Have you ever wished that you could make money doing the things you love? Then you should consider becoming an Everyday Affiliate.
Everyday Affiliates are the people who transform their hobbies into successful careers. If you’ve ever looked online for product reviews then the chances are that the people whose reviews you’ve watched are Everyday Affiliates.
Once upon a time, playing video games was seen as a waste of time and those wishing to become certified games testers would have had to compete against thousands of other applicants. However, thanks to the support of sites such as YouTube and Twitch, your passion for playing can now gain you the attention it deserves, without you having to leave the house.
If you have a passion or a hobby, no matter how small the niche, then you can market it online. In this article, we will show you how to do just that!
Starting Out
The chances are that if you have a hobby then you have already done some online research or subscribed to blogs and websites which will give you information on how to improve at it. It’s also very likely that some of the people you have taken advice from are Everyday Affiliates. With this in mind, you probably already have an idea of how marketing your hobby works.
One of the first things you can do to get started is look more closely at the people who dominate your area of interest and make notes on how they have their business set up. One of the most common ways in which Everyday Affiliates work is to provide solutions to problems. Let’s look at an example:
Say that you are interested in model railways. You follow several people who share your interest and also write articles about which engines, carriages, tracks etc. are the best to use. One day, you see that one of your tracks has become sticky but you don’t want to damage it by scrubbing it. You might then turn to Google and type in something like:
You’ll then be given a list of various websites offering solutions. To the untrained eye, these will look like people who are giving away their advice for free, however, if you look at the pages more closely you’ll find that they will link you to a place where you can buy track cleaner or other related products which might interest you. The links which are embedded in these pages will then take you to a page where you can purchase the product and, if you do, the Everyday Affiliate who sent you there will get a cut of the profit.
The Everyday Affiliates who make the most out of marketing like this are the ones who have a genuine passion for what they do and are able to give good advice. If you have both of these qualities then you can become a trusted member among the online community, providing a valued service, whilst also making a healthy profit.
The important thing to remember when becoming an Everyday Affiliate is that you need to have good content that gives people information. If you aren’t informative and only try to sell the products you are offering, it will show. However, if you manage to gain people’s trust in a niche market then you will be able to attract a devoted audience who will constantly look at your site for the latest information about what to buy and how to improve. This kind of publicity is priceless, but it can be time consuming if you need to keep posting regularly. That is why it is highly recommended that you choose a hobby you love.
Don’t get greedy
Always try to keep in mind why people are visiting your site. It isn’t to be sold something, but to find a solution to a problem or get news updates. Therefore, don’t cram your site up with too many ads. If you are doing a top 10 list then by all means have 10 links to separate products, however, if you are writing about track cleaner, don’t try to stretch your article to include other products. If you can fit a couple in then that’s ok, otherwise your article will seem like a sales pitch and put your more loyal readership off.
Find Problems
Another trick to becoming a super Everyday Affiliate is to keep practising your hobby and make notes. You should try to find problems with what you are doing, because if you are having difficulty with something, other people are too. Make a list of all the problems that you have and then go about looking for solutions. If you can’t find a solution then you can be the first to solve it. This will give you original content, which is hard to come by.
Another good source to find the problems people need solving are forums. These are normally filled with people asking questions. Pick as many as you like and then try to find solutions to them. By doing this, you will be able to build a catalogue of articles very quickly. Not only that, but because you saw that people were asking the question, you can rest assured that there is a demand for the content. What’s more, once you have written the article, you can post it onto the forum where you saw the original problem posted.
KYC (Know Your Customer)
KYC testing for the Everyday affiliate is not as corporate as it sounds. This too can be done using online forums. Try to accurately gauge the age, gender, class etc of your average readership and then alter your articles to be in line with the status quo. This doesn’t mean that you should pretend to be someone else, rather that you should take into consideration things such as moderation of language, colloquial or formal, age appropriation etc. Let’s take another example and imagine that your favourite model train company has just introduced a brand new engine marketed towards children called ‘Timmy the Tank Engine’. However, your average readership are over the age of 65.
Do you advertise the train or not? If your demographic are over 65 then clearly they are not going to be interest in children’s toys, right? Wrong! They may have grandchildren who they would like to share their hobby with. Therefore, rather than being a children’s toy which is irrelevant to your audience, ‘Timmy the Tank Engine’ becomes ‘Timmy the Tank Engine: The key to sharing your passion with your grandchildren.’
It doesn’t take much to spin an article in this manner, but how you spin it will depend entirely on your key demographic. That is why it is so important to get a good understanding of who is looking at your site.
Growing Influence
Once you have a blogspot it’s a good idea to connect it to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Telegram etc. By doing this you can get an even better idea of who your audience are and begin to interact with them on a more personal level. You will also notice that your sphere of influence grows more rapidly. By sharing you work across social platforms and generating lively debate, other people will also share your articles for free and generate a healthy amount of traffic. It is possible, if you use a platform like Wordpress, to link all of your platforms together so that a post on your blog will be automatically posted to Facebook, Instagram etc.
If you want even more information you can also ask people to sign up for regular newsletters, which you can then send out to people’s email addresses. Once you have all of these measures set up you can focus on generating great content and growing a larger audience of loyal readers.