If you’re reading this, I assume you’re either an affiliate marketer (possibly making money with AWeber) or you’re considering becoming one.
This blog post will go over some of the most important things you need to look out for before, during, and after your AWeber campaign.
Things To Check Before Your AWeber Campaign
One of the most important things to do before you start ANY business is to ensure you’re covered legally. Make sure you have a good health & dental plan in place, have a secure home environment for yourself and your family, and have the ability to pay your bills on time. If any of these things are lacking, it’s highly likely you won’t be able to properly operate your business once you start receiving payments from clients.
Choose AWeber
There are many affiliate marketing platforms out there, but we’ll be focusing on AWeber because, well, why not? It’s been around since 2009 and has seen massive growth since then. What is AWeber?
AWeber is a tool designed to make affiliate marketing easier for beginners. The platform integrates with your email marketing service to provide you with a single view of all of your contacts. This means you can follow up with them through email or handle their downloads through a dedicated landing page.
If you’re planning on using AWeber, make sure to look into the affiliate programs they offer. Most reputable companies will offer standard commission rates plus give you the ability to create your own custom rates. You can contact the affiliate manager directly through the platform to get this customized rate setup.
Determine Your Budget
Once you have chosen AWeber, it’s time to figure out how much you’re willing to spend on advertising. This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on a lot of factors, but there are some general guidelines you can follow. For example, if you’re using display ads (something we recommend), you might want to start off with a small budget and then gradually increase it as you learn more.
The amount of money you spend on ads will determine how much you make in commissions. So, it’s important to figure out how much you’re willing to spend on ads before you start accumulating customers.
Set Up An Email List
When you start an affiliate marketing business, one of the first things you’ll want to do is build an email list. Depending on your chosen business, this could be a very easy task or it could be very difficult. The more difficult it is, the more you’ll want to do it. Why? Because a larger email list provides you with more opportunity to generate sales.
To generate sales and grow your business successfully, you need to learn to be comfortable with putting yourself in your customers’ shoes and understanding their needs. The more you know your customers, the more you can tailor your offer to fit their needs. This, in turn, will lead to happier customers and increased sales.
If you currently have a large email list, it might be a good idea to re-visit this decision and see if you can’t find a way to use your list to generate more sales. Think about all the local businesses you know and love that provide a service or product your audience is likely to be interested in.
Choose Your Niche
When I first got started as an affiliate marketer, I didn’t really know what niche I’d fit into. I had heard of affiliate marketing before but didn’t really know what it entailed. After doing some research and becoming more familiar with the concept, I chose to specialize in fitness products because I knew there were a lot of people out there who were looking for help in this area. So, I started off by creating a blog around this topic and then, over time, diversified my content to include food, health, and lifestyle ideas as well.
If you’re just getting started, it might be a good idea to choose a niche that you’re passionate about and that will provide you with the opportunity to really grow as an affiliate marketer. When you choose a niche, you’re choosing what products you’ll promote and why you’ll choose those products. Choosing a niche doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself to only promoting products in that niche; you can, in fact, promote any product you want as long as you fit the requirements set forth by the niche you’ve chosen. For example, if you’re promoting supplements, you might want to choose a fitness niche, but you can also promote skin care products or protein powders as long as they fit into your niche’s requirements.
Choose Your Platform
Depending on your chosen affiliate marketing business model, you’ll need to consider which platform to use. Do you want to create your own blog and use WordPress as your content management system? Do you want to use a third-party platform like Shopify to host all your content? Do you want to use a free tool like HubSpot to get all your marketing needs covered? As you can see, there are a lot of different platforms out there and not all of them suit every affiliate marketer’s needs. For example, if you’re wanting to build a blog to promote products, you might not need the full feature set of Shopify.
Once you have your platform in place, it’s time to move onto the next step.
Set Up Your AWeber Account
Now that you have a blog set up with a purpose and you have a good grasp of the concept of affiliate marketing, it’s time to move onto the more technical aspect associated with getting started. This is where you’ll need to set up your AWeber account. If you’re following along, you can use this handy link to get to the AWeber dashboard.
On the left-hand side of the dashboard, you’ll see a search bar. This is where you type in keywords related to your chosen niche. As you type, a list of suggestions will appear below the search bar. Choose a few that are closely related to your niche and use them as your keywords. For example, if you’re specializing in health-related products, you might type in “health supplements” or “vitamins” to see a list of suggestions.
On the right-hand side of the dashboard, you’ll see three big orange buttons. These buttons are for sending bulk emails, creating landing pages, and converting leads. To send a bulk email, simply click on the big orange button and fill in the details of your email campaign. You can do this either manually or using one of the many built-in email marketing campaigns AWeber provides.
Creating landing pages for the different platforms you choose to promote on will give you more control over the user experience and the interaction between the user and your business. This is especially beneficial for eCommerce sites because, in most cases, these can be quite complicated to set up. You can use the landing pages you create to display products, collect emails, or sell affiliate products. To set up a landing page on Shopify, simply visit their platform and then click on the big orange button in the top right-hand corner. You can do this for most other platforms as well.
Choose A Domain Name And Hosting
Now that you have a platform in place and you have started accumulating content, it’s time to choose a domain name and hosting services to house all of this content.
As the name suggests, a domain name is what you’ll use to access your website (web address). When someone clicks on that domain name, they’ll be directed to your website. You can either buy a.com domain name for a couple hundred dollars per year or you can use a.io domain name for free (you’ll need to register the domain name yourself).
Choosing the right hosting services is as important as choosing a good domain name. When it comes to hosting services, you’ll typically either want to go with something free (like WordPress) or pay-as-you-go (like Squarespace).
The cost of hosting will vary based on the amount of content you have, how many visitors you have, and whether you use the free version or the pay-as-you-go version. Typically, the more content you have, the more visitors you have, and the more you pay for hosting.