AFFILIATE MARKETING

8 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting Affiliate Marketing

Published

3 years ago

December 29, 2021

8 Things I Wish I'd Known Before Starting Affiliate Marketing

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most interesting and lucrative industries on the Internet, in which commissions are earned from promoting a company and/or driving a sale. It consists of a vigorous hub of web publishers who want to monetize their sites, and is a great opportunity for marketers and advertisers to partner with others to promote their products, services, brands or affiliate programs. I have been involved in this field as an affiliate marketer since 2007, and can safely say that I love what I do, not least because it allows me to connect directly with my audience without having many intermediaries.

However, there are a few things I wish I had known before I started.

1. Track success metrics

There is no way to grow an affiliate website or earn more from it if you don’t know how many visitors visit that site every day, and where they come from. Therefore, it’s critical to track analytics and determine which marketing channels are bringing in the most traffic so that you know where to focus efforts when it comes to promoting affiliate offers.

Here are some of the metrics you need to track:

Monthly visits and unique daily visitors. The more your site gets, the higher chances there are for making sales.
How many sales did you garner this week? Track each affiliate offer’s performance to determine which offers are converting the best.
How much was earned from each offer? It’s vital to track how many sales are generated from each affiliate program, since every publisher gets a different commission from selling the same product. This will help determine which affiliate network and products convert better for your site or blog, and to make better offers to get yet more sales.
Which countries are visitors from? This metric will indicate which country’s audience converts better to yours, and so help select the right offers for your market.

2. Don’t expect huge earnings overnight

If you’re just starting out as an affiliate marketer, don’t expect success too quickly, because thousands of web publishers have been doing this for years, yet still struggle to find revenue. I’m not suggesting avoiding goals, merely that it’s important to be patient and to work enduringly hard in order to see significant results. This is a business like any other, so income will depend on how much time, effort and patience you’re willing to invest.

3. Never stop learning

One of the most important lessons I’ve internalized over years as an affiliate marketer is that there is no end to learning or knowledge sharing. This industry changes very quickly; new trends appear all the time, and old ones die out quickly. So-called gurus retire their affiliate sites every few months only to launch new ones, so you need to be ready to take advantage of changes and to spend resources on learning — absorbing affiliate marketing blog posts, interviews and case studies along the way.

4. Avoid overvaluing your product or service

One of the first things many marketers do when they start an affiliate website is to promote their own products and services, but it’s important not to overvalue them, because this will only backfire in the long run. Remember that you need your audience more than they need you, so provide valuable resources, information and insights that will help them to solve their problems. Start by building authority in a niche, share free content consistently and get involved in the community. Then, once you get real traffic coming to your site, create an offer that’s closely related to what you’ve already shared on your blog or website.

5. Don’t sell visitors short

One of the biggest mistakes I see affiliate marketers making repeatedly is trying to sell their visitors short instead of providing high-quality offers that match well with what they want and need. For example, if someone is looking for a dog bed or a leash, they wouldn’t buy an offer related to yoga classes, because it’s completely irrelevant and doesn’t match what they’re searching for. So, before trying to sell your visitors something, make sure that you’ve done research and arrived at offers that closely match what an audience is looking for.

6. Embrace testing

Another blunder I see often is guessing what works best instead of testing ideas before investing time, effort and money. This is why I suggest A/B testing tools for at least some campaigns, as they will give valuable insights on what’s working right now, without any risks.

7. Don’t leave money on the table

Many affiliate marketers are quick to start promoting a new offer the moment it goes live. Still, they fail to fully optimize and promote before making it available. In many cases, this means that you’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table by not testing your landing page, images, copy and ad copy first. This doesn’t necessarily mean spending days or weeks running A/B tests, but at least try to split-test before promoting an offer broadly. This will give you a better chance of converting more visitors into subscribers or buyers, because you’ve taken the time to work on optimizing everything from start to finish. This is the process I use for every new campaign for my online shop, and it works like a charm.

8. Don’t be afraid to give up

Lastly, remember that it is not a vice to give up on something that’s clearly not working. Even though it might be hard to walk away from an affiliate campaign or website, it’s vital to ask if results are worth the time and effort, then possibly put that energy into something that has a better chance of succeeding. Don’t let others make you feel bad about switching things up, because there is no such thing as doing everything right, so just do what makes sense.

At the end of the day, there is no absolute right or wrong way to do affiliate marketing, but you should at least have a rough plan — one that includes knowing how much you’re willing to spend on advertising, where your niche traffic is coming from and what offers are converting best. The more time and effort you invest into learning and testing everything first, the more likely it is that you’ll succeed.

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AFFILIATE MARKETING

Best US Cities to Start a Business, Entrepreneurship: Report

Published

11 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Best US Cities to Start a Business, Entrepreneurship: Report

What city is best for starting your business? While several factors should play into a decision, a new report from fintech company SumUp has identified the top 10 for entrepreneurship based on tax data, the number of millionaires in the city, and even Google searches.

New York topped the list because of the opportunities it offers across industries, from tech to fashion, and its 4% sales tax, which was the lowest of the group. New Yorkers also frequently Google “how to get rich” and “how to make it in business,” the study found. The city also offers access to over 30 WeWork coworking locations, the most of all the cities in the report, which theoretically could help startup employees collaborate.

Chicago came in at No. 2, with SumUp researchers highlighting its 120,500 millionaires and high interest in entrepreneurship through tracked Google searches. They also found that Chicago stood out for finance startups.

Rounding out the top three was Miami, “where the weather is warm and taxes are low,” according to the study. Travel, tourism, and commerce startups thrive in this city, which has 0% personal income and capital gains tax.

Here’s a complete list of the top ten cities for entrepreneurship, according to the report.

1. New York

Number of millionaires: 349,500

Personal income tax – highest income: 10.90%

Sales tax: 4.00%

2. Chicago

Number of millionaires: 120,500

Personal income tax – highest income: 4.95%

Sales tax: 6.25%

3. Miami

Number of millionaires: 35,300

Personal income tax – highest income: 0.00%

Sales tax: 6.00%

4. Los Angeles

Number of millionaires: 212,100

Personal income tax – highest income: 13.30%

Sales tax: 9.50%

5. Dallas

Number of millionaires: 68,600

Personal income tax – highest income: 0.00%

Sales tax: 6.25%

6. Austin

Number of millionaires: 32,700

Personal income tax – highest income: 0.00%

Sales tax: 6.25%

7. Houston

Number of millionaires: 90,900

Personal income tax – highest income: 0.00%

Sales tax: 6.25%

8. Seattle

Number of millionaires: 54,200

Personal income tax – highest income: 0.00%

Sales tax: 6.50%

9. Washington

Number of millionaires: 28,300

Personal income tax – highest income: 10.75%

Sales tax: 6.00%

10. Boston

Number of millionaires: 42,900

Personal income tax – highest income: 9.00%

Sales tax: 6.25%

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AFFILIATE MARKETING

What Is Founder Mode and Why Is It Better Than Manager Mode?

Published

1 day ago

September 6, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

What Is Founder Mode and Why Is It Better Than Manager Mode?

Paul Graham, the founder of famed startup accelerator Y Combinator, coined a new term this week that has taken over social media: founder mode.

In an article released on September 1 and publicized on X over Labor Day weekend, Graham separates “founder mode” from the traditional “manager mode” route by noting key differences in management styles and organizational structure. Graham’s X post has over 21 million views at press time.

Founder mode means that the CEO interacts with employees across the organization, not just their direct reports. The startup, even as it grows into a large company, is less hierarchical; the CEO could do “skip-level” meetings with employees, for example. Graham gave the real-world example of Steve Jobs running an annual retreat for who he thought were the 100 most important people at Apple — regardless of where they were on the corporate ladder.

Manager mode, meanwhile, is less hands-on and involves more delegation to other people. Founders can grow companies and run them effectively without switching to manager mode, Graham stated.

“Hire good people and give them room to do their jobs,” Graham wrote. “Sounds great when it’s described that way, doesn’t it? Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground.”

Graham gave the example of Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who tried to follow conventional “manager mode” wisdom to hire good people and let them do their jobs.

“The results were disastrous,” Graham wrote.

Chesky had to pivot to a different “founder mode” style of management and explained in an interview last year that founders have multiple advantages over managers: They have owned every part of the process of building a company, from start to finish; They have built the company up, so they can rebuild it; and they have permission to rebrand the company or make major changes.

This is it: @bchesky on founder mode.

Three reasons why founders differ from managers:
1. Being the biological parent
2. Full permission to make change
3. Knowing how to rebuild the company pic.twitter.com/VhuQ70B8FK

— Yana Welinder (@yanatweets) September 2, 2024

In the past few days since Graham released his essay, the social media world has begun exploring what it means in humorous and insightful ways. One post drew a comparison between micromanaging and founder mode.

founder mode pic.twitter.com/LWOlaFq4UJ

— ST (@seyitaylor) September 2, 2024

Other posts from women founders addressed the question: Can women be in founder mode too?

Chesky wrote on X earlier this week that women founders had been reaching out to him since Graham released the essay about how they can’t run their companies in founder mode the same way men can.

“This needs to change,” he wrote.

Remember when the female founders did founder mode and all got cancelled for it?

— Sara Mauskopf (@sm) September 3, 2024

It happened to me first — headlines portraying me as a “toxic leader” when I had to make the same, often unpopular, decisions that my male peers did without critique.

For them, it’s called Founder Mode, and it’s celebrated (a proper noun! With its own merch! And trademarks… https://t.co/rF0IM1huy3

— Sophia Amoruso 3.0 (@sophiaamoruso) September 5, 2024

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AFFILIATE MARKETING

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Lost $10 Billion in 1 Day

Published

2 days ago

September 5, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Lost $10 Billion in 1 Day

Nvidia’s stock faced an unprecedented drop on Tuesday, wiping off $279 billion in market value, the largest one-day loss in U.S. history. The loss is worth more than all of the shares of many major U.S. businesses, including McDonald’s and Chevron, per CNN.

Nvidia’s shares tumbled over 9% in regular U.S. trading and continued the descent post-market by an additional 2%, after a report of a subpoena from the Department of Justice relating to an antitrust investigation, per Bloomberg.

Jensen Huang, the CEO and Nvidia’s top individual shareholder, also took a personal hit with a $10 billion drop in his wealth.

^{Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang – Photo by I-HWA CHENG/AFP | Getty Images}

Shares were up about 1% Wednesday afternoon, according to CNBC.

Nvidia has about 80% of the market for AI chips. In response to the DOJ antitrust investigation, a company spokesperson told the outlet that Nvidia “wins on merit, as reflected in our benchmark results and value to customers, who can choose whatever solution is best for them.”

Despite the losses, Nvidia is still up 118% year to date, per Reuters.

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