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Affiliate marketing is a popular online business that doesn’t require a lot of money to start and can be profitable. However, this is not a get-rich-quick business. You need to know up front that if you plan to become an affiliate marketer it takes time, patience and dedication to succeed. If you have those three things and can write great content, this affiliate marketing for beginners guide will help you get started.
- What is Affiliate Marketing?
- Understanding How Affiliate Marketing Works
- Getting Started as an Affiliate Marketer
- Selecting What to Promote
- Promoting Your Affiliate Marketing Business Without Going Broke
- 4 Tips to Help You Succeed in Affiliate Marketing
- Pros & Cons of Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
- Best Affiliate Programs to Join
- Final Words of Encouragement
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a passive income opportunity where retailers and other businesses (often referred to as advertisers) share a portion of the revenue they earn with affiliate marketers who send paying customers their way. You will be the affiliate marketer (also referred to as publisher, affiliate or influencer), and in order to earn money, you must educate your readers through quality content that will include links to relevant products from the online businesses that accept your request to partner with them.
There’s no cost to join affiliate programs, but being accepted into some can be difficult if you don’t meet certain requirements (more on that in a little bit).
Understanding How Affiliate Marketing Works
You earn money as an affiliate marketer when visitors from your site click your affiliate link and take action. What this means is they will buy or sign up for a product or service, take a short survey, subscribe to a mailing list or submit a form.
The action you’re paid for will depend on each advertiser’s payment model. Pay Per Sale (PPS) and Pay Per Lead (PPL) are the two most common models.
PPS, also referred to as Cost Per Sale (CPS), is when the advertiser pays the affiliate marketer a certain percentage for each sale made through the referring link. Some advertisers may pay a flat rate rather than a percentage, but in most cases, the affiliate marketer is paid a percentage of the sale.
PPL, also known as, Cost Per Lead (CPL), is when the advertiser pays the publisher a flat rate for each lead. A lead can be when someone subscribes to an email list, signs up for a free trial, downloads an app or software, completes a short survey or submits a form.
Getting Started as an Affiliate Marketer
The good news is affiliate marketing is a profitable work from home business idea that doesn’t require a lot of money to get started. Although a big bank balance isn’t needed, time is a must. If you have the time and can remain dedicated, the steps to help you get started are as follows:
Step 1: Choose a Niche
The first thing is to decide on a topic that you want to write about. Being as you’ll be creating a lot of content that needs to be trustworthy, it’s best to choose something you know a lot about or have an interest in (so the research won’t bore you).
Need some help? According to Hustler, some popular affiliate marketing niches for 2024 include technology, health, digital marketing, love and relationships, personal finance and investment, pet care, movies, music, fashion, beauty, travel, mental/life coaching, and self improvement. Remember, go with something you have knowledge of or are really passionate about.
Step 2: Set Up a Website
While there are other ways to earn money in affiliate marketing (social media and YouTube), having a niche website is more effective with less rules to follow.
Setting up a website doesn’t require a big investment. All you really need is a good web host and domain name. You don’t even need coding or design skills if you select a host with WordPress.
WordPress is a free content management system for building websites. It’s really simple to use, has numerous customizable themes, and if at anytime you need help, there are many tutorials on YouTube.
Step 3: Start Writing Quality Content
Quality content is essential if you’re going to be successful as an affiliate marketer. You need to produce high quality articles that are informative and useful for your readers.
The type of content that yields the best results will vary depending on the niche and market you’re targeting. However, some general tips that may be helpful include:
- Always put yourself in your readers’ shoes when writing. Think about what they would want to know about the topic that you’re writing about. This will help you write articles that resonate with them on an emotional level, which is one of the most important factors in affiliate marketing success.
- Make sure all your information is accurate, up to date and relevant to your readers’ interests.
Here are a five content ideas that should work with pretty much any niche:
- Tutorials: Share how-to guides, step-by-step tutorials and/or instructional videos that help readers solve problems or learn new skills. Whether it’s learning a new software or creating a DIY project, tutorials are an excellent way to establish yourself as an expert and build trust with your audience.
- Product Comparisons: Consumers are always looking for guidance on the best products/services to buy or try out. Articles that include your personal experience, highlights features, and mentions the pros and cons of different products/services in the niche you choose leads to sales and can boost your ranking in search engines.
- Resource Articles: Position yourself as a valuable resource by curating comprehensive and informative content that offers insights, tips and recommendations related to your chosen niche.
- Reviews: Share in-depth, honest reviews of products or services relevant to your niche. Whether it’s a detailed analysis of a new gadget, app or online tool, a hands-on review of a skincare product, or your personal experience with a travel service, unbiased reviews can help your readers make purchasing decisions with confidence.
- Gift Guides: Gift guides are a fantastic way to tap into seasonal trends, holidays and special occasions. Create lists of top products, gift ideas or must-have items that cater to your audience’s interests and preferences.
Whether it’s a holiday gift guide, a back-to-school essentials list or a birthday gift roundup, gift guides drive valuable traffic to your site and are very likely to increase your affiliate sales during peak shopping seasons.
Step 4: Join Affiliate Programs
Until you’ve written and published quite a few articles and have a decent amount of traffic flowing to your website, the best thing to do in the beginning is to rely on Skimlinks for income.
Skimlinks has a network of over 48,000 merchants. One of the key advantages of using Skimlinks for affiliate marketing beginners is unlike other programs, you don’t have to apply to each merchant for approval. If the merchant is listed on their website, you’re automatically approved. This enables you to focus on creating quality content that drives revenue.
Another great benefit is Skimlinks’ reporting features offer valuable insights into the performance of affiliate links, which will help you identify new opportunities to optimize your strategies and increase earnings.
Skimlinks is truly a great way to kickstart your affiliate marketing journey. Then once you have a good amount of articles on your site and are getting a decent flow of traffic, you can start joining other affiliate programs.
Selecting What to Promote
Once you start exploring products, it won’t be long until you realize there’s a large selection to choose from. However, you don’t want to go wild. Instead, take your time and make wise choices. You want to earn readers’ trust, so don’t promote products that appear dodgy. If you question the product and wouldn’t buy it yourself, don’t try to convince your readers to buy it either.
It’s also crucial that you pick affiliate marketing products that relate to the niche you chose.
Following are some other things to keep in mind on your hunt for just the right products.
Aim for Products With Lucrative Commissions
When choosing what to promote, look for companies that offer high commission. Opting for products/services with higher payouts can significantly boost your earning potential. Remember to select high quality products that resonate with your audience.
Maximize Income with Ongoing Commission Products
Consider products and services with ongoing commissions. That’s right, as long as the customers you refer remain subscribed or active, you’ll receive a consistent, recurring income.
Elevate Your Affiliate Marketing Website With Digital Products
Digital offerings such as e-books, educational courses, software and/or digital tools usually have a higher commission, and some, such as subscription services, offer the recurring revenue I just mentioned above.
Embrace Trending Products
Keeping an eye on emerging trends allows you to offer your audience fresh, sought-after products, increasing your chances of making sales and attracting more traffic to your site.
Promoting Your Affiliate Marketing Business Without Going Broke
In order to succeed in this business, you need quality content and people that will read the articles you’re putting out there. Fortunately, there are a variety of ways you can get the word out about your new website without spending a lot of money.
Create Top Notch SEO Content
Rather than spending money on ads, focus on writing high quality SEO content to gain organic traffic. When optimizing your content, it’s very important that whatever you write is natural and easy to understand. In other words, it should come from your heart. Write as if you’re having a conversation with a friend.
For a more in-depth lesson on writing SEO content, I’d like to recommend Brian Dean’s guide on SEO writing. In my opinion, it’s an excellent resource for beginners.
Build a Social Media Presence
You should definitely jump on the social media bandwagon. Just spending a few minutes a day sharing advice, interacting with your followers and linking to your affiliate marketing content, helps you gain more traffic that can lead to sales.
Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok are some of the popular social media platforms that successful affiliate marketers utilize. Obviously, you don’t have to create an account on all of them. Just sign up for the ones that work best for you. Not sure which ones to choose? No problem, Phil Norris over at Authority Hacker has an awesome guide that is sure to help you make the perfect selection!
Distribute Business Cards
Don’t underestimate the power of old school marketing. Giving a well-designed business card to people you meet at networking events and conferences spreads the word about your affiliate marketing website in a personal and memorable way.
Help Journalists With Their Stories
Journalists use Connectively (a.k.a HARO) to find experts for their stories, and you can be that source. All you have to do is create a free expert account to begin providing expert insights or opinions in your niche. In return, you’ll get valuable exposure, which is usually a link to your affiliate marketing site or article.
Build an Email List
Having a newsletter is a fantastic way to promote your niche website and boost your affiliate income! Newsletters give you the opportunity to stay connected with your audience, continue to build trust and drive traffic to your affiliate links.
The newsletters you send out can include exclusive affiliate offers that align with subscribers’ interests, updates about new articles on your niche site and/or content that’s not available on your website.
4 Tips to Help You Succeed in Affiliate Marketing
- Focus on Building Trust, Not the Money
Yes, I know the whole point is to make money, but that’s not going to happen if you promote the wrong products. Promoting a bad product results in unhappy customers who probably won’t return to you, because they’ll feel as if they can’t trust your recommendations.
The best way to ensure you select winning products is to choose things you’ve used yourself. If it’s something you haven’t ever used, reach out to the owner of the product and ask for a freebie to review. Explain that you’re an affiliate marketer and planning to promote what he/she is selling. In some cases you may not need to contact anyone, because some digital products may have free trials that you can take advantage of.
Once you’ve made your selections, always be honest with your readers by stating what you liked and didn’t like about the products. - Track and Analyze Your Results
Monitoring your niche affiliate marketing website’s metrics (e.g. click-through rates, conversions and commissions) is a great way to gain that success you’re craving. This important data will reveal how visitors interact with your site. In other words, you’ll learn what they’re clicking on, how far they scroll through the articles you publish, which products are the most profitable and much more.
Two free tools that are great for helping you gather this valuable data are Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity. - Stay Updated on Industry Trends
Subscribe to newsletters, participate in Facebook groups and read your favorite blogs/websites to stay on top of the latest in affiliate marketing, as well as the niche you choose. Staying updated on the latest news and trends helps you stay ahead. - Seek Knowledge and Learn Continuously
Educate yourself by reading, attending free webinars and networking with other affiliate marketers to enhance your skills and stay motivated on your journey.
Pros & Cons of Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Best Affiliate Programs to Join
Final Words of Encouragement
Affiliate marketing can be a slow process, so don’t expect money to start stacking up right away. It may take a few months or up to a year to start earning a livable income as an affiliate marketer. This is where the patience I mentioned at the start of this article comes in.
If you have the time and ability to consistently write and publish great content, bring in lots of traffic to your website and not get discouraged and quit when things aren’t happening as quickly as you’d like, the odds of you building a successful affiliate marketing business are great!
