Entry # 3: How to Start Affiliate Marketing

I have been here in Malaysia for more than 3 months now and made almost 500 online job applications with JobsDb, Monster, Hired Now, OnlineJobsPH just to name a few. While doing that I have been attending as well a couple of different free seminars on E-Commerce, Digital Marketing, Drop shipping, Affiliate Marketing, Mobile App Development and other personal development seminars. This is the one thing I loved most about Malaysians as they are very enterprising and they to love to learn new things.

One of the seminars that I have attended on Digital Marketing is the one conducted by a Singaporean named Fabian Lim who is the author of The Science of Getting Rich Decoded based on the original writings of Wallace D. Wattles and of the book “Click! Work Anytime and Live Anywhere which gave me the light bulb to drop my job hunting and focus on online business. Basically the seminar revolves around on the different earning opportunities available on the internet and as mentioned in my earlier post, I would like to share with you all I know about Affiliate Marketing. I did give you an overview about it from my previous post and for this post, I would like to share with you on how you start with Affiliate Marketing. If you googled it, most would say there are around 6 or more steps to do so. In my case, I would just like to categorize in into three major steps

First, you need to create a website. Nowadays, creating a website is no longer a challenge, you can create a simple website in less than an hour. You do not need programming skills as they are platforms that allows you to drag and drop to create your website. In my case, I used WIX as I have been using this for quite sometime and somewhat familiar already of the different functions. I already created several websites such as my personal website for my insurance side hustle, online portfolio of my brother, our homeowner’s association official website and my niece’s e-store. If in case, you do not want to go through this hassle, I am most willing to offer you my services at a very reasonable professional fee.

Second, you to identify which affiliate program that you will sign-up. To make this decision you have to know your target audience. Prior to starting, I did a marketing survey to find out which online shopping platform my target audience used. It turned out that most of them are into Shopee, Lazada and Zalora. I was actually under the impression that once you do affiliate marketing, the default program that you should sign up with should be Amazon. Thankfully, I was able to attend the seminar of Fabian Lim and learned the importance of this step as it is logical of course to go for an affiliate program where your target audience is.

Lastly, which I think is the most challenging step of the whole process is how to drive traffic in your website and encourage users to do the actual purchase on the site. There are hundreds of thousands of websites doing affiliate marketing and for you to get a slice of the market can be an uphill challenge. So in my case, I decided to focus on a niche market and try to understand the online shopping habits of people within my circle of influence. I have also used one of my Facebook accounts to further market my website and planning to do in the future a YouTube version of monetizing me and create a mobile application as well.

This is all for now and will share more on my future post specific details of the different Affiliate programs,

Stay Wealthy!