar to what you are targeting. You then write high quality articles and offer them to the blog’s owner. They get a piece of free content, and you get a link to your website (you promote affiliate offers on your website and not the guest blog itself)

You should be informed that guest blogging leans on quality content and relationships. Your opportunities will vary niche by niche. Some niches are filled with active blogs. While it’s a bit tough to get your content posted on the biggest ones, there are often small or mid- sized blogs that are more receptive to outside content.

HOW DO I FIND BLOGS

The best way to find blogs in your niche is to go onto Google and type different keywords in your niche.

Often, the top result will be blogs. There will also usually be contact information on the blog to submit guest post to. In some cases, you’ll find them on social media as well.

You can also type in [Keyword of niche + blogs]

The downside is that, just with building your own website, it’s a numbers game since you might not just accepted the first time you reach out to someone with your guest blog post. It takes ongoing efforts and persistence, then guest blogging would become a great traffic source.

5. QUORA

Quora is a website where people ask questions of every topic imaginable. Of course questions that relate to your affiliate offers are available too. If you land on Quora and answer questions on topics related to your niche, you can help people and build credibility and trust.

Quora isn’t just for developing brand. You can also drive traffic from it. If you already have a blog with articles in your niche, you can post the links to those articles in the answers you post on Quora.

For example, let’s say you have an article on your website about the 10 best logo freelancers on fiverr. You can research a question on Quora form someone asking about how to get the best logo freelancer to hire. You then answer the question by providing a few ideas and then encouraging them to check out the article on your blog to get more ideas.

Just like other methods, this is great but limited. Using Quora as a compliment to other traffic sources would bring in extra eyeballs to your links.

6. PAID ADVETISING

While most of the approaches we have discussed in this article involves generating organic traffic, you can speed up your results by paying for it. By investing in ads, you can generate a substantial traffic to your website or wherever you are promoting your affiliate links.

The biggest advantage with this method is speed. While most of the other methods take months to generate substantial results, investing in traffic can pay off in days. Many affiliates find more success with this approach because they are encouraged to do more after seeing it payoff sooner.

The major drawback also is the money you are investing. While making smart investment in traffic is great, new media buyers struggle to profit, especially if the traffic points directly to affiliate offers. Many traffic platforms also have rules against buying ads that promote affiliate programs directly.

To put you a step ahead of potential competition, read the previous article on how to promote your affiliate links, scroll over to paid advertising and find out how to start with media buying.

7. EMAIL MARKETING

This is by far, the best source of traffic affiliate marketers use to generate a steady monthly passive income. Here at FartMan, this has been our go to method of getting people to visit our blog, affiliate offers and anywhere we want to send them.

Email marketing is great for one reason, “Control”. You decide who sees your emails and who not to see them. There aren’t any algorithms to impede visibility etc.

A dedicated blog article has been solely written on this. Click here to have an in-depth of how this whole email marketing strategy works and why you should start using it now to your advantage.

CONCLUSION

One of the major challenge when it comes with building any business online. i.e. coaching services, print-on-demand, physical store, freelancing etc. is the ability to drive targeted traffic to your products.

We have had our own unfruitful days. We went through the learning curve just as you are right now.

We learnt to put the pieces together, asked for assistance from experts, built a solid foundation and then started scaling up.

All the traffic methods we discussed above are methods we have tested on our own. You have to decide which traffic source would be your primary source of traffic and the ones to complement them.

You can start as we initially did, one free organic method and one paid method.

You have already begun the journey with all the information in this article. Start now, take action and build an audience of people who would always trust you to provide them with the value they need.