The REAL “Magic Formula” To Start As An Affiliate

- By Connie Ragen Green

I’ve been online since 2006, and during my first year it was affiliate marketing that allowed me to learn how this business works and to start earning some money. Even now, six years later, affiliate marketing continues to account for almost half of my income. During the past few years I’ve ranked as one of the top affiliates for many of the people who I began learning from in the beginning, and have built lasting relationships with them that I treasure. The secret to my ongoing success is that I continue to keep it simple.

Jim recently wrote a post about how people tend to want to make everything so complicated. He discussed the questions you must ask if you want huge results, no matter which business model you are following. I thought I would share how I use those exact questions when it comes to affiliate marketing.

The questions are:

1. What problem will you solve?
2. How will you solve it?
3. Who will you solve it for?

Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just send out an email with an affiliate link in it and expect your subscribers to buy the product or service you are promoting. That’s the fastest way to make people unsubscribe and to earn a reputation as someone who does not care about or value others. Instead, think of yourself as a problem solver and be creative with what you promote.

I have always considered affiliate marketing to be the art of ‘recommending what you love’. It makes sense to recommend the products and services that you already use and benefit from to others who have the same or similar problems. Let’s break this down further, using the three questions.

As an online entrepreneur I regularly encounter situations in my business that I need help with. I may be having a problem driving targeted traffic to my sites, finding the best plugins to use on my blog, or needing help with my videos. When I find a product or a service that helps me to solve my problems quickly and at a fair price, I am then ready to share these resources with others.

It’s also important to note here that the people who come to me as a trusted advisor are also online entrepreneurs, so my problems and solutions are relevant to what they want to achieve. In other words, if I find a solution to a problem in any other area of my life, it would not be appropriate for me to share that information with them.

Let’s go back to the original three questions from Jim:

What problem will you solve?

The problem must be one directly related to your niche. Think about what might keep your prospect awake at night as they worry about how to solve this problem satisfactorily.

How will you solve it?

Typically, I find a product or course or service created by someone else and recommend it to my list through my affiliate link. I will then share the details of how this other person’s product directly and specifically helped me to solve my problem. The prospect can put themselves into my shoes as I walk them through the steps I took along the way.

Who will you solve it for?

The answer here is that you are solving problems for the people who look to you for guidance in your niche. These people come to know, like, and trust you over time as you become a trusted advisor and resource for them.

I will give you an example of this. Last year I was searching for information on how to set up Facebook fan pages for each of my books that would engage my readers, get them talking about me and what I had written, and help me to make more book sales. This was my problem.

I was able to solve it by training I took from a respected social media expert. I went through her course, implemented everything she taught, and created two fan pages that helped me to achieve my goals. This course was the solution to my problem.

I then shared this story, with all of the details, to my list of prospects whom have information products, books, and other information they wish to sell online. I recommended this course to them so they would be able to enjoy similar results and build their businesses. The people I solved the problem for, by recommending someone else’s course through my affiliate link, were those who were experiencing the same problem as I was with this aspect of social media.

Remember that not everyone will have the same problem as you, and that the product you recommend as an affiliate will not be the perfect solution to everyone’s problem. It’s when you can align the problem, the solution, and the target audience that you will be the most effective and earn the most income with affiliate marketing.

Connie Ragen Green is a former classroom teacher and real estate appraiser who left it all behind to come online at the end of 2005. She quickly discovered affiliate marketing and now teaches this online marketing strategy to people around the world.

If you want to learn more about Connie’s Affiliate Marketing techniques, check out “Affiliate Marketing Secrets Explained” right now!