Affiliate Marketing Basics: Expert Advice [Exclusive Interview]

What’s the affiliate marketing basics you need to keep in mind if you want to start and grow your affiliate venture in 2021? Today, we’re pleased to talk to a very special guest! Adam Enfroy, widely known in both the digital marketing and blogging industries, kindly agreed to share some of his first-hand insights.

Hi, please introduce yourself!

Hi, my name’s Adam and I’m a full-time blogger.

I launched my blog AdamEnfroy.com in 2019 and scaled it to a million dollar business in under two years. I currently write to 500,000 monthly readers and teach my readers how to scale their influence at startup speed. Currently, I live in Florida, work on my blog full-time, and share my journey in my income reports.

You were the Head of Digital Marketing in BigCommerce (!) back in 2018. Why did you choose affiliate marketing, after all? How did it all begin?

Before I was the Head of Digital Marketing at BigCommerce, I was their Affiliate Manager. I saw a lot of affiliates making a ton of money promoting BigCommerce and decided to try it out myself.

So I took what I learned in the tech world and used startup growth tactics to build my personal brand. Instead of making a small affiliate niche site, I decided to go big and go after all of marketing.

Today, I’m in over 200 affiliate programs and consider myself one of the best affiliate marketers in the world. And part of the reason for that is I’ve seen both sides. I’m an affiliate manager turned affiliate marketer and I know how and where to join programs, add affiliate links, generate traffic, negotiate deals, etc.

Could you tell us more about these programs?

Since I worked in the ecommerce industry, I am in a lot of ecommerce related affiliate programs – ecommerce platforms, dropshipping suppliers, etc. I found the AliDropship affiliate program by reaching out to their team and collaborating on content and adding them to my site.

Overall, I’m in 200+ affiliate programs and write about everything from ecommerce platforms and the best online course platforms to web hosting, website builders, and more.

Is it worth it financially? What’s your average affiliate income?

I make over $75k per month in affiliate income.

What do you do to make it happen? What’s the affiliate marketing basics you’re sticking to?

Affiliate marketing is a Google-driven engine. And your blog is a mediator.

It is a mediator between a Google search and a purchase – it’s really that simple. You need to rank on Google for searches with transactional search intent and then direct readers to your affiliate links.

Think about it this way.

When someone searches for something like “best laptops” or “best credit cards”, who is ranking?

The answer: All blogs and media sites promoting affiliate links via list posts.

That is the game.

It is a content and link driven business, where the best content with the most links ranks on search engines and makes the most money.

And if there’s money to be made, it’s going to be competitive.

So you need to focus on:

• Keyword research based on the right keywords with transactional search intent
• Writing high-quality content to rank on search engines
• Building backlinks to your content to build authority

By doing this, my blog gets over 500,000 monthly readers and makes over $80k per month without spending any money on advertising.

How much time does it take you every day to manage your affiliate resources?

My blog is now completely automated and I don’t need to spend much time on it. Although I could take months off and revenue would stay pretty flat, I still spend probably 20 hours per week on my blog. I’m also working really hard on a premium blogging course, so that is taking up a lot of my time.

On my blogging page, I write about how to effectively outsource, automate, and scale your blogging business so that you can do this, too.

What’s your biggest affiliate marketing challenge?

The most challenging part of affiliate marketing is the extreme competition on search engines. If you’re an individual person like me, you’re going up against companies with lots of employees. You really need to effectively use your time, scale your content marketing efforts, and treat your affiliate website like a real business.

Without a doubt, 2020 was a challenging year. In your opinion, what’s changed the most during 2020 in affiliate marketing? What trends are there for 2021?

I saw a huge boost in affiliate revenue in certain SaaS categories as more businesses move online in 2021 and beyond.

In 2021, I’d focus on your website’s content experience. It’s not just what you write, but how easy it is to engage with your content. For example, affiliate list posts might need a table of contents to take readers down the page, video content, or sticky sidebars to keep readers engaged.

Your ultimate goal is to end the search journey. Google is getting smarter and can understand content quality based on user signals.

For example, if a person searches for something and hits the search engine results page (SERP), you need to be the last result that they visit for that search. Maybe they click site A, go back to Google, click Site B, go back to Google again, then finally click your site and complete their search, never going back to Google for that specific keyword during their session.

That tells Google you’re the best.

And to do that, you truly need the best, most engaging content.

What’s the affiliate marketing basics that you would recommend every newcomer to consider?

Focus on:

1. Content and links
2. Content and links
3. Content and links.

I see a lot of new bloggers try to join a bunch of affiliate programs and add affiliate links without first building authority and traffic.

Affiliate marketing is a number’s game.

You need traffic.

To get traffic, you need to create great content based on transactional search intent and build links to that content so that search engines take you seriously.

Anything taking away time from that is limiting your future growth.

If you’re looking to make more money with your affiliate business and check out the strategies I’ve used to build a million dollar blog in under two years, you can take a look at them in my guide on how to start a blog – and make sure to sign up for my email list. 🙂

Thank you, Adam, for sharing the exclusive, first-hand insights into the affiliate marketing basics, secrets, and future! We appreciate your input and are sure it’s invaluable for dozens of newcomers to ecommerce who’d love to register as an affiliate and start their business, too. See you!