Imagine you’re on the beach on some resort island, sipping on freshly squeezed juice, swaying back and forth in a hammock, AND making money at the same time. The idea of escaping the 9 to 5 rat race and earning passive income and living your life on your terms is a dream many of us share. However, most struggle to put these thoughts into action.
One way to make this dream a reality is through affiliate marketing, a sales tactic that can generate high online revenue. You create content, whether creating a website, writing a blog, making YouTube videos, or build an audience on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and the like, you can use affiliate marketing to monetize this content. In this introductory guide to affiliate marketing, I will teach you everything you need to know to get started with your online business idea, from the definition of affiliate marketing to its benefits and best practices.
So, What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a process in which one party earns a commission from marketing another party’s products. The first party – called the affiliate – searches for a person or company with products they want to promote, promotes their products on their website, blog, and/or social media accounts, and then makes a commission from each sale they generate.
These people or companies provide affiliates with a unique link called, wait for it- an affiliate link. This link can track the affiliate’s performance and compensate them based on the number of sales they generated for the owner of the products.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
There are several reasons to become an affiliate marketer:
- Low risk: Joining affiliate marketing programs is usually free, so you don’t need to make an investment to start. Often if there is a fee, it is that only users of the product are allowed to be affiliates, which means you know the product better to be able to market it.
- Passive income: There is very little work that needs to be done and once its done it can go to work for you making you money day after day. Once you add the affiliate link to your post on your website, blog, or social media platform, you can earn from the sales each time someone clicks the link and buys without putting in extra effort after one post.
- No customer support: When customers have queries or complaints, the company, not you, will be responsible for resolving their issues.
- Flexible work schedule: Rather than sticking to a traditional schedule, you can work as an affiliate marketer on your own time. Many work a few hours in the morning while the house is still quiet, or at night once everyone else is sleeping. It also allows the flexibility of doing the work anywhere that has electricity and an internet connection
- Minimal business costs: You don’t need standard business infrastructure to become an affiliate marketer; all you need is a laptop and an internet connection. The only other costs are website costs or ads if you chose to spend the money on them.
How Exactly Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
This type of marketing has three major players involved: product creators, affiliates, and consumers. Together, these three parties make up the affiliate marketing ecosystem.
Product Creators: These are the people or companies that make or provide the products. This could be a nationwide franchise like Walmart that caters to about every need, a niche store like Home Depot that caters more to a specific need, or a small independent shop or individual that has one or two products
Affiliates: Affiliates are the people who strike a deal with the product creators to market their products and in exchange will be paid a set amount or percentage of the products they sell. The affiliate promotes the products on their own platforms, such as a personal blog or social media pages.
Consumers: Consumers are the people who buy the product. The affiliate earns a commission on the sale when they make a purchase after clicking on the affiliate link. The consumer gets a product they want (or need), the creator gets a sale, and the affiliate gets a commission for making the sale.
How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
As an affiliate marketer, there are several different ways you can get paid. Most sites I have found use PayPal or wire transfers. While pay per sale is the standard practice, it’s helpful to be familiar with the other methods as well:
- Pay per sale: This is by far the most common way affiliate marketers earn money. Consumers must buy the product after clicking the affiliate link, and the affiliate receives a percentage of the sale price. Most pay on a bi-monthly to monthly schedule.
- Pay per lead: While less common, the seller may also pay the affiliate for generating leads, rather than making sales. In this case, the affiliate must persuade the consumer to complete an action such as filling out a contact form, submitting an email, or signing up for a free trial.
- Pay per click: Another unusual method is for the affiliate to earn money when consumers click on their link – regardless of whether they convert to a lead or make a purchase.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing
Now that we have some general knowledge about “what is affiliate marketing”, here’s a step-by-step overview of how to get started:
- Select a Platform
- Find your Niche
- Build an Audience
- Connect with Brands
- Create Affiliate Content
- Get Clicks
1. Select a Platform
Pick one platform to begin. As you learn the ins and outs of that platform you scale to other platforms. You can choose to do affiliate marketing on any platform or social media channel of your choice. Places like Pinterest and Instagram are popular options, but using your blog or YouTube channel tends to yield the most effective results.
- Website/Blogging: If you’re interested in using a blogging strategy, creating a blog is simple and usually free of charge or very little expense. Write articles that answer questions people have on a subject. Then you can monetize your blog by incorporating affiliate links into your articles in ways that are genuinely helpful to your readers. For example, if your post is about baking a cake, as you explain the ingredients and instructions, you might include a link to buy your favorite kitchen mixer or the perfect cake pan. My favorite host sites are BlueHost and WPX.
- YouTube: Affiliate marketing is a proven way to make money on YouTube. If you choose this as your main platform, you’ll need to smoothly incorporate branded products into your videos. Some YouTubers opt to create videos focused around a particular product or brand, while others feature the product as part of a broader theme. Many create videos that are about the product they are selling or many include items they use like mics, software, cameras, etc in their bio that people will click on and buy too. If you choose YouTube, I recommend you sign up for TubeBuddy.
- Instagram: Since Instagram doesn’t offer you the same ability to describe the product at length and make it part of a larger story, the platform isn’t as effective in converting your audience. Nonetheless, it’s a common choice that does yield profit for some. If you go this route, post Instagram photos that feature the product and include a link and explanation in the description. You can also have a link in your bio to what you are promoting currently.
- Facebook: Affiliate marketers usually use Facebook in three ways. First, they can create ads and pay Facebook to display them using specific parameters. Second, they can create Facebook profile pages where they post about products they are affiliates for with their links. Third, they can create Facebook Groups and provide a forum for people to discuss products and sprinkle in affiliate links into the quality materials they provide.
- Twitter: Most people I know resort to twitter as an add-on site once you have a good understanding of one of the other methods. Good way to post links to the other site’s posted article or video.
Regardless of which option you prefer, it’s a good idea once you learn one to move into another to post across a variety of platforms so that you can cross-promote your content and expand your reach. This will also give you an understanding of which types of content work best for you, helping you optimize your promotional efforts.
No matter where you chose to start (or expand to) consider signing up to Canva to create professional-looking uploads for posts, graphs & charts, banners, icons, and sooooo much more.
2. Find your Niche
Niche and the platform order are really interchangeable. Sometimes one can dictate the other.
There is a lot of competitors on the internet. There are approximately 31 million separate channels on YouTube alone, and Instagram has over 1 billion active users. Meanwhile, there are over 600 million blogs on the internet, and these numbers are steadily increasing.
As a result, it’s vital that you stand out by focusing your posts on a single topic – for example, Italian cuisine rather than just cooking, or piano rather than just musical instruments. If your niche is too broad, there will be a lot of competition, making it difficult for your target audience to find your content.
Start with a broad topic- the three best are health, wealth, and relationships, but just about anything can be a topic; but make it something you enjoy doing or talking about. Then niche down a level, ex- Health to Weight Loss. Now niche down again- Weight Loss for … [gender, age, physical limitations, health problems, style (diet/exercise/supplements), etc.] You want to be at a sweet spot where there are still a good number of possible buyers but targeted enough to make quality on-target content.
3. Build an Audience
After determining your preferred platform and niche, you’ll need to build a fanbase to gain exposure. Whether you focus on growing your Instagram account or becoming a successful YouTuber, having a dedicated audience will increase the likelihood that some of them will click on your affiliate links. These strategies will help you to draw attention to your posts:
- SEO: Short for search engine optimization, SEO is the process of strategically adjusting your content to rank high on Google and other search engines. When your blog or YouTube channel appears as one of the top search results, users are more likely to click on the link and navigate to your page. My top recommendation for SEO/SEM tools is Semrush.
- PPC: Another way to appear as a leading result on search engines and gain more traffic is to invest in PPC (pay-per-click) advertising. Keep in mind, though, that the amount you spend on ads might be more than the amount you make from affiliate marketing.
- Email marketing: If you already have email subscribers through your personal website, send out newsletters that point your audience toward your content. You can also add affiliate links directly to your email blasts.
Here is my article on the best autoresponders for affiliate email marketing.
- Social media marketing: Gain further exposure by spreading the word about your Youtube channel, blog or social media account (FB, IG, Twitter, Snap, Pin, etc.) as you build out these other social media channels.
4. Connect with Brands
Once you establish your platforms and develop a fanbase, it’s time to start looking for affiliate marketing opportunities. There are two main ways you can find brands to promote:
- Join an affiliate marketing program: The easiest way to connect with brands is by joining an affiliate program. While there are a variety of programs out there, some of the most popular include Clickbank, Amazon Associates, CJ Affiliate, and ShareASale. You can even look at the bottom of web pages of different companies to see if there is a link to affiliate or partner programs in their footer.
- Reach out to brands yourself: If you have a particular brand or product in mind that you’d love to promote, you can also reach out to companies on your own. Be sure to emphasize how they will benefit from the collaboration. You’ll need to explain why reaching your audience can bring them new customers. This is best once you establish yourself as a marketer so you can show what you have done for others (especially if it is a competitor).
Keep in mind that if you’re targeting consumers, you’re better off partnering with companies that have high sales volumes, even if the commission is low. If you’re targeting businesses, on the other hand, join a partnership that offers a high commission with a lower sales volume.
5. Create Affiliate Content
Sellers will provide you with an affiliate link to embed in your content. Rather than promote the products directly, try to make them fit naturally within your content. By incorporating the promotion into a larger, more engaging story, you’ll be able to gently guide your audience toward making a purchase.
Here are some examples of powerful affiliate content:
- A list of product recommendations, either in the form of a YouTube video or blog post, with promoted items included as suggestions.
- A YouTube tutorial in which you show your audience how to use a series of products, including the one you’re promoting.
- A webinar in which you teach viewers how to perform a certain task, with a relevant product recommendation included in the presentation.
- A blog post that offers tips or how-to advice, with a suggestion that incorporates the promoted product.
- An Instagram photo that shows you using the product.
As you get started as an affiliate marketer, experiment with a variety of strategies to learn which ones reach the biggest audience and generate the most profit.
Example: YouTube creator teaches you how to build a website. Along the way, they promote who they use to search and buy a web domain, who they use to buy hosting, themes & apps, what to put on the site, etc… all in which you are given their affiliate link to use if you so chose to buy these products.
6. Get Clicks
By now, you should have an idea of all the key affiliate marketing ingredients: a strategic platform and niche, a dedicated audience, product creator partners, and, of course, great content. The only thing that’s left is to convince consumers to click on your affiliate links.
You’ll need to arrange your links in the right type of context if you want to get clicks. Consider this: if a product’s name pops up out of nowhere, no one will be persuaded to click on the link. Your audience will be more inclined to click on it and make a purchase if you tell a story about how that product improved your life or would help them solve a problem.
You should also pay attention to how your links are placed. If you’re adding the link to a blog post, do it in the form of a compelling CTA (call to action) at the beginning and end of the content. Make the link stick out on the page by changing the color, blue is a common color people associate with links, adding a CTA button, or employing a banner ad.
Affiliate marketing strategies and tips
Now that you know “what is affiliate marketing” and begin your affiliate marketing journey, keep these tips in mind to maximize your success:
- Choose sellers with high conversion rates: Before you collaborate with a seller, take a moment to research them. Don’t waste your time marketing a product that has low demand. If you promote a high converting brand, the more chances your audience will buy – and the more you’ll earn as a result. Remember selling 500 products that have $1000 commission is half the money as 100,000 products at $10. Weigh the conversions rate times commission to see the potential
- Promote products you believe in: Only market products that you can sincerely recommend to your audience. That way, you’ll offer genuine value to your followers while making your personal brand credible and reliable. If you wouldn’t suggest to your best friend, don’t to your audience.
- Stay up-to-date with trends: Whether your niche is fashion, technology or travel, keep tabs on the latest industry trends. That will help you promote the most competitive products with the highest consumer demand.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: You don’t want your entire strategy to be dependent on the website, landing pages, and conversion rate of a single merchant. Instead, promote products from a range of merchants to increase your chances of success. Look back at my website YouTube tutorial example.
- Test and optimize: Adapt your marketing approach on a regular basis to see which methods produce the most profit. Is it time to step up your blogging game? Do you need to rework your landing pages? Is email marketing a good way to target your audience? Experiment with several promotional methods to see which ones are most effective for you and your target audience.
The best way to test and optimize is to track. ClickMagick was my choice for tracking.
Beginner Tool Kit
For a leg up, check out my article: Great Affiliate Marketing for Beginners Tools