Digitalization of everything is one of the best things to happen to the world but very few people understand the value in this.
In the past couple of weeks I've been spending my days reading up a lot on marketing and so far, I can say it has largely shaped how I view the Internet, rather than see problems, I find myself opening up to the opportunities that come with each new(and old) thing - good or bad - from the naked view.
Sure, there's a lot of crap on the net, but that's only because there's a lot of human attention being spent daily in this space so lazy business builders and bag chasers fill up the space with crap to mine that attention, but you, you can do it right, build a good reputation and make money.
Trends are gold mines
Following trends is easy, but extracting value from them? Not so much.
The reason for this is very simple:
Most of us are too distracted to see the value that is there to gain.
But hey, what makes it profitable is that few spend the time to study trends and develop structures to extract value from them.
When an ecosystem is over-saturated, the value that can be attained reduces significantly, but since this isn't quite leveraged, it becomes a highly profitable venture.
In case you're still wondering what this is about, well, it's quite a common venture but most people view it as something with several complex walls, I mean sure, anything money-related is bound to not be so easy, but that's what makes it very rewarding when the hammer hits the nails in the head, firmly.
Affiliate marketing, no, it is not dead because humans are very hungry creatures and you should know, that a hungry beast has to always be fed.
Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing strategy that enables you to earn an income without building several layers of service and production networks as a business.
Why struggle to build a product, build a brand name through service - which is dang expensive - just to sell a couple of strings and texts? Sounds rather traumatic. So no, scratch that, you're better off taking up a marketing role that with success stands to pay you more than a company-hired marketer.
Fun Fact: Affiliate Marketers make an average of $70k in a year, the best of the best make millions.
Of course, you have to find great affiliate products and programs and be good at promotions for this to pan out.
Notwithstanding, here are some tips and tricks:
Follow trends
Well, it's only expected that this is the first tip, no? But what's the trick?
Make no mistakes, trends are half the time already clawed up by big media companies. I could still recall chasing the FTX collapse trend and being pushed to the corner by higher authority publishing platforms.
So what can you do?
You can compete by using high-authority websites, including Medium, LinkedIn and Quora.
Writing promotional copies on these platforms has a high chance of showing up on Google, which is an ocean of attention. Find a product or program, enroll, get approved, acquire your affiliate links and head over to start publishing promotional pieces.
For the second tip
Draft out a list of low-competition keywords
I know your question is most definitely "How would I know what keyword is low on competition?"
Well, for starters, I mean long-tail keywords so we are looking at something like "Is Finance A Good Career Path?" as opposed to simply "Finance" as a central topic.
Having known this, how to know if a keyword has low competition is to simply search it up on Google and look at how many results Google returns with an exact match, and also the websites that are ranking for these keywords. If their names seem very foreign or merely exploring the site they don't quite intimidate you then you bet the content on those recommended platforms above will outrank them.
With this, you can publish as much content as you can, promoting various products all the way.
The third tip:
Keep it related
Keep what related exactly? Your content, for best results, you have to keep your content related to the products or services you're promoting, it makes no sense promoting pet products on software-related content, surely we have dog lovers amongst software developers but at that point, the topics are too conflicting, this is why Google has to track you and use your personal data(usually from most recent activities) to confirm your ads or use the content of the page to do so, it simply increases the click-through rate(CTR) because it's related.
What should you not do?
Spam!
Remember you're trying to build a reputation and spamming doesn't quite help you and you'd discover that in the long run, it affects your growth both audience-wise and income-wise.
What inspired this post?
Well, apparently 3D-printed vegan salmon just hit the European market and first I was like, what the crap? We eat lab-generated foods now? but on second thoughts, vegans, these wondrous individuals who care so much about animal lives have been causing a trend, why not support the moment by connecting them to Vegan stores where they can get their new-found food tastes and ethical fashion wears.
I ran a couple of searches and found some vegan affiliate programs. About 6% of the United States identify as vegan so that gives you an idea of the available audience to target.