How to Start Affiliate Marketing and Make Money for Beginners

Share a product and make money. That’s all it takes to do affiliate marketing. This guide will teach you how to start affiliate marketing for beginners and make money.

In this guide, you will learn what affiliate marketing is and how it works. You will also learn how to create content, how to get traffic, how to pick a product to promote, and how to persuade your audience to buy. By the end of this guide, you will be on your way to becoming a high-paying affiliate marketer.

Feel free to bookmark this page for reference so you can return to this article easily.

There will be a lot to cover in this affiliate marketing guide, so if there is a specific section you’d like to read, you can use the table of contents below. With that said, let’s get started.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of recommending someone else’s products. An affiliate marketer uses their content to share recommended products with their audience. When someone clicks on their affiliate link and buys a recommended product, the affiliate earns a commission (a fraction of the sale).

You probably have encountered affiliate marketing online without realizing it. Here are examples of affiliate marketing online:

A YouTuber advertises a sponsor and shares a link in the description
A YouTuber tells you what books to read and gives links in the description
A blogger shows you how to use a specific product and shares a link to it
A website shares the best action cameras and provides links to them

This WebCents Blog also has affiliate links. At the top of every post, you see a disclosure that tells you I make a commission if you buy something through one of my affiliate links.

All of these situations is some kind of affiliate marketing. Let’s break down how exactly these affiliate marketers are making money.

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Affiliate marketers, or affiliates for short, are creators who attract an audience in a specific niche. They create content and, over time, gain followers who are interested. Once they have enough followers, they recommend products they believe can help their followers.

To recommend a product, an affiliate shares their affiliate link. This link contains a tracking code unique to them. When someone clicks on their affiliate link, a cookie tracks their interactions on the product page. If it sees that they bought the product, the affiliate is credited with a commission, which is a fraction of the sale.

Affiliates pick products from sellers that are in their niche and get their affiliate links. If the affiliate creates content that aligns with the product they want to promote, they can advertise the product in their content and share their affiliate link.

An affiliate acts as the middleman between the seller and potential customers. Because of affiliates, sellers receive valuable customers to their products. This is why sellers are willing to pay commissions to affiliates. Without them, they probably would go out of business.

Example of Affiliate Marketing

Here is an example to help illustrate affiliate marketing.

John is online, looking for a new kind of soft drink to buy. On Martin’s blog, John learns about Fizz. The blog post convinces John that Fizz tastes just as good as any soft drink, all without artificial colors and added ingredients. John also learns that Fizz has health benefits and can improve his physical fitness. He clicks Martin’s link and purchases a pack of Fizz bottles.

In this example, Martin is the affiliate. Martin does not own the Fizz product, but he was able to show John the benefits of Fizz in a blog post. Because John bought Fizz using Martin’s link, Martin earned a commission and made money as an affiliate.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

There are a few good reasons to make money with affiliate marketing:

Unlike an online store, you don’t need to own a product yourself.
You don’t need to provide customer support. (Just redirect customer complaints to the seller.)
You can make streams of passive income.
You can scale your income by selling higher-paying products.
It’s a win-win-win: a win for you, a win for the seller, and a win for the customer.

Now, while affiliate marketing is a very simple strategy, it takes a lot of time and effort. Don’t worry. In this guide, I’ll break down step by step what you need to do to become a successful affiliate.

Steps to Start Affiliate Marketing and Make Money for Beginners

It’s time to learn how to start affiliate marketing and make money for beginners. In the next sections, I will guide you through the following steps:

Pick one niche to become an expert in.
Pick a platform to create content.
Follow a content strategy.
Get traffic to your content.
Sign up for an affiliate marketplace.
Promote a product.
Set up email marketing.
Sign up for a marketing course.

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Pick a Niche

The first step to doing affiliate marketing is creating content. In order to create content, you should think about what topics you will write about.

This is why you should pick a niche, an area of life that your ideal followers are interested in. Here are some examples of niches to choose from:

Personal finance
Travel
Food and cuisine
Cooking recipes
Games and gameplays
Technology
Health and fitness
Spirituality
YouTube vlogs
Entertainment

Step 2: Pick a Platform

Step 3: Create Content with AI

Step 4: Get Traffic to Your Content

Step 5: Sign Up for an Affiliate Marketplace

Step 6: Promote the Product

Step 7: Set Up Email Marketing

Step 8: Sign Up for a Marketing Course

Affiliate Marketing Income Reports

Affiliate Marketing FAQs

Conclusion

Become a content creator

Every affiliate marketer is also a content creator and there’s a reason for that.

Let’s say you have a problem, but you’re not sure how to solve it. What’s the first thing you would do? Most likely, you would go to Google, YouTube, or social media, and browse through all sorts of content to find a solution. Now, if you find that a specific product would absolutely solve your problem, you’d most likely buy it.

Millions of people around the world go through this exact process every day to find solutions to their problems. They consult blogs, YouTube videos, and social media posts. Take a look at these mind-boggling statistics:

As you can see, people consult blogs, videos, and social media every day to find inspiration and solutions to problems. This is why content is so important.

If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing, you have to post content. If content isn’t really your thing, then consider starting a Shopify store or just finding a remote job.

Choose a platform to post content

Once an affiliate marketer chooses to make content, they figure out where they will create it. As mentioned earlier, people turn to various places for information:

Blog posts and website articles
YouTube videos and shorts
Facebook posts
Pinterest pins
Instagram photos
Posts on X (formerly Twitter)
Reddit and Quora threads

Every affiliate marketer has to pick a platform where they want to establish their audience. Once they pick a platform, they sign up for an account (or website) and prepare to make content.

Take a moment to think about what kind of content you would like to create, and what platform would make a good choice for you.

Pick one niche and become an expert

As an affiliate marketer, you don’t just post any kind of content. You need to be an expert in a specific area of life, known as a niche. Popular niches include travel, health, finance, sports, food, crafts, and more.

There’s a reason why you have to be an expert in your niche. This is because you’re not the only person talking about things in your niche. There are hundreds of others in the exact same niche you’re in. They are your competitors.

When people see you as an expert, they consider you a reliable and trustworthy source compared to your competitors. As a result, you become a preferred source of information over others and you’re more likely to have an established audience.

Produce a ton of content

As soon as you figure out your niche and your platform, it’s time to produce as much content as you can! How often should you publish content? It depends on the platform.

According to this interesting study, bloggers should post at least once a week. Ideally, they should aim for three to four blog posts per week to gain traction.
YouTube channels should upload as often as possible, ideally once a week. But, if heavy editing is necessary to make a video, I would say at least once a month.
This article has multiple studies that say social media creators should publish once or twice a day.

Now this gives you an idea of how often. As for how much content, many affiliate marketers create an endless stream of content. They even publish when no one else seems to be reading or watching. Eventually, once they have a big enough audience, they will have created enough content that they can take some breaks later.

So, as a beginner, you will need to keep publishing content at least until you make it, but ideally as many times as you possibly can.

Find products to promote to your audience

Of course, to do affiliate marketing, you need a product (or few products) to promote. So, once you have your content creation plan in place, you find products that are relevant to your niche and the content you made.

To find products, affiliate marketers turn to big brands if possible. These brands typically have affiliate programs where marketers can get an affiliate link to

Affiliate Guide: How to Start Affiliate Marketing and Make Money for Beginners in 2025