How to Make Your First Affiliate Sale Quick Easy Steps

When I started this site, there were a ton of things I did wrong. Now, this doesn’t mean that this site doesn’t make money, in fact, I’ve heard a ton of things. Today, I am going to share some tips that will help you learn how to make your first affiliate sale.

The First Affiliate Sale Is The Hardest

If you’ve never had a website/blog online, then you’re about to find out that affiliate marketing comes with a huge learning curve. That’s why I always recommend this training program to help you understand the process.

You’ll learn the process of what it takes to earn your first sale online. The method that I am going to discuss involves using content marketing because it’s free.

I don’t think that any beginner should pay for marketing right out of the gate, especially, if you have no clue what you’re doing. Anyone can get started with content marketing as long as you’re willing to work hard and do your research.

So grab your favorite beverage and let’s take a look at what it takes to make money affiliate links.

Get Started With Amazon

I know that a lot of bloggers refuse to use Amazon because they pay low commissions. However, as a new blogger and affiliate, Amazon can be a goldmine.

Not to mention that it’s easy to make sales if you can get people to click on your links. You’ll earn commissions on anything they purchase within a 24-hour period.

Now let’s take a look at why new affiliates should get started with Amazon.

Amazon is hugely popular.
Trusted by millions of people.
Amazon will take care of all the selling and upselling for you.
You earn commissions on anything they buy from your link in a 24-hour period.

Sounds easy, right? Well, it can be but it can also be confusing. The biggest mistake I made with my first Amazon affiliate website is providing low-quality content because I didn’t think that it mattered.

I also spent too much time just focusing on writing reviews on products. It’s okay to write reviews, but you don’t want to focus 100% on that type of content.

It’s important to create a website that has valuable content that will answer your audience’s questions. Yes, you can throw in some product reviews as well, but you don’t want to write too many.

How to Choose Your Niche

If you’re thinking about starting an affiliate website, you’ll need to think about the right niche market. This will play a huge role in whether or not you actually make money and can stick with it during the slow times.

This will be your first task before you can get started.

Since you’ll be starting with Amazon with your very first program, I suggest that you take the time to find out which categories pay the most. This is extremely important because you don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that you can create a site that pays $3,000 per month only to realize that the category pays crap.

You also want to make sure that the topic gets a decent amount of monthly searches. You can use a keyword tool like KWFinder to help you find your profitable niche.

This tool will also help you scope out the competition. There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of competition, but if you try to tackle an extremely competitive niche, it’ll take you longer to see success.

It ended up taking me more than a year to start seeing regular traffic with this blog because I was writing content on extremely competitive topics.

You don’t want to do that, otherwise, you’ll be more likely to quit if you don’t get fast enough results.

This is the tool that I use to write these blog posts and I used it to uncover my niche for my second blog.

What to Look for When Choosing An Amazon Niche

Choose a topic that you can write articles and has plenty of great products with high reviews.
You have enough interest to stick with the topic for long-term. (it takes a while to see results online)

Make sure that you sign up for FREE with KWFinder to help you find low competition keywords for your articles.

If there are already a ton of blogs that have amazing content, I would personally choose a different niche.

You don’t want it to take you years to start seeing an income, and there are plenty of niches that don’t have a ton of bloggers. It may take a while to find it, but it’s totally worth the time and effort.

Set Up Your Blog

Once you’ve chosen your niche and found some products that you want to promote via Amazon, it’s time to set up your self-hosted WordPress blog.

Don’t make the mistake of starting on a free platform. A self-hosted blog will give you so much more freedom and control that you won’t get on a free platform.

There are several reasons that I always suggest WordPress for new bloggers, even though it has a learning curve, and they are:

It’s extremely versatile and flexible and you can find a great theme that is mobile responsive and looks great out of the box.
Beginner friendly and you can create amazing looking sites, especially with themes like Genesis, and Divi Builder.
WordPress makes SEO easy, especially with Yoast SEO. Check out how to use Yoast SEO Plugin for optimizing your blog posts.
Most themes are largely optimized to work on all sorts of devices – smartphones, iPads and so on.
WordPress is supported by all reliable hosting companies which make installation quick and easy.

I’ve written a step-by-step tutorial that will show you how to install your blog in 5 minutes. I also recommend getting your hosting with SiteGround, which is perfect for new bloggers.

Coming Up With A Plan

You’re probably excited to sit down and write content for your new blog but don’t. Instead, I suggest that you take the time to visit other bloggers in this niche to see the type of content they are writing.

You don’t want to steal their content, but this will give you a good idea of:

The types of content that work great.
What type of content they are writing for their blogs?
How often they are publishing new content?
Are they writing long-form content or shorter articles?
Is it an authority site or a niche site?
What is the Domain age of the site? (use this site to check the domain age of the site)

Don’t stress this part too much, it’s just a great way to see what other types of websites/blogs are out there in the niche you’re getting ready to build.

First Pages for Your Blog

Once you have your blog set up, it’s time to create the first pages you’ll need. You’ll want to ensure that you create an:

About Us
Contact Me
Privacy Policy
Affiliate Disclaimer

You’ll also need to use a plugin like Advanced ads to create an affiliate disclosure and let people know that you will earn a commission whenever they purchase something from your blog.

Since you’ll be promoting Amazon products, you need to familiarize yourself with their operating agreement for affiliates.

Writing Content

Now comes the hard part of writing the content. As a content marketer, you’re going to have to love writing blog posts. This is what you’ll be doing on a regular basis.

As a new blogger, I suggest writing as many blog posts as you can as quickly as you can. It’s important to focus on the right topics and spend time writing amazing content that helps your audience.

You’ll want to have a decent blend of informational articles, product reviews and other useful posts that add value to your readers.

For example with this site, I write a lot of product reviews, how-tos and other types of content that I believe will help my audience.

Let’s say that you start a blog on the best outdoor watches.

You could create a content mix of:

Reviews
Informational
How-to’s
Comparison articles
Training tips for anyone who wants to start outdoor training

Basically, you want to provide a mix of different types of content that people will find helpful.

Don’t make the mistake of just writing product reviews, because that’s not a helpful site.

Content Marketing Tips and Tools

I can’t stress it enough before you pump out a bunch of content, you need to use KWFinder or Jaaxy to help you uncover profitable keywords that people are looking for.

This will be the difference between waiting years to make a sale or making a sale in a matter of a few months.

Useful posts: How to find low competition keywords and Using KWFinder to help you increase your organic traffic.
Write in-depth blog posts and leave out all the fluff. You can use this word counter tool to help you see how long your articles as well as your competitor’s.
Use Grammarly to help you proofread and edit your content before you hit publish.
This blog post checklist will help you get started promoting your content. When your blog is brand new, you’ll need to work hard on getting your content in front of your readers.
Here are 3000 blogs that accept guest blogging, if you’re into that. Me, I’d rather write content for my blog and let it grow over time.

What to Focus On As A New Blogger

I know that you’re interested in making money with your blog, after all, your goal is to get the blog paying for itself without taking forever.

However, it is going to take a while for a new website to start getting traffic from Google. If you’re like most new bloggers, you’re going to go to Google and type in keywords like “how to grow my blog” or “how to grow my blog traffic.”

Honestly, as a new blogger, I wouldn’t focus too much on traffic right out of the gate. Instead, you need to focus on the following things as a new blogger:

10 – 30 amazing blog posts that are filled with a ton of value and are extremely helpful.
Get a jump start and learn how to use Pinterest, because it’s going to be your main source of traffic with a new blog.
Install Google Analytics so you can see where your traffic is coming from and the type of content people like reading.
Write some popular blog posts that do well on Pinterest by using Buzzsumo to see what others have written.

Keep your eyes open for better-paying affiliate programs as well as monetizing your blog with ad networks like Fomo Ads.

You want to diversify your income so you have money coming from several different sources, not just one. This is the secret to sleeping well at night.

Things You Need to Avoid as A New Blogger

It’s so easy to fall into the comparison trap to see what other people in your niche are doing. It’s okay to check out your competition once in a while, but don’t become too obsessed with it.

Otherwise, you’ll find yourself…

Comparing your beginning to their middle and will become depressed because you’re NOT getting anywhere. We all start from scratch and it takes time to build a successful blog.

Final Take Away

So many people are turning to the Internet in hopes of earning residual income over time. I started this blog because I wanted to earn enough money to walk away from my WordPress freelancing business.

I’ve finally reached that goal now I am continuing to grow this blog so my online income can increase. I’ve also started a second blog to diversify my income.

It’s amazing that anyone can start a blog, but unfortunately, not everyone will be able to create a profitable blog.

It takes a lot of hard work to create a blog that actually makes money. However, that being said, if you’re willing to work hard on the front end, you will eventually see your hard work pay off.

The question to ask yourself is do you have what it takes to wait it out for months or years, no matter how long it takes you to start earning?

If the answer is yes, then affiliate marketing can be a lucrative business.

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I still remember my first affiliate sale, it was a whopping $0.50. How long did it take you to make your first affiliate commission? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear about it.