Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

What Is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the practice of promoting the products or services of another person or company in exchange for a commission on the resulting sale. I stumbled upon this marketing technique a few weeks back and people are making millions with it. You will find a lot of affiliates in the blogging world as well as youtube descriptions and even on social media platforms.

Basically, it’s getting a commission on a sale

You can start affiliate marketing on various platforms. The most popular ones being Amazon associates, Reseller club, and Clickbank.

How much money can I make with affiliate marketing?

The affiliate marketing industry is growing steadily. Top affiliates and influencers make over $100k a month from affiliate sales (influencers such as Pat Flynn, John Chow, Rae Hoffman, Mark Ling, and Shawn Collins). Middle-class affiliates make anywhere between $1k to $10k a month. New affiliates generally have ZERO affiliate earnings.

In affiliate marketing, the flow of revenue is almost never constant. Making money from affiliate marketing is hard because everyone is doing it, and the competition is fierce. Affiliate marketing is an extremely lucrative niche, with billions of dollars in circulation, but not everyone makes it to the top.

How can I start affiliate marketing as a side hustle?

The easiest way to start affiliate marketing is by joining amazon associates in my opinion. The requirement that you should have to work as an amazon affiliate is a website with decent traffic, a blog, or any platform on which you can advertise your affiliate links.

You can visit https://affiliate-program.amazon.in/ and sign up for the affiliate program. If you already have an amazon account then you use it for logging in.

Other platforms on which you can start are Clickbank, Reseller’s club, eBay partners, and Shopify Affiliate Program. There are many tutorials on youtube on “how you can start affiliating marketing”, so just go ahead watch them and do your research before starting affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing Pros

You don’t need any marketing experience to become an affiliate, though a bit of SEO knowledge and writing chops never hurt.

With only a bit of time + money investment up front (setting up a website, getting set up with affiliate programs, and creating content with your affiliate links) you can start making money.

Affiliate Marketing Cons

Affiliate marketing is relatively simple, so there will be plenty of other affiliates out there competing for clicks and leads – some of them with years of experience behind them.

Affiliate marketers need to be wary of scams and fraudulent affiliate programs.

How can I promote my affiliate links:

1. Email Marketing

The success of email marketing is all about growing your contact list, segmenting it to appeal to different groups of customers, and providing valuable content to encourage recipients to stay engaged. Always link to your website in your email call to action, and encourage repeat visits to your website by sending fresh content on a regular basis.

Are you collecting email addresses from your website visitors? See five signup form examples businesses used to grow their email lists.

2. Personal Email Signature

You can include a link to your homepage or a specific landing page you want to promote. If the link is to your homepage, make sure it works like a landing page.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Learning how to boost SEO will help improve organic search engine rankings. However, SEO is a complex process which involves optimizing your website for keywords, providing authoritative content, and increasing quality links to your site. By enhancing SEO, your website will appear near the top of search results for your specified keywords.

Not sure what keywords are relevant to your business? Use these keyword research tips to find the best keywords and get found online.

4. Pay-Per-Click Ads

What is PPC? Create paid ads to appear on search engines. The most popular paid ads are through Google AdWords. You tell Google how much you’re willing to spend and only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This is called pay-per-click advertising. Make sure that your ad links to a landing page that matches the copy in the ad (you don’t want to advertise hiking boots and send visitors to a page featuring umbrellas).

5. Social Media

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter (with one billion users each) are a great way to promote your site and promote your blog if your site has one. Provide links to your homepage, blog or other website pages (depending on the nature of the content) in your social media posts and bios. ​When using social to promote your website/brand it’s important to understand your target audience. Check trends, using popular features on each platform like Instagram stories and Instagram ads. Share your content.

Here are 9 expert ways to grow your email list on Facebook.

6. YouTube

About 1 billion people use YouTube every month. That fact, combined with the enormous popularity of video, makes YouTube a natural for promoting your website. Be sure to include a call to action button in your video with a link back to your website, and give viewers a good reason to go there.

7. Guest Blogging

Identify leading websites in your market niche and offer to write guest blogs for them. Be sure to include a link to your website in the blog post, for example, in your bio at the end of the article.

If you don’t consider yourself much of a writer or are just getting started with content marketing, it’s important to learn a few basic steps.

8. Retargeting

If you shop at Walmart online, you might notice ads for the products you just purchased, or similar Walmart products, on other websites. That’s achieved through retargeting, a cookie-based technology that involves inserting a special code on your website. When visitors come to your site, the code attaches a cookie to that visitor’s browser. That makes it possible to display ads for your website on other sites across the web, increasing the visibility of your site and the products and services you offer.

Is affiliate marketing worth the time and work I put into it?

Affiliating marketing is a good way to earn but don’t expect life-changing income. Affiliate marketing takes time and effort to get results. Focus on getting traffic on your site, as your site grows, set new goals, and continue experimenting.

This is how to build up a site that eventually generates a decent income.