Not without good reason, the CFD and Forex affiliate programs are by far the most profitable in their entire affiliate marketing industry. As such, they attract hordes of affiliates looking to achieve higher affiliate earnings. If you have the necessary marketing skills and provide you partner up with the suitable, right CFD and/or Forex broker achieving impressively high commissions as an affiliate is very much possible. In fact, many CFD and Forex affiliates are making hundreds of thousands of dollars each month!
Our team has showcased the lucrative opportunities to be had through Forex and CFD affiliation on numerous occasions, with our most recent post on the matter illustrating our points further through the use of a specific program as a case study. If you are into affiliate marketing but have not yet explored the financial niche, you can access, this must-read piece here regarding Top Forex Affiliate Program Case Studies.
If you are an affiliate, who has not yet capitalized on the full potential of your affiliate partnership, and are actively seeking for ways to boost your earnings, worry not because we have you covered too! Our resident team of experts has put their thinking caps on and are today serving you with our own recipe towards Forex and CFD affiliate marketing success, made up of useful, smart and insightful tips to help boost your affiliate endeavour. Read on and do read through as, in the end, we are throwing in a secret that will help unlock your full potential. (We shall be happy to receive your success stories and any messages of gratitude, if you feel like it).
The world of online, digital marketing is under constant evolution as search engines keep changing their algorithms. Affiliate marketers in general, and forex and CFD affiliates in particular are affected by these changes since their twofold goal is to attract and refer traffic, which will then turn from a lead to a conversion and translate into higher commission payouts. The profitability of a Forex or CFD affiliate then, depends largely on attaining not merely high volumes of traffic, but high quality traffic as well, since high quality leads have increased chances of converting effectively.
The tips below have exactly this aim in mind, and if you apply them in your forex affiliate marketing endeavours, then you are bound to see a marked increase in your forex affiliate earnings.
To effectively attract and convince your target audience you need to know who they are. In fact, you need to understand them and their needs better than they understand themselves! Armed with a full knowledge and insight into the targeted buyer personas, you will be better equipped and able to craft the right messages and deliver them effectively to achieve the ultimate goal of attraction and conversion. All information is important and knowing as much as you can should be the target. Knowledge, however, that extends far beyond mere demographics, as age, gender and location and further than a general description of one’s hobbies, preferences and social habits.
To effectively target your desired audience as a forex and CFD affiliate, you need to also know all the available information on their trading profiles and preferences. If they are part time or full time investors, what markets they prefer to trade in and which asset classes, how risk tolerant they are, which strategies they favour, which trading platforms they prefer, where they get their trading advice and information from, etc. The ultimate key to the effective targeting of your audience however is knowing their pain points, because it is only by providing them with solutions to those that you will be able to securely seal the deal and achieve their conversion. Knowing the trading challenges they are faced with, and what sort of help they are seeking is of paramount importance, because if you can offer what they are looking for then you will win them over.
An effective way to be more efficient in the management of your different buyer personas is to create templates for each broad category to be able to be targeting different types of prospective clients at any one time, armed with the knowledge you will have about their specific characteristics and pain points. Through such a categorisation you will be better able to adjust your offering and targeting accordingly and offer value to each and every prospective client, throughout their buyer journey. Offering them value will allow you to build mutual trust and deemed as valuable and trustworthy is the bulletproof method for attaining high quality traffic.
If your understanding of your target audience is impeccable and you do manage to become a source of answers to pain points, a valuable and trustworthy haven, this will not suffice unless you can actually be visible and your target audience members can actually find you. The best way to attain high visibility and exposure is by ranking high on search engine result pages and the way to do so is through Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO. The higher up you rise on a SERP in specific keywords, the more noticed you will get and the more you are bound to attract, thus boosting your affiliate earnings potential. If you do manage to get SEO right as an affiliate you stand to benefit hugely, but SEO is an ongoing dynamic process and cannot be handled in a “set it and forget it” approach. Reiterating the importance or basic components of SEO is beyond the scope of this present post, but you can always visit our blog, which is packed with information and insights for those who want to rely on the power of SEO to help them achieve online success. A prime example is our post on using SEO to attract customers as a crucial element of a Forex digital marketing strategy for a successful lead generation for Forex businesses.
We trust that if not familiar with SEO practices you will read on the topic and get the drift. To neatly sum up the point we are demonstrating here and being able to proceed to the next tip to help your forex affiliate efforts, lets us say that through effective SEO your aim should be to rank high on keywords that you have found to concern your target audience, through the buyer persona analysis you have already performed. Once you know the right keywords to target, you should employ SEO to rank high on those and get the attention of prospective clients. This can be achieved in a variety of methods, for example through paid PPC campaigns or through the production and posting of quality content such as blog posts, videos or free guides, distributed through email, which will also help you quickly built a mailing list for future use.
Having recognised who your target audience are and which keywords they are searching for to tailor your SEO efforts on those, the next crucial step in the process is ensuring the value of your offering. By providing information, knowledge, advice and content in general that directly pertains to a prospective client’s pain point is what gives you added value in their eyes. If you can prove that you are invaluable then the process of turning a lead into a conversion that will get the cash rolling in commission payouts, becomes much easier and straightforward. It is therefore important to ensure that adding value should be the guiding rationale behind all content you generate and disseminate as a forex and CFD affiliate marketer, always keeping in mind that this value should have a direct relation to a challenge, query or pain point your prospective buyers are seeking help with.
The conversion of a lead, like most customer transactions, is usually a process and not an instance. Therefore, you should keep in mind that buyers usually go through a 3-stage journey and your success as a digital marketer depends on effectively targeting and attracting a buyer throughout this trip. If you stay for the duration, your affiliate commission will be waiting right after the finish line!
The three distinct stages making up a buyer’s journey are: The awareness stage, which is the process when potential buyers are spurred to become aware are realize that they have a problem that needs solving, or a need that must be addressed, or a desire to be fulfilled. The consideration stage, which is the period during which a potential buyer will be actively seeking for information and possible solutions to solve their previously identified problem or meet their prescribed need. The decision stage, which is when the potential buyer, having examined the available solutions to their problem, decide which is the best and most suitable for them and proceed to make the purchase. In your forex affiliate case, this is the stage that seals the deal, the point at which a referral decides in favour of the broker you are promoting and opens a trading account. To reach this final part of the journey and cash in on your referral, you need to ensure that the content you generate, as well as your overall marketing endeavours accompany the prospective buyer throughout the process.
If your content is not top notch, then don’t bother creating it in the first place. In today’s fast pace world, consumers in general and prospective clients in particular are much more demanding and pickier than in the past, and exactly because they are being constantly bombarded by content, ads and promos, they are in the know and can easily discern if someone tries to serve them crap.
Do not make this mistake, and always ensure that the content you disseminate as an affiliate is not only high quality, but engaging and appealing too. Check that your messages and content are written in a way that is easily digestible, having a natural flow and coherence that is easier for readers to follow and doesn’t put them off. In order to inspire trust and prove your professionalism and seriousness, be certain that all your material is grammatically and linguistically impeccable, as many people will completely discredit you if you can’t express yourself in proper English, or the language of your target audience that you are trying to convert.
Moreover, to be able to evaluate your content, always read through it critically before uploading it, and put yourself in the position of your target audience. If you find the content clear, interesting, and a pleasure to read, then chances are that your target audience will appreciate it too.
As a prudent entrepreneur, even when you are a forex or CFD affiliate, your primary target should be to achieve the maximum ROI, i.e. return on investment. A great way to get there is through repurposing your content, provided you didn’t skip tip#5 and that content is indeed of high quality.
If you do spend the time and effort to devise high quality content, then you should leverage it to the maximum possible degree. The most obvious benefit that arises from repurposing your content, rather than creating new content from scratch is the saving in time. However, touching up your content and serving it through different channels also helps expand your reach and gaining added visibility. Keep in mind that any virality or popularity you gain online, will help build up your credibility and authority on the topic you are dealing with and this will help position you as an expert on the specific topic and increase the trust of potential clients.
Content repurposing is possible in a variety of ways, such as compiling several blog posts in one ebook that could include further data and images, to give it added value. Another way would be to repost content on your social media accounts, making sure you have a presence in as many channels as possible. Adapting the content to the needs and requirements of every different channel is essential, but not difficult to achieve and the impact that social media use can have on exposure is huge.
Finally, and to built on a hot SEO trend, videos and vlogs seem to be immensely effectively, and it would therefore make a lot of sense to turn your content into videos that you can either post on your website or on your YouTube channel.
If you follow these tips, your chances for achieving forex affiliated marketing success will be greatly increased and your potential profits greatly boosted. Besides the insightful and smart tips above however, we did also promise to reveal a powerful secret that will skyrocket your endeavour.
Thus, without further ado here come's the magic recipe for forex affiliate success
As pointed out above and further illustrated in our recent post showcasing an exemplary case study for forex affiliate success, the key to unlocking your full potential lies in effectively achieving differentiation from your competitors. The forex and CFD landscape, simply because it holds a hugely lucrative potential, is also highly attractive and thus fiercely competitive. There are hordes of online retail trading providers and an equally huge number of affiliates promoting them, all fishing for customers from what is essentially the same pool.
The secret to success then lies in nailing your Unique Selling Point (USP).
In fact, finding your USP and then effectively promoting it is perhaps the key to succeed in any endeavour, not simply in the field of forex and CFD affiliation.
Finding your USP however, is by no means a simple task, exactly because it pertains at identifying a gap in the market that you operate in, which you must be in a position to fill, thus being able to beat your competitors and convincing prospective clients that you can give something that they simply cannot find anywhere else.
It is therefore vital for your affiliate marketing success, not only to have a unique selling preposition, but getting it right as well. And as already explained, this unique selling preposition must be directly relevant to an existing and documented pain point of your target audience. If you don’t have a USP or if your USP does not address a pain point of aspiring traders, then no matter how hard you try, it will be extremely difficult to lure prospects your way and away from competitors and manage to turn leads into conversions, resulting to commission payouts.
Delving too much into the theory behind the notion of a unique selling preposition is beyond the scope here, so the point to keep is that you absolutely must have a USP and that once you decide what will it be, you should ensure that you communicate it effectively in all your forex affiliate marketing endeavours in a manner that is clear, consistent and directly addresses a pain point of your target audience.
A real-life example of how to best find your USP and succeed as an affiliate The theory then sounds pretty straightforward and makes sense; the problem arises when you decide to reach its implementation. We feel you and yes, we do recognize that crafting a unique selling preposition in a field that is as populated and as competitive as the field of online forex and CFD trading is by no means an easy task. In fact, you are right to feel it is daunting and almost impossible. Don’t loose your hope just yet though... check out this: Before revealing a proposed USP that we are almost certain will propel you towards forex affiliate prosperity, let us explore an example that we believe wouldn’t work, in order to illustrate the difference.
Let us say you recognise the pain point of the target audience to be addressing is the need to be able to trade on the go and perform all their trading activities on a mobile device with exactly the same ease and having the same functionalities as on a desktop version. Yes, this may well be a valid pain point and it would have gone down as a great USP to say that the broker you are promoting offers excellent trading on the go, via any mobile phone or smart device. The problem is, such a preposition would have indeed sounded kind of unique ten or even five years ago! Today, you cannot credibly go around flaunting this as some kind of innovative, exceptionally unique offering, since all trading platforms now have a mobile version and literally all brokers enable trading on the go for their clients.
Having illustrated how not to approach the USP conundrum, let us now deliver the goods as promised, as a reward for all those who are reading this post till the end. If you know the forex industry well, and as a forex and CFD affiliate you should have a pretty good idea of its basics, then you already know that the most active forex industry in the world is that of the USA. What is an oxymoron and a paradox however is that while US based Goliaths of trading mostly call the shots, American individual retail traders are severely limited in what they can do, due to strict national financial regulations.
Why do Forex brokers not accept US clients? Read the truth!
To make the pain point we are addressing here even clearer, we need to bear in mind that brokers operating in the USA must be registered with both national regulators, namely the NFA and the CFTC and that, in theory at least, only brokers that are registered with both these watchdogs are allowed to accept US residents as customers.
In an attempt to tighten their hold and prevent what went down during the 2008 financial crisis, both the National Futures Association (NFA) and the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) amended their regulatory framework, rendering it the strictest in the world and imposing great restrictions and limitations on US based brokers, such as:
Trading through US-based and registered brokers, under such limitations and strict rules is not a very attractive option. The problem is exacerbated even further because many offshore based forex brokers have stopped accepting US citizens or residents as clients, because they do not want to bare the excessive cost of registering with both the CFTC and NFA, as well as having to comply with the tedious reporting requirements imposed by these two watchdogs. Instead of having to deal with much higher operational expenses and a massive paper mess, many offshore brokers simply avoid the hassle by rejecting US clients all together.
Thus, the problem is offering US based aspiring traders the chance to open an account and trade through brokers that are not bound by the strict rules of US watchdogs, but who still do accept to take on US clients. If you could offer a viable solution to this problem, then you would have a brilliant unique selling proposition and one that would hold a tremendous earning potential.
The great news and the great secret we are letting you in today is that there is indeed a solution to this pain point that you as an affiliate could propose and flaunt as your USP, helping you boost your referral earnings.
The only thing you have to do is to search and find reliable offshore brokers, who still accept US traders as clients and partnering up with such a broker, allowing you to effectively target the US market and offering a real solution to a very real and pressing pain point for aspiring US traders.
Such offshore forex brokers, who are not registered with the NFA and CFTC and are thus not obliged to comply with their strict limitations, do exist though they are not in great abundance. What allows them to accept US citizens is the fact that they are registered in offshore jurisdictions where the local authorities have not entered into mutually binding MoUs with the US authorities, and are thus not bound by their restrictions. Since CFTC authority affects the brokerages and not individual traders, for as long as US citizens abide by their IRS obligations and declare what needs declaring, then they can still trade through offshore brokers that are beyond the reach of US regulators.
Aspiring US-based forex and CFD traders would jump at such an opportunity, since an offshore broker would give them access to a trading account and a chance to profit from trading in a manner with much less hassle. Through an offshore broker, US clients can enjoy the same trading experience as traders across the globe, who can take advantage of promotions and additional services and are being able to trade under more freedom, without strict rules and restrictions on leverage, hedging, scalping etc. In this manner, they can freely choose their trading markets, strategies and methods and maximise their chances for forex and CFD trading success.
The perfect match So, now you have it: a valid pain point and a tangible solution to it and if you manage to offer it will give you a unique selling proposition and vantage point, the much-sought after competitive edge over other forex and CFD affiliates. The task then is quite simple: find and compile a list of the best offshore forex brokers accepting US clients and you have your unique proposition ready. Then explore their affiliate programs and find the best and most suitable affiliate program to join. At this point, if you haven’t done it already it would be wise to consult our ultimate guide on the matter, prior to partnering up with a specific broker.
Eager and always willing to help, our team of resident experts is here to share their knowledge and insights, as they have done through this enlightening post. In your quest for top notch brokers accepting US clients you shall not be alone. Watch this space, we will be back!
The forex market is a highly lucrative one and so is the field of forex affiliate marketing. However, becoming a truly successful Forex affiliate marketer is not ...