Are you a content creator wondering how to monetize your content? If so, you’re in the right place. One of the most efficient ways to do so is to use affiliate marketing. This is a way for you to make a commission by promoting another brand’s products.
This article will explain how to start affiliate marketing and give information on affiliate marketing for beginners. Lastly, it will provide you with a helpful affiliate marketing step-by-step process.
Table of Contents
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Before learning how to start affiliate marketing, you need to learn about what it is.
Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing where you promote another company’s products. Affiliate marketing can drive sales and generate significant online revenue for both the brand and the affiliate marketer.
This is generally done with affiliate links. The brand or merchant will provide a creator with a unique link that can track the sales from this specific link. When someone buys a product using your affiliate link, the affiliate marketer will receive a commission.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
There are two parties involved in affiliate marketing: the merchant and the affiliate. The merchant is the business that is selling the product or service. It is who the customer actually pays for the product or service. The affiliate is the one who promotes the business’s content to their audience to increase their customers and sales. The affiliate gets some type of commission for a successful sale or even sometimes just for a lead.
How Do Affiliates Get Paid?
There are different ways for an affiliate to get paid. The way an affiliate is paid is typically determined by the product or service being sold and its value. There are four common ways for affiliates to be paid: pay per sale (fixed fee), pay per sale (percentage), pay per lead or inquiry, or pay per click (PPC).
Pay per sale is when there is a fixed fee commission that is paid to the affiliate every time a sale is made, regardless of the order value. Pay per sale is when the commission value is determined by the value of the order. The affiliate receives a certain percentage of the sale price. When the affiliate receives a fixed fee every time a qualified lead or inquiry is made, that is pay per lead or inquiry. Lastly, pay per click is when the affiliate receives a fixed fee every time a click is sent to the merchant’s site by the affiliate. This is usually a small fee.
Affiliate Marketing Step by Step
Follow this affiliate marketing step by step to start affiliate marketing. If you already have an online presence you can skip steps one and two and dive in at step three.
1 – Choose Your Niche
If you are wondering about how to start affiliate marketing for beginners, the first step is to determine your niche. You have to figure out what type of content you want to post about. If you already have a target audience, then you are already one step ahead in finding your niche. If not, try to focus on a specific category. Take a category and narrow it down to be more specific. For example, if you are considering your niche as makeup, focus on product reviews or makeup tutorials.
Your niche needs to be one that can be profitable as an affiliate partner. If we continue to use the makeup example, let’s say your niche is product reviews. You can review certain makeup products. You can pair with a merchant and use affiliate marketing. This allows you to continue reviewing makeup products while promoting for your merchant.
2 – Decide on a Platform to Join
Next, it is time to decide which platform to use. Affiliate marketing can be done on many different platforms, but there are some that work better than others. Blogs, YouTube, other social media, and email lists are four of the best platforms to start using. Blogs and YouTube are the two most popular platforms because it is easiest to build a following and audience.
A blog is a great place for affiliate marketing because you can embed your affiliate links within your content. Creating a blog has become easier and cheaper recently. If you decide to use a blog for affiliate marketing, it is important that you understand search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a digital marketing technique focused on increasing website traffic.
YouTube is a great option because it is free to use. You can add an affiliate link on your YouTube channel. It is very easy to put it in the video description or the comments section. The majority of YouTubers will mention within their video that the affiliate link is in the description.
Lastly, you can also use other social media platforms for affiliate marketing. Instagram is one of the top social media platforms to use for this. Instagram influencers are individuals with a reputation for engaging a large number of people and affecting their purchasing decisions. They can direct their large following to the brand or merchant’s products by promoting them to a certain extent. They can do this in multiple ways including a sponsored post, product review, and more.
Although the effectiveness of email marketing has decreased, it can still be very useful for affiliate marketing. You can use email lists to promote the merchant’s products. It is a great way to reach out to people without being too invasive. You can also create a section on your website where customers will get a discount for signing up with their email. Then, you can use their emails to send promotional material.
3 – Find Affiliate Networks or Schemes to Use
The next step to start affiliate marketing is finding at least one affiliate network or scheme to utilize. An affiliate network acts as the middle ground between affiliates and merchants. There are numerous affiliate networks out there.
A helpful way to choose between the networks is by looking at the merchants you want to promote. You want to find information about their affiliate schemes. With a quick Google search, you can search the merchant’s affiliate program. Use the search “[merchant] + affiliate program” to find this information.
After learning about certain merchants’ affiliate schemes, you should start joining affiliate networks. There are plenty available. Some of the most popular are Amazon Associates, Shareasale, ClickBank, CJ Affiliate, eBay Partner Network, and Gumroad.
Amazon Associates is Amazon’s affiliate marketing program. It helps content creators, publishers, and bloggers monetize their traffic. Because Amazon has millions of products and programs, you will be able to find products that align with your content.
Shareasale focuses on empowering advertisers and publishers of all sizes to grow their business online. Shareasale is a part of Awin, an affiliate marketing network. They help advertisers by increasing consumer reach. They do this by connecting over 211,000 global affiliate partners to online retailers. Publishers such as content creators, influencers, website owners, and technology partners, create profitable partnerships with Shareasale’s portfolio of the world’s best-known brands across multiple sectors.
4 – Choose Products to Promote
After joining affiliate networks and schemes, you have to decide which products you want to promote. The products you promote should match your content strategy. Now, think back to the earlier makeup example. You want to promote makeup products because it aligns with your content strategy of reviewing makeup products. The two align perfectly. Further, maybe you want to focus on only luxury makeup or only drugstore makeup. You need to do the same with your own niche and the products you promote.
5 – Plan a Strategy to Promote These Products
Lastly, you need to develop a strategy for promoting these products. How are you going to drive traffic to your merchant’s website? Answer this question with a promotion strategy. There are numerous ways to promote your products and services. Some of the most common strategies include SEO, PPC, social media, and content marketing.
FAQs about How to Start Affiliate Marketing:
- What is affiliate marketing?
- How does affiliate marketing work?
- How are affiliates paid for affiliate marketing?
- What is affiliate marketing step by step?
- What tips are there for affiliate marketing for beginners?
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