A great way to make extra money or even a full-time income is by starting an affiliate marketing website. It can be done on your own or you can outsource a lot of the work. No matter your approach, if you have your marketing strategy on point, it can bring in quite a lot of money. This is because affiliate marketing works in commissions.
The thing is, the key to the success of your website is to bring in lots of traffic. And the kind of traffic where people are ready to buy. If you can do this, then why send people to somebody else’s product to buy? You’ve done all of the heavy lifting and are lucky to get 3% of the purchase for yourself.
You’ve proven that you know how to bring in traffic and know what people want. Why not make your own and send them to your own product page? Surely there are aspects about the product that you think could be better. Therefore, finding a way to produce it yourself is a sure way to level up your earnings.
In this article, I will go over the steps to take to transform your affiliate marketing blog into an eCommerce store.
Before you start transforming your website, you have to get an idea of the costs to get started. One of the benefits of doing an affiliate site is the low barrier to entry. For just the cost of hosting and registering a domain, you can be on your way.
An eCommerce store is much different in that you have a lot of upfront costs. You’ll need to know the costs so you can decide if you are able to get started with your savings or need a loan.
First and foremost is the cost of the goods and the shipping. When you find a factory that can produce the product you need, there is usually a minimum order. Now, you already have some data on how many sales per month you can probably expect since you are already making commissions. Now you can decide how many units you can expect to sell per month. Choose the factory that allows for the minimum that best suits your needs. Then you can come up with the cost of manufacturing.
Next up is the shipping. The factory will usually work with a shipping company and can give you an approximate cost of getting the goods to your destination.
Lastly, fulfillment is very important. If you are dealing with a small number of orders per month then you may want to save money by doing the fulfillment yourself. Just be sure you have the space and time to do the packaging and shipping.
Otherwise, you need a fulfillment center like Pro Star fulfillment to handle the processing, storage, and shipping of your product. You will usually ship your product directly from the factory to the fulfillment center. They then take care of the rest. Shop around and find the price that is going to work with your budget.
There is temptation to take an existing product and then design your own to be different. The better route is to find out the aspects of the product that people are unhappy with and fix those problems. This makes your product better rather than just different.
You can find out what the problems are that people are having by reading the reviews from the product page that you send your readers to. If this is Amazon then this is a great resource as there are usually lots of reviews and questions answered about the product.
Make a list of all the things that people are unhappy with and then design yours based on those specifications.
When you had an affiliate marketing blog you were a marketer. Now that you have your own product you are a brand. And your marketing strategy needs to evolve as a result.
Your social media profiles need to be updated to reflect this change so you are creating a recognizable brand. Your content still needs to focus on being helpful. However, you should also highlight your product and make sure your logo is visible and eye-catching.
You should also reach out to an influencer in the niche of your product. Ask them if they will make some content with your product. If they are on Youtube then maybe suggest an unboxing video or a review if they have a large following and your audiences intersect.
You may have to pay them in addition to giving them free products since creating the content is time-consuming. Make sure that all of your material has the brand and the same color scheme as everything else in your branding. This allows people to easily recognize it.
Another big difference between affiliate marketing blogs and having your own product is that you have to deal with actual customers. With an affiliate site, once somebody clicked off of your site to the product page they were no longer your responsibility. Often, you have no idea who they are.
When you are the one selling the product, you will have to deal with customer service. Instead of looking at this as a negative aspect, embrace it. This is your chance to outdo the seller of the original product that you were affiliated with. They are now the competition and you can beat them with superior customer service.
Just like you did for the design of your product, look at the reviews when it comes to how they were treated when they had issues with the product. This is your chance to do things differently and stand out as somebody who believes in the value of their product and backs it up in deeds.
You’re signing up for more work when you transform your affiliate marketing blog into an eCommerce one. But, you also are poised to make a lot more money by selling your own product and keeping the profits. If you don’t mind the extra work then it will be worth it.
