Sunday Shares #10: The Best Affiliate Program For Beginners

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In this issue of Sunday Shares, I’m sharing with you not three but four pieces of content that I read recently that I hope you’ll find as interesting as I found them to be.

The articles I’m sharing includes what might be the best affiliate program for beginners to start with. Some might agree and some might disagree. I’ll share my opinion on this.

Also, one excuse I’m tired of hearing when it comes to starting an online business, a guide to creating the easiest pieces of content for your website and 25 affiliate resources you might want to consider using.

Read on and hopefully learn something useful that you can implement in your affiliate marketing business.

(1) Why Amazon Is the Best Affiliate Program for Beginners

Dom Wells, who sells pre-built Amazon websites, explains why Amazon is the best affiliate program for people who are just getting into affiliate marketing.

Despite certain drawbacks, like their notorious small commission rates and cookie length, you can make really good money with Amazon because it’s a brand that people know and trust.

Dom gives some reasons:

1. Amazon products sell themselves
2. You get sitewide commissions

Just imagine sending someone to Amazon to buy a book but getting commissions for a 50″ smart TV set. This happens all the time.

Amazon will usually spend time and resources to make sure their product pages convert at a high rate. This means you wouldn’t have to do a lot of convincing to actually make a sale. The experts will tell you to just  get people to click over to Amazon.

Dom suggests two ways to take advantage of this opportunity – you can either build a dedicated Amazon website or just build a niche website and monetize it with Amazon Associate links.

What do I think?

I certainly agree that Amazon is one of the easiest affiliate programs to make money from. They’re a little strict with the rules so just make sure to read the affiliate agreement so that you won’t get banned.

(2) Content Curation: The Art of a Curated Post (Infographic)

Posting a Sunday Share is the easiest content I can create for this website. It takes about 15 minutes to write because I’m just posting 3 links to posts I want to share with readers and commenting about them.

This is an example of content curation and it’s the easiest type of content you can create for your website. Done right, you can use this technique to always have something for your audience to read and still be seen as an expert in your niche.

In this article from Mitchell Hall on Curata, he shares an infographic showing how to create the perfect piece of curated content for your blog using these 5 elements. The article further explains how to put these five elements together to create the perfect post.

Obviously though, you wouldn’t want to create a website with just curated content. According to Curata’s study, the best marketers have a ratio of 65 percent created content to 25 percent curated content so you should aim for those numbers.

If you’re stuck for something to post, why not go ahead and curate some content on your blog right now?

(3) I Don’t Have Time to Start a Business

This is an excuse that I hear all the time unfortunately from people who have expressed the interest of getting into affiliate marketing.

People have full time jobs. Or they have school. Or they’re doing a course. Or their kids take up all their time.

Yes we have lives to live but how can you be too busy to start a business? Especially an internet business which doesn’t actually take a lot of time.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best businesses you could get into because you don’t have to work all day or be physically present for it to work. You don’t need to deal with customers and you can choose your own times.

Kyle wrote this blog that touched on the topic of having time for an internet business and explains why people will always be busy but they’d still have time for what is important.

Take that from the guy who started Wealthy Affiliate 12 years ago while going to school with homework, exams and classes, playing basketball, keeping fit in the gym, spending time with his girlfriend and having an active social life.

Running an internet business doesn’t require a lot of time and if you can only manage an hour every day (instead of watching television), then this time adds up and you can build a business that will afford you more spare time in the future.

I also dropped a lengthy rant/comment in the discussion area which is buried now but you can read it below. I talk about my situation when I was just getting started, not having an internet connection at home but still making it work. Read it after you’ve read the article.

“So much truth in this post. I read it while eating dinner.

When I saw the title of the post, I knew where this was going. This post resonated with me so much because I hear that excuse all the time. I’ve referred people to WA who have told me that they don’t have time. But they in the club every weekend. Or on Facebook responding to every single comment on their latest post.

People nowadays have NO excuse because almost everyone has an internet connection at home and a personal computer or laptop.

When I was just getting started I had no internet at home and no computer. But I knew I wanted it to work because I needed a better life. I was busy too. I had a full time job.

How did I make it work with a full time job and no internet at home?

Everyday after work, I would go to the internet cafe and spend 1 or 2 hours learning and doing. I would eat my lunch real quick then go check my campaigns at the internet cafe.

I was busy just like everyone else.

My advise is to know what you’re busy with. If you want that extra income as much as you say, then GET BUSY WITH INTERNET MARKETING.

Be too busy for the club.
Be too busy for Netflix.
Be too busy for Facebook.
Be too busy for idle friends.

And…

Be too busy because you have to build a business.

No one is sooo busy that they can’t squeeze in some time every day to learn and build a business. If you make just enough time everyday to do just one lesson of the certification course, you’ll have a website up in 10 days. If you really busy then it might happen a little slower but it will happen.

To be honest, if you think you don’t have time, then you’re not really interested in changing your situation. But don’t use the excuse of not having time because everyone has the time whether they think they do or not. Lamest excuse in the book in my opinion.

One thing that I’ve personally observed in friends that I’ve tried to help is that they aren’t really that busy even though they say they are. The truth is that they’re just trying to run from something else.

They think they can’t write good enough.
They think that it might not work for them.
They think that someone who’s doubting them might be right.
They think they will try and fail.
They think that it wouldn’t work fast enough.

I just can’t understand why they wouldn’t say what the real problem is instead of saying that time is the issue. Everybody has time.

People are even more privilege now than I was back when I started but even I made it work for me.

Sorry for the long response but this issue is one that I’ve had to deal with personally and I’ve written about it more than a couple of times so I might just be a little bit passionate about the topic.”

(4) 25 Affiliate Resources You Can’t Miss

Finally, here’s something from the Shopify Partner blog that I found interesting because they put together a list of resources in a number of categories that you might consider if you want to improve.

In the list written by Senior Affiliate Manage at Shopify, Bonnie D’Amico, she puts you on to resources in a number of categories including conferences, affiliate and general marketing education and leaders in the affiliate marketing space.

The one thing I was surprised and excited to see was that they recommended Wealthy Affiliate, which I’ve been recommending for years, as one of the go-to resources for learning affiliate marketing.

You can check out the other recommended resources here.

That’s all for this week and I hope that you enjoyed reading these articles and learned something that can help you in your quest to make money online.

More exciting curated content coming in the next issue of Sunday Shares.

Please let me know, in the comments section below, what you think about the articles I’ve shared.