Starting in affiliate marketing is something that many people aspire to do. And who can blame them? You can read so many success stories of people who have built a passive income empire with their affiliate websites and are now able to work from everywhere around the world. Who wouldn’t want that?
Before you can even begin to think about packing your suitcase and moving to Thailand, you have to start somewhere. That’s why this article centers around the question of how to get started with affiliate marketing.
First, we’ll look at what an affiliate marketer actually is, to help you to determine whether it’s the right fit for you.
Then we’ll delve deeper into different ways of building your affiliate marketing business. In that section, you’ll discover how to do affiliate marketing on different platforms, from building your own website to leveraging social media.
Last but not least, we’ll discuss the ways in which affiliate marketers make money, which will help you in making the right decisions right off the bat when starting your affiliate marketing journey.
Index:
- How to become an affiliate marketer?
- What is an affiliate marketer?
- How much do affiliate marketers make?
- Dropshipping vs affiliate marketing, which is which?
- How to get into affiliate marketing?
- How to start an affiliate marketing business?
- How to start a website for affiliate marketing?
- How to start affiliate marketing with no money?
- How to start affiliate marketing without website?
- How to do affiliate marketing on YouTube?
- How to add affiliate links to YouTube?
- How to become a Twitch affiliate?
- What is a Twitch affiliate?
- How to apply for affiliate on Twitch?
- How to use Pinterest for affiliate marketing?
- How to start affiliate marketing on Pinterest?
- How to make money on Pinterest with affiliate links?
- How to use Twitter for affiliate marketing?
- How to promote affiliate links on Twitter?
- How to add affiliate links to Medium?
- How to affiliate market on Medium?
- How to make money with affiliate marketing?
- How to create affiliate links?
- Affiliate marketing tips
- Best affiliate programs for bloggers
- Best affiliate programs for beginners
How to become an affiliate marketer?
There are many different roads you can take to becoming an affiliate marketer. Before you start your affiliate marketing business, it is important to have a sense of where you are going.
A sense of what kind of affiliate marketing you’re aspiring to be. Thinking about this before you actually start with affiliate marketing can greatly increase the chances of you arriving where you want to be.
That’s why in this first section, we’ll look at what an affiliate marketer is in the broad sense. You’ll read about what an affiliate marketer does and how they make money (we won’t tell you how much, but more about that later).
If after reading all that you still feel like affiliate marketing might be something for you, you’ll find out how you can go about starting your own affiliate marketing business in the second part of the article. We’ll discuss the many different paths you might take, including ways to start affiliate marketing without having your own website.
What is an affiliate marketer?
You might be wondering by now, what’s an affiliate marketer actually doing to make a living? Let’s start there.
An affiliate marketer is someone who earns a commission for promoting another’s products or services. The amount of money earned is directly correlated to the number of sales or leads that the affiliate has delivered.
The precise nature of the collaboration between an affiliate marketer and the advertiser (the company or person whose products they promote) differs. In one case, the affiliate marketer might earn a commission for every sale that he accomplishes, while in other instances commission might be tied to the number of clicks on a banner or downloads of an e-book.
Whatever the chosen model might be, it’s important to note that an affiliate marketer is compensated based on the performance of his promotions. The advertiser only has to pay once a sale has been made, or another agreed-upon criterion has been met.
This makes the next question a little challenging to answer, but we’ll try to give you a ball-park answer anyway.
How much do affiliate marketers make?
Asking how much an affiliate marketer makes, is kind of like asking about how much “an” NBA star or professional football player makes. LeBron James and Lionel Messi are going to be on a whole other level than most of their colleagues.
In much the same way, the amount of money an affiliate marketer can make depends on how good they are at what they’re doing.
The beauty of affiliate marketing is how scalable it is. Many affiliate marketers invest part of their income in growing their business. You can constantly expand on the amount of money you’re making by building new websites, increasing your audience, promoting new offers, and so on. This means that the sky’s the limit.
To give you an idea of how much you can make as an affiliate marketer, here are some statics:
- The affiliate market in the USA alone was worth over 7 billion dollars in 2021 (source)
- 48% of affiliate marketers worldwide earn $20k a year
- The best earning 3% of affiliate marketers earn over $150k a year
According to this research by Glassdoor, an affiliate marketer makes $65,800 a year on average, with the range going from $42k at the low end to $83k at the top.
Dropshipping vs affiliate marketing, which is which?
Before we’re going any further on shaping your starting affiliate marketing journey, this is a good place to say something about dropshipping vs affiliate marketing. Since you are interested in affiliate marketing, chances are you’ve also heard about dropshipping.
Maybe you’re still a little hesitant whether starting with affiliate marketing is the right path for you, or if you should instead opt for a dropshipping business.
Let’s look at what distinguishes those two different ways of earning an income online.
We’ve established what affiliate marketing is. It is the promotion of another’s (the advertiser) products or services by an affiliate marketer, – also often called a “publisher” because they usually publish content (blogs, videos, etc.) to promote their affiliate offer.
You can read more about the publishing part of becoming an affiliate marketer further down in this article.
With dropshipping, you sell those products on your own platform. You then forward that order to the supplier of the product, who ships the product to the customer. This allows you to sell products in your own webshop, without having to worry about inventory or shipment. Still, it takes more effort than affiliate marketing, because you are managing a larger part of the sales process.
Affiliate marketing vs dropshipping from a business point of view:
Roughly speaking, once you have built your affiliate business, you can make money without putting any more effort into it. Once your content is attracting visitors who will then discover and click on your affiliate links, you will keep earning a commission.
With dropshipping, however, you will always have to manage your incoming orders and forward them to your suppliers. You are also responsible for customer support and returns because you are the one where people actually buy the product. In return, you’ll usually receive a higher reward for any sale made than with affiliate marketing.
The most important question you’ll have to ask yourself is what type of business you want to build for yourself. As strong advocates of the affiliate marketing model, we adhere to the idea of a business that will also make money when you turn away your attention for a while.
How to get into affiliate marketing?
Alright, we’re going to assume that by now, you have decided that affiliate marketing is, in fact, the way to go for you. Or that at the very least you are still interested in the process of getting into the affiliate marketing business.
That’s what the second part of this article is all about. Are you ready to discover how you can start affiliate marketing today, even if you don’t have any money to invest in building your business?
How to start an affiliate marketing business?
Did that peak your interest and are you now wondering how to become an affiliate yourself? That’s what we will be discussing in this next part.
There are many different ways to start an affiliate marketing business. This makes sense when you remember that affiliate marketing is all about promoting another person’s or company’s products or services.
Say I bought a table lamp that I’m fond of. It exceeds all expectations. In fact, I’m such a huge fan that I reached out to the manufacturer of the lamp because I would love a way to share the lampy love with my friends and family. The manufacturer provides me with a discount code that I can share on my Facebook page, and every time that code is used to make a purchase I’ll receive 5% of the order value.
That’s affiliate marketing right there.
This example is just meant to show you that starting an affiliate marketing business doesn’t have to be difficult, or expensive. You can start as small as you want. You can start without investing anything but your time. An affiliate marketing business can start on simply the love for a certain (type of) product, and grow from there.
To give you a little bit more guidance, however, we’ll now look at some concrete ideas to build your affiliate marketing business upon.
How to start a website for affiliate marketing?
The most common and well-known way to begin in affiliate marketing without being an influencer is starting an affiliate marketing website.
How to start affiliate marketing with no audience? An affiliate website is a website that is built with the main purpose of promoting affiliate programs. You will use this website to attract visitors, build an audience, and refer them to products and services that are relevant to their needs in order to earn a commission when they buy said products or services.
“Needs” is a key term here. Keep in mind that your ultimate goal is to market and sell to the people who visit your website. This will be a lot easier for you to do when the content (pages, blogs, videos, etc.) on your page help them solve a problem they’re facing.
It’s just a lot harder to sell anything on a blog about your personal life than it would be on a website with information about how to build your own mechanical keyboard, where you can recommend the best parts for the job.
So the first thing you need to start a website for affiliate marketing is an idea. This might sound lame, but the initial idea is in fact the most important factor in determining the chance of success your affiliate marketing website has. You want to determine the best niche market for you to be in.
What do we mean by a niche? A niche market is a small segment of a bigger market that can be defined and isolated from that bigger market by its own preferences, needs, and identity. An example would be the bigger market “women’s shoes”, which has many conceivable niche markets:
- Business shoes for female bosses
- Stylish workout footwear
- Durable and comfy shoes for gardening
- Eco-friendly and durable
And so on. As you might see, many of these categories can themselves be narrowed down even further. Instead of workout footwear, I might choose to focus on women who are balancing a career and family with training for a marathon.
Try to be as specific as possible in defining your topic and audience. The better you can fit the content on your website to the needs of your visitors, the bigger the chance of them buying something via one of your affiliate links.
When you have the idea and it’s time to actually start building your website, we recommend using WordPress. Thanks to the utilization of many different plugins, WordPress offers flexibility for building your website that is unmatched by any other building platform out there.
By now you might be wondering, how much does it cost to start affiliate marketing? And that’s the beauty of it: you can start for as little as you wish to invest, even if you don’t have anything that you can or want to invest at all! Don’t believe us? Keep reading to discover how to start affiliate marketing for free.
How to start affiliate marketing with no money?
It’s even possible to start affiliate marketing with no money to invest. This makes it the ideal setup for anyone who is looking to build something for themselves besides their nine-to-five, without the possibility or wish to invest their savings.
If you are willing to invest a little bit, you can start an affiliate marketing website for next to nothing. All you really need is to register a domain name and pay for hosting. This could be done for just a few dollars a month.
However, that’s next to nothing.
If you’re looking for ways on how to start affiliate marketing for free, you’ll be wanting to look into starting out as an affiliate marketer without building a website.
Chances are that if you have no money, then you will probably have time that you can invest in your project. There are other ways to monetize that time than by building a website. Ways that you could start utilizing today, without having to spend anything.
How to start affiliate marketing without website?
Most of the time when we’re talking about affiliate marketers, we refer to people who build a (portfolio of) website(s), attract an audience, and promote products and services to that audience in order to earn an income.
You do not need to have a website in order to have an audience you can reach, however. If you’re looking to start affiliate marketing without having to build a website, all you really need is a social media presence.
Pro tip! The best way to start with affiliate marketing with no website and no money is to share the most valuable information on a topic that interests you on social media. Grow your account to at least ten thousand followers and slowly start to promote the most interesting affiliate programs.
For a good example, take a look at this guy. He has built his affiliate marketing empire on YouTube, simply by making content that fits the needs of many people: finding the best deal.
This is another way of looking at the niches that we talked about earlier. Instead of focussing on a specific product or market, The Deal Guy has focussed on the “best deal” niche. And it worked, seeing how he is nearing 2 million subscribers on YouTube.
So, how are channels like The Deal Guy making money from YouTube?
How to do affiliate marketing on YouTube?
Did you know that YouTube is the second-largest search engine, beaten only by Google? Millions of people browse the platform every day, looking for quality content that fills their information needs. This means that YouTube presents a big opportunity for every affiliate marketer looking to expand – or start – their business.
Doing affiliate marketing on YouTube is actually not that difficult, as the example from The Deal Guy made clear. And it doesn’t have to be expensive to get started. In fact, it is a pretty neat way to start affiliate marketing with little to no money.
Of course, you can make your setup and equipment as expensive as you’d want. However, you could get started with just the camera on your smartphone.
The process of getting started is much the same as we described for starting an affiliate website. You will be promoting affiliate offers. And in order to promote those offers, you are going to need an audience.
This means that you’ll need to decide what niche market you are going to target. Once you get that figured out, you’ll need to create relevant content that offers what your target audience is looking for. That means getting out that camera and shooting some videos. There are different types of videos that work well from an affiliate marketing standpoint, like:
- Product comparisons
- Reviews
- Unboxings
- How-to and tutorial
Keep in mind the example of The Deal Guy. The strength of an account like that is actually in its simplicity. Just a guy talking to the camera and discussing great deals. It can be as easy as that to do affiliate marketing on YouTube.
How to add affiliate links to YouTube?
You create content – in this case, videos – to attract an audience. Once those visitors start coming in, it’s time to monetize them and start earning some affiliate income.
The way to do that is via affiliate links. Remember? They were the type of links that if your visitors follow them and make a purchase, you’ll earn a commission.
When you’re building an affiliate website, you would simply add those links to appropriate places in the articles, pages, and blogs you are writing. There are two main ways to add affiliate links to YouTube content:
- You can add affiliate links to the description of your YouTube videos. This description will appear beneath your videos and you can add as many as you like. It’s good practice to refer to those links in the video itself, just by mentioning that people can find a link there to the product you’re discussing.
- YouTube offers the end card feature, allowing you to display clickable cards at the end of each video, tempting your viewers to take additional action. This could be watching another video, or subscribing to your channel, for example. If you’re part of the YouTube Partner Program, you can also show links to external websites in these cards, using them to promote your most relevant affiliate links.
And there you have it, doing affiliate marketing on YouTube is a lot like building your own affiliate website, only you create video content instead of written articles to attract an audience. One of the great benefits of this approach is that you don’t need to worry about hosting and building your own website, so you could get started with just your phone.
Choosing this approach might be the best fit for you when you:
- Don’t like writing but love being in front of a camera and editing
- Are looking for a cheap – or even free – way to get into affiliate marketing
- Have expert knowledge on a subject that is best shared through visual aids
How to become a Twitch affiliate?
Becoming a Twitch affiliate is another way to earn an affiliate income via video content. Twitch is focused on the live streaming of videos. The roots of Twitch are in streaming gaming videos, but people are also creating content on sports, music, entertainment, and much more.
Everyone can start a Twitch account and broadcast about the topic of their choice to attract an audience.
The main difference between Twitch and YouTube is that the former is focused on direct broadcasting. YouTube on the other hand is – although they offer a direct broadcasting option – in its basis more of a search engine that is meant for lasting content that people can find via the search bar.
What is a Twitch affiliate?
A Twitch affiliate is simply a member of the Twitch Affiliate program, that allows qualified streamers to monetize their channel and the audience they’ve built by putting out their content.
As we have seen, Twitch is aimed at direct broadcasting. This means that being a Twitch affiliate asks for a different approach than affiliate marketing on YouTube.
Becoming a successful Twitch affiliate means that you will have to build a following of fans. Your Twitch audience will consist of people that are following you and consistently tuning in to your content.
Ideally, you would also build your own following on YouTube of course. However, thanks to the search engine application of YouTube, you have an opportunity there that you don’t have with Twitch: reaching an audience by making videos that answer a specific question or problem.
How to apply for affiliate on Twitch?
You can’t actively apply to become an affiliate on Twitch. The only way to get to that coveted status, is by reaching the criteria that are needed so you will get invited to join.
At the moment of writing this article, the following criteria are applicable for anyone who’s looking to apply for affiliate status on Twitch:
- You have broadcasted at least 500 minutes in the last 30 days
- Those 500 minutes were distributed over at least 7 unique broadcasting days
- On average, there were at least 3 concurrent viewers of your broadcasts
- You have at least 50 followers
Once your channel fulfills this criteria, you should receive an invitation to join the affiliate program within a few weeks via email and a notification in the platform. Via this invitation, you can start the setup process that will allow you to start monetizing your content.
How to use Pinterest for affiliate marketing?
Using Pinterest for affiliate marketing is probably a great addition to your affiliate business when you’ve chosen a niche that has a strong visual component, like crafts, interior design, or gardening.
Millions of people are using Pinterest everyday to browse for ideas and inspiration. This opens up a great opportunity for any affiliate marketer looking to reach those people.
You can use Pinterest for affiliate marketing in two ways:
- You can add affiliate links to your “pins” (the visuals that you post to Pinterest) directly, much like you would add affiliate links to your video content on YouTube.
- Or you could use Pinterest to promote the articles on your affiliate website, by posting pins to attract people’s attention and then linking them on to the entire article.
How to start affiliate marketing on Pinterest?
To get started with affiliate marketing on Pinterest, these are the first steps you should take:
- Launch a Pinterest business account. A business account allows you more freedom in promoting your affiliate links directly. Furthermore, it allows cool features like Analytics, Ads, and Audience Insights, arming you with valuable data and information.
- Discover the trends. Just as with any other affiliate marketing channel, you need to know what your audience wants in order to lock them in and make money from them. Follow boards with similar offerings to yours. Surround yourself with the content that your audience sees when they are browsing Pinterest. Make sure that you see what they see, everytime you log onto the platform.
- Produce great visuals. To make it as an affiliate marketer on Pinterest, you are going to need great visuals. Otherwise it’s going to be impossible for you to stand out from competitors. Always be on the lookout for opportunities to be better than the other boards in your niche (you didn’t follow them for nothing, right?)
- Create valuable content to promote your affiliate links. Don’t just go around throwing pins to boards with your affiliate links stapled through them. Your success will be based on the quality of the content you’re putting out. Try and find ways to give more value to your audience. For example by offering additional articles or videos with more in-depth information and tips, in which you can promote your links. Ideally, your links should be an addition to valuable content, not the other way around.
- Interact with other users in order to get a broader presence on Pinterest and boost your visibility.
- Analyze, adjust, adapt. The best way to achieve success as a starting affiliate marketer, is by constantly analyzing what you have been doing, review what has worked well and what hasn’t, and adjust your strategy accordingly. This means you are constantly working on better adapting to your audience and their needs.
How to make money on Pinterest with affiliate links?
Making money on Pinterest with affiliate links works in the same way as with your own website, or the other affiliate options we’ve talked about. As we’ve already discussed, you can either add your links to pins directly, or choose to use pins to promote articles on your affiliate website in which the links are incorporated.
We recommend choosing the latter approach, so as also to improve your visibility in search engines like Google. In that way, you’ll be building different channels at the same time instead of putting all your affiliate eggs in one basket.
How to use Twitter for affiliate marketing?
Twitter is still one of the most popular social media channels. Recent research by Omnicore found that there are 199 million monetizable daily Twitter users. This makes using Twitter for affiliate marketing a very lucrative chance.
You might not be able to get the same results as Elon Musk, who can influence the exchange rate of an entire cryptocurrency asset with one tweet. Still, using Twitter for affiliate marketing can be very profitable.
Here are some tips on how to use Twitter for affiliate marketing:
- Use your bio. This is an excellent place to inform people on what they can expect if they decide to follow you, promote your affiliate website, or put in your most important affiliate offer.
- Engage with other users. Twitter lends itself for replying to other peoples’ tweets that use the same hashtags like you. This will allow you to enter the conversation about topics you are focussing on.
- Be active. Chances of your success with Twitter affiliate marketing will increase rapidly from tweeting regularly, since this is the best way of getting your voice out there, being heard, and building up your number of followers.
- Hashtags are your friend. The beauty of Twitter is that you can enter a conversation on a certain topic by using the appropriate hashtags, which allows you to get your content out there even if you’re new to the game and don’t have many followers yet.
- Promote additional content. It might not be the best approach to simply start tweeting your affiliate links and offers. Instead, make sure that you write insightful content or shoot amazing videos on the topic you’re tweeting about. Use Twitter to promote that content, get people to read or watch it, then hit them with your best affiliate offers.
How to promote affiliate links on Twitter?
Comparable to what we discussed for Pinterest, there are different ways to promote your affiliate links on Twitter. The first and most obvious place to start is your bio. You might want to put your most amazing affiliate offer there, that one product that changed your life and might change the lives of your followers just the same.
It’s also a good idea to use your bio to link to your website, where your followers can then find the awesome articles you put out and have filled with your affiliate links and offers.
You could choose to promote your affiliate links on Twitter by simply throwing them around in your tweets. A better strategy, however, is the one we painted above.
Create good and valuable content on a different medium, like blog articles on an affiliate website, videos on YouTube, or a stream on Twitch. We’ve discussed how to monetize these earlier in this article.
Then, use Twitter to join the conversation around your topic and promote that content. Reply to relevant hashtags. Tweet small nuggets of wisdom from your other content and direct people to your website or YouTube channel to read or see more.
How to add affiliate links to Medium?
Medium is an open publication platform, where readers can find original pieces of writing and thinking. Some of these are free, some of them are available only to members who pay a small monthly fee.
That is the first way to earn money from writing on Medium, which anyone can do. As a writer, you have the choice to make your writing available for free, or for paying members only, in which case Medium will pay you a commission based on the number of people reading your stuff.
In this article however, we are interested in how you can make money from Medium with affiliate marketing. So let’s shift our attention there.
Adding affiliate links to Medium is not difficult. Medium doesn’t ban content with affiliate links, so you can simply publish articles that link directly to your affiliate offers like you would on your own affiliate website.
How to do affiliate marketing on Medium?
The key to affiliate marketing on Medium in the right way, is resisting the temptation of putting too many affiliate links in your content.
You want to focus on quality. Comparable to Google’s algorithm, Medium’s systems are designed to favor quality content that brings readers what they’re looking for. This means that stuffing your writing full of affiliate links will end up in your content not being found and read.
Writer for your audience, not simply for promoting your affiliate offers. It’s better to add just one really good affiliate offer in your article that will really help your readers with the problems they’re facing, than to cram as many affiliate links in there as possible hoping that the sheer volume is going to ensure people will click on them.
How to make money with affiliate marketing?
Now that you know what it takes to become an affiliate marketer and to start your affiliate business, it’s time to talk about how you are going to actually make some money with affiliate marketing.
That is, if you’ve gotten this far and are still reading, we’ll assume that we haven’t scared you away from the desire to become an affiliate marketer.
We’ve been talking about affiliate offers and affiliate links a lot already. And for good reason, because they are how you are going to make money from affiliate marketing.
Without the right products or services to promote, you won’t be able to make a commission. And no commission means no money. It’s as simple as that. So let’s take a look at how you can get started on making those commissions flow in and start building your passive monthly income.
How to create affiliate links?
The most common way to create affiliate links is by using affiliate networks. An affiliate network is a large collection of affiliate programs from many different companies. Signing up to the network allows you to tap into these programs, which will allow you to generate a unique affiliate link that you can promote.
Popular affiliate networks that cover a wide range of branches, are:
We’ll talk more about the best affiliate programs to find links to products and services you can promote later in this article.
For now, it’s important to know that in order to create affiliate links, it’s important to find the right affiliate network or program. In other words: one that offers the type of products or services that you can promote in the niche that you have chosen.
Affiliate marketing tips
In order to make money with affiliate marketing, there are some important things you’ll have to keep in mind. Most of these were covered in the article already. Since we’re talking about making money here, this is a good place to refresh our memories.
Some of the most important affiliate marketing tips are:
- Choose the right niche. We talked about this in the section about starting an affiliate website, but it applies for whatever channel you might have chosen. Determining the niche that you are going to target, the topic you’ll be creating content about and will choose your affiliate offers in, is at the very basis of your affiliate business. Go for something that you are knowledgeable about already, or otherwise eager to learn more. The most important thing: the niche must give you enough energy to keep pushing to build your affiliate empire.
- The right mix of channels. You’ll have to think about the best ways for you to promote your affiliate offers. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, but don’t choose too many channels either. It’s better to focus on a few things and do them right, than to try and leverage every channel. A good way to start is, for example, building an affiliate website with articles to put your affiliate links in, and using Twitter and/or Pinterest to promote those articles.
- Be patient. The most important affiliate marketing tip that anyone can give you, is probably to simply be patient. You are working to build up a passive way of making money for the long run. Don’t expect to become rich overnight, making it easy to get disappointed with your results and throwing in the towel. With affiliate marketing, good things come to those who wait and keep grinding and working while waiting.
- Data, data, data. Last but not least: make sure that you can measure the results of your efforts. This will allow you to see what works and what doesn’t, so you can focus on the right stuff and eliminate waste. Our affiliate dashboard will give you everything you might ever need in that regard.
Best affiliate programs for bloggers
Many affiliate marketers rely on their blog or affiliate website to attract an audience. If that’s you, it makes sense that you are looking for the best affiliate programs for bloggers.
The best program for you depends mainly on the topic you are blogging or writing about.
Bloggers who are in the right niche might find a lot of interesting programs to promote there. If you have an audience of entrepreneurs, for example, promoting Ecommerce programs or SEO affiliate programs to help them build their online presence might be a great way to boost your commission.
Especially when the products you promote are subscription-based, allowing you to earn a monthly income from anyone who signs up.
Things also depend on your location. A US-based lifestyle blogger, for example, might be very well off with the Amazon Associates program, while their Dutch counterpart would probably be better served with the Bol.com affiliate programs, since the latter is better known in the Netherlands.
Best affiliate programs for beginners
If you’re just starting out as an affiliate marketer, you’re probably looking for an affiliate program that’s easy to use and has a wide range of interesting products to promote.
One of the best affiliate programs for beginners is probably Amazon Associates.
It’s for a reason that so many affiliate marketers began their journey on this platform. Amazon has an amazingly broad product catalog, so that almost anyone will find some interesting stuff to promote here.
Another benefit is that most people are familiar with Amazon. This will promote their level of thrust after following one of your Amazon affiliate links, making them more likely to buy and earning you a commission.
Do keep in mind however that the commission rates that Amazon pays are fairly low. So be sure to be on the lookout for affiliate programs that might offer you a bigger return on your efforts for comparable products. Good networks to look into, are:
Finally, when you’re looking for ways to earn money every time a reader clicks one of your links, without them even having to buy anything, you might want to look into pay per click – or ppc – affiliate programs. If that sounds like something for you, check out this list of the best pay per click affiliate programs.
Pay per click could be interesting for beginning affiliate marketers, but you have to realize that the commissions are way lower than with other programs. While it could create some interesting first revue, it might not be the way to build your business in the long run.
And there you have it: everything you need to know about how to start affiliate marketing. We wish you all the luck on the path ahead of you, which can be rewarding but sometimes also daunting and difficult to navigate. Please keep in mind that tracking your progress is your friend and that the right affiliate dashboard can make all the difference in the world, being the compass that you need to get to that sweet oasis of a passive, affiliate income.
Frequently asked questions about starting as an affiliate marketer
To provide you with something like a summary at the end of all this new knowledge, we will answer some frequently asked questions people have about starting in affiliate marketing.
How to make money in affiliate marketing without a website?
There are multiple ways to make money with affiliate marketing without having a website or a landing page. You can promote affiliate products on every platform with an audience. This means you could leverage YouTube, Instagram, or any other social media platform. You could even send someone your link via WhatsApp or e-mail. As long as you can find a way to reach people, you can earn money by sharing affiliate links with them.
How to create an affiliate marketing website?
Or is affiliate marketing hard for beginners? Creating an affiliate website is pretty easy, since launching a website has become very straightforward. The difficulty is in finding the right niche. Find a topic you are knowledgeable and passionate about, in order to ensure that you will remain motivated to keep building your affiliate marketing website after creating it.
How much does it cost to start affiliate marketing?
Starting affiliate marketing is free, whether you are the affiliate or the advertiser. An advertiser only has to pay a commission once they’ve sold a product. As an affiliate, you can start out by promoting your links on free media. If you which to build an affiliate marketing website, you need to consider some costs for registering a domain and hosting the website.
Can I start affiliate marketing with no money?
Yes, you can start affiliate marketing with no money. You will just need to get creative about how and where to promote your affiliate links. Start out by using channels that are free, like Instagram and YouTube, and build from there. With no money at all, you won’t be able to launch a website, but you can still start building your affiliate marketing business.
How much money do you need to start affiliate marketing?
As we’ve seen, you don’t need any money at all to start affiliate marketing. If you wish to build an affiliate marketing website, you need some money, but still not a lot. Registering a domain name and hosting doesn’t have to be expensive. If you have some money to get you started, you could of course fasten the take-off of your business with ads and build the authority of your site with something like linkbuilding.
How to create affiliate links?
You create affiliate links by signing up for an affiliate network or program, like the Amazon affiliate program. Then you can select the products or services from that network you wish to promote. The affiliate software then generates your own personal and unique affiliate link, which allows the software to promote your promotion efforts.
How much can I make from affiliate marketing?
How much you can make from affiliate marketing is literally limitless. That is the beauty of affiliate marketing. Let’s say you have built your first successful affiliate marketing website and making a decent amount of money. You could then invest a part of that money in launching another website, adding to the amount of money you are making from affiliate marketing.
What are the 3 main types of affiliates?
There are three main types of affiliates:
1. Pay Per Click (PPC) Affiliates: These affiliates are paid for each click that leads to a sale. They are responsible for creating and managing advertising campaigns for the company, driving traffic to the company’s website and products, and monitoring the performance of the campaigns.
2. Pay Per Sale (PPS) Affiliates: These affiliates are paid a percentage of each sale they make. They are responsible for convincing potential customers to buy the company’s products or services, and they typically receive higher commissions than PPC affiliates.
3. Pay Per Lead (PPL) Affiliates: These affiliates are paid for each lead they generate, which could include a signup, newsletter subscription, survey completion, or other action. They are responsible for driving interested parties to the company’s website and products, and they typically receive lower commissions than PPS affiliates.
Is it too late to start affiliate marketing?
No, it is not too late to start affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online, and it is a rapidly growing industry. It involves promoting products or services for other companies in exchange for commissions. You can start affiliate marketing by signing up with affiliate programs and networks, such as AWIN or Impact. You can then promote products or services through your website, blog, or social media accounts. You can also join affiliate marketing forums to get advice and tips from experienced marketers. With the right strategy, you can make a lot of money from affiliate marketing. So, don’t hesitate – it’s not too late to start affiliate marketing and start making money.
