How to Start Affiliate Marketing and Make Money for Beginners in 2024

In this article, I will show you how to start affiliate marketing for beginners.

Affiliate marketing is a popular way to make money online. It seems simple and easy to do, but it actually requires a lot of time and energy.

Affiliate marketing is an online business model. Not everyone has the skills, time, and patience to conduct a successful online business. But, if you’re willing to run an online business, affiliate marketing can definitely work for you.

Whether you’re completely new or just need a refresher course, this affiliate marketing guide is for you. In this article, I will talk about what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and give you a step-by-step plan on how to start affiliate marketing for beginners.

At the end of this article, I will also share some resources that can help you. Feel free to use the table of contents below to help you navigate this article. With that, let’s get started.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission online by selling products from other merchants. As an affiliate marketer, you advertise someone else’s products to potential customers. When someone uses your affiliate link, you make money when they purchase the product.

Here is a quick example to help illustrate.

John is online, looking to buy his soft drink. He runs into an ad featuring Martin, who is advertising Fizz, a healthy version of John’s favorite soft drink. In the video, Martin 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 some bottles of Fizz.

In this example, Martin is the affiliate marketer. Martin does not own the Fizz product, but he was able to show John the benefits of Fizz through an online ad. Because John bought Fizz using Martin’s link, Martin earns a commission and makes money as an affiliate marketer.

As you can see, affiliate marketing is a very simple strategy. However, there are many steps that go into affiliate marketing, as you’re about to see in the next section.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

So you know what affiliate marketing is, but how exactly does it work online?

Affiliate marketing follows a specific strategy that generally follows these steps:

1. Become a content creator.
2. Choose a platform to post content.
3. Pick one niche and become an expert.
4. Produce a ton of content.
5. Find products to promote to your audience.
6. Share affiliate links in your content.
7. Promote your content to drive traffic.

Let’s go through each of these steps in a little more detail.

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:

• 77% of people on the Internet read blog posts. People read about 10 blog posts per day.
• YouTube has about 2.5 billion watchers per month.
• Over 2 billion people use Facebook every day. By 2027, Facebook will reach 75% of the world.
• Half a billion people (500 million) use Pinterest every month.

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