Affiliate Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide to Make Money

I often use the term “affiliate marketing”. Bloggers and internet marketers who have been into online marketing for years are familiar with affiliate marketing, and with the fact that it is the most lucrative way to earn money online.

In this article, I will share the basics of affiliate marketing and all the details you need to know in order to understand how affiliate marketing works.

Affiliate marketing allows people to sell a variety of products online through their blogs or website.

If you are looking for an easy way to monetize your website, you can easily implement affiliate marketing into your site.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing wherein you refer someone to any online product and when that person buys the product based on your recommendation, you receive a commission.

This commission varies from $1 to $10000, depending on what product you are promoting.

The most common question I hear is related to how companies track the record of who is sending the traffic and making the sales.

The simple answer involves a tracking URL, which is a unique link given to you by the affiliate company or product company.

This URL is used to keep track of all the traffic and sales you are making via your website or other promotional techniques.

Many old-fashioned affiliate programs allow a buyer to add the email or referral details in an effort to account for affiliate sales, but this is certainly not the best way to track progress.

The basic concept is signing up for an affiliate marketing network and finding products that are within your niche.

Once you find the product that is within your niche, you click on the hoplink to add your affiliate ID to the product link.

When a reader clicks on your hoplink and buys the item, you get a commission for the sale. Although this sounds simple, there are a few things that you need to know before you get started.

1. Choosing Your Affiliate Network

The affiliate network that you choose will have a lot to do with the type of products that you are selling. Different affiliate networks will focus on different items.

Some affiliate networks like Commission Junction mainly focus on selling website subscriptions and services while ClickBank will focus on digital products like ebooks and software packages.

Determine what affiliate network is going to fit best into your niche.

For instance, if you’re running a website that offers advice on insurance, you can use a lead based affiliate network to promote insurance quotes.

Some affiliate networks are known for late payments and other bad business practices so do your research beforehand.

2. Choosing Products

When you’re first starting out you’re going to be inundated with different products for marketing.

There first thing that you need to do is research on the products that you’re going to promote.

Unlike your niche where you are focusing on a small market, you can expand your product base and offer a wide variety of products or lead generating links when you’re marketing to readers.

Don’t go overboard, but have a couple of items that are relevant to your niche. Whether these are ebooks or software packages, your readers have broad-based needs within your niche so you should appeal to every aspect of their need.

Click on the “Gravity” or “Network Earnings” options on the affiliate network for stats on what products are selling the best.

3. Buy The Product

How are you going to give real information about a product if you have never used it? When somebody comes to your website they are looking for information on the product.

If you don’t give them detailed information then they are going to leave the site and probably never come back.

Buy the item so you know the ins and outs of what you’re trying to sell.

Never give broad information about a product or you’re going to come off as scammy.

You will be glad that you bought the product instead of just trying to fake your way through a review to do online marketing for it.

4. Be Honest

Affiliate marketing is all about being honest with a product. If there are things that you don’t like about the product, tell your reader.

This will differentiate you from the other marketers trying to sell them a product based on the features.

When you explain what you don’t like about the item you show that you actually know what it does and what it doesn’t do.

You can easily build rapport with your readers and establish online trust.

This will bring them back to your website when they need a new product or are wondering about different websites that you’ve tried out.

5. Cloaking

Almost everybody knows what a hoplink looks like. When you put hoplinks on your website, a reader is going to know that you’re trying to sell them something.

These links are not only telltale signs of a sale; they are not aesthetically appealing to your websites.

Cloaking your links is the best way to keep the website looking professional while not coming off as a hard sell.

You can use cloaking tools or you can use an anchor text link. This allows you to embed a link within a certain phrase.

For instance, if you’re trying to sell an ebook on acne you can add your hoplink to “Acne Ebook” so that when the phrase is clicked the reader is taken to the product page.

6. Viral Media

Viral media is an easy way to drum up traffic to your site or blog. If you are going with a hosting plan then you will be able to easily host videos on your site.

If you don’t have a hosting plan, head over to Bluehost or HostGator and buy one. This is very cheap and will give you the freedom to upload and house your videos per your website or blog.

Record yourself going over the product or take screenshots of the product to show the different features. Also talk about what you don’t like about the item to keep your readers informed. Video marketing is a great way to generate traffic.

So, in simple words: Many online companies who sell products such as shoes, web-hosting space or any service, offer an affiliate program. You can simply sign up for the program and get your unique tracking link. 

Now, whenever you are writing about the product, you can simply use this special tracking affiliate link to recommend the company’s site, and if your readers buy anything, you will get a commission.

Every affiliate program has a set TOS. For example, many of them offer a 60-day cookie period, which means that if a visitor uses your special affiliate link to land on the sales page of the site and instead of buying today, he buys at some point within the next 60 days, you will be entitled to the sales commission.

Common terms associated with affiliate marketing

• Affiliates: Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and make sales.
• Affiliate marketplace: There are many marketplaces like Shareasale, CJ, and Clickbank, which work as central databases for affiliate programs in different niches.
• Affiliate software: Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product, for example, iDevaffiliate.
• Affiliate link: Special tracking link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate promotion.
• Affiliate ID: Similar to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which you can add to any page of the product site.
• Payment mode: Different affiliate programs offer different methods of payment. For example check, wire transfer, Paypal, Payoneer and many more.
• Affiliate Manager/OPM: Many companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers to earn more by giving them optimization tips.
• Commission percentage/amount: The amount or percentage you will be receiving in affiliate income from every sale.
• 2-tier affiliate marketing: This is a great way of making money from an affiliate program. With this method, you recommend that others join affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when a sub-affiliate makes a sale, (similar to MLM or multi-level marketing.) This income is popularly known as a sub-affiliate commission.
• Landing pages: A unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing pages, and you can run A/B testing to see which pages convert best for you.
• Custom affiliate income/ account: Unlike a generic affiliate account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the most affiliate sales for them.
• Link clocking: Most of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique like URL shorteners, Thirsty Affiliates, etc., you can turn ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your readers.
• Custom coupons: Many programs allow affiliates to create custom coupons which are also used to track sales. Custom discount coupons help you to increase affiliate sales as well.

For companies offering an affiliate program, this is one of the best ways to receive free promotion, thus saving substantially on advertising.

For example, whenever you see coupons or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when you make a purchase, webmasters make money.

Affiliate marketing:: FAQ

At this point, you should have a basic understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how it works. If you have any questions regarding any of this, you can always ask it in the comments section below.

Now, let me answer some of the common questions asked by webmasters and marketers where affiliate marketing is concerned:

1. Is affiliate marketing harmful or illegal? No, it is neither harmful nor illegal, as you will simply be using the particular link provided to you rather than a direct link to link to any site.

2. Affiliate marketing and AdSense: Can we use both? Yes, you can because affiliate marketing does not violate any Adsense TOS. 

In fact, for me, affiliate marketing works better than Adsense, and that is one reason you see fewer AdSense ads here.

3. How do I find an affiliate link for any product? Not all companies offer an affiliate program, of course, but for those that do offer affiliate programs, you can check their website for related information. 

When searching, be sure to check the company’s FAQ page if they have one. Another way to find this information to do a simple Google search.

For example, one could place the following phrase into the Google search engine: “product name + affiliate program“.

Replace product name with the name of the product you are promoting, and this should bring you to the landing page.

Many companies use an affiliate marketplace like ShareASale, CJ, or Clickbank. These are free to use and allow you to create a free account.

4. How to find new products to promote? Affiliate marketplaces such as those mentioned above are the best places to start your affiliate marketing research. 

You can browse your niche and see the top performing affiliate programs.

Alternatively, you can keep an eye on blogs in your niche and see which products they are promoting and what methods they are using.

5. Is it important to have a blog for affiliate promotion? Not necessarily, however, a blog is really the best promotional tool. With that said, you can always use methods such as PPC or advertising to promote a product as well. 

This is more like hit-and-run affiliate marketing, however. The best way to make the most of your affiliate marketing opportunities is to have a blog and use it for hard and soft promotion.

6. How much does it cost to join an affiliate program? There is no charge for joining an affiliate program, however, your total cost depends on what promotion technique you are using. 

For example, a blog post doesn’t cost a dime whereas PPC marketing, email marketing or advertising come with various price tags.

7. What qualifications do I need to become an affiliate marketer? There is literally no qualification required to become an affiliate marketer, though having good copywriting skills and marketing skills will be an added advantage.

8. Are there programs available which automatically converts links into affiliate links? There are a few networks like Viglink and Skimlinks which automatically convert normal links into affiliate links. 

They use Javascript so it’s SEO friendly, and you do not need to sign up for an individual affiliate program.

9. How much money can one make from affiliate marketing? As I mentioned above, there is no limit to the amount of money you can earn from affiliate programs. It all depends on which program you’re promoting and how many conversions you are making. 

I started with $126 as my first affiliate income, and now I make almost $6k-9K/month by promoting products which I use day-to-day.

Alright, I now understand what affiliate marketing is all about. How do I get started?

Here, I and many guest authors have covered some of the best guides to help you to understand in depth about getting started, and some of the pros and cons. Following is a list from our affiliate marketing archive which will help you to get started:

I hope this beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing will help you to get started. If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask me in the comments section below.

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