Affiliate Marketing for Seniors: Work Flow
There is a process to becoming a successful affiliate marketer.
It's not rocket science, but it is a series of steps and each one is essential.
Many would be entrepreneurs hear about affiliate marketing and decide that it's an easy way to make money, maybe to achieve the twin desirabilities of living the laptop lifestyle and making money while you sleep.
While both of those are achievable, they won't happen without a plan. As the old saying has it "fail to plan - plan to fail". Seniors who jump into affiliate marketing without understanding the essential steps are planning to fail. Don't be one of them
Here are the 10 steps required for step by step affiliate marketing for seniors:
Choose Your Niche
If you are starting any sort of business, whether it's bricks and mortar or an online business, the first question you have to ask yourself is "What is my business all about?"
In the online world, it's called choosing your niche and, although it's very important, bear in mind that it may be just the first of many online businesses that you are going to own.
Unlike the bricks and mortar world, it costs very little to start an online business so the chances are that you will eventually own several.
This of course has the advantage that each one only needs to earn a small amount for it to all add up to a decent income. And if just one of them takes off, you can do very well indeed.
But it also means don't hesitate too much.
Avoid "paralyses by analysis" and jump right in, even if it's just for the learning experience.
As a senior starting up in affiliate marketing, you are going to make mistakes. Embrace them and come out of the other side with the extra knowledge gained as a result.
So How Do You Select a Niche?
There are two ways to select a niche for your online business:
- Choose something that you are knowledgeable, even passionate about. In other words, a familiar subject.
- Choose something that gets a lot of searches and has a large number of related products. In other words, a popular subject.
Familiar Subject as Internet Niche: Advantage
The advantage of a familiar subject is that you are going to be writing a lot of content around it and that will be easier if you are already knowledgeable and passionate about it.
Familiar Subject as Internet Niche: Disadvantage
The disadvantage of this approach is that while you may be passionate about a subject, if no one else is, then you won't get much in the way of visitors so all your good work in writing articles will be wasted.
Just because you're passionate about collecting old bottle caps or mapping the far side of the moon doesn't mean that visitors will flock to your specialized website or that you can make an income out of it.
Popular Subject as Internet Niche: Advantage
By choosing a niche that has a lot of searches and associated products, you increase the chances that, if your business is successful, you can make a lot of money from it.
For example, "weight loss" is one of the most searched for terms on the internet and has a ton of products associated with it, from diet books to treadmills.
So is it a good niche to be in?
For a startup business, probably not. Actually, definitely not.
Popular Subject as Internet Niche: Disadvantage
The disadvantage of a popular subject is, well, its popularity. It means that the competition is intense.
A Google search for "weight loss" will bring up over 1 billion results!
And all of them will have been in business for much longer than you. Every keyword you can think of will already be the subject of other websites.
Your chances of making it to page 1 of Google, Bing or Yahoo through SEO are pretty much zero and if you're not on page 1, you might as well be invisible.
Yes, you can pay for ads, and I'll examine that option in detail further down the track, but for the uninitiated, it's a rapid way to spend money with no return.
What to Do?
Clearly, your best bet is to find something that you're knowledgeable about (or at least interested in) that will have a reasonable number of related searches but doesn't have an insane amount of competition and has associated products that you can sell.
For more information on HOW to do this, get my free books:
The 4 Things You Must Know (to Make Money While You Sleep) and
How to Select Your Internet Marketing Niche
Register a Domain Name
The next step is to register and purchase a domain name that reflects your niche. For example, to promote coffee-related products, I registered the domain names coffeekickstart.com and goldilockscoffee.com (coffee that's "just right").
You can register your domain name through Wealthy Affiliate, where you can also host your websites and learn all about affiliate marketing, step by step.
Build a Website
Next you will build a website based on your newly registered domain name. Again, Wealthy Affiliate is your go-to destination to learn how.
Create Content
Your Home Page
When you first create your website, your home page will be your blogroll (a list of your blog posts, latest first). This gives you an immediate presence on the internet. Wealthy Affiliate will teach you how to do this.
Later on, you may to choose to create a specific home page that tells your visitors what your business is all about and, at the same time, moves your blog post navigation to an item in your header menu.
Your Blog Posts
Your blog posts are where you create content for your website.
They will typically be a mixture of information that your target audience will find useful and promotional links to products that they will also find useful, but for which you get paid an affiliate commission.
This is easy to do, and is the reason that affiliate marketing is such a great side hustle for seniors and, if fact for everyone else as well.
Create a Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is something, such as an e-book that's relevant to your target visitor and that you can give away on your website in exchange for their name and email address. There is both an art and a science to creating a lead magnet and I'll cover it in detail in a future blog post in this series.
The development of AI has made the creation of quality lead magnets much easier and more productive, but there are definitely a right and wrong way to go about it.
Seniors have a unique advantage when creating a quality lead magnet for an affiliate marketing business.
Build Your Email List
This is the reason you create the lead magnet. You use an autoresponder to obtain your visitor's name and email address and maintain it in a database. This is your email list.
You can use the autoresponder to send informative and promotional emails to the subscribers in your email list. They are much more likely to buy from you than random visitors are.
This whole process will be covered in future blog posts.
Get Affiliate Links
These are the links you will use to promote products that pay you affiliate commissions.
Create Landing Pages with Reviews
Landing pages are pages on your website that review your affiliate products. The review contains the affiliate link to the product that will pay you an affiliate commission if the visitor buys it.
People who are looking to purchase a particular product often search for reviews on that product. A detailed, honest review is your opportunity to engender trust and increase the probability that when they buy the product, they will do so through your link.
Drive Traffic to Your Landing Pages
Organic Traffic
You drive organic traffic by writing blog posts that get onto the first page of search results for product relevant keywords. The blog post links to the landing page.
Paid Traffic
You get paid traffic by creating Google, Facebook, Bing, Pinterest or other pay-per-click ads. The ad also links to the landing page.
Work on Your Business
Like any business, you need to work on it. Continue to write blog posts and create reviews. Find more appropriate vendors with quality products that you can promote and earn an affiliate commission.
There is a huge scope for substantial profit in affiliate marketing for seniors. In future articles, I will expand on those aspects of the journey that I could only touch on here.
See Also:
Is Affiliate Marketing the Ideal Side Hustle for Seniors?
Affiliate Marketing for Seniors: How to Build a Website
Affiliate Marketing for Seniors: Create Content
Affiliate Marketing for Seniors: Create a Lead Magnet
Affiliate Marketing for Seniors: Your Lead Magnet's Landing Page
Successful Affiliate Marketing for Seniors and Retirees in the USA
