How to build an audience for affiliate marketing?

Building an audience for affiliate marketing is crucial to making money online, especially if you’ve been trying to get into affiliate marketing but aren’t getting anywhere.

Using this method can send you 100% free traffic to your offers, which means more sales and conversions.

An audience is extremely important because it will determine how much money you can earn every month. It’s also important that you don’t make the common mistake of spending too much time and money trying to create your affiliate marketing business and not earning a profit.

So How to build an audience for affiliate marketing?

Narrow down your topic

Your goal is to build a micro-niche at first on a topic that you’re passionate about and that will let you earn money from affiliate marketing.

To find a niche, first look at your interests. Find a topic that you enjoy working on, even if it’s not directly related to something you plan to do for the rest of your life.

Next, choose an audience with potential. Try to think of topics that have large audiences like “dieting,” but don’t go with established competitors like Weight Watchers or NutriSystem because they already have millions of visitors a week and it would be nearly impossible for your site to compete. Instead, try looking for niches within the overall topic such as “organic dieting” or “vegetarian weight loss.”

Lastly, make sure your niche will be relevant in the long term by finding subtopics/keywords people are searching for now as well as ones they’ll search for in 6 months or 1 year.

For example, look up seasonal keywords like “best dieting tips during winter” or “diet while on vacation,” because they indicate broader trends in how people search online.

Do you need a website to make affiliate marketing?

The short answer is no, but it helps to have one.

There are three main ways to make money with affiliate marketing: websites, social media, and email.

A website provides an opportunity for more comprehensive content about specific topics and helps build trust with readers/potential customers. If you’re going to promote different products, it’s helpful to have a dedicated space where you can focus entirely on those products. Websites also typically have more SEO benefits than social media profiles do.
Social media: Having a presence on social media makes it easier for potential customers to find you and your content. Many brands have their own social media pages to share information about new products or promotions, so having your own account can help keep you noticed.
Email list: When you collect emails, you own them. Nobody can steal this list from you. That’s the most underrated marketing strategy. Even if one of your social media accounts is down, you can still run your business and email your audience your offers.

Build an email list: Why Your Email Capture System Is More Important Than Your Content

Create your email capture system before driving traffic and be active on social media.

If you’re new to the world of online marketing, you may think that creating content for your website is the most important aspect of getting started.

And it’s true, that content is vital to a successful online presence. But what you might not realize yet is that your email capture system is even more important than the content on your site.

When you start publishing content on your website, it’s like sending a boat out into the ocean. If you don’t have anything to tie it to, it will just float away.

If you don’t have an email capture mechanism in place on your site, people can read all of the amazing content you’ve been slaving over and then leave without ever coming back again.

That’s why it’s so important to make sure that you have this system set up before you start driving traffic to your site.

So what exactly is an email capture system? It’s a way of persuading people who visit your site to give you their email address (which gives YOU permission to send them things via email).

You can do this by offering an incentive for joining your mailing list, like a free download or sample product.

Pick your top platforms

You need to figure out where your audience is.

Pick the top three platforms where your audience is, and then pick one at a time to focus on for your content and building an audience.

The best platform for affiliate marketing is YouTube, followed by Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

The more platforms you use correctly, the better chance you will have of building an engaged audience of potential buyers.

Be active on social media

The first step to building your audience is simple: be active on social media. You’ll need to start with a Facebook page or Twitter account or Instagram account.

Once you’ve set up all of these accounts, you’ll want to start posting content. Don’t just post content, be engaging on social media and try to interact with other users as much as possible.

For example, if someone comments on your content asking a question, don’t just move on to the next comment. Respond! When you respond to comments and queries, it makes people feel appreciated and like they can relate to you more easily.

When people like you, they share your stuff and buy your products!

Don’t be afraid of asking for shares or even feedback from time to time as well. If people see that you’re open and accepting of criticism, they’ll be more likely to give it (in a helpful way).

It’s important that people can see real humans behind the brand name too—pets are always good for this!

The key to growing an audience is connecting with other users and building relationships. The easiest way to do this is by being friendly and outgoing.

Use Facebook groups to grow your subscribers

Facebook groups are a great way to grow your list of subscribers because they allow you to post an engaging hook or question in a space where people have already self-selected their interests.

You can also ask the group owner if there’s a way for you to promote your content through them.

But you need to be careful not to come off as spammy!

Make sure that you’re only promoting your content in groups that are relevant to the subject of your content.

Provide value. Your posts should always provide something helpful to your target audience. If you just post links to your website or your products without adding any value, people will see right through it and think you’re just there to get followers for yourself instead of helping them.

Build relationships with other marketers

It doesn’t matter what you’re selling if no one sees it. That’s why building relationships with other marketers is such an important factor in success. There are some great ways to meet marketers with large and engaged audiences:

Subscribe to their email list
Follow their social media accounts
Comment on their blog posts
Interact with them on forums
Join groups and communities of people like them

Once you find these people, introduce yourself. Don’t be afraid to get personal!

The more insight you can give into who you are and why your audience should trust you, the more likely they are to care about what you have to say.

Offer something valuable so that the relationship is mutually beneficial. This can be as easy as swapping guest posts or doing a joint webinar together!

Run contests

Running contests is a great way to boost engagement, especially if the contest is fun and relevant to your target audience. Here are some ways you can make sure your contest will be a success:

Make it fun: For example, ask followers to post their best picture of using one of your products. Let them vote on their favorite entries by liking or commenting on the posts. The person with the most likes wins!
Offer good prizes: You don’t have to give away something big, like an iPad or a $100 Amazon gift card (although that would be nice). A smaller prize like a Starbucks gift card or even just a shoutout can make all the difference in whether someone enters.
Use social media to promote it: Send out emails and post messages on Twitter and Facebook at least once every two days reminding people about the contest and letting them know how long they have left to enter. It’s also a good idea to post pictures of the prizes so people get excited about entering.

Be present in forums

Find forums with high traffic and comment on them. Commenting on other people’s blogs and forums can be a great way to get more exposure for your site. When you post a comment, you’re likely to include a link back to your site if it’s relevant, increasing your chances of getting traffic.

Answer questions that people have posted in the forum or blog comments section. When you find questions in the comment section of a blog or forum, answer them appropriately; they are generally opportunities to add value by providing helpful information and recommendations related to the question.

Use Quora to answer questions and direct people to the right affiliate product

Quora is a forum-style website that aims to provide users with direct answers to questions they have. It’s unique in that every answer can be upvoted or downvoted based on the amount of help it provided, as well as comments and additional explanations. Some questions have thousands of answers, many from different people with different perspectives.

Affiliate marketing on Quora is actually pretty simple. You just need to know what kind of content to post. While many people are focusing on posting their links in answers.

A great way is to post content about the product you want to promote and include your link there. This way, the reader can click through if they’re interested in learning more, but they won’t feel like their question is being answered with a sales pitch.

Identify the problems that your target audience is experiencing

To enhance the success of your affiliate marketing, you should address the “pain points” of your target clientele. Once you understand the difficulties, you can tailor your affiliate content to solve them.

One option is to solicit customer feedback through questionnaires aggressively. Many free tools, such as SurveyMonkey and Google Forms, are available to help create surveys quickly.

Social listening is another way to find your target audience’s issues. Consumers’ queries and concerns about a brand or product are reported on social media.

You may use a social media management application to keep track of corporate mentions. Use Sprout Social or HootSuite to track what people are saying about your products and services. You may also read blog comments and forums.

Social listening may help you learn more about your customers’ likes and dislikes. This may boost the appeal of your products and services on the Internet.

Analyze your competitors’ offerings

It is essential to research your competition to identify your affiliate audience. BuzzSumo is a free tool you may use for this purpose: BuzzSumo provides you with a list of questions people ask about specific subjects.

You may also see what content your competitors engage with the most and where it is disseminated.

It is not the goal of researching your rivals to duplicate their techniques; rather, it is to learn from them. Instead of uncovering missed customer pain areas, it helps you identify profitable marketing channels managed by rivals.

Take some time to examine their website content, social media sites, and blog articles compared to yours.

You might be able to find ways to fill in the gaps that your competitors have left. This could help you find new affiliate audiences to target and grow your business.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money while doing something you love. So what are you waiting for? Just START 🚀