If you’ve read part one of our Affiliate Marketing in a Nutshell series and want to know just how much it costs to get started, then you’re in the right place. In this article, we’re going to be looking at all of the elements you’ll need to get your first campaign off of the ground and how much it will cost to do so.
What you’ll need
The Basics!
Domain Name
The first thing you are going to need is a domain name. These can be purchased quite cheaply from a number of sites. If you want a quick and easy way to see if your domain name is available then go to. Alternatively, if you aren’t sure of a name and then you check out Lean Domain Search Just type in a word you like and they will list 100s of options to choose from. It’s a really useful service and can give you a catchy 2-word name for your site. It’s always best to go with .com names. You can check the availability of this by clicking on the name you like.
Hosting
Once you have a domain name, you’re going to need to find a place to host it. This is also one of the more inexpensive aspects of affiliate marketing and can be done for just a few dollars a month. If you want to keep life simple, you can run everything from WordPress and they will link you to BlueHost who can host your site. Otherwise, there are plenty of options available.
Having a website is the basic fundamental component to getting started in affiliate marketing. It is technically possible to use other people’s/company’s sites such as Medium to get started for free. However, this is not recommended as it will be far less beneficial in the long run.
If you rely solely on a third party site, then your business is essentially in their hands and if they decide to close you down, then you’ll have to start from scratch. However, with that being said, many affiliates use Facebook to market their products, and this can be very lucrative. However, it still isn’t free. In the future, we will be looking more closely at how to run your first campaign using Facebook. So stay tuned!
The Next Step
Once you have a domain name and hosting, you’re going to want to start building your website. You could do this first of course, and save yourself paying out whilst it’s still in development. Although, many people find it gives them the momentum to press on more quickly when they’ve invested something into it.
SEO and Keywords Tools
There are a lot of good free keyword tools out there to help you know what keywords your site ought to contain. Answer the Public is a really sleek tool that gives you a nice chart of all of the most searched keywords in your area.
If you really want to get serious about your campaigns though, you won’t find better tools than those provided by SEMRush, although their service will set you back around $70 per month. However, it’s worth the money, as they will provide you with in-depth reports and analytical data about your site’s reach and all the advice you need to improve your campaign strategies.
PPC
PPC or Pay-Per-Click marketing is the best way to start out in affiliate marketing. Pay-per-click means that you pay a fixed amount every time someone clicks on one of your links or ads. The aim of the game in affiliate marketing is to get a high percentage of those people who click, to buy the product you’re advertising.
With Google’s advertising system, you set the amount you want to pay per click. Clicks often vary around $0.5 - $1.00, but you can pay more or less depending on the quality of traffic. We aren’t going to go into to much detail here, as we will dedicate another post to the mechanics of PPC later on, however, for the time being, note that this is where quite a lot of your capital investment will be spent as you figure out how to balance the number of clicks you pay for with the number of people who go on to buy your product.
Images
Images are a tricky area to get right and it depends very much on you with regards to how much you will spend. If you are creative and know how to create professional images, then it won’t necessarily cost you a penny. If you are not that creative but can use tools to edit pictures, then you could use a mixture of free editing software and stock/creative commons images to create the look you want.
If, finally, you have no interest or time to spend creating images then it’s best to either join a stock photo site which has plenty of options or use sites like Fiverr and Deviantart to have people create them for you. Fiverr is better as it is designed specifically as a freelance job site. However, Deviantart is worth a look as it’s mostly students who charge very little for their work and there are some good artists and photographers to be found there, but you will spend quite a while sorting the wheat from the chaff.
Training
The question here is whether or not you should pay for training. If you read the previous article then you already know that we suggest not too. It’s often very expensive and won’t necessarily give you the advantages which they promise.
In affiliate marketing, the only real training you need is experience. Once you start doing things and seeing that they either work or don’t then you’ve already started training yourself. The real key is not giving up which a lot of people do!
Email Marketing
Email Marketing allows you to engage quickly and effectively with a large number of potential customers. This has become a lot more difficult since GDPR and so it’s worth joining an email marketing platform that will give you guidance.
ESPs or Email Service Providers often differ quite a bit and we will give you a more detailed breakdown of a large number of providers in a later article. For now, however, just know that sites such as Aweber allows to email your database of prospective customers en mass. Although, if you have a database of 100,000+, you’ll be looking at paying somewhere in the region of $800 per month. With that being said, if you have a small database you can have unlimited emails sent to up to 500 recipients for around $19 per month, so that you can test the waters.
Outsourcing
We’ve already touched on outsourcing in this article when we spoke about images. We also have a full article on the Ins and Outs of Outsourcing. However, when you are starting out, whilst you probably won’t need to start employing people full-time, you might need people to do the odd job for you. For this, you can use a number of sites including the aforementioned Fiverr and UpWork. However, if you want something more specific then you might consider using OnlineJobs.ph. This is a Philippines based site which allows you to post job adverts and get instant responses from 100s of applicants. You are then free to pick the one you need most. The site uses a subscription-based service and, unlike UpWork, your employees don’t have to pay a site tax from their own pockets. Just make sure to unsubscribe once you have found your ideal candidate.
In the next article, we are going to be looking at some more of the pros and cons of affiliate marketing, in order the help you know whether or not it’s the right industry for you.