Affiliate marketing has grown so much in the last few years that it has entered mainstream popularity with advertisers. The system behind it is simple, intuitive, and easy to implement, and it's a win-win situation for the customers, product owners, and affiliates!
With the gain in popularity came a huge influx of newcomers who joined the industry in the hope of achieving success. Most of these beginners need additional guides and help to get their marketing campaigns up and running, so let's try and explain the basics and help users get started!
What is Affiliate Marketing?
By definition, affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where affiliates promote a company’s products or services and earn a commission through their referrals. In simple terms, the system works like this:
Let’s say a company has a product or service they want to sell. They are great at making the product or service, but they don’t have the resources or knowledge on how to advertise it properly. They then create an affiliate program where individuals (advertisers) can advertise that product or service to customers directly, and in turn, they get a commission for every sale (or predetermined action) that they achieve.
For all of these roles in the pipeline, there are defined roles and names for those roles, so here are some so you know what people are talking about if you come across those terms:
- Merchant
Merchant or product creator is the company or individual that creates and owns the product or service. They are the ones who do all of the shipping, order handling, support, and commission payout to affiliates.
- Affiliate
Affiliates or marketers are individuals or companies that promote products or services owned by merchants. In our case, this is what most of the readers of this article are. As an affiliate, it is your task to promote the product, find an audience for it, and sell it to as many people as you can. You get paid by the merchant for each successful sale you make in the form of a commission!
- Consumer
This is the customer that affiliates advertise to. Your focus should be getting as many customers as you can with your marketing campaigns!
- Affiliate Network
This is a platform that connects affiliates with merchants, providing tools for tracking, reporting, and managing payments. You won't always use affiliate networks, as sometimes the program is direct with the merchant.
Why is Affiliate Marketing Popular?
Affiliate marketing got its initial bump in popularity due to the promotion of a lavish lifestyle that the first wave of “super affiliates” started to show off.
These affiliates started early 10+ years ago and through hard work, they managed to secure millions in profits. Of course, once they started promoting how much they made a lot of people wanted to try it out as well, in most cases with limited success.
Nowadays the industry has changed a lot. The big players still like to show off, but that isn't the main lure into the industry anymore. Now, people like affiliate marketing since it offers a low barrier to entry, with a lot of flexibility, scalability, and potential.
How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?
So now that you know what it is and why it's popular, it's time to learn what you need to do to get started!
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Chose a Niche
Before you do anything, you need to pick a niche or topic, that you would like to cover. Usually, people decide this based on factors like, how strong the competition is, market demand, and personal passion and interest.
The perfect niche would be something that you personally like, that doesn't have a lot of competition that could push you out, and with enough people interested in it it makes sense to promote products and services in that niche.
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Find an Affiliate Program
After you know what niche you want to cover, it's time to focus on finding affiliate programs that you can join. The best option in most cases is to find a merchant that you can work for directly, but in the majority of cases, this isn't possible for beginners, and you need to join a program that would connect you with them.
There are multiple types of programs, and you should research them before committing to one. Which one you join should also be impacted by the niche you want to run!
- High-Paying, Low-Volume Programs
These programs are best suited for people who already know a thing or two about how to run campaigns. The products and services in these programs are hard to get conversions for.
These are often some financial offers or high-margin products that have a tough time selling. Once you make a sale they do pay well, but if you are just starting, you might be wasting a lot of money until you figure out how things work.
- Low-Paying, High-Volume Programs
These programs are best suited for most affiliates. They are great for beginners and experts, and depending on your skill level, you can make a lot of money through scale!
Under these programs, you will find most eCommerce products and simple services that are easy to sell to the average customer.
- Recurring Commission Programs
This is something that you can't find that often in most niches, but in some like iGaming (gambling), they are quite common. Here you can gain commission through the program as long as the customer you brought pays for the service, deposits money, or buys products over a longer period of time.
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Build a Platform
Depending on the products you want to promote, you will have to spend more or less time and effort on building your platform. Your platform can be a lot of things. Anything from a YouTube channel, or Instagram profile, to a full-fledged website with hundreds of blog posts.
The main goal is to have a reliable and simple way of promoting the products and services you want to sell to your audience.
In case you decide you want to host a website (which is common) then you will need a domain, hosting, and a page that you either code yourself or use a service to build it for you. Content management systems (CMS) like WordPress can also be a great help!
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Create Content
This is the most important part as if you create bad and uninteresting content, nothing can help you grow and sell products. First, you should decide on what sort of content you want to host. This can be:
- Product Reviews
- How-To Guides
- Comparison Articles
- Listicles
- News and Information
- Trends
- Blog Posts
- other
Each of the content types mentioned has its own strengths and weaknesses and your audience will react differently to them depending on a bunch of factors.
Make sure your content matches the general expectations of your niche and audience, and dont be afraid to change up the formula every once in a while to introduce something new and exciting.
Keep in mind that the content you post will determine how your customers interact with you in the future. Keep things realistic, and don’t overpromote things, if you do reviews, write your actual thoughts and dont sugarcoat things as people will notice this and it can ruin your reputation as a “sellout”.
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Drive Traffic to Your Content
Now that you have your niche, platform, and content, it's time to get some eyes on it and make revenue!
- Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the traffic you gain through organic methods, like word of mouth, having a good reputation, search engine results, etc.
Increasing it can be a difficult task as most platforms nowadays focus on paid content since it's better for them if you pay money to appear in front of your customers.
To increase your organic reach, you can improve your content and consistently post so that the algorithm picks up your content, improves your SEO, and of course, have a good reputation with the community.
- Paid Traffic
Paid traffic is simple to set up, but it takes some skill and knowledge to do it properly without overspending money on campaigns.
- Social Media Ads: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook are all places where you can run ads and promote your content. Most affiliates use this as it's simple to set up and very effective!
- Email Marketing: most affiliates think that email is an old and outdated way to promote content, but it's one of the cheapest and most effective ways to do it. You can get people to sign up for your newsletter, send them promotional offers, and get conversions that way for cheap!
- Paid Ads: This covers all other forms of paid ads like Google ads, native ads, and others. The more you pay the more traffic you will get, and the better your targeting is, the more customers you will get!
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Utilize Affiliate Links
When promoting your content you should include the affiliate links you want people to click on. These links should be relevant and align with the content that you host. You should always disclose that you are promoting sponsored links since it is mandatory in some countries and a good and honest practice everywhere.
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Optimize and Improve
Like we always say, optimize and improve your campaigns whenever you can. Check metrics like your Click-through rates, conversion rates, costs, and traffic sources, and try optimizing things that can improve those stats.
You can try A/B testing, different content, design changes, and switching focus on products to get the best results!
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a great way to start making income online. It’s not as easy as some say it is since it requires strategy, consistency, knowledge, and a lot of effort, but it can be a great way to start your online business.
Starting is the hardest part you have to go through, but with enough patience, knowledge, and consistency, you can make a living or at least a side income with aff marketing!
How was your start in the affiliate marketing industry? Share your knowledge with us in the comments below!
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