What is Affiliate Marketing? How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?

In this article, I have shared a complete guide and proven strategies, what is affiliate marketing, and how to make money with affiliate marketing?

If you are already into affiliate marketing and not getting the right way to drive high converting traffic.

Don’t worry, I’ll share each and every strategy that top affiliates are doing and how they are making money with affiliate marketing?

So let’s dive into it.

>> What is Affiliate Marketing
>> What are the Benefits of Doing Affiliate Marketing
>> How to Start and Make Money with Affiliate Marketing
>> Pro Tips to Become Successful Affiliate Marketers
>> Frequently Asked Question by Every Beginner Affiliate Marketer

What is Affiliate Marketing?

If I go with the affiliate marketing definition, it is the process in which an affiliate earns a commission for promoting the product of other companies.

The affiliates simply recommend the product to their audience and give a referral link to redirect to the landing page of the product or company’s website. Once customers buy products by the referral link affiliate gets a commission for recommending that product.

This is not a source of promoting links or any kind of scheme to earn money. This is a well-formulated business. There are thousands of people who have made more than a million-dollar by Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing usually have three parties:

You may have got an Idea which all the parties involved in the affiliate marketing in the above image.

However, let’s learn more about these parties.

1. Merchant

A merchant is a person who owns a particular product or services or owns a whole company. Affiliate Merchant can be anyone like a seller, retailer, advertiser, creator, etc.

Merchant has a vital role in this whole cycle because this cycle starts from a merchant and without a product, this cycle cannot be successful.

In the affiliate marketing process, the merchant doesn’t need to participate actively, all they need is a product to sell. However, if merchant participates in this process and proactively encourage their affiliates to generate more sales can be an added advantage.

2. Affiliate

Affiliate is a mediator, they are also known as an affiliate marketer, affiliate partner, or associate. Their work is to just connect the buyer to the seller but this is not that much easy it sounds.

All the strategies and executions used to be done by Affiliate Marketer to promote a product and convince the buyer to buy the product. Once a buyer buys any product they pay you after the lock-in period.

What is Lock in Period?

The vendor determines a lock-in period after that they release the commission. Once an associate makes a sale vendor keep their money until the lock-in period to determine it is a genuine sale customer is not asking for a refund or cancel the services.

Pro-Tip – Before choosing any products to promote make sure that the product is credible and it’s really helpful for your audience. So that there would be more chances of getting a sale by your recommendations and fewer chances cancellation/refund.

3. Customer

Customers make this entire system to go around. Without a sale, nothing is going to happen neither vendor is going to make a profit nor associate will earn a commission.

From a good affiliate marketer’s point of view, the customer is the most important party in this whole cycle. Because a good marketer believes if he has a good audience base they can find hundreds of trusted vendors easily and sometimes the vendors will approach affiliate themselves.

There are two types affiliate products:

Pay Per Click

In this method companies pay affiliates for every clicks when the user redirects to the company’s website by the reference of affiliates.

However, this method is not sustainable and it does not build a good relationship between affiliates and companies. Sometimes affiliates use the wrong methods(robotics or real traffic with different IP addresses) to send clicks on the websites and earn money.

That’s why 99% of the companies don’t use the Pay Per Click method to sell their products via affiliate marketing.

Pay Per Sale/Conversion

This is the universal method of affiliate marketing, in this method company’s only pay affiliates when visitors buy the product via referral link of affiliates.

Almost every company is using this method to sell their product affiliates via affiliate marketing and our whole discussion would be based on this method.

Let’s go into deep.

Before I tell you how to start affiliate marketing I want to make you realize what are the benefits you can get by doing affiliate marketing?

What are the Benefits of Doing Affiliate Marketing?

A lot of people ask apart from earning money what all the benefits they can get in affiliate marketing. There might be you also have this question in your mind or even you don’t have this query in your mind but now I believe you are curious to know.

So, let’s start discussing some points that you don’t have to take the hassle of that.

Passive Income

Affiliate Marketing is a proven source of creating passive income. Because once you create an engaging platform of an audience. Your audience will come to you and buy the products by your referral link even while you are sleeping.

No Customer Support Hassle

When you have your own product or services you need to take care of your customers before sales and after-sale. Which plays a crucial role in the success of any business.

However, if you are doing affiliate marketing you just have to educate people about the product before sale. The customer service part is taken care of by the merchant.

Work From Anywhere

This is the beauty of this business. You can work from anywhere there is no boss, no 9 to 5 hassle, only needs to be connected with your audience, create content continuously, educate them, and keep them engaged.

Cost Effective

So, till now you would have applied your brilliant mindset and have got an idea of how much cost-effective this business idea is.

The biggest reason for that is you don’t have your own product you don’t need to manage any kind of setup cost or maintenance cost.

Performance Based Reward

The best thing I like about affiliate marketing is your reward is not limited you can earn as much as you want it depends upon your marketing strategies and the amount of effort you are putting.

Your income would calculate on the basis of the sale you generate. Also, you don’t have any limitation to join the number of affiliate marketing programs. You can join unlimited affiliate programs and expand your limit of earning.

Note:- Only join those affiliate programs on which you trust and believe this product will help your audience. Never mislead your audience.

Now, I believe that you would have got a very clear idea of what is affiliate marketing, it’s earning potential, and what all the benefits it has apart from making money.

So, let’s dive into the process of how to start affiliate marketing.

How to Start and Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Till the time you have learned everything now this is the time to take action and make money with affiliate marketing. So, Let’s begin the step by step affiliate marketing guide.

Step 1: Find a Niche

The first step is very crucial. Most people do a huge mistake at this step. First of all, let’s understand what is a niche?

Niche is a particular topic in which you are really interested in, you have enough information about that topic and you can share your content for a longer time.

It can be anything like,

So, these are some categories in which you can find your niche. These are the universal topics, there can be multiple topics under each topic. For example, Sports is a universal topic, and cricket, football, hockey, basketball, etc. can be a niche.

Similarly, Digital Marketing is a universal topic and Affiliate marketing, Search engine marketing, Facebook marketing, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Copyrighting, Video Marketing, etc. can be a niche.

Although, I have given some topics to you. However, it is not limited to this, there can be hundreds of more Affiliate Marketing Niches.

So, choose something in which you are really interested in and have enough information and Let’s move to the next step.

Step 2: Find Relevant Products

You need to be very careful while selecting a product for affiliate marketing. Whatever the product you are choosing, it should be relevant to your niche.

If there is any product you are trying to promote which is not relevant to your niche, your audience might feel like you are greed your intention is to just sell the product not adding the value. Because people only buy a product via your link when they trust you on your content.

The best places to find affiliate marketing products are marketplaces. You need to figure out which all the marketplaces are available where several products are available relevant to your niches.

Some Popular Marketplaces:

• ClickBank Affiliate
• ShareAsale
• Commission Junction
• Impact
• Maxbounty
• Amazon Associate (Not Recommended)

You may think why I have highlighted Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program is not recommended, while it is the biggest eCommerce company in the world?

Well, let me show you something.

This is the harsh reality of the Amazon Affiliate Program. Their commission structure is too less even on some categories they don’t pay you anything.

However, it doesn’t mean that you should stop doing affiliate marketing on amazon at all. You should keep it as a final priority. In case you don’t find any product on other marketplaces that can be promoted. Then you can use their program.

You can also spy on your competitors to find the best products in your niche. Even you’ll have a more clear idea that what kind of products is in demand relevant to your niche.

Step 3: Find the Problem in Your Niche

I have seen many people who teach about affiliate marketing, they skip this point while this is the most important part in terms of giving you more conversion and sales of your affiliate products.

The biggest reason behind this is when your customer comes to you. They expect some answers from you where they are stuck. Else they already have the option to buy directly from the vendors.

There are few ways by which you can find problems in your niche:

Quora – Whenever someone talks about doing the research, only one thing that comes up in my mind is Quora. Quora is the biggest question-answer social media where every day millions of people post their questions and millions of people answer those questions. So, this is the best platform where you can find the problems of your buyers.

Other Social Media Platform – There are multiple social media platforms where people spend most of the time. You can also find the intent of your audience related to your niche.

Forums – Quora is also a kind of forum however, there are many more forums are available like Reddit, India Forums, Yahoo Answers, Google Answers. You can directly ask the questions related to your niche to find the biggest problem.

Reviews and Questions – This is also the best method to understand the intent of trusted buyers. You can go the review pages of relevant products to your niches and read the different reviews or questions of your buyers.

Once you complete this process you’ll have a clear idea of your buyer’s intent. So, let’s move to the next step.

Step 4: Create Content and Solve the Problem of Your Audience

Once you have analyzed the problems of your audience in your niche. So, now you have to create problem-solving content for your audience.

There is no limitation on the type of content you can create. You can create the content as wish either in forms of Video or Article.

Video Content

YouTube is the best platform where you can create video content. There is no rocket science that needs to create Youtube Videos. You just need to educate your audience in your content and start doing affiliate marketing on YouTube.

Creating YouTube videos is easy but to reach your target audience and grow your audience, you need to create some strategies.

Learn How to Grow a YouTube Channel.

Articles

The best way to create content in the form of an article is to create your own blog just like you are reading my blog. Creating a blog is also not a difficult task. You just need to follow some steps.

Read the Full Guide – How to start a Blog.

Step 5: Start Promoting

This is the most important part you must be waiting for. So, the good news is, you are ready to go ahead and promote your product.

You have to embed the affiliate product links in your article or video where it is needed. For the youtube, video link in the description and in the article embed a hyperlink.

For example, if you are guiding someone on how to lose weight, so you can recommend people to buy a product which can help them to lose weight.

First of all congratulations, you have learned what is affiliate marketing and how to start.

Now, let’s jump into the strategy part because it is very important to have a strong strategy to get more clicks on your affiliate links and get more conversion.

Step 6: Drive Traffic

This is the most important part to be a successful affiliate marketer. You need to know how to drive traffic on your website or videos or anywhere you are spreading your content.

Organic Traffic – It is a kind of traffic that drives organically at any platform. Mostly the term is used to get organic traffic is SEO or other organic algorithms of any platform.

Inorganic Traffic – Inorganic traffic is a kind of traffic is driven by the paid advertisement on different platforms like Facebook or Google.

What next after driving traffic?

Bonus Step 1: Create a Hook or Lead Magnet

I have seen many people who stop at the last stage I discussed but the real journey of a star affiliate marketer begins here.

You need to create a hook or lead magnet. This is a kind of product you create for your audience to giveaway. Even it can be a set of your blog or some YouTube video series.

Types of Lead Magnet which can be created

1. eBook
2. Free Checklist
3. Series of Videos
4. Series of Articles
5. Free Webinar
6. Free Online Course

Now let’s move to the next step and learn how to use it.

Bonus Step 2: Create a Lead form

When you have created your lead magnet you have to create a lead form and put it on your website as a popup bar or after the header, asking your audience to give their name and email in exchange for your giveaway. Just Like this.

Bonus Step 3: Add Subscribers to Your List and Send Email to Your Subscribers

Now you might have been thinking of sending emails require a lot of time and there is a dedicated person needed for that, but you can set up this one time with the help of an email marketing tool.

You have to create a form and attach with the list in your email marketing tool, all your subscriber would be added to that list automatically and email would be sent to your subscriber automatically.

You can easily connect your customers to the landing page of the product or your blog or to your YouTube Videos. So, your audience will be engaged with you.

You can start email marketing for free with Aweber.

Bonus Step 4: Create Content Continuously for Your Subscribers

This is a trait for every successful marketer they keep engage their audience with new content and new products.

You also need to do the same, keep finding new products keep creating relevant content, and start introducing the new content and product to your audience.

You are all set to start doing affiliate marketing. However, I have some pro tips to become a successful affiliate marketer.

Pro Tips to Become Successful Affiliate Marketers

Before I start, I want to tell you these tips are not only going to help you become a successful affiliate marketer

Build Trust

Trust is the most important factor in any business doesn’t matter what kind of business it is.

Although I have already covered this topic in short but I want you to remind never mislead your audience because you can mislead your audience for one time but you’ll also lose one customer.

That’s why, educate your audience by your content, the more trust you’ll get more sales you’ll get.

Niche Specific

I have seen many people who start their journey in affiliate marketing or any other digital field. When they don’t get results in short of time they start sharing content from other niches.

Never do that your audience will get confused and stop trusting on you. So, instead of moving to another niche, start doing more research on your niche and create relevant content.

If you are doing blogging and changing sharing irrelevant content means, you are making google confuse. So, as a result, Google will stop sending traffic to your website.

Use/Research Before You Recommend

In order to find the right product either research properly about the features and qualities of the product if it is available for a long time in the market. But if you have tried and tested that will be great.

However, if the product is new then please use the product either a trial version or fully accessed version.

Stay Updated with the Trends

It is very important to be updated with the trends in your niche to chase your competitor.

The best methods to do it is to spy your competitors, track their activities, and always try to be ahead of them.

Also, stay tuned for the new product coming in the market, soon you’ll start promoting that product more result you get.

Don’t Rely on the Single Product

If you rely on a single product it creates a limitation for you. In the future, if the vendor makes any commission reduction or shut down their affiliate program. Then it might cause an issue for you. That’s why it is always recommended to promote multiple affiliate products.

I have shared a scratch to advance guide in this blog. However, I’m going to cover some frequently asked questions by every beginner.

Frequently Asked Question by Every Beginner Affiliate Marketer

I have covered some common questions frequently asked by every newbie. However, if you have any other doubts in your mind you can ask me in the comment section you are always welcome to ask or discuss something with me.

CHEERS!