Ultimate Guide to Domain Flipping for Beginners

Domain flipping is one of the best side hustles to make money online and this is for a reason. Starting an online business requires you as an entrepreneur to register a domain name and buy web hosting as the barest minimum investment. With your own domain name and website hosting, you can build a website or start a blog to promote your business locally and globally.

 

And because domain name registration is on first come first serve basis, holding all other factors constant, you may not be smart or lucky enough to get the exact domain name you desire to brand your business when you are starting out.

 

To this end, trading in domain names has become a huge money-making industry of sorts to discerning investors. Every now and then, you’ll come across domain aftermarkets where inventory of thousands to millions of names is listed for sale at prices you cannot fathom.

 

The question is, “Why is it so?” This is because business owners who want to grow their brands and project strong online presence are willing to invest tidy sum of money to buy a domain name which is specific to their business.

 

In this ultimate guide to domain flipping for beginners, I’m going to spill the beans on how to make money buying and selling domain names for profit. With as little as $10, you can buy a domain and sell it for quick cash. All you need is the requisite knowledge to pick up a quality domain name that ticks all the dots for a quick cash sale.

 

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through all the steps to research and get a domain name worth selling for cash. There is nothing complicated about buying and selling domain names on the World Wide Web. What you really need is the patience to research a good domain name with lots of potential buyers in sight before you step your foot at the door.

 

While it’s true that you can make money with domain names, it’s never a get rich quick scheme. Domain investing must be strategic for you to be able to turn it to a full-time side hustle business and make profit. In other words, you want to buy a domain name and quickly reach out to potential leads who are willing and able to pay premium money to own it as soon as possible.

 

Domaining is like digging the treasure trove to find precious gold. Imagine purchasing a domain for about $10 to $100 and selling it for $1000 or more within a period of 12 months without doing any grunt work other than listing it at secondary marketplaces like Atom.com, Dan.com, Afternic.com or GoDaddy.com!

 

A lot of domainers are making money online from domain name business investments on daily basis. But for you to be successful at domain investing, you’ve to hone strong digital marketing skills to identify real potential buyers in advance, have requisite business tools to work with, have gut feeling to know a domain worth buying and the creativity and foresight to spot diamonds in the rough besides setting aside reasonable amount of budget to get started.

 

But if you’re starting on a shoestring budget, setting aside between $50 and $100 cash investment will be okay to buy your first batch of domains of about 3 to 5. But the higher the budget, the better for you to turn in profits quickly as you’ll be able to leverage several sources to get premium domain names to resell for profit as quickly as possible.

 

For example, if you’ve starting budget of $1000, you’ll be able to tap into several marketplaces such as domain auctions, closeouts, backorder services and aftermarkets to source for and buy cheap but high-quality domain names you can quickly resell at a profit. This is one of the best ways to earn and thrive in this ever-competitive domain business.

 

With that said, let’s dive in!

 

Types of Domains for Sale

 

Depending on your research and conviction to register a domain, there are different variants of domains for sale which your potential buyers will find valuable. The most important factor before investing in a domain name is the value which your potential buyers will derive from your sale. What value will it bring to the table of any intending buyer?

 

If you cannot attach any value to your virtual real estate you intend to purchase, there is no reason to buy it in the first place. This is because it will be difficult for you to pitch, convince and sell such domain to any reachable entrepreneur who you may contact during your outbound marketing if need be.

 

In this blueprint, I’ll discuss domain for sale types which you can have success with.

 

• Brandable domain names
• Exact match domain (EMD)
• Geo + keyword domains
• Keyword + descriptive prefix or suffix

 

Brandable Domain Names

 

This type of name has to do with creativity and ability of a domainer to combine English words or letters to form a unique brand business name. For example, Google.com, YouTube.com and Facebook.com are brandable domain names. The creative word combination is unique and compelling. If you ask me what has “face” got to do with “book” in the Facebook domain name, I’ll not be able to give you a straightforward answer.

 

But selling brandable domains is slow and can tie down a lot of capital. You may hold your inventory for years before finding a buyer. The worst part is that it’s difficult to know exactly who your potential buyers are at the beginning of researching leads and prospects to market your domain for sale to.

 

In any case, you can focus on a niche per time which will make it easy for you to come up with viable domain name ideas to register or buy for reselling at a profit. Atom.com (formerlySquadhelp.com) is one of the best marketplaces to buy brandable domain names.

 

Exact Match Domain (EMD)

 

EMD is an exact keyword phrase registered as a website domain in the order it is being searched for online by users. For instance, “small business ideas” is a keyword phrase which internet users search for on monthly basis. Now, if you own the domain name, SmallBusinessIdeas.com, you’ve an exact match domain in your portfolio.

 

An easy way to get EMD is by using keyword tools such a Google Keyword Planner. However, a valuable EMD is one that has a lot of monthly search volume, high CPC (cost per click) and competition in mostly high-paying niches such as insurance, finance, technology, etc.

 

What if you own BabyShower.com? I can bet you that manufacturers and entrepreneurs will beat a path to your doorstep to buy it from you. The type-in traffic factor and search engine optimization (SEO) benefits of an exact match domain (EMD) make it highly valuable to entrepreneurs and investors alike. You can play around with keyword research tools to find valuable EMDs that are available to register or make use of ExpiredDomains.net to get some expired domains to buy at mere registration cost.

 

Geo + Keyword Domains

 

These are geographically oriented domain names. A dentist in New York can buy NewYorkDentist.com from you if you own it without batting an eyelid. Keywords related to services or products are highly marketable when combined with geographic locations.

 

As is always the case, expensive niches or services will command more money than the others when you’re selling domains associated with geographic locations.

 

Keyword + Descriptive Prefix or Suffix

 

As a domain investor, there are good keywords or phrases worth investing in at any day or time. It could be trending keywords or emerging technology. Let’s say you cannot afford to buy Business.com as a domain name to sell later. You can append a suffix like “hub” to the “business” keyword and then come up with BusinessHub.com to sell.

 

Some years back, I registered PassiveIncomeHub.com and sold it for quick cash of $260 as I could not lay my hands on PassiveIncome.com. All I did was to add the suffix “hub” to “passive income” keyword and I received an inbound offer to sell it.

 

In this case, you’ve to keep a file of common and valuable prefixes, suffixes or stop words which you can append to good keywords such as hub, joy, pro, center, base, etc.

 

How to Identify Valuable Domain Name

 

The characteristics of a good domain name make it valuable when it comes to selling. The more characteristics a domain name has, the merrier and valuable it is.  As a domain flipper, you’ve to intuitively consider and evaluate all these factors in a domain when thinking of investing in a name to sell for profit.

 

Some of these characteristics include age of domain, quality backlinks, length of domain, brandable, target keyword, commercial viability, memorable, free from trademark infringement, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, easy to remember, not hyphenated, passes radio test, distinctive, etc.

 

With experience and practice, you’ll be able to stack these qualities together when evaluating a domain name to buy before investing in it in a jiffy. For you to be on a speed lane, develop the habit of regularly checking out domains sold reports published online at NameBio.com, DNJournal.com/domainsales.htm, Domaining.com, etc.

 

How to Buy Low and Sell High

 

The first step to quickly sell your domain is to buy something that will appeal to a lot of prospects and leads in terms of brand value it projects, SEO benefits, keyword targeted, etc. You can hand register a domain name for $10, buy from closeouts for about $20, bid at auctions with less competitive bids or research and contact individual domain owners especially undeveloped domains.

 

You can then list your domains for sale in premium marketplaces like Dan.com, Afternic.com, Atom.com, Sedo.com, just to name a few. Sooner or later, we’ll be releasing complete domain flipping guide to help aspiring entrepreneurs to make money with domain names. You can bookmark this page for the link.

Places to Sell Domain Names

The best marketplaces to sell your domain are secondary markets where your domains for sale will receive wider exposure. You can check out places like Afternic.com, Atom.com, Sedo.com, Dan.com, Daaz.com, etc.

 

How to Build an Email List from Scratch for Beginners

 

One of the best ways to make money online as an internet marketer, blogger or webmaster is to build an email list from scratch in your target niche market and monetize it in the best ways that suit you. Starting an email marketing campaign is not complicated at all and anybody can do it with the right online marketing tools which I’ll discuss shortly.

 

First and foremost, you’ve to understand that consistent list building confer a lot of responsibilities on you as an email marketer because you’ve to be on top of the game with your subscribers in order to be in their good books.

 

You may not know that generating a lead and/or closing a sale is not as easy as it sounds. It takes as many as seven times to expose a product or service to a potential prospect before he may decides to buy. So, understanding the buyer’s journey is important if you want to succeed big time. 

 

To this end, you’ve to find a way to consistently reach out to your target audience in order to have the opportunity to constantly promote products and services that they need to them. Beyond this, the onus is also on you to intersperse your promotions with high quality content, industry news, emerging trends, etc which will be of benefit to your subscribers so as to get the best results from your email marketing campaigns.

 

To do this effectively, you’ve to subscribe to reliable ESP (email service provider) who will be saddled with the collection and management of subscribers on your behalf using email marketing software specifically designed for this purpose.

 

List building is an integral part of digital marketing channels and it’s important you learn and master it inside out if you want to go far and make profits in your online business for the long term.

 

As it were, statistics have it that for every $1 you spend on email marketing campaigns, you should expect circa $36 ROI (return on investment) or even more. ROI from email marketing is the highest of all the digital marketing strategies used by internet marketers to reach out to their target markets.

 

Now, let’s quickly discuss the basic online tools and resources which you absolutely need to succeed with your email marketing strategy.

 

Email Marketing Tools and Resources

 

The following tools and resources are what you need to start email marketing business successfully and on a sound footing.

 

1. Domain name
2. Web hosting services
3. Blog website preferably WordPress blog
4. Email marketing software
5. High quality lead magnet
6. High impact but constant content for your blog and email autoresponder
7. Website traffic

 

Domain Name

 

The first step is to register a domain name to make it easy for you to build an email list of subscribers from your own website. This is the URL or virtual office address that you’ll be using to direct targeted traffic to your website and for branding purposes. For example, HustleVim.com is a domain name focusing on side hustle ideas. The domain URL will take you to a landing page when you type it on your browser.

 

For less than $10 for a year, you can buy a domain name from NameCheap and use it to start an online business successfully. Namecheap domain registration service is cheap and reliable. A lot of online business owners use Namecheap as their preferred domain registrar. But you’ve to get the .com extension because website visitors are wont to type it on their browsers as the common domain business TLD.

 

Preferably, you can get a keyword domain or EMD (exact match domain) to start your own business online as it will make it easy for you to embark on profitable search engine optimization (SEO) and favorably rank on the SERP, holding all other factors constant.

 

Also, it will help your potential customers to easily find your website online and know what your business is all about in advance without necessarily explaining it to them every time.

 

Web Hosting Services

 

Website hosting services is essential for you to host your files and website on someone else’s servers in order to make your website to be live and accessible 24/7. Without web hosting services, no prospect or customer will be able to find your web site on the World Wide Web and take action of buying any product or service from you.

 

There are companies whose businesses are to provide hosting services to webmasters and bloggers on the internet. HostGator web hosting services is one of them and they provide their hosting service at a cheap or affordable rate and they are very reliable. With an excellent customer support, you don’t have any problem starting an online business with them.

 

The icing on the cake is that HostGator supports WordPress hosting and offers free domain name registration for first time customers in their first year. For less than $100 for your web hosting fees for a whole year, you’ll get a free domain name to start your own business on the internet.

 

In addition, HostGator hosting company provides website builder to help you create websites without knowing a lot about HTML, coding or having website design skills.

 

Click here to sign up with HostGator website hosting services

 

Blog Website

 

When you purchase website hosting from HostGator as I explained above, you’ll get a domain name for free for the first year. And because HostGator supports WordPress hosting, you’ll be able to install self-hosted WordPress blog on your domain name for free. WordPress.org has functionalities that will make it simple and easy for you to build a website or create a blog for free to start your own online business.

 

Creating a blog website will provide you with a solid platform to build an email list from scratch in easy steps. You can also write and publish blog posts targeting long tail keyword phrases which you can easily rank for on the SERP or simply direct your subscribers to relevant content pages on your blog to read from your autoresponder email series.

 

Blogging for money is very profitable if you’re able to integrate an effective email marketing campaigns with it. With a reliable web hosting company, blogging is a breeze and any beginner can do it without being tech savvy. I started blogging when I couldn’t even differentiate between HTML and hot meal!

 

Creating a blog and integrating email newsletter with it will help you to stand out as an expert, brand your business, build trust and credibility with your target audience over time.

 

Email Marketing Software

 

Before you can seamlessly build an email list of subscribers, you’ve to sign up with an email marketing software provider. This service will be provided by an email service provider (ESP) like GetResponse’s autoresponder company. It’s an essential part of your online marketing system if you hope to build and grow your leads and increase sales.

 

GetResponse email marketing software has a 30-day free trial from this link and you can take advantage of that to start email marketing business successfully without paying a dime at the beginning. Besides, you’ll be able to learn the ropes of email marketing and how it works before jumping in with both feet.

 

With reliable ESP, you can create sign up forms, create autoresponder messages, send broadcast messages and automate your email marketing campaigns without breaking a sweat from your account dashboard.

 

High Quality Lead Magnet

 

A lead magnet is the incentive that will draw in would-be subscribers to your website where they will be willing to exchange their email addresses for your valuable content they need. In some quarters, some people call it “ethical bribe” because you’re using a valuable product or service to coax your web visitors to give you their email IDs for further communications in the future.

 

A lead magnet can be any valuable content in the form of free ebook PDF, video, audio, podcast, gated blog content, infographic, whitepaper, case studies, webinar, app, software, mini online course, one time offer, and so on.

 

But the best gift to give away should focus on answering questions your target audience is asking or providing the right solutions to problems or pain points they are grappling with.

 

You can learn about these questions from the comment sections of your blog posts, lurking around in online communities or forums and taking notes of questions being asked by members or making use of keyword research tools. Another good place to scoop content ideas for your lead magnet creation is questions and answers sites like Quora.com.

 

Constant Content for Your Blog Post and Email Autoresponder

 

When building an email list, you’ve to develop a system to constantly create high quality content to feed your subscribers. You can hire a freelance writer for this purpose or do it yourself. But the best way to learn and master list building is to sign up with email newsletters of successful email marketers in your chosen niche and reverse engineer their ideas and strategies.

 

Obviously, your subscribers look up to you as an expert and you’ve to prove it beyond every reasonable doubt for them to remain in your list. With this in mind, you’ve to be abreast of industry news, trends and information so that you can relate it to your list members before anyone else does.

 

This is why constant learning and studying are paramount to your email marketing success. It’s always easier to recommend and sell any product or service when your followers and fans perceive you as the go-to expert. I’ll be publishing an article later on how to generate content ideas for your email business newsletter and blog post ideas.

 

Content in this regard will include blog posts, videos, email series for your autoresponder and broadcast messages for product recommendations. Your constant interactions with your audience through surveys, blog comments, etc, will inform you of their content preferences.

 

Website Traffic

 

For your website to gain traction and get subscribers, you definitely need free targeted traffic from search engines as well as paid media if you’ve the budget and experience to do so.

 

However, you’ll not get instant website visitors from your SEO traffic efforts from day one like pay per click (PPC) advertising. But creating and publishing constant content through blogging can accelerate your online marketing campaigns by leaps and bounds.

 

Content marketing is a potent way to generate inbound leads and customers on a regular basis.  You can use any of these digital marketing channels to kick start your list building efforts.

 

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay per click (PPC) advertising
• Social media marketing (SMM)
• List building
• Content marketing
• Blogging
• Online communities and forum marketing
• Etc

 

For any online business owner who wants to learn how to build an email list from scratch, the following outline will guide you on what to do.

 

1. Set clearly defined and measurable list building goals.
2. Know your target audience.
3. Know your brand and stuff.
4. Watch and analyze your competitors.
5. Analyze and measure your data or metrics.

 

In addition to the above, you’ve to understand the moving parts of building an email list of subscribers both the technical know-how and content marketing aspect of it. I will dive deep into how to build an email list of subscribers from scratch from subsequent blog posts. Just bookmark this blog so that you don’t miss out from any of the publications.

 

Simplified Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Did you know that one of the best ways to build and establish relationship, trust and credibility with your target audience is by integrating email marketing strategy into your digital marketing mix? Besides this, it is also an online marketing system which will provide you with ample opportunities to demonstrate your expertise in a specific subject matter and ultimately make it easy to recommend and sell products and services to your subscribers.

 

I must tell you that you’ll be making a grievous mistake in your small business if you’re not building a mailing list of subscribers either as a webmaster, blogger, internet marketer, ebook author, online business owner or digital marketer.

 

So, in this guide on email marketing tips for small businesses, you’ll discover how to set up a successful campaign and have higher ROI (return on investment) more than what you should have gained using any other digital marketing strategies.

 

But first, you need to have a website of your own to be able to effectively build an email list of subscribers from scratch and have control over your list members. And with WordPress CMS blog platform, it’s now a breeze to build a website and integrate a sign up form on it to collect names and email addresses of your prospects.

 

Creating a blog on self-hosted WordPress blog is free but you’ve to buy web hosting from a company that supports WordPress hosting. If you’ve not gotten a web host yet, you can purchase website hosting services from HostGator because they are relatively cheap and reliable compared to other web hosting providers.

 

The best part is that you’ll get a free domain name registration offer from HostGator hosting company if you sign up with them as a first time customer from this link.   

 

Our next online marketing tool which you should have in your arsenal is an ESP (email service provider). ESP is the company that will provide you with an email marketing software or autoresponder to set up your web form and seamlessly organize your list building campaigns as you like it. ESPs are a dime a dozen on the World Wide Web but you’ve to be careful with the reputation of the company you sign up with.

 

However, in this tutorial, I’ll recommend GetResponse autoresponder because they are reliable, cheap and have excellent customer support. In addition, GetResponse 30-day free trial will allow you to learn the ropes of email marketing before you dive in with both feet.

 

GetResponse pricing is quite affordable and user friendly for any beginner or small business owner to get started and make money online. With as low as $15 per month, you can start email marketing campaigns in any niche market and be rest assured that you’re on the path of business growth.

 

Click here to learn about GetResponse pricing from their official website

 

Thirdly, you need a valuable lead magnet to entice your prospects and blog readers who will give you their email IDs in exchange for your free gift offer. You can create any type of content and give it away for free in the form of PDF ebook, audio, video, podcast, webinar, infographic, etc.

 

But you’ve to make sure it’s a valuable content that your subscribers are frantically seeking for and cannot be found elsewhere gratis. And the best way to create relevant content is to simply answer some of the questions your target audience is asking. You can make use of good keyword research tool and question and answer sites like Quora.com or AnswerThePublic.com to discover these questions to answer for your potential readers.

 

Don’t forget that you’ve to create series of email messages for every specific campaign you’re working on. This will include welcome email message and series of autoresponder content which will be delivered on predefined days to your subscribers at a date set apart by you.

 

Depending on your email marketing strategy and promotional tactics, your content should always be a mix of transactional, navigational and informational materials. Promotional emails have to tie in with the type of content you’ve delivered. But you should not send blatant promotions to your subscribers simply because you want to sell and make money at all cost.

 

Fourthly, create a blog, optimize your blog, publish blog posts regularly that target keyword phrases and set up opt-in mailing list form on a page on your blog.

 

With that said, let’s dive into my top 20 email marketing tips for small business to get you started right away.

 

Tip #1: Be an Avid Reader and Learner

 

As an email marketer and online business owner, constantly creating value in the marketplace is non-negotiable if you don’t want to continually record high unsubscribe rate from your mailing list. But even as an expert, you can never know enough. And for you to become a guru or thought leader in your industry, you’ve to continuously be a student of learning. As the saying goes, “Learning never ends.”

 

Personally, I’ve come to discover that the more you read and learn from others, the more you realize the little you know even when you think you’re an expert.

 

So, connecting and networking with who’s who in your industry will be a great asset to you in the long run and it will also allow you to gain insights on better ways and means to run and grow your online business by leaps and bounds.

 

You can sign up for email newsletters of some of these subject matter experts (SMEs) in your industry and observe how they professionally pre-sell, promote and close sales for their products or affiliate products.

 

Tip #2: Become an Expert or Thought Leader

 

Majority of aspiring internet entrepreneurs misses the mark when it comes to how to make money online. To be honest with you, online shoppers, information seekers or web surfers are very wary and they’re not comfortable at all when dealing with a mediocre in any niche market with regard to his product recommendation or content published on his blog.

 

Even if you’re not a subject matter expert at the beginning, you’ve to strive by all means to become one sooner or later. The fastest way to do this is to pick the brains of others as you grow your business as I explained in tip number one above. It will help you to build a mailing list fast and sell more products and services that you decide to promote to your subscribers.

 

A thought leader should have more than the basic business or job experience to solve problems and pain points of his target market. He must have sharp presence of mind and adaptable.  You’ve to be abreast of industry news, technologies, emerging trends, and the like.

 

Starting a blog on Blogger was an idea I picked up from an expert who built a blog on Blogspot and later sold it for thousands of dollars. And as digital marketing coach and trainer, I decided to use his strategy to start a free blog on Blogger with a custom domain name.

 

If I’m able to manage and grow this blog to make $1,000 per month online, it will become a case study to teach my coaching students who are on a tight budget but have at least $10 to buy a domain name to start a business. This is how to read, study, learn and possibly become a maven in your focus market.  

 

Tip #3: Hone Email Copywriting Skills

 

If you ask me, starting a successful email marketing campaign is a Herculean task and not just a child’s play. It involves a lot of steep learning curve, work load upfront, digital skills, subject matter expertise and consistency. Little wonder why a lot of online marketers fall by the way side and give up completely with email marketing systems.  

 

The best thing to do is to hone email copy writing skills to navigate and succeed with your list building campaigns. You should carefully craft every copy that delivers the goods without being overly sounding “salesy” or promotional.

 

Your landing pages and lead magnet page must emphasize on benefits over features with bullet points, clear CTA (call to action), money back guarantee, and so forth. There is a lot to learn when it comes to copywriting but you can hire a freelance copywriter if you like.

 

By simply following industry experts via their email newsletters, you can learn how to write great subject lines and preview text to get high open rates. Using text and images in your email copy with brevity can be of immense value as well.

 

Tip #4: Include Social Share Buttons on Your Blog

 

As a small business owner, email marketing is crucial to your growth. The fastest way to reach out to your target audience is through social media marketing. And if you own a blog especially WordPress blog, there is social media plugins you can install and activate to get social shares.

 

Using social share buttons on your blog is one of the best email marketing tips for small businesses which I’ve received during my blogging career. The other side of the equation is creating high quality content that will resonate with your target audience. I call these pieces as content worth sharing and linking to.

 

Tip #5: Use Storytelling to Build Your Mailing List

 

If you want to excel in your email marketing campaigns, the best antidote is to create high-impact content that tells your own stories and experiences as well as that of your customers. It doesn’t have to be a palatable story anyway. It could be mistakes you’ve made, sacrifices you made, lessons you learned, and so on.

 

Telling stories about your business move the potential customer through the buyer’s journey with conviction. I’ve used stories to sell products and services of every description. For example, I use HostGator website hosting to get online, build websites and create blogs.

 

What I did was to take my readers and digital marketing training students through my sign up process and show them my HostGator billing dashboard.

 

 

This singular action tripled the number of subscribers signing up for my list. All in all, email marketing tips for small businesses is really about being creative with ideas that will benefit you and your customers. What can you do differently that is unique and acceptable to your ideal audience?

 

 

How to Start Affiliate Marketing for Beginners Guide

 

If you’re searching for information on how to start affiliate marketing for beginners successfully, I can assure you that you’re in the right place. But before I go into the business of the day, let me tell you a secret. For you to become a successful affiliate marketer, you’ve to take consistent action to implement the tasks which I’ll discuss in this guide. Reading this text is not just enough to do the magic of making money on the internet. No, it will never happen that way!

 

Affiliate marketing business is one of my top 10 online side hustles to make money which I published sometime ago.

 

As a digital publisher, you’ve to understand that affiliate marketing business is simply driven by researching and finding the right solution with an affiliate program and recommending it to solve the problems and pain points which your target market is currently grappling with.

 

Beyond that, you should be able to show and demonstrate with proof to your target audience that the affiliate product or service you’re recommending will actually work for them.

 

This is why affiliate marketing success hinges more on “use, show and tell” promotional tactics. This is what I mean. If you buy and use a product and you’re satisfied with its efficiency or efficacy, you can promote that product if it has an affiliate program by signing up and relating your experience with the people will who need it also to solve similar problems they may be contending with as well.

 

It’s easier to close a sale of an affiliate product when you’ve first-hand experience than just philosophizing about a product’s features and benefits on an abstract level. More often than not, the discerning web users will know fake product reviews when they see it.

 

For example, I use HostGator for my web hosting services. My WordPress blogs and niche websites are hosted with HostGator Company.  And because I’m very satisfied with their services including their excellent customer service, I boldly recommend HostGator to my digital marketing training students and blog readers.

 

What I do is to simply describe the benefits of signing up with HostGator and show them screenshot of my HostGator billing dashboard as a proof that I’m actually using them for my website hosting services.

 

This serves as a social proof that I have personal experience with the website hosting company and anybody following me will reasonably believe what I’m saying regarding the pros and cons of using HostGator hosting.

 

So, in this affiliate marketing guide, I’ll walk you through all the steps on how to make money with affiliate marketing right from the very basics to the point of promoting your blog website.

 

With that said, let’s dive in.

 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

 

Simply put, affiliate marketing is a system whereby a virtual sales rep (otherwise known as affiliate, affiliate marketer or digital publisher) signs up with a merchant (also known as vendor, product creator, product owner or advertiser) who has an affiliate program in place in order to promote and sell his product or service and/or generate leads for a fixed or variable affiliate commission.

 

Majority of beginners, bloggers, internet marketers, webmasters, and so on are into affiliate marketing business because it has low barrier of entry and easy to start. As an affiliate marketer, you can quickly create a blog around a popular topic with affiliate products and services, promote these products and services so that you can close sales and earn affiliate commissions for yourself.

 

However, I noticed that a lot of people are not doing it right. If you want to become successful with affiliate marketing promotions, you’ve to build an email list of subscribers in your target niche market so that you can continually reach out to your potential buyers with high quality content and occasional promotional messages. It will help you to generate more clicks and sales.

 

In addition to that, you’ve to maintain a high quality content driven blog website where you can demonstrate your expertise with your target audience and continually build relationship with them on a longer term. As it were, online shoppers are mostly comfortable buying products and services from who they know, like and trust.

 

Also, they buy from e-commerce stores or websites they trust. This is why one can say that the likes of Amazon.com are so successful in the retail industry today. Your goal is to become a trusted expert in your field so that your followers, readers and subscribers will know, like and trust you for any product or service you recommend to them.

 

Let’s take a look at a typical PDF ebook for sale on a topic on domain flipping. let’s assume that the merchant sells the ebook for $47 and he has also integrated an affiliate program so that affiliate marketers can sign up and sell it on his behalf for 50 percent commission rate.

 

What this means is that for every affiliate who is able to close a sale for the vendor through his own online marketing efforts and promotional methods, he will earn affiliate commission of about $23.50. So, if you’re an affiliate to this vendor and you’re able to sell 10 copies of the affiliate product every month, you’ll earn an average of $235 commission per month.

 

That is, affiliate commission per sale is: $47 X 50% = $23.50

And $23.50 X 10 copies = $235 affiliate commission per month

 

But here is the caveat! If your digital marketing campaigns cost you $1,000 per month to generate $235 profits, that is a big loss already. And if it costs you only $35 in advertising to generate the same profit, you’ve earned $200 in net profits.

 

This is why a lot of affiliate marketing bloggers usually resort to SEO (search engine optimization) to generate free targeted traffic from search engines to their blogs and specific web pages. In the course of this side hustle blog, I’ll write a blog post on search engine optimization so that you can use it to prime your blog website for SERP (search engine results page) while targeting profitable long tail keyword phrases.

 

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

 

For you to understand how affiliate marketing works, first let me explain the 3 to 4 parties that are usually involved in the affiliate marketing business relationship.

 

Depending on the choice of the merchant, there are usually 3 or 4 parties involved in any affiliate program, namely: merchant, affiliate, consumer, and/or affiliate network.

 

The Merchant

 

A merchant may also be referred to as vendor, advertiser, product owner or product creator. It could be an individual, JV (joint venture) partners or a company. A merchant owns the affiliate product he wants digital publishers to sign up for, promote and sell for him.

 

A vendor do most of the heavy lifting of researching product ideas to create, creating the product, writing the sales copy to promote the product or hiring a copy writer to do it, setting up sales or landing page, creating help desk to attend to customers issues, and so on. He also sets up an affiliate program so that he can invite affiliates to sell for him.

 

The Affiliate Marketer

 

An affiliate marketer is usually a blogger, internet marketer, webmaster, digital publisher, etc, who decides to sign up for an affiliate program of any particular product or service, promotes it and makes money online if he successfully closes a sale.

 

An affiliate will create a blog, build an email list of subscribers and publish constant content on his website or third parties’ websites to drive targeted traffic to his lead magnet page or the landing page of the merchant. It’s mainly about using content marketing to curry the favor of potential buyers to get clicks to merchant’s website and converting them to sales.

 

For instance, I’ve spent quality time to write this blog article on how to start affiliate marketing for beginners. And by extension, I’ve also included links to affiliate products which I’ve personally used to create affiliate websites over the years.

 

If you find this blog post helpful, useful and relevant to your affiliate marketing journey, you may want to follow my links to make a purchase of the essential tools which I use to create affiliate websites. So, it becomes a win-win situation for everyone!

 

This is how affiliate marketers operate i.e. providing unique content related to specific topics and products and complementing it with partnership links to merchants’ products and services that could help the consumer to solve his problems or achieve specific goals.

 

Basically, affiliate marketing works by generating referral link or banner for an affiliate product and sharing it with your target audience on your own website or any third party web properties.

 

As an affiliate marketer, this is what I suggest you should always do.

 

1. Choose a niche market to focus on.
2. Research pain points that require urgent solution.
3. Find existing products with affiliate programs that could be the right solution to the problems which you discovered in (ii) above.
4. Sign up for the affiliate program and get approval so that you can generate affiliate link or banner to promote and sell the product.
5. Set up web property preferably WordPress blog where you can monetize your blog and promote the affiliate product by publishing high quality and unique content, building a list of subscribers you can continually reach out to with email messages and content marketing.
6. Make money online, rinse and repeat.  

 

The Consumer

 

A consumer is the buyer, customer or client who has paid for the affiliate product or service. He is the final decision maker in the affiliate marketing relationship. He can decide to open his wallet now and pay for the product immediately or defer it to a later date before buying it.

 

However, there are usually cookies set on the potential buyer’s browser on his laptop, PC or device to track the sale and credit it to him as the referral affiliate even if the consumer doesn’t buy immediately. The number of days for cookie tracking, of course, will depend on the affiliate program agreement in place. 

 

For you to generate more clicks and get sales of the products which you’re promoting, you must be ready to subscribe to reliable email marketing software. Autoresponder will help you to collect email addresses of potential buyers who you can market to later down the sales funnel.

 

As a matter of fact, you’ll sell more of an affiliate product if you’ve targeted list of subscribers who know, like and trust you.  If you ask me, list building is an integral part of affiliate marketing business success.

 

The Affiliate Network

 

This is the fourth and last party in the loop. Some vendors can decide to set up an in-house affiliate program and manage it themselves such as Amazon Associates program. This will limit the parties to just 3 i.e. merchant, affiliate and consumer.

 

But where affiliate network is involved in the relationship, they usually handle everything related to the affiliate program of every vendor who has signed up with them. Affiliate network acts as the middleman between the merchant and the publisher. This will extend the process to four parties i.e. merchant, affiliate marketer, affiliate network and consumer.

 

Affiliate network may host the affiliate product and landing page for the merchant and at the same time handle the product delivery to the buyer after payment has been processed. From there, merchant is paid his share of the sale, affiliate is paid his appropriate commission and the network takes their cut to cover their administrative expenses and then some.

 

For ease of management, making use of an affiliate network program is critical to your affiliate marketing success. For me, I only sign up with reputable affiliate network programs which will give me the confidence to focus on creating blogs, publishing content and doing content marketing to generate more  leads for the merchants who I’ve partnered with.

 

Some of these affiliate networks include:

 

• Impact.com
• CJ.com
• MarketHealth.com
• Clickbank.com
• JVZoo.com
• ShareASale.com
• Rakuten.com
• FlexOffers.com
• PepperJam.com
• Affiliate-program.amazon.com
  
• Etc

 

I get paid by these networks without working with individual merchants all the time.

 

Essential Tools to Start Affiliate Marketing Business

 

You’ve to invest in the following essential online business tools before you can run and grow an affiliate business profitably and successfully. In short, they are the bare minimum which you’ve to include in your digital marketing toolbox.

 

1. Domain name
2. Web hosting
3. WordPress blog
4. Email marketing software
5. Keyword research tool
6. Content (for your blog and promotion)

 

For domain name registration, I mainly use Namecheap to buy domain names because they are cheap, reliable and have excellent customer service. And as a digital marketer, I usually separate my web host from my domain registrar.

 

As for website hosting, I use HostGator. As pioneers in the web hosting industry, HostGator have the resources to manage your websites and blogs in terms of bandwidth, disk storage, security, customer service, free SSL certificate, etc. Click here to sign up with HostGator web hosting and reach out to me for my premium blogging ebook. I’ll send it to you gratis!

 

For self-hosted WordPress blog, it’s free to install and set up if you’ve signed up with a web host that supports WordPress hosting like HostGator. WordPress is an open source CMS (content management system) platform which makes it easy for non-techie blogger to install it on a domain name.

 

Email marketing software is the bread and butter of affiliate marketing business. Reputable and reliable ESP (email service provider) will have the capacity to manage and automate your list building campaigns. GetResponse email marketing software has a 30-day free trial which you can take advantage of if you’re on a budget to get started.

 

Keyword research tool is necessary to have in your marketing arsenal as an affiliate because you need to write blog posts targeting profitable long tail keyword phrases. And the only way to discover these search queries is to launch keyword research software like Google Keyword Planner tool which is totally free for advertisers if you sign up for Google Ads program.

 

As a digital publisher, creating content is free and should not be a problem at all. But if you hate writing, it means you’ve to outsource content writing to a freelance writer.

 

How to Create Affiliate Marketing Website

 

The affiliate marketing steps below are what I usually follow to create affiliate website and you can follow suit.

 

1. Choose a niche market to focus on
2. Identify pain points and problems to solve in the niche market
3. Find existing affiliate product or service to solve the problems identified in (ii) above
4. Conduct keyword research to identify profitable search terms to target
5. Register a domain name with your target main keyword in it
6. Get web hosting
7. Create affiliate marketing website using WordPress
8. Configure, customize and optimize your blog website
9. Regularly write and publish content on your blog
10. Monetize your blog website and content therein
11. Promote your blog and build backlinks to gain authority
12. Track, measure and review your website metrics
13. Make money online and grow your affiliate business

 

This is my step by step affiliate marketing for beginners’ outline which I always follow to a Tee.

 

As you can see, this is how to make money with affiliate marketing and it’s not rocket science. And I’ll be publishing a detailed blog post on how to start a blog and make money blogging online to complement this article so that you can hit the ground running in a matter of weeks.