Affiliate Marketing for Beginners – The Definitive Guide

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular and easiest ways to make money online.

Want to learn how you can make passive income with affiliate marketing?

Read this “Affiliate marketing for beginners” guide till the end!

Caution: After reading this, you may want to leave your 9 – 5 job and start your own affiliate marketing business.

Don’t do that unless you start making good money using the methods I’ll tell you about in this article.

Let’s get started with a short definition of affiliate marketing.

Related: Is Affiliate Marketing a Pyramid Scheme?

What is Affiliate Marketing? How Affiliate Marketing Works?

affiliate marketing for Beginners

Affiliate marketing is a type of digital marketing where a business pays you when you bring them a conversion.

The conversion action can be a sale, a newsletter sign-up, or a form.

Let’s take an example:

A company selling marketing software makes you its affiliate marketer.

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It gives you a custom link that you can post to your social media, blog, YouTube channel, or any forum.

When someone clicks on your link and buys their software, you get a pre-defined percentage of the sale amount (Or whatever term the company sets).

You can consider yourself a salesperson for that company. But, you won’t have to go door to door to sell their products.

By helping people make buying decisions with your content, you can generate huge profits on auto-pilot.

How Much Money Can You Make With Affiliate Marketing?

how much money can you make with affiliate marketing

The short and sweet answer is “There is no limit”.

The amount of money you can make will depend on the niche you choose, your strategies, and the work you put in.

There are people making 6 figures selling other people’s products and there are people who find it difficult to even get started.

Your success depends on your strategy, which is what we will be talking about in a while.

The bigger your income goal, the more overwhelming it can become.

You’ll have to be patient as well. It’s more like a marathon than a sprint. But, it’s ridiculously rewarding.

Why should You Go for Affiliate Marketing?

To Work from Home

Working from home eliminates the need for a commute. Time savings such as this also enables people to get real health benefits such as:

  • Additional sleep
  • Extra hours for the loved ones
  • Some time off

To Have an Extra Income Source:

Earn more money (without signing up for additional stress at your main job). You can have your income goals realized by giving a few hours here and there.

To be Your Own Boss

If you are your own boss, you work for yourself. You make your own decisions and do not have anyone to be answerable to.

One of the benefits of being your own boss is that you are your own critic. You analyze your performance and come up with better ways to perform a job.

To Work on Your Own Terms

You can own, run and grow your own business. When you work for yourself, you’re in control. You can choose your workplace, clients, and hours.

You’ve got time to upskill. Your work is your passion. Every day is different. Your self-esteem can grow.

Work with People all around the Globe

In fact, society has become more globally connected due to electronic communication. Communication on the internet has eliminated distance as the main barrier to communication.

This electrical/global society makes the world a smaller place, offers more business opportunities and it is improving cultural education.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners – Getting Started

how to get started with affiliate marketing

Let’s first discuss the two important initial steps you need to take before jumping into affiliate marketing.

Select the Medium

Your first step as an affiliate marketer should be selecting the platform where you would market affiliate products.

You can create a blog, a YouTube channel, or even use an Instagram account to get started with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing for beginners is a hot topic. People tend to turn to a search engine when they want to know about a product or service.

68% of internet experiences start from a search. As a blog owner, you would want your website to rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages), especially in Google.

More than 90% of web searches happen on Google.

Alternatively, you can opt for YouTube. YouTube gets nearly 3 billion searches every month.

That’s insane! It’s the second most popular search engine after Google.

You can make a YouTube channel for free, without any problem.

Note: You’ll need to put a disclosure on your blog and under your YouTube videos that you are an affiliate promoting products.

Related: Affiliate Marketing Without Social Media: How Do You Do It?

Choosing Your Niche

This part requires a little brainstorming and consideration. Gone are the days when you could choose any topic and write on it.

Today, with more than 600 million blogs on the internet, the giants have taken most of the space in almost every niche.

So, what should a beginner blogger do?

Simple: “Niche Down”

So, if you were to focus on “gold”, you should focus on “golf balls”. If you are thinking about targeting the “outdoors” industry, choose “portable solar panels”, for instance.

You see, there is still a lot of space. You just have to be smart while picking your blog topic.

Here is a breakdown of the procedure.

Step 1– Follow Your Passion (but, not too much).

Step 2– Check if the niche has enough profitable keywords (at least, 60)

You can use “Google Keyword Planner” to get keyword ideas.

Step 3– Use Google Trends to make sure it’s not a seasonal niche.

Step 4– Find some reasonable products to promote & sell.

Choosing a niche is imperative because you want to establish yourself as an authority in a certain topic to be able to sell effectively.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

how to get started as a beginner in affiliate marketing

People also ask. How do we start affiliate marketing as a beginner? Here’s how to get started with affiliate marketing.

  • Decide on a platform
  • Find affiliate programs to join
  • Create great content
  • Drive traffic to your affiliate site
  • Get clicks on your affiliate links
  • Convert clicks to sales

Decide on a Platform

Do you want to promote affiliate products on your blog or YouTube channel? I’d suggest going with a blog as it’s a versatile option. You can later expand into YouTube as well.

You Might Also Like: How to Start Blogging?

How Can You Find the Best Affiliate Programs?

The easiest way to find companies that have affiliate programs is to join an affiliate network. You will find a lot of different networks that allow affiliates to get started almost immediately.

But, some will require you to provide them a traffic proof.

But, fortunately, those are in minority.

Another way to find affiliate networks is by finding out individual companies. A company that pays its affiliates directly.

Related: Affiliate Marketing Without Being an Influencer

Create Great Content

Once you find an affiliate network or company to promote, now would be the time to create great content around their products.

Your content should be simple, easy-to-understand by laymen, and persuasive enough to make your reader act.

Drive Traffic to Your Content

Here are some tips to attract relevant traffic to your affiliate content.

  • Master keyword research
  • Write engaging titles and headlines
  • Keep updating your old content
  • Add visuals to your blogs

Provide Honest Advice

Consumers frequently rely on product reviews to decide whether a product or service is worth their investment or not.

By giving them your honest opinion about the product, you can help them make a decision that they might not regret later.

Your focus should be to provide the best advice you can. Misleading your readers can only lead to distrust for your affiliate business.

Get Clicks

You can either include an actionable call-to-action at the end of a review. Or, you can place banner ads within your content to make the readers click on your affiliate links.

Secrets of Converting Traffic into Sales

For Converting Traffic into Sales:

  • Refine your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
  • When writing descriptions for sales you need to make sure that you sound friendly, kind, and humble
  • Engage your viewers
  • Leave white space between and around the text
  • Get people excited about your offering
  • Find problems and solve them

Related: Affiliate Marketing Without Followers

What Is YouTube Affiliate Marketing?

YouTube affiliate marketing is where you place affiliate links under your YouTube videos. You provide the helpful content that your audience needs and help them make a buying decision.

So it’s quite similar to typical affiliate marketing in terms of how you make money.

Affiliate Marketing Parties

  • Affiliates
  • Merchants
  • Affiliate networks
  • Consumers/Customers

Affiliates

An affiliate is a promoter or the publisher of the product. They can be individuals or a company.

Merchants

Merchants are the typically creator of the product. They offer a significant amount of commission to other people or companies, who have a significant following on their brand or product.

Affiliate Networks

Networks host a number of affiliate companies in different spaces. They connect affiliate marketers with affiliate companies.

A popular affiliate network is CJ Affiliate.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners - The Definitive Guide 1
CJ affiliate network

Related: Will Affiliate Marketing Die?

How Much Can a Beginner Affiliate Marketer Make?

Affiliate marketing is a logical and flexible sales process that creates different income streams. However, it is not a get-rich-quick model.

Earning an income through affiliate marketing requires a lot of things such as Research into products, web traffic patterns, and follower interests.

Growth in the early months – and even the first year – is quite unpredictable and irregular for most of the sites.

It’s quite impossible for a good niche site to achieve its first $1000 month until somewhere between 12 and 18 months.

Reaching that mark regularly is typically/traditionally achieved between 18 and 24 months.

Here is a subjective breakdown of income per day depending on the expertise of a blogger.

  • Low-level affiliates, who earn up to $300/day
  • Intermediate affiliates, who earn from $300/day to $3,000/day
  • High-level affiliates, who earn above $3,000/day
  • Experienced or, you can call them “gurus of affiliate marketing,” who make more than $10,000/day

Why Do I Love Amazon Associates?

Imagine that a reader visits your post about the best cotton suit. They click on one of your affiliate links, leading them to a product on Amazon.

But they realized they have to pick up some groceries. So they leave their house, and get themselves dinner, and then finally go back to Amazon where they found the product.

Since they’re already shopping on Amazon, they decide to purchase some jeans too.

Here’s the good news. Earlier, when they clicked on your affiliate link for just a review. Just at the moment, a cookie was stored on their device.

Because Amazon has a typical 24-hour cookie duration, you will get your commission for both the cotton suit and jeans —even though you didn’t promote the latter.

Affiliate Marketing with Amazon

affiliate marketing for beginners
affiliate marketing with amazon

Affiliate marketing with Amazon is the first step every affiliate should take. Why? Because Amazon Associates is not only easy to get into, but it’s also the most popular e-commerce platform out there.

So, when you recommend a product on Amazon, there is virtually no trust barrier between the consumer and the company. This makes your work easier.

Do You Need a Website for Amazon Affiliate?

Do you need a website for Amazon Affiliates? No, you don’t need one. You can simply sign up for their affiliate program and start promoting products. However, having a website can help you to build trust with your audience and also give you a place to promote multiple products from different companies. If you have a website, you can also use it to drive traffic to your Amazon affiliate links. And, if you have a blog, you can use it to write reviews and articles about the products you’re promoting. So, while you don’t need a website for Amazon Affiliate, it can certainly be beneficial.

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Author

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  • Zain

    Zain is an SEO Copywriter / Freelancer and Digital Marketing with around 4 years of experience in writing and digital marketing. He's currently managing this blog and offering freelance writing services on Fiverr and Legiit.

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