How To Develop A Winning Affiliate Marketing Strategy

4 min readJan 30, 2024

If you’ve ever considered doing affiliate marketing, then you’ve probably started like this..

Google “How to do affiliate marketing” and read a bunch of articles or watch youtube videos
Start researching products to promote
Get confused
Give up

I get it. I’ve been there.

The internet is information overload and 90% of people don’t know what they’re talking about.

I’m going to help you develop a winning affiliate marketing strategy in the form of a business plan. You can then take this plan and implement it today.

Why though? Because this industry is going to basically double by 2030.

Jump in early.

1. Identifying Your Target Audience

First things first. You’re going to want to identify your target audience. This is more important than picking a niche. In fact, I want you to forget about a niche right now because this is where people get hung up. For this example I’m going to use the health and fitness niche.

Understanding Demographics: Who are you speaking to? Your content is naturally going to attract people that are similar to you. Similar pain points, interests, goals, and desires. Give them a name. Be specific.
Joe: The frustrated middle-aged man struggling with weight loss and fitness.
Michelle: The busy mother seeking to regain confidence and health post childbirth.
Daniel: The successful, older businessman aiming for a healthier lifestyle. He’s put it off for far too long.
Jessica: The young adult looking for natural weight loss solutions.
Creating Personas: Develop detailed personas for each demographic to understand their unique challenges and aspirations.

2. Locating Your Audience

Social Media Platforms: TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Medium.
Content Focus: Tailor your content to be platform-specific, engaging, and relevant to each audience’s browsing habits and interests.

For example. If you’re using Tik Tok or instagram, then create short form videos. If you’re using Medium or LinkedIn, write engaging posts (like this!)

3. Content Strategy: Fitness and Diet

If I was to start in the health / fitness / weight loss niche, then I would go follow 5–10 creators who are crushing it. Study their content, save their posts, and use it to model your own.

Hashtags and Trends: Utilize popular fitness and diet-related hashtags to increase visibility.
Edutainment Approach: Combine educational content with entertaining elements like stories, tips, and inspirational journeys.
Content Ideas: Fitness and workout routines, healthy eating and clean eating tips, motivational stories and fitness transformations.

4. Attracting Your Audience

Content Creation: Create engaging short videos, stories, and posts that resonate with each persona. Use pictures, use your copywriting skills. The goal is to grab their attention.

Sharing Your Journey: Document and share your own fitness journey or review products and routines to build authenticity.
Utilizing Multimedia: Incorporate stock footage, voiceovers, and text to create compelling and informative content.

Your content should use the following format:

Engaging Headline
Hook
Value
Call To Action (CTA)

5. Lead Generation

There are two ways to generate leads. Organic and Paid traffic. Organic is the way to go with affiliate marketing because you’re recommending products you know, use, love, and trust. Your audience must know and trust YOU if they’re ever going to purchase a product you’re recommending. It takes 12–20+ touch points for somebody to start trusting you.

Free Giveaways: Offer valuable resources like recipe guides, workout videos, or wellness routines in exchange for email addresses.
Content Types: Easy-to-make healthy recipes, equipment-free workout routines, daily wellness plans to boost fitness and health.

6 Funneling Leads: The Bridge Funnel

Structure: Develop a simple two-page bridge funnel consisting of an opt-in page and a bridge page to capture leads and introduce your main offer. I use systeme.io as it’s free to start and my favorite funnel builder. Use the free giveaway to capture their contact information.

7. Choosing The Right Products

This is also where people get hung up. People think affiliate marketing is recommending physical products like Airpods or clothes. You want to approach this with a value ladder. Start with lower ticket items, then introduce higher ticket products later on.

Why? Well, let’s say you want to make $10,000/month with affiliate marketing. You promote a fitness app that pays you 10 bucks per sign up. You would need 1,000 sign ups per MONTH in order to earn that kind of money.

Versus. Let’s say you promote a 90 day body transformation program that cost $5,000. And the company pays its affiliates $1,000 per sale. Now you only need 10 sales per month to make $10,000 per month!

The fitness app can be a lower ticket item while the body transformation program can be the higher ticket item. Keep the focus on digital products.

8. Upselling and Community Building

Upsell Opportunities: Offer additional courses or training programs that complement the initial product.
Community Events: Organize live events or online meetups to foster community spirit and support among your audience.
Build your own fitness community around your affiliate marketing business.

You can now use this outline to create your own business plan. This is a simplified version and there’s more you need to learn in order to connect all the dots.

You’re more than welcome to do the additional research like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, or, you can grab my free guide where I break this down even further.

Once you input your email, it will take you to a thank you page which has an important video I’d like you to watch. It’s a $7 affiliate marketing business builder challenge that taught me everything I know. They’ll help you get set up in 2 weeks.

*Disclaimer* I’m an affiliate for that program, so if you do sign up with my unique link, I will earn a commission (another example of affilate marketing!)