Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online and we have people making thousands of dollars (and even millions) from their affiliate marketing efforts. We all love to get great results from little efforts and that is exactly what affiliate marketing brings about â€“ No need to answer support queries, no need to brainstorm product ideas etc.

Successful affiliate marketers have a recipe, and this is what most newbie donâ€™t know. You donâ€™t just setup an affiliate website and expect the income to be flowing; there are steps you have to take to get the best from your affiliate marketing efforts. This post will be explaining a 4-step-recipe used by many successful affiliate marketers to make money online.

1. Market Research

One thing I have learned from many successful affiliate marketers is that they donâ€™t just jump into a niche and begin to try to make money online promoting affiliate products but they always research effectively before committing their resources into a niche.

It is a very dangerous mistake to get started in a niche you know nothing about, you have to research effectively and have enough details about the niche you are about to enter. When trying to start affiliate marketing in a particular niche, you have to have basic knowledge of the niche, such as the type of audience, the buyer intent, the competition and which type of product works best in that niche. You wouldnâ€™t want to be promoting ebooks in a niche where they love to buy books in hardcover.

2. The Right Product

After you know the type of market and what works best, you wouldnâ€™t just want to start promoting any product you see, this isnâ€™t going to work! Another crucial step to making money online from affiliate marketing is promoting the right product. I have discovered that promoting products from big brands tend to convert better because the big companies will have done a lot of the marketing work, and your prospect would have come across the product on several occasions, he/she will be more likely to buy it than other products he/she is coming across for the first time.

Another thing you should note is that if a product has been over-promoted, you might not get the best from your promotion efforts because most of the buyers would have gone after the recommendations of a guru in the niche, thereby leaving you with less opportunity to make sales.

3. Focus on Trust

Another core factor that determines how you make it with affiliate marketing is trust. It is very important to focus on building trust with your prospects first. It is very important to know that it is easier to destroy your trust than it is to build it. If you worked hard on building trust with your readers, you can destroy that trust by promoting the wrong product.

There are several ways to build trust with your readers (or to-be customers) and one of the best ways to build trust is by making sure you give value. If you are promoting your affiliate products via your blog, it is very important to focus on writing high-quality, valuable content first because this will help you win the trust of your readers, thereby making them buyers.

4. Get Traffic

One thing I have noticed from most people who believe affiliate marketing is difficult is that most of them have little to no traffic. Affiliate marketing success doesnâ€™t stop in you researching the market or having the right product, you also have to focus on getting traffic to your affiliate links. When it comes to getting traffic, there are different types of traffic but getting high-quality traffic from the right place works best. One major source of traffic you should focus on as an affiliate marketer is search engine traffic because you only need to work once, and once you could secure your spot in the search engines you will begin to get traffic on autopilot.

Another great advantage of search engine traffic is that it converts better than any other traffic source because search engine visitors are more targeted â€“ they came in a search for something.

While search engine traffic is not the only way to get traffic, there are several other ways to get high-quality traffic to your blog and I will be listing 5 of them below:

i. Guest Blogging

ii. Forum Posting

iii. Blog Commenting

iv. Video Marketing

v. Article Marketing

Conclusion

The above are 4 great steps (I call it the affiliate marketing recipe) to affiliate marketing success, implement the above tips and you will begin to get more results from your affiliate marketing efforts.

This guest post was written by Onibalusi Bamidele, a young entrepreneur living the internet lifestyle, subscribe to his blog for more great posts. Also, get his free traffic report called the ultimate traffic formula.