Today, affiliate marketing is nothing new, but one of the most popular ways out there on the Internet to make money online from a website, blog, or a mobile application.
When someone becomes an affiliate marketer, they are allowed to add a steady stream of revenue to their online business, for example: blog’s monetization strategy.
In this online affiliate marketing step-by-step beginners’ guide, you’ll be able to learn how does affiliate marketing works, and how to get started with easy – right away.
Check this simple online affiliate marketing beginners step-by-step guide, along with important tips & tools you’ll need to be successful in affiliate marketing journey.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
If you are new to this term, then you should know, by definition, affiliate marketing is a referral program where online retailers (advertisers) pay you certain amount of commissions when your users make a purchase from a recommended referral link mentioned by you.
Unlike other advertisement types, that pays based on the clicks or views, affiliate marketing works differently on a concept of cost-per-acquisition (CPA) or also know as cost-per-lead (CPL) basis.
In other words, you can say, when someone takes action (that is, buying a product or service, or even signing up for a free trial), you would only be getting a commission.
Because, advertisers are less risky, whereas affiliate programs are paying much higher rate of commissions to online content publishers in-compare to Google AdSense or other kinds of ads network.
It should also be noted that, Internet affiliate marketing needs a more personal approach, than any other types of business.
To make your affiliate marketing effective, you must be able to find a product or service of your interest that you think would be helpful to your audience.
After that, you should start making strategic additions to your website or blog posts and other areas of the site, so that your users can purchase products or services using the recommended links.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work on Internet?
To get started with Internet affiliate marketing, first of all, you’ll need to search and find the company or product or services you want to promote through your content.
Then, you’ll need to choose a product/ service that you might think would be relevant to your blog’s category & topic, and also useful to your users.
The product/ service, or company you choose to recommend, would be referred to as the “merchant.”
In your next step, you would have to join their affiliate program to work with the company, product vendor, or a service provider.
After this you’ll become a ‘member’ of their affiliate network. Many companies also use terms such as associates, partners, referrals, and so on.
Once you get approved to join their online partner program (also known as the affiliate program), you will be given a unique affiliate ID.
You’ll be required to use this affiliate ID for tracking the product or service in all your links you add to your blog to promote.
To get started earning through affiliate links, you can promote products by adding in-depth reviews, recommending those links in articles, or displaying banner ads through widgets, or even sending email newsletters, and more.
Through your recommendations, all traffic that you send to the merchant’s website using your unique affiliate ID will be getting tracked.
After this, when a user purchases any product or service you recommended, you’ll be receiving a certain % as commission.
Once your income reaches a certain threshold amount, your payment will get issued (usually takes 45 – 60 days) or depends.
How to Get Started with Internet Affiliate Marketing?
To get started with online affiliate marketing, first of all, you’ll have to make sure you’ve a website, or use a blogging platform, and you can easily run affiliate marketing campaigns on your blog.
For example, if you are using the WordPress.com platform, then there will be some restrictions on the products and services you can link to as an affiliate.
On the other hand, if you are using a self-hosted WordPress.org site or blog, then you can easily add any link to promote and manage your affiliate marketing campaigns, more effectively.
But, if you have not yet created a website or started a blog, you can just start making it immediately. Right now!
If you’re new, just follow the instructions in one of our guide on how to start a blog, and then you can get-up and walk in less than few minutes.
When you’re done, you’ll need to add a disclosure page to your blog, informing users to find out how you earn money from the site.
You may refer to our disclosure page, and free to use it as a disclosure template on your site or blog – whatever you run.
When you start as an affiliate marketer, you’ll also need to add a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service page to your site.
These are considered as one of the must have pages on any WordPress powered website or a connected blog.
How to find Affiliate Products & Services to Promote?
There are already many ways out there to find products and services of different companies that you would love to work with as an affiliate.
Here are some of the easiest ways to find products and services that you could think about getting promoted.
# Affiliate Products/ Services you have already used!
To get started, you need to look at the products and services you have already used and find them really useful for your users.
This is believed to make it easy for users to trust the product or services, or the brand you choose to promote, because you already know the pros and cons.
Then, you’ll need to visit the product’s site and search for terms such as “Affiliate Program,” or “Affiliate,” or “Become Affiliate,” or “Partner,” etc.
There are many companies who’re already looking for affiliate marketers to promote different products and services; you can find their affiliate partner link in the footer of the site.
# Find Products/ Services Recommended by other blogs!
To find a product and service to promote through your blog, what you can do is, just look on others’ blog those are similar to yours.
On the internet you would find amazing websites, you’ll be able to find similar blogs that use affiliate marketing to make money online.
How to find out, if they are promoting affiliate products or services?
Just, look for the banner ads on their website or blog. When you move your mouse over the banner, you can see the link in your web browser’s status bar.
This link usually has a unique affiliate member ID that helps the merchant track which affiliate partners are sending traffic/ sales to them.
Sometimes these links may look like internal links, but when you click on them, they take you to the product or service site with the affiliate ID in the link.
# Find that Popular Affiliate Network on the Web!
Yes, you’ll need to be a part of that popular affiliate networks, because this way you’ll find those products/services, and offers you would love to have and promote.
These popular Internet affiliate networking sites act as intermediaries between the affiliate marketers and merchants online.
When you become a part of the affiliate network, you will find that many of the products and services you wanted to promote, already there in the affiliate network.
By joining those popular affiliate networks, you would get help in quickly finding many products and services that you think could be promoted on your website.
# Contact that Company You Want to Work With!
If you want to work with a company, but not able to find any information about its affiliate program or page, in that case you can simply send them email asking about the affiliate.
Sometimes, it also happens that a company might not be actively promoting its affiliate program.
In that case you can wait, if they have an active affiliate program, they can send you invitation to join.
What is Affiliate Network, and Why You Should Join?
When you become an affiliate marketer for a company, the affiliate network will act as a middleman between you and the merchant.
For company and service providers, affiliate networks offer their platform to list products, track affiliate traffic, manage affiliates, and send payments to affiliates marketers.
For affiliate marketers, these affiliate networks provide an easy-to-use platform to join as affiliates, search for products or services, and track their performance and revenue.
On the Internet you’ll find many affiliate networks, but some of the most popular affiliate networks that you should join are given below.
- Awin: A global affiliate network that delivers marketing solutions for advertisers and publishers around the world.
- JVZoo: Provides the network and tools essential for building a successful and profitable affiliate making business.
- LinkShare: Affiliate network enables you to partner with the leading brands and earn commissions from your site.
- ShareASale: This is another affiliate network for publishers with more than 2500+ merchants, products & services.
- CJ Network: Known as Commission Junction affiliate network that you can join to make money from your website.
- ClickBank: They are internet retailer of top quality lifestyle products allowing affiliate marketers to promote them.
If you want more, explore some of the leading affiliate marketing networks and programs perfect for a digital marketer.
# What Kind of Affiliate Network You Should Consider Joining?
First, you should think of joining the affiliate network, which owns the products or services you always wanted to promote.
You may even join multiple Internet affiliate networks to find different products and services to recommend.
Like we do love to use all of the affiliate networks mentioned above, as-well-as other networks too.
Remember to regularly check the affiliate network that you have joined, also their affiliate program policy and terms of service.
It is also a good idea to always review the program policies for each product and service and the merchant you do promote.
This will help you get a clear idea about everything from revenue, to payments, to bonuses, and so on.
Affiliate Marketing Tips for Beginners to Increase Earnings!
Now that we have already covered the basics of affiliate marketing, let’s learn some other tips on how you actually make money through affiliate marketing.
# Select Good Products and Brands to Recommend
When you start as an affiliate marketer, you’ll have no control over the trends of the products you have promoted. So you need to make sure that you promote only the best products from the reputable companies.
# Provide very useful and valuable content
You have to explain to your users by providing useful and valuable details about the product. Many affiliate marketers do this by writing product reviews, video reviews, pros and cons with comparison, and more.
# Remember your audience
When choosing a product, remember your audience, keep your site’s viewers and their interests in mind. You’d make sure that you don’t recommend products just because they provide highest commission.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Tools and Plugins for WordPress
There are some of the best affiliate marketing tools and plugins for WordPress that you would love to use to get help with your affiliate marketing management.
- ThirstyAffiliate: An affiliate link manager plugin that gives bloggers the tools they need to monetize their website with affiliate marketing.
- AdSanity: A simplified ad management plugin that turns your WordPress site into an ad server without getting in the way of your content.
- ClickMeter: Link tracking, affiliate tracking, conversion tracking plugin to monitor, compare & optimize your marketing links in one place.
- ConvertKit: An email marketing tool for online publishers to grow their affiliate business by automating with the email marketing solutions.
- OptinMonster: A powerful lead generation platform that converts abandoning visitors into subscribers with their dynamic marketing tools.
- Google Analytics: Free web analytics tool providing statistics and analytical reports for search engine optimization and marketing purposes.
- WP RSS Aggregator: This is one of the best plugins for easily importing, merging and displaying RSS and Atom feeds on your WordPress site.
- Google Webmaster Tools: This is another free tool by Google that helps you evaluate and maintain your site’s performance in search results.
- SEMRush Magic Keyword Tool: Great tool for keyword research, providing industry standard data and also ideas with keyword suggestions.
Hope this ultimate affiliate marketing guide for beginners will help you understand the basics of online affiliate marketing along with the useful tips tools would also be helpful for you to get success in your affiliate marketing journey.
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