Affiliate marketing is probably the best way to make money online. You might have heard of it, and you’re curious about how it works exactly and how you can get started. Well, don’t worry because, in this article, I’ll cover everything you need to know about how to start affiliate marketing for beginners.
Here’s what we’ll go over:
- How affiliate marketing works, and the pros and cons
- How to pick your niche and products to promote
- How to create content around your niche
- How to get your products to sell and make money
Keep in mind that affiliate marketing is a very deep topic, so I can’t go over absolutely everything about affiliate marketing in this one article. But I’ll give you the most important things you, as a beginner, need to know in order to start earning with affiliate marketing.
I’d recommend taking notes as well. There’s a lot to cover and it’ll be easy to forget a few things. So get out a pen and paper (or your computer’s notepad) and I’ll break down what you need to know about affiliate marketing in this article. Let’s get started!
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
In affiliate marketing, you sell a merchant’s products and earn a commission for every product you sell.
Suppose someone approaches you, asking for directions to the nearest supermarket. Naturally, you would tell them where it is. Using your directions, they will eventually find it and buy their groceries.
Imagine if you could make money for every single thing this person buys at the supermarket. After all, if it weren’t for your directions, this person wouldn’t have been able to find the store and buy anything. Affiliate marketing works in a similar way.
As an affiliate marketer, you are basically taking potential customers and directing them to products that might interest them. These customers may have a problem in their life, so they decide to ask you for help and you show them a product that can help. These aren’t your own products, they’re somebody else’s products. And every time someone buys the product that you show them, you get a piece of the sale, known as a commission.
You are the middleman between products that need selling and customers that need those products. And, in affiliate marketing, everyone benefits! It’s a win-win-win: a win for the customer, a win for the seller, and a win for you!
Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing
Now, let’s talk about what makes affiliate marketing great. And not so great.
Pros
- You don’t need your own products to sell!
- You can start with little to no money investment!
- You can do this pretty much on your own!
- You can earn passive income anywhere in the world! (It’s true, it just takes time)
- All you need is an Internet connection and a working computer!
Cons
- It will take a lot of time and effort upfront…
- You will need to learn some programs and services…
- You have to know how to do proper marketing…
- A seller may choose to take down one of their products and you have to find a different one…
As with all things, affiliate marketing is not for everyone. As with any other business venture, it does take a lot of work and commitment. That being said, anyone can learn affiliate marketing, including you! All you need is the willingness to learn and take action. I’m about to give you the steps you need to take to do affiliate marketing right. So, if you’re ready to start making money as an affiliate, read on!
How to Pick Your Niche
This step is very important when it comes to starting any business, including an affiliate business. You need to focus on a specific niche.
There are different types of consumers. Some are only interested in sports items, that’s one niche. Others are only interested in musical instruments. That’s another niche. So, you should pick only one niche to draw your ideal customers into.
The question is: which niche should you go for?
It needs to be a niche that you are passionate about. In order to be a successful affiliate marketer, you will have to master knowledge in a niche. That means you’ll be doing a lot of researching and creating a lot of content. And if you choose a niche you’re not exactly fond of, you’re going to give up quite easily.
Another thing to keep in mind: some niches are more profitable than others. For example, you are going to make more money in a health-related niche than in a boat-related niche. That’s because there will always be someone out there who is health-conscious, but not too many people want to buy or learn about boats.
The most profitable niches are in the health, wealth, and relationships categories. These are niches that will always have a ton of customers for you to make money from.
If you still need help, check out my guide on the best affiliate marketing niches.
How to Pick Your Products
Once you find a niche that you’re interested in and one that can make you good money, the next step is to figure out what products you’re going to promote.
If you’re a complete beginner, I’d recommend that you pick only one product to promote as a start. Later on, when you get better at affiliate marketing, you can slowly branch out to more and more products.
So, how do you find products to promote? The best place to find products for the niche you chose is through a website called an affiliate marketplace. Here are some affiliate marketplaces you can browse through to find a product to sell:
- ClickBank. This website mostly sells digital products in a variety of niches. Check out my ClickBank beginner’s guide to learn how to use ClickBank.
- OfferVault has thousands of affiliate marketing offers you can go through, including PPC offers (that allow you to make money for certain steps a customer takes, even if they don’t buy!)
- ShareASale connects companies with affiliate marketers. You might find some familiar names looking over ShareASale’s merchant directory.
- CJ.com also has a lot of big companies looking for affiliates as well. It’s also worth checking out! (When you sign up, join as a publisher, NOT advertiser)
- Impact Radius is yet another marketplace with a lot of brand names. If you still haven’t found the right company or products to promote, give this one a try!
I should also mention that some big companies like Walmart, Amazon, and Nutrisystem have links to their affiliate programs on their website. So, if you already have a company in mind that relates to your niche, try going to their website and see if they have a link for Affiliates or Affiliate Program at the bottom of the page.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you find a product to promote:
- Find a product that many people are using. Try typing the product’s name and the word “review” into Google (like “Nutrisystem review”) and see if there are plenty of people leaving positive reviews. If there are very few or if the reviews are really bad, that’s a red flag.
- Look for high-ticket products. “High-ticket” means these products have to be on the expensive side. It’s already hard enough to make a sale, so pick a high-ticket product that will give you a lot of money if and when you’re fortunate enough to find a buyer. It’s a lot easier to make money with very few high-ticket sales versus trying to get plenty of low-ticket sales.
- It should be a product you’d love to have. If you’re not enthusiastic about a product you’re looking at, you’re more likely to give the impression to your customers that it’s boring. Find a product you’d love to have and your excitement for it will be felt by your customers.
How to Create Content
So you found a niche and a product that interests you. Now it’s time to share it with the world. As an affiliate marketer, you must create content. This is important because you need to build rapport with your audience before you can get them to buy.
Let’s say you’re looking to get married. You don’t just walk up to a stranger and say “Will you marry me?” That’d be ridiculous, right? It’s the same thing with your customers. You need to get to know them and they need to get to know you!
Creating content is the best way to show your personality and get customers to trust you. Over time, they will find your content helpful and informative and trust you more and more, to the point where they’re willing to buy whatever you recommend. The more content you post, the more rapport you will build.
And if you’re not willing to create content, then affiliate marketing is not for you.
So, if you’re serious about making money as an affiliate and you’re ready to get started, let’s go through the steps on how to create content:
- Pick a platform to create content on.
- Find topics in your niche for your content.
- Do a lot of research on your niche.
- Use the right keywords to help search engines.
- Insert illustrations and links to beautify your content.
- Introduce your product appropriately.
- Drive traffic to your content.
Yes, that’s a lot of steps, but with a lot of hard work and practice, all this will become second nature to you. Let’s go over each of these steps in detail so you know exactly what to do.
Step 1: Pick a platform
You need to decide what kind of content you’ll be making and where you will be making it. The Internet has all sorts of places people go to: for example, blogs, YouTube channels, Pinterest pins, etc. This is where your potential customers are going on the Internet. So, pick a platform to meet your audience.
Here are a few ways you can find your customers as an affiliate marketer. Remember that being a content creator is necessary to finding customers who will buy your affiliate products.
- Blogger: You’d need to start your own website/blog and post articles on it consistently. Over time, your blog will become established with all your content, and you will gain readers who trust you and can eventually become your customers.
- YouTuber: All you need to do is start a YouTube channel and create videos around a specific niche. As with blogging, your channel will eventually become established with all of your content and you will gain subscribers as well as paying customers.
- Social media marketer: If you love posting on social media, like Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest, you can just post something about your niche in places like Facebook groups or as Pinterest pins.
Step 2: Find topics in your niche
Now that you’ve picked a way to create content, it’s time to think of exactly what to talk about.
You can’t just advertise your product and say “Buy now!” People get turned off by that, especially if they don’t know whether they can trust you. So, find meaningful topics to help and educate your customers, and once they trust your advice, then you can start showing them your product.
So, think of the niche you chose in the previous step. What questions will people in your niche have?
If you’re not sure what questions people might ask, you can use a website called Answer The Public. Just type in your niche and you’ll get plenty of ideas! For example, if you type in the word “guitar”, this is what you’d see: a lot of popular topics related to guitars.
Make sure you have a list of these topics on hand since it’s hard to remember them all. On Answer the Public, you can save the list of topics as an image on your computer so you can come back to it whenever you need more topics to talk about.
Step 3: Do a lot of research.
You have topics, but now you need to explain them. And while you know a thing or two about your niche, you certainly don’t know everything. That’s why you should do some research on every topic you’re about to discuss. How long do you research? Until you are confident enough that you can fully explain the topic.
Type your topic into Google or YouTube and find blogs or videos to help you understand everything about that topic. Try to remember as many details about your topic as you can. You might need to take down notes on paper or on your computer’s notepad to help you remember.
Once you got the details of your topic in your head or in notes, it’s time to create your first piece of content!
Step 4: Pick the right keywords.
If you type into Google a search term, you’ll come across all sorts of websites that match your search term. It’s the same thing on YouTube: enter a search term and related videos will pop up. One of your blog posts or videos can appear on search too, but only if you select the right keywords.
If you’re doing a blog post, put your keyword in your title. Then write out your content, making sure your keyword appears a few times. You don’t want to mention it too many times. Search engines do not like that and they might not show your content for that. Keep your content natural, while mentioning your keyword every now and then.
If you’re doing a YouTube video, put your keyword a few times in your title and video description. And if you’re on forums or social media, you won’t need to worry about keywords.
This is a nice free way to get traffic to your content. It’s called search engine optimization, or SEO for short. If you’d like some SEO tips and tricks, check out my SEO for beginners guide.
Step 5: Insert illustrations and links.
People online have short attention spans, so you need to keep their attention as much as you can. The best way to do that is by adding illustrations and links to your content.
Illustrations are used to visualize what you’re trying to say. You can find free third-party images to put in your blog or video on sites like Pixabay and Unsplash. You can also create graphics on a website called Canva.com. Or if you want someone else to do it, use a freelancer website like Fiverr and hire someone to do an illustration for you.
You also need links to other websites or videos, not just your affiliate link. This gives your audience a way to interact with your content. Since this is your first piece of content, link out to other people’s blogs or videos. Over time, when you create more content, you can link to previous content as long as it makes sense.
6. Introduce your product appropriately.
In your content, introduce your product to your audience only if it relates to your topic. For example, if you’re selling a weight loss program, you don’t want to advertise it in a muscle-building article or video.
Now, the key to advertising your product properly is to connect with your audience’s potential problems. Let’s say your video is meant to help people lose weight using some techniques. You can introduce your weight loss product by saying something like this:
One of the ways you can lose some pounds is by sticking to a diet plan for at least 30 days. Now it can be quite hard to create your diet plan or even stick to it. It’s also no fun missing out on the foods you love to eat. However, with Nutrisystem, you can enjoy your diet plan and actually lose weight! It takes the foods you enjoy and turns them into a diet plan that you can follow with ease. I would definitely recommend Nutrisystem if you find sticking to your diet boring and challenging. So, check it out!
In this statement, I laid out the inconveniences of sticking to a diet and then introduced a product that can solve those problems appropriately. Toward the end, I gave it my recommendation and then I put a call to action, telling the reader to check out Nutrisystem. Of course, I’d put in my affiliate link to Nutrisystem so they can see for themselves and think about buying through my link. If they buy, I’d make money.
This is a great way to blend in your topic with a product that can help out your audience.
Step 7: Drive traffic to your content.
Once you create your content and publish it, now you just need people to engage with your content. Think for yourself: how are people going to find your content? You need to be seen. Here are some ways to make your content visible on the Internet:
- Search engine optimization. As I mentioned in step 4, people often end up reading a blog or watching a video because they searched for it, so try to be visible in the search engines. This includes optimizing for keywords, striving for quality content, and establishing yourself as an authority. To learn more about how to do SEO, check out my SEO for beginners article.
- Answer people’s questions with it. If you go to websites like Quora and type in your topic, you will find people who have questions that can be answered with your content. Give a brief answer and then share a link to your content so they can learn more.
- Post it on social media. Join a Facebook group or a Reddit community and share your content, especially if you believe it would be helpful to the people there.
- Pay to get it advertised. Have you noticed blogs or videos that stand out at the top of the search? Most likely, they got there because they paid for it. You can pay to have your content stand out too, but it does take some risk! You may lose a lot of money before you make your first sale. I wouldn’t recommend this for beginners, but it’s an option you can take if you understand the risk involved.
How to Sell and Make Money
Obviously, this is the step you’ve been waiting for: how to make that money! You chose a niche, you found a product, you picked a platform, and you made some good content. Now, how do you start making sales?
Get More Traffic
The first thing you need to do is make sure you have a lot of traffic viewing your content per day. So, if you have less than 100 people watching per day, you should work on getting more traffic. Master any of the traffic methods I laid out in step 7 above. Keep that up and, over time, you’ll get enough consistent traffic.
Learn Marketing
Now, if you do have good traffic, but you’re still not getting sales, then you need to learn the skill of marketing. You need to give your customers convincing reasons to buy your product. Go to step 6 above and make sure you are writing out your sales pitch similar to how I did it.
If you still don’t quite understand marketing, then you should invest in good online marketer training. One amazing resource that I highly recommend is Legendary Marketer.
Here is why Legendary Marketer is a great place to learn online marketing:
- The instructor, Dave Sharpe, loves helping beginners like you and makes it easy to understand marketing
- You get your own coach who can answer any questions you have
- You’ll understand how to avoid the mistakes many beginners make when online marketing
- It only takes two weeks to understand everything you need to know
- It only costs you $10 to get started!
So, if you’re ready to improve your chances of selling your affiliate product and earning your first commission, get started below!
More Affiliate Marketing Training
Well, that’s pretty much it. I’ve gone over everything you need to get started as an affiliate marketer, so I hope it helps you out.
Of course, there’s still a lot to learn when it comes to affiliate marketing as a beginner, so I will share with you a great resource that I’ve used to start my affiliate marketing journey: Affilorama!
First of all, this website is 100% free and it gives you all sorts of articles and videos that will teach you all the skills you need to know as an affiliate marketer. They even have a “Pathway to Passive Income” e-book that will show you A to Z how to go from zero to making passive income with affiliate marketing.
You can get started by signing up for a free Affilorama account below!
Not sure about Affilorama? Check out my Affilorama review article here!
Conclusion
And that’ll do it for my complete guide to affiliate marketing for beginners. I hope you found it useful and informative. Stay tuned as I will be posting new articles on affiliate marketing, e-commerce, and different ways you can earn money from the comfort of your home!
In the meantime, I have other articles on making money online that you can go through if you haven’t already. For example, you can take a look at some other affiliate marketing articles below:
Thanks for reading as always and all the best to you on your online money-making journey!