How to Start an Affiliate Blog from Scratch and Make Money in 2024

5 min readOct 9, 2023

As many of you already know, affiliate marketing is a great way to earn passive income online.

I was researching this topic a lot in the last months, and once, looking for link-building techniques, I stumbled over Adam Enfroy’s YouTube channel.

Not only could his videos hint at how to boost my local business (I started to get clients 2 weeks after implementing his SEO strategy), but he also made me interested in building a blog website and trying to earn money with affiliate marketing. This post summarizes the techniques Adam and other creators share on the internet.

It will provide an A-Z game plan to start an affiliate marketing blog from scratch and make extra money even with a full-time job.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing involves promoting products or services and earning a commission when someone purchases through your affiliate link.

For example, you can join the Booking.com affiliate program. If you write a blog post about the 12 best hotels in Paris and include Booking.com affiliate links, you’ll earn a commission every time someone books a hotel after clicking your link.

Affiliate programs exist across all niches. As long as you can recommend products, you can include affiliate links and earn commissions.

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Here are some key benefits of affiliate marketing:

Passive income: Once your content ranks high on Google, it can bring in affiliate revenue month after month with little extra effort.
Work from anywhere: Affiliate marketing is an online business model, so you can work remotely and fit it around a full-time job.
Low startup costs: You don’t need much capital to get started. The main costs are a domain name, hosting, and tools.
Unlimited earning potential: There’s no cap on your earnings. The more traffic you drive, the more you can potentially make. Top affiliates earn over $1 million a year.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing: 1-Year Plan

Here is a 12-month plan to start affiliate marketing and reach $10,000 per month in revenue:

Month 1: Keyword Research and Planning

The first step is determining your niche and identifying keywords to target. Look for:

An area you’re knowledgeable and passionate about
Low competition long tail keywords with decent search volume
Opportunities to recommend affiliate products

Use keyword research tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to find low-competition keywords. Look for keywords with low difficulty scores (under 20) and search volume over 1,000.

Some examples:
best AI website builder
best usb microphone for vocals
best dog food for allergies

You can use ChatGPT or any other available chatbot to look for a niche and brainstorm fresh keyword ideas. Check this video for an amazing implementation of ChatGPT for this:

Create a list of 30 target keywords and 10 potential affiliate programs to join.

Month 1 Goals:

Choose your niche
Register a domain and set up hosting

I recommend you using 10web web hosting and website builder for this. You can save money on PageSpeed boosting plugins and an amazing AI website builder to create your website in minutes. If you want to use a more affordable hosting, check Hostinger, it’s a stable hosting provider with the lowest price on the market. It also provides an amazing AI website-builder. However, you will have to consider boosting you PageSpeed with 10web WP Plugin once your website is live.

Identify your first 3 articles to write
Make a list of 10 affiliate programs

Month 2: Create Content

It’s time to start publishing content optimized for your target keywords.

Focus on creating what Adam calls a minimum viable post — you completely around 2,000 words. You can always expand and update it later.

Include:

Informational articles to support affiliate content (“how-to’s”)
Proper on-page SEO and formatting
Unique insights based on personal experience (add pictures of you using the product if possible, that will enhance user trust)

Use tools like Grammarly and Frase.io to optimize articles. Or try AI writing tools like SurferSEO to create an initial draft. The key is developing an efficient system for creating high-quality posts.

Frase is an AI-powered tool designed to make your writing experience as simple as possible. It will analyze your competitors’ data, and help you start with the outline based on the existing content. It will help you you create ranking content, providing valuable insights for SEO optimization.

Try Frase for just $1

Month 2 Goals:

Have 8+ articles published
Establish a consistent blog post creation process

Month 3–6: Build Affiliate Links

Once your posts start ranking and driving traffic, it’s time to monetize them with affiliate links.

Steps:

Join affiliate programs like Amazon Associates and ShareASale
Swap out generic links for your affiliate links
Prioritize top-earning programs at the top of posts
Track revenue and commissions in a spreadsheet

The goal is to build what Adam calls an “affiliate marketing machine” with a diversified portfolio of affiliate offers.

Month 6 Goals:

Start earning first affiliate commissions
Have 50+ articles published
Establish standard operating procedures

Months 7–12: Expand and Diversify

In the second half of year one, focus on scaling your affiliate revenue and establishing your blog as a business.

Key steps:

Rank for more transactional keywords
Organize affiliate links with the ThirstyAffiliates plugin
Consider hiring a writer to outsource content creation
Track revenue and profit/loss in a spreadsheet
Diversify into other income streams like display ads, sponsored posts, info products etc.

You can also start building relationships with affiliate managers to negotiate higher commissions and exclusive promotions.

End-of-Year Goals:

$5,000+ in monthly affiliate revenue
100+ articles published
Register an LLC and open a business bank account
Build relationships with affiliate managers

Conclusion

Starting a successful affiliate marketing business takes consistent effort over 6–12 months.

However, maintaining a strict content creation and promotion process can build traffic and passive income over time.

Be sure to focus on providing genuine value to readers rather than just pushing affiliate links. Building authority and trust is key to long-term success.

So, what niche would you pick?