Affiliate Marketing Simplified: A Beginner’s Guide to Earning Online

Affiliate marketing has been around since the late 1980s, but it wasn't easily accessible to everyone until Amazon started to apply the concept to its e-commerce platform at the end of the last century. Today, businesses of all types and sizes offer affiliate marketing opportunities, spawning an industry with a growth rate of around 7 to 8% annually.

If you want to grow your own income alongside this fairly new industry, we can help. This guide to affiliate marketing for beginners is a great place to start. Keep reading to learn more about what affiliate marketing is, how to get started and what common mistakes to avoid.

What Is Affiliate Marketing and How Does it Work?

Affiliate marketing is a business growth strategy that involves companies having others market on their behalf. In exchange for the exposure this brings them, the companies pay commissions on sales, lead generation or other actions that can be attributed to the marketing efforts of the affiliate.

To better understand how affiliate marketing works, consider this example we made up based on real affiliate marketing opportunities:

• Sue is a quilter who runs a sewing and quilting blog. She has a small but dedicated audience.
• She signs up with Amazon to be an affiliate.
• Sue writes blog posts about quilting and sewing projects, tips for the hobby and the lifestyle associated with the hobby.
• She integrates product mentions into her blog posts and uses her affiliate link to recommend those products on Amazon.
• Sue might also set up an Amazon store or lists with recommended products.
• When people follow Sue's links and make purchases on Amazon via them, she earns a commission.

You don't have to sign up with Amazon or have a blog to engage in affiliated marketing. Those are just two examples. You might check whether your favorite brands offer affiliate opportunities or sign up for a more general affiliated marketing network or program such as Clickbank. Anywhere you can build an audience and use your affiliate links works for affiliate marketing, including social media, your own website and email.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

As a gig-economy opportunity, affiliate marketing offers numerous benefits. Some include:

• A low start-up cost. The financial bar to entry for beginners is especially low with this business idea. You don't need a place of business—you can run affiliate marketing from your own home. You also don't need to create or buy products or inventory. At most to get started, you might want to purchase a domain and set up a website. However, social media influencers with strongly engaged followings might be able to start from their social profiles.
• Accessibility. This money-making opportunity is easy to enter. You don't need to know a lot about marketing, and many networks provide knowledge centers or other training information to help you get started. Anyone who is comfortable navigating the internet and using tools like WordPress or social media can become an affiliate marketer.
• Flexibility. While you'll have to put in the work to succeed with affiliate marketing, when, how and where you work is incredibly flexible. You can work from home in the morning or evening, making this a growth opportunity if you want to build an income source before leaving a regular 9-to-5, for example. You can also choose from a variety of opportunities, and we recommend selecting affiliate programs that involve products you're passionate about, as you are more likely to connect with the right audience and put in the work to succeed with your goals.
• Generation of passive income. Once you get started, you can generate passive income with your network. This means you can earn money while going about your day-to-day life and your income isn't completely tied to how many hours you put in.

How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing

While the details of each affiliate marketing network may be different, you can get started by following the steps below.

1. Choose a Niche

Pick a specific type of industry or niche you want to become an affiliate marketer for. It helps to specialize because you can build a trust relationship with your audience. Then, they may be more likely to make purchases based on your recommendations or the links you share.

Here are some examples of hypothetical niche choices for affiliate marketers:

• Leona is a mom of three small children who blogs about her life and offers tips for others. She might choose parenting, childcare, early childhood education or even toys as a niche.
• Luis is retired and travels. He captures his adventures on Instagram and offers advice about traveling as an older adult. He might choose niches such as retirement products, travel products, or even travel agency or cruiseline bookings.
• Emmett owns his own lawncare company and wants to add a second income stream. He might leverage his knowledge to build a site with lawncare tips and choose affiliate marketing niches related to plans, backyards and lawncare.

2. Find Affiliate Programs

Once you select a niche, work on finding and applying to affiliate programs that work with your choice. You typically have two overall options.

First, you can apply directly with a company for an in-house affiliate program. This can be time-consuming and create limits regarding the products you can recommend. We like this option best for affiliates who want to champion a specific small business or who are in a very specialized niche.

The second option is applying to affiliate programs such as Clickbank or CJ Affiliate Marketing. Going this route expands your opportunities for connecting with brands, recommending products and driving earnings.

3. Create Quality Content

Begin to create high-quality content and include links and recommendations for your audience to products or services. Your content should:

• Answer specific questions or speak to unique needs for your audience
• Cast you as a leader or authority in the niche so you can build trust with your audience
• Serve your audience well—don't just create spammy lists of links

As you create more content, you can drive increased earnings. However, even if you have a lot of content, you may need to continue publishing new content regularly to remain relevant for your audience and online.

4. Promote Your Links

Don't forget to promote your content. If you create a blog post, share it on social media. If you write an Instagram post, cross post it to Facebook or share it in your stories. Learn more about digital marketing practices to help your content show up for more users online.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Affiliate Marketing

Take time as you begin your affiliate marketing journey and try to avoid common mistakes such as:

• Choosing the wrong niche. Consider your interests, knowledge and lifestyle when you select a niche. By choosing something you're interested in, you can increase your chances of success and reduce risks of burnout with this endeavor.
• Promoting the wrong products. Research products and services to ensure you're recommending quality offerings your audience actually needs and will use. If people buy items you recommend only to find they are low-quality or not useful, they're less likely to make purchases based on your suggestions in the future.
• Ignoring basic marketing practices such as SEO. While you don't need to be a marketing guru to be successful with affiliate marketing, you do need to understand some basics. Take time to read articles about digital marketing and related topics and continue learning as you grow your affiliate marketing business.
• Creating spammy or low-quality content. Bombarding your audience with affiliate links can come across as spammy. Focus on creating valuable content that organically incorporates affiliate links.
• Not disclosing your affiliate relationship. Legally, you need to disclose your affiliate relationships. You can do this by including boilerplate content on your site that lets people know the content they're reading includes affiliate links.

Tips for Success in Affiliate Marketing

While avoiding the common issues above will help increase your chances of success, you may also want to implement a few of the tips below. We think the first one is a must-do for anyone trying to earn money online.

• Build an email list. Email marketing is highly lucrative. On average, for every $1 spent on this marketing effort, businesses make around $36 in ROI. As an affiliate marketer, an email list is your direct connection to highly engaged followers who are most likely to purchase products you recommend.
• Diversify your channels. Connect with your audience and make recommendations via multiple content channels. Common options include a web site or blog, social media channels and email, though you might also leverage podcasts or ebooks.
• Optimize for mobile. Ensure your content is optimized for mobile, as more people connect with digital information via smartphones and tablets than laptops or other larger-screen devices.

Tracking Your Progress and Earnings

As you work on growing your affiliate marketing income, ensure you track your progress and earnings. You can invest in software for this purpose or leverage free tools offered by your website and the affiliate marketing network you join. By tracking progress and reviewing metrics, you can make data-backed decisions about what works for your audience and what you might want to do more of.

Understanding the Different Payment Structures

As you consider what new opportunities you want to engage with in your affiliate marketing journey, ensure you understand various payment structures. How you're paid can impact your earnings. Common payment structures include:

• Pay-per-Sale. With PPS, you receive a commission when a customer makes a purchase.
• Pay-per-Click. With PPC, you receive a commission when someone clicks on your link.
• Pay-per-Lead. With PPL, you receive a commission when your link generates a lead, such as when someone sets up an appointment or completes a contact form to learn more about a service.

Some companies pay commissions based on the number of software installs your link generates while others pay you a commission each time your referrals pay for an ongoing subscription. A few affiliate programs offer two-tier programs that let you earn percentages on commissions generated by affiliates you brought into the program.

Finding the Right Balance Between Selling and Serving

It's critical to find the right balance between selling products and serving your audience. If all you do is provide links and promote products, your audience may lose interest fast or feel that you are using them. However, if you give away too much value via your content, your audience might not have a need for the good or services you're promoting.

While there's always a balance, it's different depending on your niche and audience. One of the challenges of affiliate marketing for beginners is finding your unique balance, but with persistence, we know you can.

Like this post? Pin it & Share it! Thank you!

‍