“This is my experience in affiliate marketing with HostGator. For your information, as affiliates in HostGator the commission will be paid after 45 days due to their “money back guarantee” policy. Furthermore, some of your commission may also be cancelled for some reasons”.
Before we talk further on affiliate marketing, let’s take a guess on how much I earn from 28 sales promoting HostGator? These are the sales I made from January until September 2012.
In making money from HostGator affiliate marketing it will not always mean that all sales turn into commissions. Paid commissions are those that have reached minimum payouts, a valid one, and already paid.
Why do I say a valid one? Because for some reasons your commission could be invalid. If this happen to you, they won’t pay your commissions.
Now, let’s take a look on affiliate sales notification I have got from HostGator below :
That’s the good news I’ve got from HostGator sales team.
As you see on email notifications above, I started my blog on January and made my first sales on January 21st. Ok let’s start on step by step on How I Make 28 Sales from HostGator Affiliate Marketing in 9 Months
1. It’s About Sales and Marketing
It’s start from your mindset
Marketing? What do I mean? If you want to make your first affiliate sales then don’t just focus on making sales, you have to focus on doing marketing too. Marketing has broader mean than selling.
I’m not the expert on online marketing, but if you market your blog which is consist of affiliate articles there are more chances you’ll make sales from your blog. By doing marketing you are trying to build trust by making your blog closer to your readers.
Marketing is not just about selling, it’s all about getting yourself closer to the consumers. In case of a blog, then you should make yourself closer to visitors. Let them know who you are and what you do.
Build your trust and the money will come. Blog commenting and guest posting are the best ways for blogger establishing their online trust.
(read : How to build trust and keep make money online?)
3. Select the Right One
Once you have the correct mindset then you should choose a product to promote. It’s affiliate marketing, you don’t need to make your own product do you?
Select the right product to promote is important to make sure your consumers are going to buy it. In case of HostGator, it is become a basic need for many bloggers. So, who wouldn’t need a web hosting providers if you are bloggers.
HostGator is just an example here, there are many products available to be promoted in affiliate marketing. You have to be sure that there is consumers for that product and you have a plan on how to sell it.
3.Buy and Use It
This time, you should think about sales. Just ask yourself … “What makes you buy a product?” Your answers are your costumers questions. The simplest thing you can do to make money with affiliate marketing is to know the product that you are promote.
“The easiest ways to make money with affiliate marketing is by using the product you are promote”.
The main reason for this is to know the product better than your consumers. If you understand about the advantage and disadvantage of that affiliate product then you can make a balance affiliate promotion article.
Though you can make a review without buy it, it’s not recommended to do that if you want to make more money from affiliate marketing. Juts get back to previous question “What makes you buy a product?” Explain your answer in your article promotion.
4.Make a Story
A story about how your experience using affiliate product is a great ways to make money from affiliate marketing.
Readers like a story then make sure you make a good one. Make a story about your experience on affiliate products, how that affiliate product help you solve your problems.
5. Popular Post
If you have a blog, there must be “popular posts or popular articles” page haven’t you?
Why this important?
New visitors have tendency to read the latest post and popular post. Popular posts indicates that most visitors read it. In consumer psychology, “popular posts” have an extra-value to read.
If your affiliate article includes there, guess what? It’s an automatic promotion isn’t it?
I have made two affiliate articles about HostGator and one of it includes in Popular Posts. Take a look at picture below (the post stand-still as part of popular posts until today):
After some time blogging, popular post is not that important any more. I found that good content tends to convert in affiliate sales. I will create content about this in future, so please stay tune.
6. Use Social Media
There are billions of users in facebook. That is huge numbers of consumers for you. Don’t waste it. Market your affiliate article in facebook. Make your affiliate article goes viral in facebook and see how it works to your affiliate sales.
If you need assistance in promote your article you can use social signal marketing which only cost you $5 for 3 days promotion to reach 100 social signals on facebook and linkedin (money back guarantee in the 4th days if your social signals doesn’t reach 100!).
7. Low Cost Ads
Now this one is little bit tricky because it will cost you a money.
So why I do this?
It’s my experiment.
After I made several hundreds of dollars from affiliate marketing I decided to test some low cost advertisement as an investments. I have chosen clixsense for this.
Does this effective?
I have signed for clixsense advertisement in July 2012.
From the “commission report” available on HostGator affiliates account I see that so far clixsense bring 8 buyers to my HostGator affiliate link.
I can’t tell how much I earn from it because the commission status still “pending”. If I make my own lucky guess, based on my sales notification then I should get paid for $100 for each sales because I have made 16 sales in September 2012. Can’t wait myself until the pay day 😀
The clixsense itself cost me $75 for 50,000 visitors. I set 1000 visitors to my clixsense ads each month since July 2012 and start to bring sales in September 2012.
Does this worth to try?
To me, it’s make me some cash. It’s your own decision to try clixsense low cost advertisements or not. I try it because I have earned some cash from previous affiliate marketing I have done with other products. As you may know, I like experiment to learn more and clixsense is one of my experiments in affiliate marketing promotion.
How is Your Affiliate Marketing so Far?
The experience above is my step-by-step activity that give me 28 sales from HostGator affiliate marketing in 9 months. One sale is invalid so far thus I made $550 (based on paid commissions) and spent $75 (my clixsense advertisement experiment). The ad service not available anymore in 2020.
It’s all the combination I’ve been made. Select the product, buy and use it (or understand it better no matter you buy it or not), make a promotion article, do massive promotion (low cost advertisements are alternative).
I know there is better ways to do affiliate marketing, but this is exactly how I promote HostGator as one of the ways I make money from affiliate marketing. If you think this post useful, why don’t you share it on your favorite social media platform?
