Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

Affiliate Marketing

Last updated March 20, 2022 | by Kirk Anthony | 15 Min read

If there’s one reason why so many people are drawn to affiliate marketing, it’s because of the potential to earn a consistent stream of passive income.

As you are probably aware, affiliate marketing is where you make money by earning commissions by promoting the products of other people or companies. Basically, you include a link to their product on your website or blog, and then each time a visitor buys the product through clicking your link, you will earn a percentage of the sale.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, in concept yes. You could probably set up a few affiliate links on your blog or site right now and make a few commissions.

But if you truly want to succeed in affiliate marketing to the point that it becomes a consistent stream of passive income that you can live off, you’re going to have to put in a lot more work. Making a living from affiliate marketing is not something that you can accomplish overnight.

Fortunately, we’re going to outline and discuss the seven steps that you will need to follow to become an affiliate marketer.

7 steps to becoming an affiliate marketer

Let’s follow the seven steps you must follow to earn your first affiliate commission:

1.choose your niche

Choosing your niche is something you must do before you even build a website. You can’t build a website when you don’t even know what the niche is, right? This is also one of the more complicated steps, so if you’ve already figured out what your website is going to about already give yourself a nice pat on the back.

Here are some key questions that you can ask yourself if you haven’t yet decided:

What Are You Passionate And Knowledgeable About?

Simply put, you will enjoy working on your website if you are truly passionate about the subject matter. Being knowledgeable about that subject matter also helps.

Is There Money To Be Made?

Unfortunately, it’s possible for you to be deeply passionate and knowledgeable about a topic that also has zero potential for making money. Passion and knowledge are definitely great, but you need to make money in the end, right? The best way to know if your website has the potential for making money is if two things exist: 1. There are a moderate to high number of monthly Google searches for the keyword/topic, and 2. The existing market for that keyword or topic is not already overly saturated with lots of other existing websites.

This leads us into our next question…

Is There Enough Demand For The Products In Your Niche?

Think ahead about the kinds of products that you can promote in your niche. Are these the kinds of products that you can see people buying? This is something else that you will need to research ahead of time.

What Can You Write One Hundred Blog Posts About?

When narrowing down the topics and niches for your website, you have to ask yourself if you are willing to write at least one hundred blog posts (yes, one hundred) in that niche. Building a large number of well-written posts is absolutely essential for running an authoritative site that also has potential for ranking high in Google’s search engine results.

Do Any Affiliate Programs Exist In Your Niche?

Lastly but not least, find out if there are any affiliate programs or products for your niche. Check clickbank, cj affiliate, and amazon affiliates. If there are none, you need to look for a different niche. This shouldn’t be a problem with amazon affiliates. With Amazon Affiliates you can promote anything that is on amazon and receive a commission.

This leads us into our next step…

2. research the affiliate programs and products for your niche

Once you have chosen a niche, it’s time to research the affiliate programs that are available for it in greater detail. Ideally, you will have already completed some of this already when choosing your niche.

Now, it’s just time for you to dig a little bit deeper.

Specifically, you need to research the types of websites/blogs who are using your potential affiliate program and network. You want to make sure that there’re are similar sites who are using the network, as this will help you to determine your chances of success.

Make sure that you sign up for programs that will be profitable and generate a return on your investment. Examples of programs that do this include ClickBank, Amazon Affiliates, CJ Affiliates and JVZoo.

When searching for online merchants and affiliate programs to work with, you will need to ask yourself these questions:

How Much Are You Likely To Earn In Commissions?

This is probably the big question that you have in your mind, right? It doesn’t hurt to ask it first

Look for merchants and programs that guarantee minimum commissions of $1. For physical products, the commissions should be over $40. When using merchants such as ClickBank, you should expect to receive a 50% to 60% commission rate for products that are in high demand.

Do You Want To Be Associated With The Products and Services?

The products and services that you will be featuring on your website must be ones that you are willing to associate yourself and your brand with. In other words, they must be high quality and relevant to your niche. Believe in the products you are selling, and research as much as you can about them. After all, you’re going to need to deliver a sales pitch to your website’s readers and visitors.

So long as you are building trust with your website visitors, the products that you choose to market and advertise will need to be trustworthy too.

Does The Program Provide Support?

You will also need to check in on the kind of customer support that your affiliate program offers. You can find this through researching online, or better yet, by speaking with other sellers who use the program.

This is not something that you will want to overlook. You’re going to need customer support if and when any issues or confusion arises (such as if a product doesn’t ship out on the date it was supposed to).

3. build your site

The first two steps that we covered were all about researching and figuring out your potential for profit. Now, you’re going to be transforming your research into action. If you already have your website built, great! If not, you’ll need to build it from the ground up. The good news is that while building a website can certainly be very intimidating, it’s really not as complicated as it may sound. Easily the best way to build a new website for beginners will be to use WordPress. This is because the WordPress CMS is very simple to use.

To get your WordPress website up and running, you are going to need to follow these sites:

Buy A Domain Name

If you want to get your website up and running, start by buying a domain name. Your domain is the address for your website and should be the very first thing you do. The only potential issue here is that with millions of websites on the internet already (meaning that millions of domain names are already in use) you may need to choose a domain name slightly different or even totally different than the one you had anticipated. Examples of services that you can use to research and buy domain names include NameCheap, Affilorama Domaine, and GoDaddy.

Choose A Web Host And Link To Your Domain Name

Once your domain name is purchased, you are ready to begin with hosting. Your web host is the place where all of your website files will exist. Hosting is also much more affordable today than it has been. Just go to a web hosting provider with a good reputation, such as BlueHost. You can also link your domain name and web host together if you had purchased them from different companies.

Install wordpress

Next, you will need to install WordPress. Install the WordPress CMS for your website. Again, WordPress is very easy to use for beginners. You don’t have to hire a professional to do it for you if you don’t want to (although you certainly can). Most web hosting providers will also offer just a one-click installation option for WordPress, so you can literally have your WordPress website up and running in a matter of minutes.

Set Up Your Theme

After the WordPress website is set up, you will need to set up the theme. The theme of your WordPress site is basically the style or layout…it’s what users will see when they visit and peruse your site.

WordPress offers thousands of different themes, which means that your website does not have to look very generic. The best advice though is to choose a theme that is easily customizable, so you can always change it later.

I do not recommend using any of the WordPress themes. They may look nice but they are slow and clunky. Check out the Astra and Divi themes, they have some of the best themes that are both affordable and easy to customize. The best part is that they are fast and responsive which is important for affiliate marketing.

Start Creating Content

Once your website is up and running, the only thing left to do is to start creating content! This will be our topic of discussion in the next step.

Besides websites and blogs, there are other options that you can use for posting affiliate links on as well. Examples include in the description of your YouTube videos (if you have a YouTube channel) and on social media pages or posts.

All you need to do is literally just post the affiliate links to the products you are promoting. For example, you can create a video review of the product you are promoting, and then include the affiliate link in the description.

This can be a great way to get started with affiliate marketing to learn the process if you aren’t yet ready to set up an entire website.

4. produce high-quality content

By this point, your website is set up and you have joined an affiliate program. You are now ready to begin what will easily be the most time-consuming aspect of becoming an affiliate marketer: consistently producing high-quality content.

You’ve probably heard the old phrase “content is king.” Well, this is where that phrase comes into play.

To become truly successful as an affiliate marketer, you need to become an authority figure in your niche. This means that your website needs to be an authoritative site. People need to trust that the information it is presenting is correct. They also need to see that you have a wide variety of different kinds of content as well.

At the bare minimum, your affiliate website should consist of the following kinds of content:

Product Reviews

You could technically revolve your entire website around writing product reviews. This is actually a very common model when it comes to affiliate marketing and it works.

If you run an outdoors website, for instance, then you could run one that revolves around reviewing different outdoor products (such as hiking boots, tents, outdoor water filters, etc.). With this in mind, you could have product review articles such as ‘Top Ten Hiking Boots For 2021’ or something to that effect and then review your top ten brands and models of hiking boots with there being an affiliate link to each one. This will make it very easy for the audience to then buy the product that they like the most.

The best way to make money with this method is with the Amazon Associates Program. As you know Amazon has basically everything you can imagine on it so you wont have trouble finding products no matter your niche.

Blog Posts

Creating blog content is another very effective way of building content on your site. Your blog posts should accomplish all three of the following:

Address common problems to your target market
Be well written and easy to read
Be SEO optimized

A blog post such as “The Top Features To Look For In Hiking Boots” would address the target market question of “what features do my hiking boots need to have?” Then, you could even link that blog post to a product review post on hiking books like we just discussed.

Make sure the post is well written (reads well, no spelling or grammar errors, logical flow of information, etc.) and optimize it for SEO: insert popular keywords throughout the content, including high-quality images, etc.

Evergreen Content

Does your website have the potential for information that will never age? This is what is referred to as “evergreen content“. If you want to plan on including evergreen content into your website, you are going to need to carry out extensive evergreen content.

Take our hiking boots for example. ‘The best hiking boots of 2021’ is not exactly an example of evergreen content. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make a blog or product review posts about hiking boots (you can still easily produce commissions from such posts) but the hiking boots of this year are not going to be the same kind of hiking boots that people are buying next year.

But another example of an outdoor-related topic that would be evergreen because it’s relevant regardless of the time would be something along the lines of “the top safety considerations for hiking in the woods.” This kind of content will still be relevant ten years from now, so it’s evergreen content. Also, having evergreen content in your website is also great for SEO.

Informational Products

I highly recommend giving away free informational products, such as a mini-course or an ebook. This is a very popular tactic that affiliate marketers use to make money and collect emails. If you can get your readers to provide their email addresses in exchange for a product, you can then send an ebook or something similar to generate interest in the affiliate product you are trying to sell. You could then use a system such as AdSense to even monetize the traffic and make money that way.

Add Value

Do you want to know the number one way to build trust with your website visitors?

It’s simple:make sure your website adds value to their lives. You can’t just post generic content that readers can find literally anywhere else. You need to produce content that answers people’s questions and concerns and will make them look forward to visiting your site again.
Research the other websites in your niche and brainstorm content or topics that they are not yet providing. You can also do things like sharing stories from your personal life to connect with your readers as well.

5. build your audience

The good news is that by consistently producing high quality and valuable content to your readers, you will naturally begin to build up your audience.

However, there are still a number of additional steps that you can take to build up your audience even further. Here are some examples of what you can do:

Build Your Email List

Some people will tell you that email marketing is dead, but that’s not true at all. In fact, email marketing is actually absolutely critical for every affiliate marketer.The first thing that you need when email marketing is an email list. There are multiple ways to build up your email list, the most popular way is through free gifts (ebook, Guides, Check lists, Case studies, Webinars, short course, online training).

People give you their email and you give them a free gift, it’s a win win. Another great way to capture emails is through pop ups on your website. Also, running paid ads to a landing page by way of a funnel is also an excellent way. Don’t worry, I will talk more about funnels below. There are many other ways but these techniques work best for affiliate marketing.

Here’s the exciting part, once someone subscribes to your email list you can use what we call automations to send a series of pre-written automated emails. This is such an amazing method to use. One, because the best way to warm up your subscribers is through emails and second, it does it all on automatic. You can set this up many different ways but for beginners, I recommend using a simple automation flow.

It would look something like this; someone subscribes to your email list then you send them an initial email immediately.

After that first email is sent, you put a one day wait into your next set of emails. Check out the picture below to see what I am talking about. You can make these automated email workflows easily with GetResponse.

Once you have your list built up, you can send out bulk emails about updates (i.e., an update to your new website), links to affiliate products, and so on. Don’t beg for sales from them (doing so will kill your trust with them), but you can potentially fit an affiliate link or two in some of your emails.

Promote Your Content On Social Media

In this day and age, the easiest way to begin building an audience for a website is through social media. Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter all work for several specific niches. Building up an engaged following is also a great way for you to build relationships with people (you can engage with them directly in the comments or by sending them offers, for example), which means that you can also build trust with them. Then, you can begin to promote your products and services to them.

Guest Post On Other Blogs

If you want, you can treat the other blogs and websites in your same niche as your competitors and work against them.

Or, you can work with them to gain a bigger audience instead. Start by reaching out to those other blogs and websites in your niche and ask if you can write a guest post on their website (you can also offer them to write a guest post on your website as well). Include links to each other’s website, and you can send readers and visitors to one another.

Use SEO

Another great way to send traffic to your website is SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO tactics will help your website rank higher on search engines for your niche or keyword. This will help you to get more natural visitors.

This is really a separate subject all on its own and something that you need to do research on. When you do research SEO, you will find very quickly that is far more than just integrating popular keywords into your content.

Use Paid Advertising

Many affiliate marketers will actually use paid advertising methods to generate traffic to their website to drive more sales. A prime example is on social media. Facebook is a very affordable option to use paid advertising methods. Another option would be Google AdWords or to set up inexpensive banner ads on niche websites.

6. promote your affiliate products

Now, It’s Time For The Exciting Part. Once You Have Shown People That You Can Provide Valuable Content In Your Niche, You Can Add Value By Promoting Products That Will Be Helpful For Them And Solve Their Problems. These Are The Kinds Of Products That You Want To Have Affiliate Links For.

Here are the top ways to promote your affiliate links:

Promote Your Email List

You have your email list like we discussed previously, right? You can promote products directly to people on your email list. Just be sure that you maintain trust by not begging for sales. You really need to build up a relationship with your audience first, before you go to the hard sell. Like we talked about before, we recommend GetResponse for all of your emailing needs. It’s simply the best and easiest to use.

Click Funnels

Another excellent option to promote your affiliate products is with ClickFunnels. Click Funnels is a software that allows you to build funnels to help you market, sell and deliver products online. Click Funnels lets you quickly and easily create multiple sales funnels, all without having any technical skills.

In our case the best way to use a funnel for affiliate marketing is for collecting leads. The way this works is you send people to an opt-in page where you give them a free gift for their email. Next you send them to a thank you page. On the thank you page you can send people in many different directions but typically you send them to an affiliate link. The main goal here is to collect emails to grow your list for email marketing.

This is such a powerful tool because with a funnel you get to guide people step by step through the whole process. Whereas on a web site it’s much harder to guide people because they get side tracked and go different directions on your site. Also, click funnels allows you to guide people straight to a single product that they need the most to solve their problem. The best part is that once its all set up your funnel will run automatically 24/7

Don’t confuse clickfunnels with pop ups and lead magnets on your website, click funnels can’t do that. For Pop ups and lead magnets you use thrive leads.

You can also promote ClickFunnels itself. They have an affiliate program that provides you with one of the best commission rates in the industry, with most promoters earning at least 40% for every commission. In addition, you will also be given a 5% commission for every monthly account that a promoter who signed up under you sells.

There’s also a feature of ClickFunnels called Share Funnels in which you can share your funnel with other people. How Share Funnels work is every funnel that you create via your account will come with a unique URL that you can share with others. Whenever someone who doesn’t have an account clicks this URL, they will be given the opportunity to begin a two week free trial with ClickFunnels.

This person will then be tracked back to you, and you will earn yet another small affiliate commission for their sales too. This is ultimately one of the easiest ways to make money with the ClickFunnels program.

When promoting your affiliate orders, remember that you need to follow all of the terms and conditions that are attached to your affiliate program. There are some programs that are very strict about how you can promote their services or products. Some, for instance, may allow paid advertising but will not allow you to market by emails.

Product Reviews

Write honest and real reviews about your products, like we discussed before. Build your trust with your audience. Remember, they are trusting your opinion.You also need to do more than just talking about the positives and negatives of the product. That’s too generic and there are likely other affiliate websites in your niche doing the same thing. Instead, give an honest evaluation. Preferably, test out the products yourself and talk about your experience with them.

Banner Ads

Set up banner ads on your website to promote your affiliate offers. Most affiliate programs will actually offer you their own banner ads when you sign up with them. Insert your banners into the pages on your website that receive the most traffic, with the affiliate tracking being embedded in the code of the ads. When used in the right locations, banner ads can be great for driving sales.

Content Links

Another very common way of promoting offers is to use in-text content links. This is basically where you have blog posts and then have links to your affiliate products or services. All the same with product review pages, when someone buys the product after clicking the link, you will earn a commission.

Special Discounts

There are many affiliate programs that run promotions with good discounts that audiences may like. This is a fantastic way to provide value and promote offers to your readers at the same time.

You also need to have a disclaimer on your blog or site that clearly states you have links that promote affiliate offers. This is mandated by the FTC in the United States

7. rinse and Repeat with steps 4-7 continuously

You now know what Steps 1-6 are. The 7th and final step is to rinse and repeat with Steps 4-7. Your continual success as an affiliate marketer will be to repeat these steps so you can build up your website to the point that you can make consistent income. It’s all about you willing to create, promote, and market products while continuing to create high-quality content.

Conclusion

Yes, it can be overwhelming having to build an authoritative website from the ground up.But trust us, putting in all of the hours of sweat and tears will be well worth it. Once you are running an authoritative website that is receiving a fair amount of visitors each week, you’ll begin making affiliate commissions like crazy.

To summarize, here are the seven steps that you must follow if you want to become successful at affiliate marketing:

Chose Your Niche
Research The Affiliate Programs And Products For Your Niche
Build Your Site
Produce High-Quality Content
Build your audience
Promote your Affiliate Products
Rinse and repeat

This is a tried and true strategy when it comes to affiliate marketing that is guaranteed to work. If you put in the work, you’ll live life enjoying the vast financial benefits.