How to Start Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Affiliate marketing is a go-to solution if you are considering making money online.
If you are looking for a step-by-step guide to start affiliate marketing for beginners, then you are in the right place.
You can learn about what is affiliate marketing, how to start affiliate marketing as a beginner, and how it works. You can choose the right affiliate program for you by the end of this article.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a method to earn passive income with or without a website anytime, anywhere, and even when you sleep.
Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting any product or service in your niche. You earn a commission from the company when someone purchases it from your affiliate link.
Affiliate marketing is one of the main sources of income for many bloggers and influencers.
Key Takeaways:
- How does Affiliate Marketing work?
- How do Affiliate Marketers earn money?
- Affiliate Marketing Examples
- Step-by-step guide to Start Affiliate Marketing for Beginners with no money.
- Best Affiliate Marketing Programs for Beginners.
- What are the benefits of Affiliate Marketing and drawbacks?
- How to start affiliate marketing with no money?
- Tips to become a successful Affiliate Marketer.
- Mistakes to avoid as an Affiliate Marketer.
- Common FAQs on Affiliate Marketing.
1. How does Affiliate Marketing work?
First, you join an affiliate program example: Amazon Affiliate
Now you choose a product to promote. Here, I took a book on Affiliate marketing for beginners.
You get your unique affiliate link to promote it in your post on your website.
When someone clicks the link but later moves to some other product and purchases that product.
They didn’t buy the product but still bought something else from your link. Yet again you receive the commission.
This is the amazing fact of cookies period in affiliate marketing.
2. How do Affiliate Marketers earn money?
Affiliate marketing is a hassle-free technique to make money online in the long run.
Affiliate marketers can earn money in different ways like pay per click, pay per sale, pay per install, and also pay per lead.
Pay per Click:
Affiliate marketing depends on the organic traffic to your website. This can be made possible with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which is free.
When your website has a decent traffic flow, now you can redirect your customers to the merchant website.
When your audience moves to the merchant website from your affiliate site then you will be paid per click. This increases with an increase in traffic.
Pay Per Sale:
This is one of the most used marketing strategies in affiliate marketing.
In this, a person visits your blog, your website, or any platform and your content engages and excites your audience and ends in a sale. Now the merchant pays you the commission for that particular sale. You will be benefited if the affiliate program has a recurring Commission.
Recurring Commission is when your affiliate product such as software, memberships, or subscriptions was purchased by a person from your link and continues to use the product. Then for every repeat purchase, you will receive the commission.
Pay per Install:
In this type of affiliate program, you will get paid when a person installs software or an app from a merchant site through your affiliate link.
Pay per Lead:
In this pay-per-lead method, your marketing strategy enables the merchant to collect a lead.
A lead is a piece of information like a person’s email ID, or phone number which is obtained by filling out a sign-up form for a trial version of a product or newsletter subscription or even by providing a free e-book.
You will be paid for every lead.
3. Affiliate Marketing Examples
The other example is by providing the affiliate links to show the product I use or the tools I use in my affiliate website.
When you have the authority in your niche, the reader will be interested to know the tools you use. In this way, they make a purchase and you earn a commission.
Other affiliate marketing examples are providing free resources like ebooks, newsletters, and even email marketing.
4. Step-by-step guide to Start Affiliate Marketing for Beginners with no money.
You can start affiliate marketing as a beginner and with no money. If you can invest in a domain and hosting then start an affiliate marketing website. But still, you can start affiliate marketing without a website too.
Affiliate marketing has a lot of benefits when it has a website as a platform to promote. I will take you through the process with a step-by-step guide to starting an affiliate marketing website.
Start an Affiliate Marketing Website
Having a website for affiliate marketing will improve your earnings from the traffic you have on your website. This means an affiliate marketing website helps to convert the audience of your website to the customers of your affiliate product.
Your income multiplies, by having a website of your own by building trust among your audience. also, you can have multiple sources of income when you have a website.
You can start an affiliate marketing website by following the 5 simple steps:
Choose a niche
Post high-quality content
Join the affiliate programs
Create your social media platform
Promote your website
Join an Affiliate Marketing Program
To earn revenue from your affiliate marketing you have to join a suitable affiliate program for your niche. You can choose an affiliate program by understanding the interests of your audience and their needs.
Select an affiliate program to promote the products and services that your reader searches for.
In this way, you can easily earn commissions, since you satisfy the needs of your customer.
You can easily sign up from the affiliate programs of most of the networks as a beginner, but some programs require minimum traffic to your website.
Hence initially, you can concentrate on increasing traffic to your website after which you can apply to these programs. Some programs like Clickbank and Amazon Associates do not require traffic.
Expand your Affiliate Network
To set up a profitable affiliate marketing platform, you have to expand your network with your time and commitment.
Using a variation of different digital marketing tactics available online, you can increase your website traffic. To mention a few are:
Post content on social media
Build a community
Apply SEO
Build an email list
Connect with your audience
Perfect combination of the above strategies helps you expand your affiliate network.
In simple words, just by creating a trustable community and engaging with them, you can easily understand the existing problems and provide solutions which is nothing but you are an affiliate product.
Now you give them a genuine product that actually solves their problem and provides you with revenue.
Review Products in Your Niche
This is a very crucial step. When you have a website for your niche, you have to review the products are services that are related to your topic. You cannot choose some random affiliate product and review it just because it has a high affiliate commission.
As mentioned above, try to review the products that are the actual solutions for the problems that people are searching for. this helps you bring organic traffic to your website.
Build an Email List
I have mentioned this about building an email list in various parts of my articles. This is because I believe that having 1000 emails in your list is way better than having 10000 followers. This is because the email subscribers are the genuine customers for your niche.
Hence, As a beginner, focus on building a list of email subscribers.
I would recommend integrating Convertful and Mailchimp since I use them. It’s easy and comfortable to use. Also, they allow us to use free for 1000 subscribers.
You also have other options like:
Convertkit
Getresponse
Omnisend
Choose a Platform for Your Niche
Choosing a platform is recommended to boost organic traffic to your website. The platform also depends on your niche.
It is easy to find the perfect platform for your niche. You can experiment with different platforms depending on your time and identify one that drives the traffic more. it’s done.
Some of the common platforms which can easily connect with the audience are:
Blogging
YouTube
Publish Content in different forms
After starting a website you have to publish content consistently by starting a blog. You can publish content in different forms.
Listicles
Tutorials
How-to guides
Review posts
Newsletters
These are the easiest ways to target your customers, build trust about the product, and convert them to sales. Even a personal story of how you used the product and how it helped you save time can make the customers easily connect with you which in turn generates sales.
You can also provide video tutorials, which grab the audience’s attention, and here you can promote your affiliate product or service easily.
When you write comparison posts, you can easily introduce two similar products and convince the audience to buy either of the products.
It’s an easy win.
5. Best Affiliate Marketing Programs for Beginners
High ticketing programs (High pay) with high volume.
Low ticketing programs (Low pay)with high volume.
High ticketing programs with low volume.
As a beginner, I recommend you to go with the second and the third programs. You can easily find the affiliate, by just Googling the name of the software + affiliate.
Most huge companies will have self-hosted affiliate programs which you can easily sign up for. There are dozens of brands that provide services like software, which even you use. In this way you can easily recommend the same products and services you use on your website and find it satisfying.
There are a lot of self-hosted affiliate programs and affiliate networks you can choose from. Some of them are:
Commission Junction
Impact
Digistore24
Share a sale
Flex offers
Clickbank
Amazon Associates
Even beyond promoting products, you can also earn revenue by maintaining a good relationship with the affiliate marketing programs. This is because you can even promote them. Some of the affiliate programs are
Amazon Associate affiliate program
Fiverr
Shopify
Hostinger
Wix…….
In this way, it is a win-win situation for both of them. But this is achieved just by practice and consistency and hence said “Affiliate marketing is not a quick rich scheme or an overnight millionaire method”
6. What are the benefits of Affiliate Marketing and drawbacks?
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is easy to start with low or no cost.
Most affiliate programs are free to join and promote their products.
This is hassle and risk-free because you don’t need to have a physical product or maintain a store to promote it.
Affiliate marketing has the power to generate passive income if done smartly.
You can be your boss. You have the freedom to work anytime and anywhere.
Drawbacks of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is not to become overnight rich. it requires traffic to generate an income out of it.
There are no particular strategies to follow. You have to experiment with the ideas and work out a strategy that works for you which sets you apart from your competitor.
It requires more patience and time.
7. How to start affiliate marketing with no money?
8. Tips to become a successful Affiliate Marketer
You can build trust among your audience by give-aways. This can be in the form of ebooks, newsletters, coupons, and even freebies.
Build a good friendship and relationships in a community. This will help you on the long road.
Before promoting any product, consider yourself as a customer. If it satisfies you, then recommend it to your audience.
Be transparent. Disclose that you are an affiliate marketer and you will benefit from their purchase of the product.
Use Pretty Links, a WordPress plugin that helps you trap your affiliate links.
If you use one affiliate link for your YouTube videos, in your blog post, in social media posts, emails… then it’s difficult to understand where the sales are from.
This is when pretty links help you. This helps to track your links and the same time make your link appear sexy.
9. Mistakes to avoid as an Affiliate Marketer
Never promote a product just because it pays you a high commission.
Keep track of your audience’s interest and experience of the product. Get feedbacks.
Be honest about your opinion about the product and provide genuine reviews.
Focus on building an audience for your niche, rather than randomly sharing your links to a wide audience.
Diversify your income streams. Never focus on one product or one way of generating revenue.
As a final word, implement the steps for building an affiliate marketing website and follow the tips and tricks explained throughout this article.
This will help you to grow organic traffic to your website and convert your audience to active customers of your products.
Boost your revenue, in a step-by-step way and create a passive income from affiliate marketing.
10. Common FAQs on Affiliate Marketing
You can start affiliate marketing as a beginner by choosing your passion or interests as your niche. Analyze the topic in Google to find your competitors. Explore in-depth topics that are of low competition and thus build a strong authority for that particular topic. This helps you to grow traffic. This is not easy as I said but, with effort and time, it’s possible.
Affiliate marketing means you are promoting a product of another company. If you sell a product or service, you receive a commission. This is a win-win for both. It’s risk-free, and hassle-free since it’s free and you don’t need to purchase any product.
Yes, you can do affiliate marketing by signing up for an affiliate in the Amazon affiliate program.
Affiliate marketing websites are the sites that are used for promoting products as affiliates. These websites, provide pieces of information about their niche and recommend the products for their audience through which they earn a commission. Ex: wirecutter.com, skyscanner.com
There are dozens of free courses available on YouTube. You can also learn from the courses in udemy.com, mygreatlearning.com, and more. But I suggest you learn from practicing it. No Affiliate guru will teach you their secrets. The success story is different for everyone. Learn from their mistakes.
Yes, it’s possible. There are several free platforms available, from creating a website to promoting products. You have to search for your platform and experiment with it. There are a lot of resources available online for free.
Final Words on How to Start Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
As explained above, Affiliate marketing is a great way for beginners to start earning a passive income from online.
You have to promote products or services in your niche and start earning a commission for every sale that is made through your unique affiliate link.
You can easily set up a website or social media platform, then find the right affiliate programs.
After which you have to start creating valuable content. This acts as a key to success in affiliate marketing.
Also, never stop creating multiple promotion posts on various platforms. This helps your product to reach a wide audience.
Hey Smarties,
You’ll usually find me constantly learning new things and reading a lot! I quit my 9-5 job to pursue my passion in blogging and turn this journey into a full -time creator. Now I help creators to build their way. I am just a normal mompreneur who is more obsessed about building her own place online. Travel with me to grow your online business journey.
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