Affiliate Marketing For Beginners: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed

What is Affiliate Marketing? Tips, Tools and Best Practices

An affiliate website is far from a get-rich-quick scheme. Many profitable niches are very saturated, so it takes consistent effort and thoughtful strategy to earn a significant passive income.

With that in mind, we’ll walk you through the basics of how to build an affiliate marketing website that will be successful.

In short, affiliate marketing is a strategy in which a brand pays a commission to affiliates based on sales generated through their referrals. The key parties involved are:

  • Sellers (sometimes referred to as merchants, retailers, or brands) can range from individual entrepreneurs to global enterprises. They are the creators of the products or services being promoted and sold.
  • Affiliates (also referred to as publishers or advertisers) promote the seller’s products to their audiences by using affiliate links and ads. If their promotion or referral leads to a sale, they earn a commission from the seller.
  • Customers purchase the product or service from the seller based on the affiliate’s referral.

Essentially, affiliate marketing is a form of profit-sharing between sellers and advertisers. The commission earned comes out of the product price, so it doesn’t create an additional cost to the customer.

Whether you participate in affiliate marketing as a merchant or an affiliate, there are many advantages when compared to other types of marketing. One of the biggest draws is the amount of control and flexibility available.

For example, a merchant can create an affiliate marketing program based on the products and services of their choosing, while affiliates can decide which programs to participate in. The shared goal is getting product promotions in front of relevant audiences who are likely to convert.

How does affiliate marketing works?

Affiliate marketing is a sales model where a company pays a third-party to sell their product or service. If you’ve ever listened to a podcast or seen a social media influencer promote a product, they are affiliate marketers. In exchange for recommending products or services to their audience, they get a commission off of any sales that result in their referral.

After you choose an affiliate marketing program, you’ll receive a unique link or code that will allow the companies to track every customer you send their way. When a customer purchases the product through your link, you earn a commission.

You can find programs directly through a company or via an affiliate network like ShareASale. Regardless, here’s how the standard affiliate program works:

  1. You promote Store A on your website, blog, or social network.
  2. Someone clicks your unique link.
  3. They make a purchase in Store A.
  4. The company or affiliate network records the transaction.
  5. The purchase is confirmed by Store A.
  6. You receive a commission.

What are the benefits of affiliate marketing?

Now that you understand how affiliate marketing works, let’s look at a few top benefits.

You don’t own the products you’re promoting

Most public affiliate programs are larger and don’t require that you buy any of the products you recommend, like Amazon Associates. You simply join their affiliate program, grab your link, and post it on your page or website.

It’s perfect when you’re starting out, because you don’t have to invest a bunch of money into physical or digital products off the bat. You can take some time and experiment and see which types of products and services are gaining the most traction with your audience.

It’s a passive income source

Once you’ve established the groundwork to keep traffic coming to your site, you’re pretty much set. All you have to do is choose the right affiliate partners that will appeal to your audience and post those links. Your unique links and codes will continue to bring in a recurring commission for you, as long as you keep them visible on your site.

High earning potential

Affiliate marketing has six-figure earning potential for newcomers. You may not bring in that sort of money right at the jump, but there is real potential for affiliate marketing to replace your 9 to 5. Pat Flynn, for example, reported to Business Insider that he earns up to $170,000 per month thanks to the affiliate marketing business.

How much can you make as a new affiliate marketer?

Commission rates vary depending on the company you’re working with. The Amazon associates program offers anywhere from a 1% to 10% commission on sales. Others, like ButcherBox and Thrive Market, offer a flat $20 commission per sale. There are even affiliate programs that offer recurring commissions as high as 30% per sale.

How much you can make with affiliate marketing is completely up to you. It’ll depend on how much traffic you can generate toward your site(s), how well you gauge which affiliate products and services your audience will respond to, and the affiliate programs you join.

Statista reports that the affiliate marketing industry is due to reach $8.2 billion in the US by 2022, which is up from the $5.4 billion that it was valued at in 2017.

So it’s a growing market. In fact, according to Google Trends, there has been an increase of interest in affiliate marketing of 142% from 2016 to the present (though interest peaked in the summer 2021, with an increase of 426%).

How to start affiliate marketing as a beginner

1. Decide on a niche

A niche is the segment of a larger market defined by its own unique characteristics. It becomes your specialty and the topic people will know you for. Travel blogging would be an affiliate marketing niche, as would pet care or tiny homes.

Choosing a niche is a strategic business decision designed to serve a specific customer base. It helps establish a loyal audience that’ll buy your products instead of competitors’.

The top affiliate marketing niches are:

  1. Lifestyle and wellness
  2. Technology
  3. Personal finance
  4. Pet care

These aren’t your only options, of course. There are hundreds of options available. So how do you go about finding a profitable niche that interests you? Consider the following:

  • Do you want to learn more about the niche? You’ll want to become a subject matter expert on your topic over time. The only way to achieve expert status is by constantly learning and staying on top of trends.
  • Can you solve problems? Affiliate marketers often have special training or experience in a specific niche. This gives them new ways to present information and help people solve problems.
  • Is it profitable? Run a quick search on Google to see how popular your niche is. Check how much competition is in the space. Read market reports. A busy niche isn’t always a bad thing, because it means there are people ready to buy.

The goal is to choose a niche that you enjoy. You won’t be making six figures overnight. Running an affiliate business takes commitment and time. If you already enjoy doing it, you’ll be more likely to continue to do it despite how much money might be rolling in.

2. Choose your platform

The next step is considering what platform you’ll use for your business. Each affiliate marketer has a different platform and approach.

There are a two main methods to choose from as a beginner:

Niche topic or product review site

These sites review companies’ products for a specific audience and compare products with each other. They can also publish buyer’s guides and product tutorials to help shoppers make buying decisions, such as the New York Times Wirecutter site.

Digital content

Content creators include bloggers, social media influencers, and YouTubers. They continuously publish content that resonates with their audience to gain influence and encourage clicks.

A good example is how Ryan Robinson’s blog focuses on freelancers. He regularly publishes new content related to freelancing to draw in an audience and promotes brands that he’s affiliated with.

Authenticity and audience engagement are two critical elements for affiliate marketing. If you can’t connect with your audience, they likely won’t buy the products you recommend.

Not sure which platform to choose? Start on a platform you’re comfortable with. If you enjoy creating social media videos, make Instagram your platform. If you’re a good writer, maybe blogging is the best route for you. Creating on platforms you already understand will help you create content that connects with your audience and drives affiliate sales.

3. Find relevant affiliate marketing programs

There are a lot of affiliate marketing programs out there. According to Mediakix, 80% of companies use affiliate marketing. So it’s important to make sure you find the program that is right for you.

Make sure not to just focus on high-paying affiliate programs but to find the affiliate offers and products that will appeal to your audience. A few things to look for when choosing an affiliate program include:

  • Does the program have a great market reputation? You don’t want to work with partners that people don’t trust. Fortunately, affiliate networks like ShareASale and Clickbank vet programs and present reliable, profitable merchants you can work with.
  • Does the program have a good commission rate? You want to earn good money for your time and effort. Many programs pay upward of 10% to 20% commissions for a sale. Choose a rate that works for you.
  • Does it have a high earnings per click (EPC) rate? EPC is an industry-wide metric that shows the average affiliate earnings per 100 clicks across a merchant’s program. Networks like ShareASale show you this information for each merchant. For example, Modern Nursery pays a 5% commission, but its EPC is $38.20, which means you could make almost $40 per click!

Finding the right programs is critical to running a successful affiliate business. For example, True Crime Obsessed is a comedic podcast where best friends and hosts Patrick Hines and Gillian Pensavalle talk with a comedic spin about true crime documentaries.

Using this very particular take on a popular niche, they’ve garnered over 70 million downloads in one year as well as an Obsessed Network with six other offshoot programs.

The podcast promotes a variety of different products and services in episodes and a dedicated promo code page related to its niche.

To find good affiliate opportunities, ask your favorite brands if they have an ambassador or affiliate program. That way you can promote products you already appreciate and enjoy.

You can also find products and brands to work with in the following affiliate marketplaces:

4. Create valuable content

Statista reports that in 2019 people spent an average of 170 minutes online, globally. People are consuming content, but if you want to stand out, you have to make yours valuable to your audience.

Blogs are a really good way to do that. Findstack reports that 65% of all affiliate marketers generate traffic through blogging alone. Kelly Marohl from The Greenspring Home advises that new affiliate marketers should “focus on publishing high-quality content … and build a highly engaged audience. That will pay off in dividends later!”

In 2020 Statista reported that people all over the globe spent an average of 145 minutes on social media per day. So, if you’re asking if you have to have a website in order to be an affiliate marketer, the answer is no.

Promoting on social media is an easy and free way to get your content into the hands of the people that might be interested. Even platforms like Pinterest have affiliate opportunities using the pins on your various boards.

If you have a blog, research and understand search engine optimization (SEO). Brightedge reported in 2020 that SEO drives over 1,000% more traffic than organic social media. Doing some keyword research and implementing SEO well is crucial to reaching your audience. Email marketing is another way to keep those customers who’ve already visited your site interested.

5. Build an audience

To build an audience first you have to reach them. Creating email lists helps you to directly reach your audience. You can send newsletters, updates on new content, and exciting offers directly to anyone who signs up to be a part of your email list.

If you’re operating mostly on social media, follow and tag influencers that may be interested in your niche. The name of the game is to do what you can to increase the traffic to your website or social media page.

Reeling them in is just the first part, now it’s important to build trust between you and your audience to keep them coming back. Deefaz from PageOneCoffee advises, “Write on things that will create value for your audience and help them connect and make a better and informed decision on the choices they have.”

Don’t just try and sell anything to your audience in order to gain a quick buck. The more they feel your genuine interest, the more they will trust you.

Write on things that will create value for your audience and help them connect and make a better and informed decision on the choices they have.”

6. Follow FTC regulations

The FTC protects consumers from deceptive marketing practices. Unfortunately, there are affiliate marketers out there who are more than willing to promote scams and misleading products and services in order to make a quick buck.

To prevent this, the FTC requires that any affiliate marketer disclose their financial relationship with any brands or products that they are promoting. In short, you need to tell your audience that you’re getting compensated for promoting the products you’re promoting, and you must always tell them when a link is an affiliate link in order to stay compliant with the FTC.

Earn passive income with successful affiliate marketing

There’s no doubt an affiliate income is a smart way to earn money online. With a little time and effort upfront, you can build an audience and earn consistent payouts through your affiliate site—all without taking on too much risk.

How are affiliate marketers paid?

When it comes to the commission, this is usually percentage-based, but some affiliate programs also offer a fixed amount per sale.

The commission rate also varies depending on the merchant, the niche, and the offer.

Lucrative affiliate marketing programs, like WebTargetedTraffic’s for example, offer up to 40% commission on all sales made through your affiliate ID!

Usually, commissions are made as a result of a sale, but some programs reward their affiliates for acquiring leads, sign-ups, etc.

The marketing model used by the merchant determines what goal you need to reach in order to receive your commission.

These are the 3 marketing models:

1. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

2. Pay-Per-Lead (PPL)

3. Pay-Per-Sale (PPS)

Let’s do a quick outline explaining exactly what each of these are.

1. The Pay-Per-Click model

As a merchant, you can opt for paid advertising through the PPC model, and it’ll help generate traffic to your website.

As an affiliate, you can place PPC ads on your blog or website and receive a commission for any clicks that you receive on the ad(s).

As an affiliate, this means you earn a commission even if the lead doesn’t make a purchase — you just need to get them interested enough to click the ad.

This model can be profitable if you’re able to generate a fair amount of traffic to your site, as most PPC programs are measured based on impressions.

2. The Pay-Per-Lead model

As the name suggests, with this model you get paid for every lead that’s converted.

Here your goal is to get the lead to take the desired action — whether it’s to submit a form, sign-up for a trial, join an email list, or make a purchase.

Getting a lead to act on your call to action (CTA) requires more effort than simply generating traffic.

3. The Pay-Per-Sale model

This is the model that you’ll come across most often.

With this model, you’ll only earn a commission if a successful sale is made — this requires more marketing effort on your end.

This can be tough, as the pricing of the offer and the level of trust that you’ve built with your audience can impact how many sales you make.

Your audience might trust you enough to purchase an offer that’s worth a few dollars, but not one that’ll cost them $1,000.

Fortunately, you get products, that are so good that they practically sell themselves.

But how do merchants know a sign-up, sale, or any other outcome was as a result of your efforts?

The answer — cookies.

What are cookies?

A cookie put simply, is software that’s used for tracking.

Without cookies, it wouldn’t be possible to know which affiliate was responsible for the traffic, leads, or sales.

Unfortunately, these cookies expire.

Why is this unfortunate?

The lifespan of the cookie determines how long it’ll track the user’s online activity.

This means that if there’s a 30-day cookie life, your lead has to make a purchase within this timeframe for you to make any commission on the sale — after 30 days, the lead will no longer be trackable.

Affiliate programs vary in terms of the cookie duration, some aren’t as lenient as others, so keep this in mind when choosing an affiliate program.

How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing (Best Tips!)

Now that you have a website and joined an affiliate network, it’s the right time to start monetizing your site with affiliate marketing.

Let’s get started!

Step 1) Create Content That Generates Affiliate Revenue

In an effort to make money with affiliate marketing, most beginners simply publish some random content and insert affiliate links within the article.

That strategy may or may not work, but if you truly want to boost your affiliate revenue, you’ll need to make sure the content you publish reaches your target audience.

Your target audience is someone who wants to buy a product but not sure whether or not the product is worth it.

Sometimes, the user may not even know which product to buy for fulfilling their needs.

As an affiliate marketer, it’s your job to help users discover the right product for their needs with high-quality content, help them make a purchasing decision, and then navigate them to the product website for completing the purchase.

That means your article should be targeting investigational intent keywords — the type of keywords your target audience uses on Google to research about the product they want, right before making the purchase.

For more details, you can check out our guide on choosing the right keywords.

Step 2) Promote Your Affiliate Products in the Content

Now you know what kind of content you’re going to produce: investigational. You’re looking for topics that revolve around your target audience searching for an answer to the problem they’re facing.

Once you’ve done your keyword research and have your content ideas, it’s time to start inserting affiliate links in your content.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Let’s get into how you’ll track the success of your affiliate program as a business or your affiliate marketing efforts as an affiliate.

As a business, you’ll need to keep track of the following important metrics:

1. Your conversion rate — This is the number of clicks versus the number of sales (the number of conversions divided by the number of clicks)

2. Sales per affiliate — This metric will allow you to know who your top affiliates are, who may need help, or who’s negatively impacting the program

3. Revenue — Calculate your program’s overall revenue growth and your incremental revenue (revenue you wouldn’t have generated without an affiliate program)

4. Return on investment (ROI) — This is the revenue generated after you’ve covered the costs of your program

5. Active affiliates — Divide the number of active affiliates by the total number of affiliates

6. Customer lifetime value (CLV) — This is the revenue a customer brings in, minus the initial cost of acquiring them

7. The average order value (AOV) — The higher the AOV, the higher your ROI

8. Affiliate contribution margin — The revenue brought in by an affiliate minus the cost of recruiting the affiliate

9. Leads and customers gained — What percentage of leads and customers do your affiliates bring in over a given period of time?

As an affiliate, you’ll want to monitor the following key performance indicators:

1. Traffic — Here you want to monitor how your traffic increases over time because engagement is necessary for conversions

Google Analytics shows you the number of:

  • Unique visitors (they’re only counted once)
  • Session counts (the number of times someone comes to your website)

2. The time spent on your site

In Google Analytics, “Session Duration” shows you how people are engaging with a specific post.

You can calculate how long people are staying on your site by comparing the average read time to the average session duration.

3. Returning visitors — This tells you whether or not your content is bringing people back for more

Here again, Google Analytics lets you monitor this metric using the dashboard, under “New Sessions”.

4. Social sharingContent that delivers value will encourage shares!

Use social share buttons with counters to get a clear idea of how your audience is engaging with your content.

5. Social media analytics

Gain extra insights from social media platforms (such as seeing your clicks, likes, shares, etc.).

6. Your SERP ranking

Search the keywords in Google, and see how well your content is performing in the results pages.

Ranking high in the search engine results pages for your niche topic makes it easy for potential customers to find your content.

Why do some affiliates fail?

The biggest reason why some affiliates fail is that they simply don’t give it enough time, and they go in thinking that it’s a get-rich-quick scheme.

Give your efforts time to blossom!

Let’s get into some of the other common mistakes that affiliate marketers make to ensure that you get started on the right path.

1. Not putting your audience first

As we’ve mentioned several times throughout this post, success as an affiliate marketer rests on the relationships you build.

Your number 1 priority should be your audience.

Having them come second or not considering them at all is a recipe for disaster.

The stronger the relationship between you and your audience, the more you’ll earn. It’s a win-win.

These are the 2 main mistakes affiliates make in terms of their audience:

1. They focus on selling instead of helping

Focusing on selling won’t produce the results you’re looking for, instead focus on helping your audience.

2. They think that customer service isn’t their responsibility

Although customer service isn’t your responsibility, establishing a strong relationship with your audience is absolutely crucial.

You have to stay in touch with your audience and build trust in order to get them to be confident in anything you recommend.

So be sure to respond to queries and comments that you receive on your content, and work on building those relationships!

2. Picking the wrong niche

There are a number of common mistakes that happen when choosing a niche, for example:

1. Avoid choosing a niche that you’re not interested in

Not being interested in the niche you choose will make promoting the products difficult and boring.

2. Narrow down your niche as much as possible

A well-defined niche is important, as it’ll make building a solid following much easier than if you had a much broader audience.

3. Don’t ignore the level of competition

The competition level in each niche is important, especially as a beginner affiliate, because you might struggle to show authority in an overcrowded space.

3. Promoting the wrong products

If the product you’re promoting offers no real value to your audience then you’ll be wasting both your time and energy.

Ask yourself these simple questions:

  • Does your audience have an interest in the products you’re promoting?
  • Does it solve a real problem or meet a true desire that they have?

Always be sincere and confident about the products you’re selling — only ever promote products that you know will offer value to your audience.

4. Only promoting products with once-off payments

Promoting products with recurring payments means that you’ll get recurring commissions!

It’s easier to bag those monthly commissions if you’re not having to sell once-off purchases where repeat customers aren’t guaranteed.

Recurring payment models are common with software, membership, and hosting companies.

5. Not knowing enough about the products you’re promoting

This is a surefire way to lose your audience’s trust — if you’re not authentic, they’ll pick up on it.

If you’re selling for the right reason (to help your audience), then you’ll know the products you’re promoting inside and out.

Either only promote products that you’ve personally used, or ensure that you do extensive research before you promote it to your audience.

6. Making content focused on the product’s features

When a customer buys a product, they’re not interested in the features it has to offer, but the benefits that it’ll provide.

Features tell and benefits sell.

This is a common mistake that you can’t afford to make because this will have an immense impact on the number of sales you make.

People buy benefits — focus your content on the benefits and you’ll see an increase in your sales.

7. Producing poor-quality content

It’s true that content is king — poor quality content will do nothing but kill your sales.

Focus on producing high-quality content that provides value to your audience.

Producing high-quality content will also help you rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs), which in turn will help bring in more traffic to your site.

Underplaying the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) is a big mistake!

Ensure SEO plays a big role in your marketing strategy.

8. Having a poor marketing strategy

Producing quality content but then failing to effectively market it will also be nothing but wasted effort.

A strong email marketing strategy is a must-have for affiliate marketers because it allows you to:

  • Build relationships with your audience and nurture existing customer relationships
  • Build an email list of leads and repeat customers to promote your offers to
  • Keep your audience up to date with any news or special offers

9. Neglecting the importance of testing

Testing what does and doesn’t work is the only way that you’ll know where you need to make improvements.

With most all-in-one tools like systeme.io, you can run A/B tests on your CTAs, your headings, etc. to know what elements work best.

Keep experimenting with how you promote and see what your audience responds best to.

Do images work? Perhaps not.

When do your emails get the most opens and click-throughs?

Test everything — test, test, test!

You’ll want to try to avoid making the above mistakes, but bear in mind that failure is necessary for learning!

So don’t feel discouraged if you make mistakes along the way — persevere through it, and implement what you’ve learned.

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