When you start out affiliate marketing for beginners, it can be a bit overwhelming. You don’t know where to start, what product to promote, how to build a website, or what the hell affiliate marketing is. Well, I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that hard! In this post, I will go through affiliate marketing tutorial for beginners to make money online.
You’ll learn what it is, how it works, and all the steps required to get started. So, without further ado, let’s begin.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing in which you promote the products or services of other companies using an affiliate link to earn a commission on each sale.
Affiliate marketing consists of three parties:
- Merchant – The product’s creator, also known as the brand or seller.
- Affiliate – An affiliate is a publisher (you) who promotes a product to persuade their audience to make a purchase.
- Consumer – These are the targeted people who buy your suggested product.
Aside from that, there is also an affiliate link, which is a unique link that contains the affiliate’s ID or your username for tracking purposes.
How does affiliate marketing work step by step?
The merchant provides the affiliate with the affiliate link so they can track back the person responsible for the sale.
When a consumer clicks on the link, a small file known as a cookie is saved on their device that serves two purposes:
- It assists the merchant in attributing the sale to the correct person.
- It (usually) has an expiration date, which ensures that you are paid even if the consumer postpones their purchase.
As an affiliate, you are paid based on your performance, which varies depending on the type of performance-based model you choose.
Here are three of them.
- Pay–Per–Click (PPC) – Regardless of whether the clicks resulted in sales or leads, you are paid for all valid clicks.
- Pay–Per–Lead (PPL) – You are paid when the consumer performs a specific action, such as filling out an online form, signing up for a free trial, or completing a short survey.
- Pay–Per–Sale (PPS) – Merchant pays a percentage commission for all qualified sales. It can range anywhere from 10% to 40% or more.
Affiliate Marketing Tutorial For Beginners in 2023
1. Decide a Platform
Though affiliate marketing can be done on any platform, it is most effective on a blog and a YouTube channel.
A blog can be started for as little as a few dollars and will require you to write helpful content to target affiliate products.
Ensure that your content and blog are SEO-friendly so that it can rank higher on Google.
With YouTube, you don’t have to spend any money as uploading videos are free. To generate sales, you must create helpful videos that include an affiliate link in the video description.
With YouTube, you don’t have to spend any money as uploading videos are free. To generate sales, you must create helpful videos that include an affiliate link in the video description.
2. Choose Your Niche
It’s important to pick a niche that you’re passionate about while also having an audience that’s looking for solutions to their problems.
Though many niches are extremely competitive these days, a beginner should focus on a specific category.
For example, instead of targeting sports, it’s better to target cricket or football, which will allow you to build a more focused audience and potentially rank higher in search engines.
3. Join an Affiliate Program Or Network
The best way to find affiliate programs is to go to an affiliate network, where you can find several affiliate programs in a variety of niches.
Here are some popular affiliate networks you can join.
- Affiliate Future
- AvantLink
- Amazon Associates
- CJ by Conversant
- ClickBank
- FlexOffers
- LinkConnector
- Panthera Network
- RevenueWire
- Rakuten Advertising
- ShareASale
Join them and browse your niche to find top-performing affiliate products that you can promote.
Another way to find affiliate programs is to go to the product’s website you want to promote and look for their affiliate program option. They may or may not have, but most of the time, you can find them.
4. Create Great Content
If you want to score sales, this is where you should put all of your efforts.
Creating helpful, engaging content where your affiliate links fit naturally has a better chance of success when compared to low-quality content.
What I recommend is that you target the problem that the affiliate product solves and then recommend the product as a solution. This way you will have a better chance to succeed.
For example – Recommending a pimple cream (affiliate product) in an article about how to get rid of pimples is more likely to generate affiliate sales rather than simply writing about it.
Other types of posts that perform well in affiliate marketing are:
- List-post – Good for targeting multiple affiliate products.
- Product review – A detailed post reviewing an affiliate product.
- Product comparison – Comparing similar kinds of products to see which one is better.
- Tutorial post – This is basically a “How to” style post.
5. Drive Traffic
Even if you create the best content in the world, if no one reads it, you will not generate sales. As a result, having a steady stream of traffic is essential to progress.
You can generate traffic by promoting your content on social media platforms such as Facebook and Pinterest.
As a blogger, I highly recommend working on Pinterest and SEO marketing because they can generate thousands of visitors per month.
Related – 10 Proven Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
6. Monitor Your Result
After you’ve completed all five steps, it’s time to analyze your results to see which products are performing well and which are not.
If you find a successful content style that generates more sales, replicate it with other affiliate products to see better results.
If you still don’t get the desired results, it’s possible that your traffic isn’t targeted or that your content isn’t well-written.
In such cases, you must work on these issues in order to see better results.
Conclusion: Affiliate Marketing Tutorial for Beginners
As a beginner, don’t expect to see immediate results. When you are doing affiliate marketing, you will see a lot of failures. However, by experiencing these failures, you will be able to learn what not to do in the future.
Your first priority should be to make your first affiliate sale, as this will boost your confidence. Then, as your site grows, you’ll see more similar results, which will result in a decent income.
Got any questions? Let me know in the comment section
