Affiliate Marketing 101: What it is and How to Get Started
The Complete Guide
Do you want to make money online, and that too when you sleep and do not work? Then, do Affiliate Marketing.
Yes, you read it right! With the help of affiliate marketing, you can generate income even when you’re sleeping, traveling, attending parties, etc.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting products and earning a certain percentage as commission when the audiences purchase the product through your referrals.
Here’s how it works: You showcase specific products on your blog, YouTube channel, or other social media platforms. When someone from your audience buys the product using your unique referral link, the merchant rewards you with a percentage of the sale as your commission. That’s the affiliate marketing meaning.
Let’s see a few examples.
Take the company called Bluehost (a web hosting company). Once you sign up for their affiliate program, they will provide you with a unique link.
This unique link helps companies easily find which URL they are getting the sales from and track sales, conversions, signups, and other reports.
Now, once you share this URL on your medium (anywhere you’ve audiences), and when someone purchases the hosting, the company will give you $65 as commission.
This commission ($65) is for each sale. So, if you make 10 sales per month, you will get $650.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work for Beginners?
Firstly, Affiliate Marketing is a lucrative way of making online money. Everyday stress on human beings is about making life on a 9 to 6 job. To stop that, you can make a boss-free life with the help of affiliate marketing.
Let’s be clear that affiliate marketing is not a scam. If someone says, “I’m making money from affiliate marketing with just a laptop and the internet,” it’s not at all gossip. It’s a legitimate way to earn online.
I hope you roll up your sleeves and get ready to start affiliate marketing to make money. However, learning the basic workflow and its ups and downs is essential. Let’s see it here.
If you’ve already grasped the information from the infographic, feel free to move on to the next heading. However, if you’d like a more detailed explanation, I’m here to guide you through it step by step.
1. Join Affiliate Program
Ready to start Earning? The first thing you need to do is find a product that offers an affiliate program. Take the Grammarly affiliate program, for example. With this program, you can earn a $20 commission for every successful sale and $0.20 for each free signup.
However, to join this Grammarly Affiliate program, you need to have a decent audience on your profile, and your content should be niche-related.
Let’s say once you sign up for the program and they accept your submission, you’ll get the unique affiliate link. Generally, all affiliate programs give you a unique link once you join them. From that unique link only, you can share it with your audiences and track the sales.
Each affiliate program has its cookies duration. Let’s say they set the Cookie’s duration to 45 days.
Now, you’ll still get the commission when someone clicks the link and purchases it even after 44 days. On the other hand, if the purchase happened on the 46th day after the first click links, you’ll not get the commission.
This tracking link and cookie durations are different for every affiliate program. To know more about it, read here: Cookies in Affiliate Marketing.
As mentioned above, this affiliate link uniquely tracks signup, sales, conversion, cookie duration, etc.
Once the above two steps are completed successfully, share the unique affiliate link on your platforms, such as YouTube, blog posts, social profiles, etc., to reach the audiences. Also, use any affiliate shortener tool to trim the long format links.
4. Click, Conversion & Commission (CCC)
Suppose the user completes a desired action through the unique affiliate link. In that case, the affiliate earns a commission based on the agreed-upon terms.
For example, clicking that link and converting the purchase means you will get a certain amount as commission. $20 for a single purchase and $0.20 for a simple free sign up.
Note: Affiliate Marketing is easy for beginners when you consider the above steps and follow the below carefully.
Affiliate Programs: Before Join
There are millions of affiliate programs available for different products. But it would help if you considered a few things before joining these.
Is the Affiliate Program Free to Join?
Firstly, the trustable affiliate program is free to join. It may be a scam if the Program asks you to pay initial fees. Also, check the product review before you join. Moreover, some popular affiliate networks are Amazon, ShareASale, and Commission Junction (CJ). They are also free to join.
- Affiliate Program: A company directly promotes the affiliate option on their platforms (Individual merchants).
- Affiliate Networks: The best affiliate network is a platform that combines multiple merchants with affiliates. It is a mediator, providing a central hub for handling various affiliate programs.
Does that Program have Reliable Tracking?
They provide you with a unique affiliate link to track your purchases. When someone clicks your affiliate link but doesn’t make a purchase (Visit the purchase page), there are many possibilities.
With the help of reliable tracking, you can analyze the purchase of where you are making sales and where the sales are not happening. In this way, you can automatically increase sales and revenue.
Periodic Discount and Resources
To be consistent as an affiliate, you have to promote products with good discounts to your audience.
You may know about the Black Friday sales, right? When you promote products from your affiliate links with exclusive discounts, people are ready to buy them.
To get the discounts, you must contact the Program or merchants and request to provide exclusive discounts.
Also, it would be better if the product had decent promoting materials such as banner ads, posters, and infographic elements on different social media platform sizes.
It reduces the time you spend promoting the products.
Payment Tracking and Threshold
Affiliate programs offer different payment methods based on various country locations. Some of them are PayPal, Wire transfers, and cheques.
Also, consider the minimum threshold payment. Some affiliate programs need a minimum of $100, which you have to earn to withdraw the amount. However, some other programs need to set a minimum threshold. Even $5 of your commission has been sent to your payment mode account.
Does the Affiliate Program have a Support Team?
Some programs provide a dedicated team to support affiliates. Keep in touch with the support teams. Ask them many questions to increase sales, and also ask for discount offers to attract your audiences.
The excellent affiliate program has a fantastic support team. Sometimes, after you get decent sales from the product, they might also listen to your request to increase your commission percentage.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing: Get Started
Affiliate marketing is an easy way to earn money, but you need to have a decent audience to make the money. Yes, sharing affiliate links through Facebook and Instagram won’t help you make more. Hence, it needs to go beyond that.
In summary, YouTube channels and Blogs are the best marketplaces for exposing the products you want to share.
However, the downside of blogging is that you need to invest more to start a blog. Indeed, make decent videos of your affiliate product through the YouTube channel (Free to join).
Moreover, Stranger Show is a complete guide for YouTubers who are struggling to learn YouTubing and earn money from it. Subscribe to us to learn more about YouTube.
Start the channel, build a decent audience, share the affiliate products, and earn from it.
Firstly, many beginners fail to start affiliate marketing because of a lack of guidance. It would be best to focus on a few areas before starting it.
They are:
- Find the sales platform.
- Choose your niche.
- Research the product and choose it.
- Check the product’s worth and features.
- Check the cookies, period.
- Have a good support team and payment gateway?
- Use that product before promoting it.
- Finally, sign up for the product.
Let me explain briefly about these points. Stay tuned!
1. Find the Sales Platform
The choice of a sales platform is crucial as it determines where and how you promote your product, directly influencing your potential sales.
If you already have a platform with a decent audience, it’s wise to leverage it. This can save you time and effort in building a new platform from scratch.
- Start a website or blog: The best way to make more money is through blog posts, but buying a domain and hosting is a little expensive.
- Start a YouTube channel: Another big platform to attract enough audiences. It takes less investment to start a YouTube channel and can make a considerable amount in affiliate marketing.
- Email marketing: Compared to others, it takes less time to work, but the conversion rates are high. A proper email marketing tool can draw audiences and sales.
- Social media marketing: Getting more followers through simple work is easy, but it’s hard to make sales.
Choose the platform in which you have the strength to pull enough audiences and make a sale.
Recommendation: I recommend promoting affiliate products through the YouTube channel and email marketing, which are less expensive to start than others. You can also use, YouTube Shopping Affiliate Hub feature when you’ve channel.
2. Choose the Niche
So, once you select the platform, it’s time to choose the niche and stick to it. Niche is nothing but the topic of your work.
Let’s say you have chosen the YouTube channel as your platform. If you have an idea to make a random topic video and would like to make affiliate sales from it, kindly erase that idea from your mind.
For example, one of your videos is related to the food niche, and the other is about antivirus software, which means you won’t get enough trustworthy subscribers to your channel.
Therefore, it’s highly recommended to stick to one niche and create all your content around it. This strategy not only builds trust with your audience but also significantly improves your conversion rate.
3. Research the Affiliate Product and Marketing it
Many failed to earn money through affiliate marketing because they needed to research the product before starting it.
Kindly research that the product must have below two things,
- Product related to niche: The affiliate product must be related to your niche. Otherwise, you won’t be able to make money from it.
- Is that a good product? There are so many spam products available on the internet. So, make sure that the product is good to buy.
Hence, check twice before selecting the affiliate product because you’ll spend valuable time on these. In the meantime, people don’t spend money on worthless products.
4. Check if the Product Price is Worth Buying
In other words, people don’t spend too much money on simple products. However, this is not your concern; you need to promote the product to make it worth buying.
The buyer must look at the product features before they buy it. If the product is expensive, then it must have all the features that satisfy the buyer.
So, check the alternative product with problem-solving features for the money to pay.
For example, consider the affiliate product SEMrush. It’s a Keyword and SEO tool for bloggers and marketing agencies. The product price range is expensive.
However, the affiliate commission rate is 40%. It’s one of the high-paying affiliate programs, and this product is also the top SEO tool in the industry.
So, it’s trustable to promote this product. Likewise, analyze the product features and prices before promoting it.
5. Review the Cookies Period
We have already seen the usage of cookies during this period. However, before starting the affiliate marketing of each product, kindly check and review the cookie period.
6. Support Team and Payment Gateway
Check that the affiliate product has a 24/7 support team. If you’re new to affiliate marketing, you may have more doubts about its workflow.
Almost all the good affiliate products have an excellent support team. Moreover, analyze their payment gateway method.
Few countries have secure payment gateways. Once you make a sale, the next step is for them to transfer the commission to your account.
Standard payment methods are cheques, PayPal, and wire transfers.
Hence, before starting affiliate marketing, review the affiliate product payment gateway that supports your country.
You are almost ready to sign up for the affiliate product, but this is the most important step to making a success of affiliate marketing.
You must use the affiliate product before you promote it. Once you try a product, you understand its ups and downs better than others.
Even though Pat Flynn, the highest affiliate earner, follows this strategy to earn more revenue from the affiliate.
So, use any affiliate product before you promote it to your audience. If you are satisfied with that product, then your audience will be, too.
8. Signup the Affiliate Marketing Program
It’s time. The things mentioned above and filters may help you find the product to sign up for.
Once you sign up for the affiliate program, they will provide unique affiliate links. That’s where your mission starts.
Also, they provide a few banner ad images and custom links to track your affiliate sales. Frequently check the sales and clicks to increase sales.
This is how generally you have to start affiliate marketing.
Types of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is classified into different types based on the program format, relationships with products and affiliates, and earnings.
The types of affiliate marketing’s are:
1. Unattached Affiliate Marketing
Unattached Affiliate Marketing refers to a scenario where there is no direct involvement with the product or service being promoted. In other words, the affiliate is not required to use or have any personal experience with the product. This type of marketing is often used in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign models.
2. Related Affiliate Marketing
Let’s say you’re reviewing the dresses and materials you used on your home, but promoting the curtains to your audience is called Related Affiliate Marketing.
In other words, the affiliates have the basic experiences with the product. Still, they do not need to use the product themselves.
When the product is related to the niche, even though it has not been tried on their hand, it refers to Related marketing.
3. Involved Affiliate Marketing
The one who is wholly involved in the product, sharing their experiences, pros, and cons.
Using the product before reviewing it helps build audience trust and increases the conversion sale rate.
I recommend you follow the Involved affiliate marketing strategy as it’s better than the other two.
4. Pay-Per-Sale (PPS)
In a nutshell, affiliates get a commission for each sale they refer to with their affiliate links. Pay-per-sale occurs when users like the promotion of your products and convert them to sales.
5. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Instead of sales, when you redirect the audiences to the product site (merchant website), irrespective of the sales, it is the Pay-Per-Click model.
6. Pay-Per-Lead (PPL)
It’s neither a sale nor a redirection; when you make the audiences free to sign up, fill out contact forms, subscribe to newsletters, and log in to free trials, you’ll get paid.
7. Two-Tier Affiliate Marketing
Let’s say you’re joining the affiliate program and earning a commission. When someone joins the affiliate program and earns a commission through your affiliate link, you’ll also get a certain percentage as a commission. That’s how two-tier affiliate marketing works.
8. Recurring Affiliate Marketing
The real passive income hides in the recurring affiliate programs. It’s nothing but earning recurring revenue from the product every month when the subscriber pays monthly.
For example, take the Kinsta product (Hosting Service). They provide 10% recurring affiliate commissions for each sale. When the product is $30, and you are making five sales every month, this is your income report:
9. Content Marketing
To attract audiences, building profiles on Blogs, YouTube channels, social media, and other search engine profiles is called content marketing.
Through content marketing, you can provide solutions, create tutorials, or solve problems by using affiliate products and leaving affiliate links. This will increase the product’s sales and conversions.
10. Email Marketing
Sales mostly happen when the affiliate has the email list. Affiliate marketers generally use their email newsletters to promote products and services.
Sending the target email and adding the affiliate links is the best method to pull more sales.
Remember, the world of affiliate marketing is diverse and offers a range of strategies to suit different needs and preferences. You can build a strong and thriving affiliate marketing portfolio by selecting and applying the best.
Why Be an Affiliate Marketer
The question is, why do I have to be an affiliate marketer?
Maybe the following advantages answer you:
1. Passive Income Potential
The main advantage of being an affiliate marker is that the working model generates passive income. Yes, you can earn money while sleeping, traveling, etc.
The content you create, like blog articles, is a one-time process, but through there, you will get commissions for at least the next five years (based on my experience).
2. Less Investment
As said before, joining the affiliate program does not require an investment. However, you may need to invest in creating the content, which varies depending on the medium in which you’re sharing the affiliate links.
3. Flexibility and Independence
Affiliate marketing allows you to work from anywhere and often will enable you to set your schedule. In a nutshell, it means better work-life balance and a healthy life.
4. No Customer Support or Handling
You promote the product, and the purchase happens. That’s your role. The merchants handle the rest of the product updates, pricing increases, services, and other complaints.
As an affiliate marketer, your role is minimal, and there is no risk of customer support.
5. Diverse Income Streams
There are no restrictions for the affiliate marketing team, such as promoting only certain products.
You can approach different companies based on your niche and apply to become an affiliate. Also, note that when you use more affiliate products, you’re diversifying your income.
6. Access to a Global Market
We are in an internet world and can barely reach any global audience remotely. Global markets help pitch more sales and commissions than local businesses.
Likewise, there are other standard benefits of affiliate marketing, such as:
- Easy to join
- Potential of high earnings
- Big and supportive community
- High commission rate industry
Affiliate marketing is the best source of income for those looking for a side hustle and a boss-free life. However, it requires dedicated work and effort in the beginning.
List of Best Affiliate Products
Are you ready to dive into the world of affiliate marketing? Here’s a curated list of the best affiliate products that can kickstart your journey.
After extensive research, I’ve compiled this list of affiliate products. Suppose you need help deciding which niche for your affiliate marketing venture; consider these products as potential topics. Rest assured, each one has been thoroughly studied and is a reliable choice.
The above is just an overview of the high-paying affiliate programs. You can choose the best and niche-related depending on it.
Tips to Become a Successful Affiliate Marketer
Follow the tips below to become a successful affiliate marketer.
1. Research and Select Quality Products
Selecting high-commission products doesn’t add any value to the audience. Hence, promote high-quality products or services related to your niche.
Also, ensure they offer value to the audiences and the product is trustworthy.
2. Understand Audience
The crucial things are your audience’s needs and pain points. When you understand those, you can easily make good sales from Affiliate marketing.
To understand your audiences, take surveys, engage with them through different social media accounts, do live streaming, etc.,
3. Create Quality Content
Many creators make mistakes by not producing quality and valuable content to promote the affiliate programs.
Only when the content provides valuable information, the audiences try to use the product, at least the free version. So, always create high-quality content (especially in formats such as blogs, videos, ads, images, posters, and infographics).
4. Best SEO Practices
Search engine optimization is mandatory if you’re blogging and using YouTubing.
If you’re running a YouTube channel, do the Video SEO without fail and rank your videos at the top of the search engine; it reflects the best affiliate sales.
5. Engage with Your Audience
The first thing you need to do after getting the audience’s support is to engage with them. Yes, always solve your audience’s doubts, reply to the comments, and do email marketing regularly.
6. Test and Optimize
You may get the affiliate tracking report from the product. It helps to see not only the revenue, sales, etc.
It’s mainly for understanding and enhancing further reports. For instance, one affiliate link may work better than the other.
So, with the report, you can understand which method is working, and which is not working. Based on this information, you can optimize the rest of your work.
7. Be Transparent and Authentic
Always disclose the affiliate links on the articles or wherever you leave them.
Audiences must know you’re getting a certain percentage as a commission from this sale. For the best example, you can check our affiliate disclosure here.
8. Patience and Persistence
Affiliate marketing is a lucrative way to make money, but it’s not an overnight success. You need to work hard, build the audience, and build credibility, at least to get one sale.
Be patient and do the work consistently. You may not see the results today and yesterday, but tomorrow might be your day. So, work hard until you provide your 200%.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is the best place to generate income, but it’s not a day-one money maker. With all the above information in mind, keep grinding the best affiliate program and make a decent income.
I trust you’ve gained a deeper insight into affiliate marketing. If you’re grappling with common questions like where to begin, how to start, or what a specific product entails, I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section or reach out to us on Instagram. Let’s engage in a meaningful discussion!
If you found this post helpful, I encourage you to share it with your friends. Your sharing can help others discover the world of affiliate marketing and potentially change their lives.
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Originally published at https://strangershow.com on December 23, 2019.
