There are two ways to make money online:
Offering services or selling products.
But what if you don’t have enough time or money to build a product or offer services?
Here’s where affiliate marketing comes.
One of the very best ways to make money online is through affiliate marketing.
Today, you’ll learn everything you need to know about affiliate marketing.
Let’s start with the basics of affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is simply when you — an affiliate — refer or recommend a product or service to your audience. When a person buys that product or service through you, you get a commission.
You can earn commissions for promoting a great product; your audience can benefit from, making it a win-win for everyone involved.
Commissions can be a one-time payment or a recurring monthly or annual payment.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn passive income while promoting products that you are already using. A lot of merchants may also call their affiliate programs an “advocate program,” ambassador program,” “partner program,” “influencer program,” or “referral program.”
I would also recommend you to read the terms & conditions of every affiliate program before you join.
It’s a perfect method to make money online, especially if you’re just starting out. You don’t need a lot of money upfront to get started. You don’t need to create a product. Best of all, most affiliate programs are free to join.
You can find affiliate programs in almost every niche, be it tech, fashion, cooking, fitness or traveling, etc.
Do note that affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and you do have to put in some time and effort to be a successful affiliate.
Pros and cons of affiliate marketing
While affiliate marketing is an excellent money-making method, it has its own caveats. Here’s what to consider when deciding whether or not this business model is for you.
Pros
- Doesn’t require you to create a product/service
- Doesn’t need a lot of money to get started
- Most affiliate programs are free to join
- Lots of niches to choose from
- Can become a passive and profitable source of income over time
Cons
- Takes some time to get results
- It’s not for impatient ones
There are no cons to affiliate marketing when you’re honest and willing to put effort.
How to promote affiliate products/services
The first step in your affiliate marketing journey is choosing a platform where you can promote your affiliate products. You can have more than just one platform, but the more platforms, the more you need time to work on each one.
Niche website or blog
A niche website or blog is a site with content that is super-focused on a topic or subtopic. It is a great way to get started with affiliate marketing. A blog is perfect for promoting products that are related to a particular niche.
For example, if you have a blog about fishing, then you can write a list post on the top 10 fishing gears and link to affiliate products on some (or all) of the items on the list.
Regularly posting content on your blog is essential to finding success as an affiliate. If you don’t want to use paid traffic, then be sure to optimize your site for SEO to get organic traffic from search results.
Start a WordPress blog the right way using our step-by-step guide.
YouTube
Not a great blogger but can talk on camera (or behind it)? Get a YouTube channel started.
YouTube is not just a video streaming site. It’s the world’s second-biggest search engine next to Google. People go to YouTube to learn how to do something or just know more about something. It’s excellent for giving helpful free content.
The second best thing about YouTube is that it’s 100% free.
That being said, if you want to deliver quality videos, you do have to invest in a camera if you plan to show your face, a microphone, and screen recording software.
If you don’t have any of these at the moment, that’s fine. Don’t let it be an excuse not to start a YouTube channel. Start with what you have and upgrade when you are able.
The most important thing when starting a YouTube channel is to create content that is relevant and gives great value to your audience.
Build trust and authority in your chosen topic, be generous with your content, and you’re sure to attract thankful and loyal subscribers who won’t hesitate to buy from you.
Quora
If you haven’t heard about Quora yet, it’s a site where people can ask any question, and anyone can answer.
So how exactly can Quora help you as an affiliate?
You can search for niche keywords like how to catch a fish, or best fishing gear (as an example), and provide answers to questions that appear in that keyword.
Write your answers well. Look at other solutions and add more information that was not mentioned in them. In short, write better answers.
Quora does not allow affiliate links on their site, so you cannot do this — your content can be removed, and your account may be suspended.
What you can do is to link to a blog post or a YouTube video as additional information when answering a question. If you have a YouTube video, you can embed the video in the answer itself.
Quora is great because you can find people who have questions about a specific topic and speak directly to them by answering their questions. If they click on the link in your answers, they are more likely to buy from you because they are likely to be interested in your affiliate offer.
Choosing an affiliate program
Most affiliate programs are free to join. However, it doesn’t mean you have to join all of them.
An affiliate program you choose must be:
- In line with your blog’s topic/niche
- Something that you have used or are currently using
- Profitable commission structure (at least 30% commission)
- Great if it’s recurring
- Something that most people would need for a long time
- Relevant to your audience
Amazon affiliate program
Amazon Associates, also known as the Amazon affiliate program, is one of the biggest and most popular affiliate programs. They have close to 1 million active associates from all over the globe.
Do you know what makes the Amazon affiliate program so famous?
The results.
Amazon has the largest database of products as well as global buyers, so getting results becomes relatively easy. You can start using Amazon associates in less than 30 minutes. You have to get any approval, and once you finish signing up, you can start promoting their products.
Here’s a detailed guide on Amazon affiliates.
Different affiliate marketplaces
Affiliate marketplaces are websites where you can find a large selection of affiliate programs. When you register for an affiliate marketplace, you can promote all products inside that marketplace.
Some popular affiliate marketplaces are:
- Shareasale
- Commission Junction
- Amazon Associates
- eBay Partner Network
- Clickbank
- LinkShare
- JVZoo
- Flexoffers
These sites are free to join. However, some products on sites like Shareasale, Commission Junction, and Flexoffers require an application that they can either approve or decline. If this happens, there’s not much you can do but move on and find another product.
Single-product affiliate programs
If you ‘ve ever used an online app or service, chances are there’s an affiliate program for it. The best product to promote would be something that you are already using.
Here are some great affiliate programs that most people are already using or would need if they want to start a business online.
Web hosting
Email marketing service
WordPress Themes
Page builders
More on affiliate programs:
- Affiliate programs that pay recurring commissions
- 25 best WordPress affiliate programs to make money online
- Affilitizer: best chrome extension for affiliate marketers
Creating your affiliate marketing strategy
Now that you know the basics, it’s time to plan a strategy. Affiliate marketing is getting more competitive these days, and people will not just click on an affiliate link let alone buy from you if they don’t know who you are.
You need to have an online presence, great content, and a killer traffic-generating strategy.
Here’s an outline of what you can do to build a successful affiliate marketing campaign.
Choose a platform (blog, YouTube, social media)
As I mentioned earlier, you can have more than one platform or just one. The important thing is it should be something you enjoy and are willing to work on for a consistent period.
Choose affiliate products to promote
Promoting an affiliate product should be relevant to your niche, help your audience with a problem, and be worth promoting (high commissions).
Create content around those products (product reviews, top 10 lists, how to
Provide a solution to a problem, a quick fix, a detailed review, or a tutorial — anything that gives your audience value. When you do this regularly, you gain traffic, you find a perfect audience, and you will get commissions off of that audience/traffic.
Drive traffic to affiliate content
There are many ways to get traffic to your content. But remember that content with affiliate links should be handled with care, especially when promoting via paid advertising.
If you don’t want to spend money on ads, then focus on your content’s SEO, build an email list, use social media to promote your content, and be consistent with your content delivery.
For paid traffic, you can use:
Google Ads – run campaigns based on your niche’s keywords
Facebook Ads – run ads to a defined audience and use Facebook Pixel to track conversion
How to use email marketing to boost affiliate sales
I’ve mentioned the distinct ways to get traffic to your content that can potentially lead to a purchase.
However, I can not talk about affiliate marketing without mentioning email marketing. These two go together like milk and cookies.
Building an email list is one of the best ways to get sales, yet most beginner affiliates make the mistake of neglecting this method early on.
You might not get a sale when people subscribe to your email list, but they’re there, and they will continue to be there as long as you send them helpful emails.
So how do you get people on your list? These days, no one subscribes to a newsletter.
Create a lead magnet instead. A lead magnet is a freebie that a person gets in exchange for subscribing to your email list.
Check out our thorough guide to starting an email list now.
Building a landing page to collect emails
We’ve mentioned that marketers use landing pages when advertising on Google and Facebook.
If you’re not using ads, it doesn’t mean you don’t need a landing page.
Studies show that over 25% of all lost sales are because users can’t navigate from the homepage to the page they want: the offer.
Landing pages lead the visitor to a single call to action.
There are no navigation links, no sidebars, and no other content on a landing page other than the offer and a button that says “Subscribe,” “Add to Cart,” or “Buy Now.”
These pages are great for building an email list that converts to sales over time. This means you might not close a deal right away, but you can keep sending offers to your list in the future and eventually make a sale.
This is why a lead is more valuable than a one-time sale, and landing pages are fantastic for collecting leads.
Setting up email automation
Building an email list is just half the work. The other half is creating the content — the emails themselves.
Ideally, you need to set up automated emails for your method of being passive. An email marketing software like Aweber, GetResponse, or ConvertKit is excellent for this purpose.
So what do you write in your emails? It can be a tip, a link to your latest blog post or video, and an affiliate offer. The key is to not sell something all the time.
You are building a relationship with your audience. Deliver content that is designed to help them solve a problem one step at a time. Then you can recommend an affiliate product within one or two of those steps.
How to track affiliate links
Another aspect of affiliate marketing that is often overlooked is tracking. Tracking your links is done for several reasons, but mostly because you need to know which sources of traffic led to a sale.
You can use link tracking software like ThirstyAffiliates or PrettyLinks. All these not just track your links, but shorten and/or cloak your long affiliate links and make them look more beautiful.
Conclusion
Now that you know what affiliate marketing is, you also know what it’s not.
It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes time to gain traction even when using paid traffic.
It is not “set it and forget it” as well. You need to check on your content and update it accordingly. You need to track your links and adjust your strategy based on analytics.
Affiliate marketing is a low-cost, high-gain method of making money online, but there is a lot of work that goes behind it.
To be truly successful and achieve the level of having passive income, you need to first give something of value to your audience. The key is to build trust, so people want to buy what you are promoting/selling over and over again.
Remember that affiliate marketing only works when done correctly. Hopefully, this blog post showed you how to do that.
If this guide helped you, share it on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to my email list here.
Affiliate marketing is amazing. That is a great guide Aayush. For all affiliate marketers, I would like to say, in the beginning, you got to have patience and soon you’ll be able to succeed.
Patience is a virtue of success.
Hey, awesome article Aayush. Even I have earned a lot from Affiliate marketing. Your suggestions will make it bigger.
That’s great :)
I am running a Motivational Blog since more than 2 years and all these time I was simply putting my thoughts in writing and now I wish to earn a little bit money or something to cover up my blogging expenses and your article on affiliate marketing helped to start and I thank you for your help. Thanks again.
You are welcome! :-)