Affiliate Marketing For Beginners to Advance Successful Strategy.


There’s a lot of money to be made from affiliate marketing and many programs out there to help you do that. In this article, we’ll start with the basics of affiliate marketing and build up so you can kickstart your affiliate career. 

  • What is affiliate marketing?
  • How does affiliate marketing work?
  • Which companies are best for affiliate marketing?
  • How do I become an affiliate marketer?
  • What are the best affiliate marketing channels?
  • How much do beginner marketing affiliates make?
  • What are good examples of affiliate marketing?
  • Affiliate marketing trends
  • Affiliate marketing tips for beginners?

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a way for your company, website or blog to make money by promoting another company’s product or service. Once a web visitor clicks through a trackable link on your end they are driven to a third-party landing page or site. If they take an action, you as the affiliate partner get a commission based on that click, lead or sale.

How does affiliate marketing work?

In most affiliate programs, there are stakeholders involved that you need to consider in the process which include:-

Affiliate marketing is a simple process but there are several steps involved. The cycle outlined in the image below shows the journey an affiliate program makes from a user clicking the link on your site to getting paid commission.

The most important element of any affiliate program is the link used to track activity. You need to ensure your link is trackable and identifiable to ensure you get paid at the end of the transaction. A spreadsheet to keep track of all your links or UTMs (a snippet of code attached to a link) is essential to help you measure performance and monitor revenue. 

Which companies are best for affiliate marketing?

Joining an affiliate program can give you advantages such as a dashboard to record all activity, analytics, creative assets to display along with access to new content and special offers for your audience.

There are a lot of programs out there, but we want to focus on the top affiliate marketing programs that can help you drive revenue. The best examples are:

1. Amazon Associates

As one of the biggest sites and the most successful, every product you can imagine is available on Amazon making it easy to tie to your content. Their Associate program offers commissions between 1 to 10 percent and the most valuable product areas are clothing and luxury beauty.

2. Shopify

With nearly 2 million merchants across categories, Shopify offers great opportunities for affiliates. It provides everything you need to set up (management tools, analytics, payments, etc.) and the commission is huge, at 200 percent for a monthly subscription if they are active for two months. In addition, when a referral signs up for a Shopify Plus account you get a $2,000 payment.

3. Clickbank

Clickbank is an affiliate marketplace and offers a huge choice of categories (arts, games, parenting, self-help, the list goes on…) so it will be relevant to most content. There are two ways to earn commission: revenue share, revshare) and CPA .

4. Fiverr

Freelance marketplace Fiverr’s affiliate program is a great example. As an affiliate, you get a dashboard to manage and monitor campaigns along with creative assets to promote their services. Affiliates can earn up to a $150 CPA for every first-time buyer or up to $1,000 per sale but commission depends on the services you promote.

5. ConvertKit

A relatively new company in the email marketing sector, ConvertKit is aimed at creators to help email management and build landing pages. Its affiliate program aims to drive subscriptions and it pays a 30 percent commission for every paid referral or webinar subscriber.

7. Wix

One of the most popular web hosting platforms, Wix gives $100 for a premium payment from your affiliate link. The company also provides you with all the creative material so you can display banners and drive people to landing pages from your site easily. You need to reach a minimum of $300 in earnings so you won't be paid until it reaches that threshold. 

How do I become an affiliate marketer?

While you can create your own purpose-built tracking software, it’s probably not the easiest way to get started. The best way to set up a program is to go through an affiliate network like one of those mentioned above.

How to decide on an affiliate network

The first thing to do is choose the best network for you. There are a few factors to take into consideration such as:-

1. What commission do they pay and how is it structured?
2. What companies and categories do they work with?
3. What type of systems do they have and do they supply creative assets or analytics?

4. What is the approval process to join?

5. How or when do they pay out commissions?


What happens when you decide on an affiliate network? 

Once you choose the network, you need to open an account and set up the terms for affiliates. In most cases, your affiliate network account manager will help with this.The terms of an affiliate program include things like the commissions paid for sales, types of sales considered valid for commission, different rates for different products, your brand guidelines, and whether the affiliates can use your brand term in Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to drive traffic for people looking for your brand.

How can I start affiliate marketing with no money?

While having a successful website that brings in affiliate revenue is the ultimate goal, you don’t have to start there. If money is an issue, use your social media channels to share affiliate links.

You can include affiliate links in your social media posts to drive traffic to particular products. You can also create videos that showcase products and include the links in the description for people to review and purchase. Read our blog if you need help.

What are the best affiliate marketing channels?

There are many marketing channels you can use for affiliate marketing. Plus you don’t have to stick to just one, boost your revenue potential by including affiliate links across your channels.

However, use judgment in your communications to avoid becoming a spammy content creator as this will turn people off. Let’s look at the best affiliate marketing channels to drive sales.

Use social media for affiliate marketing

As mentioned above, you can start small as an affiliate and social media is a great place to learn and experiment.

Facebook is a great platform to start with as it’s one of the biggest channels and you can easily target people with niche interests through Facebook Watch or Facebook Live. Have a look at your Facebook feed today and you’ll come across users reviewing or promoting products that include affiliate links.

Setting up a YouTube channel is also a great way to build your presence online and provide valuable content to an audience. There are many ways to grow your audience on YouTube so be creative and try different videos to see what works for you including affiliate links along the way to monetize your efforts

Instagram is another platform that’s set up for affiliate marketing. With their Instagram Affiliate program, the social network makes it easy to get started, and selecting products and tracking is easy through their platform. Many brands actively seek out affiliates on Instagram to promote their products through enticing descriptions and great photos such as vitamin brand @ritual or luxury towel and robe brand @weezie.

Use email for affiliate marketing

Email is a great way to communicate with your audience and drive sales. With first-party data now becoming more important thanks to the demise of third-party cookies, email is a crucial part of your affiliate marketing strategy.

If you have a newsletter then use it to include links that will drive your audience to merchant sites. You can also send one-off emails to introduce special or limited offers that you have access to as an affiliate. Just make sure you provide content that your subscribers have opted into and will be interested in.

If you don’t have an email marketing strategy, then think about creating one as it’s a fantastic way to engage with your audience.

Use microsites for affiliate marketing

Microsites are a great way to address a niche market. They offer you a way to talk to a particular audience and provide value in a way that your more generic website may not be able to.

Microsites are commonly used by charities to promote a campaign or event. This interactive example from Waterwise named ‘Every Last Drop’ was developed to demonstrate how much water is wasted in the UK each day.

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