Before we get into how to start affiliate marketing for beginners, if you`re a complete beginner you might be asking what affiliate marketing is and why you should be part of it.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is the process by which a company or an individual promotes a product or service in order to collect commissions for their referrals.
For example, you( as an affiliate) could promote products found on Amazon … let’s say a specific beauty product found on Amazon.
It would be your job as an affiliate marketer to promote this product to a target audience.
Every time someone from this audience buys the product on Amazon, you will receive a commission.
Another example is that an affiliate marketer could promote a paid service… This could be anything but for this example let’s say there is a program that teaches its clients how to write content.
Every time you direct customers to the site and it leads to a sale, you the affiliate would receive a commission.
It`s as simple as that really, sometimes some people will try to explain it in a complicated way but it`s basically helping someone find a product and you earn a commission.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
The Internet is Everywhere –
Almost everyone in the world has internet access. This means that there are thousands of niches available to market and thousands of audiences to market also.
Low Cost –
While typically it is free to start, it is very difficult to say substantial results within spending a little money. However, costs associated with web hosting, keyword researching, Facebook Advertising, and such are usually low and the ROI (Return on Investment) can be very high.
Work From Home –
As an affiliate marketer, the only requirement that you need is internet access. No need to wear a suit every day and no need to worry about how congested the traffic is in your area.
Be Your Own Boss –
Related to the last point I made, Affiliate Marketing allows you to set your own schedule and do the things you want to do on a day-to-day basis with no one to answer to.
Potential Earnings –
Within any given niche there are multiple ways to expand your target audience or use more platforms to drive more traffic to your site and earn you more revenue.
When you really start getting good, you can explore more niches to multiply your earnings.
This short post explains exactly how to identify your online money-making niche by identifying your readers’ pain points.
How to Quickly Identify Your Online Money Making Niche.
How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing
Okay so you’ve established that Affiliate Marketing sounds cool but how do you get started? These are the steps that I took and the steps that I recommend in order to get started:
- Find Your Niche
- Find Products or Services
- Keyword Research
- Create a Website
- Create Content
- send traffic to your website
- Make money
It`s as simple as that and anyone telling you-you need more to succeed online either does not know what they are talking about or they are trying to sell you some program they are affiliated with.
Finding Your Niche and Target Audience
This is the first step in the process of becoming a successful affiliate marketer.
Yet I feel that it stumps so many people (myself included).
Your niche could be just about anything. Here’s the process I take when thinking of a niche
- Write down all topics that interest you.
- Write down a specific sub-niche within that topic that interests you.
- Pick a particular audience that you would like to sell to.
Let’s take for example your interest in knowing and promoting the stock market. Great start, however, that`s just too broad.
There are probably millions of websites about stocks and so the likelihood of you receiving any website traffic is slim. Let’s narrow it down…
How about day trading stocks or even narrower, day trading penny stocks. Now, that sounds like a niche we can work with.
Next, we have to find our audience… Who would the topic of day trading penny stocks be interesting to:
- Retirees looking for a way to invest and earn more money
- Individuals on a low salary, looking for some extra money
- People who want to work from home
This is just to name a few but as you can see just within this sub-niche there are many possibilities.
You can continue this process by writing down niches, getting more specific,
Picking a target audience as you continue until you are confident and interested in what you have chosen.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Please, DO NOT wait for the perfect niche to slap you in the face… because it might never happen.
Pick something and get started. If it doesn’t work out then try something new.
The niche you start today doesn’t have to be your final, as you get more experienced in blogging, you may even find you want to blog about something totally different.
I have had blogs about Tennis, skincare, and travel so I should know.
Find Products or Services
Now that you have established your niche and target audience the next step is to find products to promote. There are two ways to do this.
First, you can promote products from Amazon or shareasale.com by becoming an affiliate for those sites. After you have set up your affiliate accounts, you can choose the products that you wish to promote.
Now having mentioned Amazon, please be informed that the affiliate commissions are very low, and the cookie period just 24 hours.
You may like
Removing my Amazon affiliate links.
If you do not wish to promote products and rather promote programs or services you can do that as well.
Sites such as JVzoo, Warriorplus, and Clickbank allow you to promote a plethora of programs.
In order to have access to this, you must create accounts on each site and search their respective marketplaces.
You will find everything from dog grooming, real estate, and everything in between that you can choose to promote.
Keyword Research
This is a very key part of your affiliate marketing career, without proper keyword research, your blog is going nowhere(we`ll explain this later).
The internet is filled with millions upon millions of articles and even if your niche is super specific it is still very difficult to rank in sites such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing without doing keyword research.
Keyword research helps you know what to write about, what your audience is looking for online.
Here’s how:
- Search your niche or sub-niche in Google – Google instant results will supply you with multiple keywords that you can save and use in the next step.
- Create a Free Jaaxy Account – Jaaxy is deemed the most powerful keyword research platform in the industry.
- In using Jaaxy you can plug in your niche topics along with different keywords and Jaaxy will inform you how well it ranks in Google as well as how often the specific keyword is searched.
- Save the Keywords with good turnouts – In following the last step you will be able to navigate Jaaxy to find the keywords that are most relevant to your topic, that provide the most traffic, with limited competition.
- These are what you will be using later on as the titles of your posts in order to get your site ranked in Google.
You will notice with time that keyword research becomes easier and easier and you will have more ideas for articles than you have time to write them! Check my Jaaxy review here if you missed it.
Create a Website
Nowadays all businesses need a website. The idea of starting an online affiliate marketing business without one is crazy!
Now, I could give you a step-by-step of the different paths you can take to set up your own website, but for the sake of your time and convenience, I’ll just tell you the best path… This program
Click Here for More Information on Building a Website
I have never had an easier time building a site than when I did it through Wealthy Affiliates.
Membership is free and with a membership, you can have two domains.
SiteRubix makes it incredibly easy to add or edit content and already has a few vital page templates included.
Wealthy Affiliates use WordPress which is open source and requires zero code input from you to create a blog from scratch.
Video tutorials and a helpful community help you every step of the way as you build your online business.
Now that you have everything in place you are almost ready to start earning money, it`s so easy, in the image below, enter your chosen domain name and in minutes, you`ll have your own website. Creating Content
Lastly, you want to create content on your site that speaks directly to your audience about the specific niche that you have chosen.
Your content should:
- Be Informative
- Be Concise
- Be Enjoyable for the reader
- Should include keywords in order to increase Google rankings.
The goal of this content is to inform your audience of the products that you are promoting while also providing valuable information that they find useful.
You will leave your affiliate links in the various articles that will redirect your audience to the products or programs that you are affiliated with and thus you will receive commissions.
Still unsure how to write content that will make you money? Rebecca explains in detail how to dig down to understand your readers’ pain points.
In Summary
Affiliate Marketing is a growing, lucrative business providing financial opportunities to a vast variety of people.
While it is not a get-rich-quick scheme it can certainly pay out well if you are ambitious and stick with it.
I hope that you found this information useful. If you have any questions/ concerns please comment below. Thanks again and good luck on your affiliate marketing journey.
Hi, Good Day. really excellent blog, I recently came across your blog post and must say that you have given awesome material on Affiliate Marketing. Your instructions and suggestions are awesome. I think we should follow this instruction to gain excellent results. Now a day affiliate marketing is also very important. The topic has been completely covered. It answered all of my questions and issues. Once again, thank you for sharing this blog. Keeping post this type of excellent content with the community.
Glad you found the post useful,in my opinion, affiliate marketing is a must for anyone trying to make money online without spending money.Not to mention not having to deal with clients or returns.I started affiliate marketing without having any ideas and now im glad I did.
Thanks, im glad to know you found the post useful.Thanks too for leaving a comment
Very good your blog! I liked the content! Thank you for sharing!
Im glad you found the post helpful, blogging especially for beginners can be hard, things confusing but once you know where to look for the right tools and where to find help, blogging and affiliate marketing is fun and a brilliant way of making money online.
Want to learn affiliate marketing? Just give your 10 minutes to this guide on affiliate marketing, which is prepared by industry experts who have been working in the affiliate marketing industry for more than 15 years.
Thanks for your comments
Thanks for sharing so many tips on how to get started with affiliate marketing.
Im glad you founud the post helpful, do check our other posts as we always have tips to help you grow your affiliate marketing website,
Loved the article, valuable tips.
Thank you for sharing
Im glad you founf the post useful and I hope it will be useful for you when you start affiliate marketing.
I loved the article.. thanks for sharing! 🙂
I`m glad you found the article useful I hope you`ll check our other posts where we cover more about affiliate marketing,blogging or keyword research as without a proper keyword research, you`ll struggle to rank high in the search engines
This was a very helpful post! I really got more detailed information about how to start affiliate marketing as a beginner.
Glad you founud the post useful, this works not only for beginners but also for experienced marketers who need to improve their affiliate income.
Having said that, I feel the most important in affiliate marketing is now giving up, most new affiliate marketers give up too soon if they are not making sales.But just like offline, making money online needs work, you work first then enjoy the benefits later.
This is such valuable information. Thank you for sharing .
Glad you found the post useful Jasmin,earning online need not be so hard, many times,people just get scared that they are not good enough, experienced enough but I think anyone can learn how to make money online.
My best way of making money online is affiliate marketing as you don`t have to deal with shipping or refunds.Drive traffic and hope the vendor has top quality products.
When I got started online, I knew nothing about affiliate marketing but I learned from the best.
Great post! And much needed! Thanks!!
What an informative post on affiliate marketing. I have learnt so much. Probably talk about nofollows and dofollows? I’m kinda lost.
Thanks Ruth
Really glad you found the post useful and informative.Getting started in affiliate marketing can be hard and confusing and you need all the info you can get.
Having said that, there are also trush info out there so it`s upto you to go through posts and see where there is value.
Morewages is just what I have been looking for. I’m also very grateful I found tips on how to create a website and start affiliate marketing the right way it helped me not only to build my website effortlessly but also save on business expenses each month, hope it helps some others.
glad you gound the post useful and happy to know you do read my posts.
Thanks for the beautiful post and this post will be very helpful for the beginners. I hope you will write continuously for us.
Glad you found the post helpful, I do cover different ways to make money online for beginners and experienced marketers alike.
I am interested in being an affiliate marketeer. Is it best to build a website first or open an affiliate marketing account on Amazon?
I do feel affiliate marketing on your site is more secure, programs come and go, what then? I`d suggest creating your own website then sell affiliate products to your readers.
Affiliate marketing sure is helpful in some ways. Still, hardwork, perseverance and a positive mindset are really important when you want to succeed with blogging.
So true, but, if affiliate marketing was to be easy, we`ll all be doing it. Making money with affiliate marketing takes time and that`s why many people give up as they want it here and now.
I appreciate your take on being an Affiliate. I tried my best with the ‘Big A’ and was disappointed and frustrated. I’ll take a closer look at some you recommended.
Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick in any way, you have to put in the work to see the benefits.
You are so right! Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. It took me almost 8 months to make my first affiliate sale. You definitely have to strategic.
glad you did not give up, some people give up after the first month, but I can understand, getting started in affiliate marketing is hard with 101 things to learn, you work endless hours without seeing progress. what many ignore is that they are supposed to be on it for the long term, they expect money without doing much work then when the money is not coming in, they just give up.
Thanks for this wonderful info it helps me a lot because now I love to starting do affiliate marketing for my blog 🙂
If you have a blog, don`t let your efforts go to waste join affiliate programs and start promoting affiliate products.
Affiliate marketing is kinda tricky but not difficult. Great guide for beginners.
I think most bloggers start affiliate marketing without training, most people make a mistake of thinking that once a blog is published, the money will start rolling in which is not the case. Affiliate marketing training like mentioned in this post, in my opinion, is a must if you want to succeed as an affiliate marketer.
Thank you so much for this post. I am struggling with keywords and have taken onboard your advice on Jaaxy. SO thank you so much!
I could not write and publish a post without first searching for keywords, Jaaxy keyword tool is brilliant and they give you free searches so you know what to expect before you join.
Is affiliate marketing better than Adsense. Can I run on my blog side by side?
This will depend on who you talk to, Adsense income is so low you`ll need thousands of visitors to your blog per day to make income worth writing home about.
In Affiliate marketing, you don’t have to depend on the quantity of the traffic that comes to your site but the quality. One affiliate sale from a single visitor to your site can make you hundreds of dollars.
Instead of depending only on Adsense, I`d advise you to do affiliate marketing and also sprinkle Adsense ads in some of your blog posts, this way, you can see what works better for your site.
this is definitely not my strong point. ugh! I just keep hammering at it though.
And that`s the right way to do it, affiliate marketing success is not an overnight task, you have to keep on working at it.
Thanks for these tips, I would love to make more money as an affiliate.
If you keep at it and keep learning, there is no reason you should not make money with affiliate marketing, know your audience and what their pain point is, offer them a solution to their problem and the money will start coming in.
My daughter is pretty discouraged because she has been unable to get a single Amazon affiliate link to load on her website using Siteground. She’s gone through the tutorial, contacted Amazon, contacted Siteground with no positive results. Do you have any advice for how she can get past this roadblock? Thanks
I do not understand why people get discouraged if they can`t join Amazon, their cookie period is only 24 hours and their commissions also very low. There are better programs out there than Amazon with better affiliate commissions.
Great share.
My blog is affiliated with Klook and Amazon. 🙂
Amazon is s great money maker for affiliates but having said that, there are things they could improve, affiliates work so hard to drive traffic,and just to lose affiliate commission because someone did not make a purchase in 24 hours…………big purchases people need to think it over and maybe shop around. It would be nice if Amazon increased cookie time, or they could increase affiliate percentage.
but then one can always join other affiliate programs to increase affiliate income.
I struggle for affiliate marketing. I just give up when no one is buying anything. Thank you for all the useful tips.
Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick, you have to put in the work and keep working. Just like an offline business you need to put in the work before you can succeed in affiliate marketing.
These are great tips! Affiliate marketing can be easy when you know what you’re doing for sure!
Totally agree with you, I`ve always said if “little nobody me” could learn affiliate marketing, anyone sure can and succeed. All it takes is the right affiliate marketing training.
This post came at the perfect time for me. A company reached out to me and very soon, I have to start trying to sell their product in order to make money. I like what you said about just getting started instead of waiting to find the perfect niche because in my experience, once you start, everything else kind of falls into place. Before starting my own website/blog, I knew close to nothing about web design or marketing my blog posts, but I had to slowly learn everything as it became necessary.
Way to go Riana, like you, I knew nothing about websites or blogging but I took the right training and started everything from scratch. As you work more and more on your blog, things start falling into place.I think more people fail at blogging as they concentrate more on the part or making money blogging than learning how affiliate marketing works,
Very informative post, affiliate marketing can be very complicated especially for beginners.
I agree affiliate marketing just like anything else out there require training and if anyone out there tells me they started affiliate marketing and making money without any training, I think they are not being honest.
Wow! so great! i really need to start affiliate marketing and monitize my blog. Do you have any favourite affiliate programs? Great tip about Jaaxy keyword search! I had no idea, will try it out
I sure have a favorite affiliate program but that does not mean it will work for you, selling affiliate products works better if you sell products in your niche. Example, animals niche? not really, too broad, you`ll do better selling dog products if your niche is something to do with dogs. (hope it makes sense)
Consistency and patience is key. Good list of steps to follow and implement about affiliate marketing.
So true Sarah and this is why many would be affiliate marketers fail, they lack consistency.
These are great tips! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Hailey, glad you stopped by and found the post helpful.
I learnt something here today that I’d starting implementing ASAP. The truth about the online world is the patience it requires, its not easy when one start off but persistence matters and how dedicated a blogger is. If you are reading this, stay strong you’re almost there, i’m also talking to myslef to because im nother exempted
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Glad you found the post useful it`s true you have to put in alot of work to succeed online and this is why most fail, they want the money and success without putting in the work required.
These are great tips. Affiliate marketing needs a lot of patience and effort. Thanks for sharing.
So true many would be affiliate marketers do give up because they expect it to be easy and quick money. Affiliate marketing is not quick money, you need patience and hard work.
I’m not really new to affiliate marketing but I’ve been having such a hard time with it so thank you so much for sharing these tips!
Affiliate marketing success takes time, you can not just get started and the money starts rolling in.You must put in the work and be patient and things will work out.
I have considered affiliate marketing. I have even dabbled a little. I might try to take it further in the future.
Affiliate marketing can be lucrative so stop dabbling and do it seriously, there is no better feeling waking up and finding you made money while sleeping through affiliate product you`re selling.
It is a good idea to be really self-aware about you and your branding first before you start out with an affiliate. But once you know your brand, finding products which you feel you can market works really well.
I know I had to try several times when I got started before I could really understand how affiliate marketing works, with proper training and help, it`s easier to find success in affiliate marketing.
Thank you for this extensive guide. Affiliate marketing is one area that I would want to master but am unable to do so.
Find affiliate marketing training you`re happy with then learn how things work.I knew nothing about affiliate marketing when I got started online but took my time and learned all I had to,I`m happy to say it was worth it.
Such a helpful article. Thank you for sharing. I need to up my affliliate marketing game.
Like anything else all it needs for you to succeed in affiliate marketing is to learn and take action at what you learn this program helped me learn everything I know.
Thanks so much for sharing this informational post. Pinning for future reference.
Glad you found the post useful, thanks for sharing it with your friends and readers
Great tips and extremely useful for marketing! Anyone should read this because its so important and useful! -Sondra Barker @cuisineandtravel.com
Happy you found it helpful, let me know if you have any questions regarding affiliate marketing.
Great article. This is a topic I know I need to learn more about and you really helped me understand some good ways. Thank you.
Glad you found the post helpful if you feel you need any more help, just do let me know.
Affiliate marketing gide for beginners is definitely what I need! I need to reread everything.
I`m sure if you keep learning you will do well, there are many affiliate marketing courses out there that should help you.
Finding them both easy to use, I have done good with Amazon and Shareasale’s affiliate programs. Some programs are harder to get links than others.
I think if you know how to use Amazon affiliate links then you should find it easy to use other affiliate links,as all affiliate links work the same.
This is a great way for beginners to monetize their blogs. I love affiliate programs – they are like free money!
Glad you liked the post. Like you, I love making money with affiliate marketing, it`s a really satisfying feeling to wake up and see I made money while I was asleep.
This is such a useful article. I have learned so much about affiliate marketing from this informative read!
Glad you found the article useful, let me know if you need any help.I`m sure if you check around in my blog, there are many posts on affiliate marketing that you`ll find helpful as well.
Thanks for these wonderful tips I totally need this for my blog such a great information from you!
Glad you found the post useful,starting affiliate marketing can be confusing if you do not understand how it really works but once you have it, affiliate marketing is quite easy.
Very nice and well-explained info about Affiliate marketing. Very useful I must say.
Glad you found the post useful, hope you`re doing well with your affiliate marketing journey.
WOW an ultimate guide to affiliate marketing, thanks for sharing
Glad you like the post, affiliate marketing is easier than people take it to be if you know how.My advice to anyone starting is to get the right course in affiliate marketing and things should work out.
Wow this is such a great and helpful article. I’ll definitely pin this post so that more people can find it. Thanks!
Thanks for stopping by, glad you liked the post. Affiliate marketing is very lucrative if you know the right affiliate products in your niche.
You have some great information here! Anyone looking to start affiliate marketing should start right here!
Thanks Tammie, many new bloggers get confused when it comes to affiliate marketing but I think with the right training, making money selling affiliate products is easy.
Very detailed post. If there is anyone on the fence about how to get started with the affiliate marketing process then this article has some excellent suggestions. I would recommend however, about the whole find your niche process, that by doing that it is taking too much time.
Skip to keyword research first. After you have found your main keyword and about 15 LSI keywords then make content which will beat the competition. Other than that this article was fantastic.
Keep on rockin’!
Thanks for stopping by and for your comments, finding a niche does not take too much time and I feel it`s an important part of creating a successful blog so there is no reason you should rush it.
That was really informative, now I am motivated enough to start my own. lol. Thanks a lot 🙂
Glad you found the post useful and motivating, affiliate marketing with the right training is easier than most of us think.
Hi Saganser, thank you for this write-up that I can say has made AM quite simple to understand and follow. Great post.
The challenges that usually face beginners are technical, on page and off page optimisations of the website or blog. These require outsourcing of these to website developers who often charge a lot for small efforts and sometimes cause more problems than prior.
What are your advice on this, please?
Luckily I never had to outsource SEO,I learned at Wealthy Affiliate which is a program I`d recommend for everyone struggling with SEO. What more they offer endless lessons for a price of less than 1 cup of coffee at Star bucks. For just $1 a day(paid monthly) you get Everything about blogging, affiliate marketing,SEO, social media and the list is endless, you can give it a try for up to 10 days totally free.
hope this is helpful.
Informative article! How does one link a product to their blogpost? Thank you.
Thanks for stopping by, if you want to link affiliate products to your post, here is a post that will help you get started as I find the network beginner friendly.https://morewages.com/magiclinks-a-must-join-for-every-blogger-with-less-traffic
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Hey, thanks for stopping by, glad you liked the site.