The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make money from home, and it’s one of the most popular methods of making money online today, with plenty of options and multiple ways to do it. But if you’re new to affiliate marketing, finding your way around can seem daunting at first. Don’t worry—you aren’t alone! If you're interested in affiliate marketing but don't know where to start, we can help. Here's what you need to know about affiliate marketing for beginners 2022!
Introduction
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, you’ve come to right place. We’re going to show you everything you need (and want) to know about building a successful affiliate marketing program. Before we dive in, let’s get one thing out of the way: affiliate marketing isn’t passive income.
This means that if you want your affiliate program to succeed, it will take some work on your part. But don't worry; we'll walk through each of these steps with you so that your first foray into affiliate marketing is a success!
Building a successful affiliate marketing program takes time, but if you follow these basic steps, you’ll be well on your way. Let’s get started!
Step by step Affiliate Marketing for Beginners Guide
Step 1 - What are the benefits of affiliate marketing?
One of the major benefits of affiliate marketing is it can be done anywhere. All you need is a computer, an internet connection and products you feel passionate about and want to share with others. This flexibility also makes it possible to work in affiliate marketing as a part of your current full-time job or even as a side hustle while you do something else.
It’s also possible that what you enjoy doing most can actually turn into your business one day. Whether or not that happens depends on how much effort you are willing to put into it and how quickly you decide it’s time to make affiliate marketing work for you.
Another major benefit of affiliate marketing is you can take advantage of other people’s efforts. You don’t have to create a website, research products or negotiate terms with manufacturers by yourself. There are already affiliate networks in place which offer these and other services.
These networks include well-known brands such as Amazon and Clickbank that handle a large number of affiliates who are looking for specific types of products. Simply sign up with them and offer their products on your website, newsletters or emails you send out and you can earn money from doing it.
Step 2 - Understanding the basics
The fastest way to learn affiliate marketing is to start doing it. You can begin with a product you’re interested in or simply go out and search for products that fit your niche. If you choose products within your niche, look at vendor pages and see if they have an affiliate program available.
If so, sign up, read their terms and conditions, fill out any information needed and get approved! That’s it! Get started on finding great products within your niche as well as researching potential merchants/affiliates in order to get started!
I know what you’re thinking... where do I start?. There are many avenues that you can take within affiliate marketing, and only you can decide which direction is best suited for your individual situation.
The good news is that no matter what path you choose within affiliate marketing, there are a few universal guidelines that will be helpful in getting started.
When it comes to affiliate marketing strategies as a beginner, they tend to vary depending on which approach or strategy you want to use. That said, there are some best practices and techniques used by experienced affiliates no matter how they choose to market their products!
Step 3 - Choosing a program
There are many programs you can use to start an affiliate marketing program. It all depends on your goals, budget and experience with affiliate marketing. Some popular options include: 1) ShareASale 2) Commission Junction 3) Rakuten LinkShare 4) AvantLink 5) Amazon Associates. For a complete list of affiliate networks, check out our in-depth comparison post here!
Now that you have an idea of which affiliate program you want to use, it’s time to choose a program based on your goals. Do you want people who click on your affiliate links to visit your site and make a purchase? Are you hoping they will sign up for your newsletter or follow you on social media? Choose programs that support these goals.
For example, Amazon Associates is great if you are looking for traffic and sales, but not so good if email signups are what you’re after. Likewise, Rakuten LinkShare is more geared towards email subscribers than direct sales. This can vary depending on which program(s) (and networks) have partnerships with advertisers in specific industries that interest you most.
Step 4 - Starting your first campaign
Before you dive into affiliate marketing, it’s important to learn how affiliate marketing works. Pick an affiliate network like Share-A-Sale, Commission Junction, ClickBank or Impact Radius and do your research. Sign up for their free affiliate program and take a look around as a visitor — check out their products and categories.
Find some products that are similar to yours that would be relevant and list them in a spreadsheet. Now make a potential customer’s buying journey map (as we talked about above). List all of the things they might click on or search for along their journey, then find out which ones are most popular through sites like Amazon Alexa or Google Trends, which offer free traffic information.
Once you’ve got a good idea of what your audience is searching for, you can use Keyword Tool (from Google) to look up which ones have decent volume, as well as average monthly searches and competition. Make sure they’re not too hard or competitive, or too broad.
If you see a lot of results with no links under them, then there’s not much demand — try harder keywords. For example if I search for make money online on Keyword Tool and click Get ideas I get 11 million keyword possibilities!
Take a look at your researched keywords, and find five good ones you think are relevant to your business. Make sure they’re not too competitive or difficult. Now you need an affiliate website that talks about these topics and products, with an affiliate link on it so you can make money off of people clicking on it.
Don’t spend too much time getting your affiliate website set up — research has shown that less is more when it comes to design, and most users don’t even notice anyway. What you want is good content, so people will be interested in coming back again and again (i.e., recurring traffic) instead of one-off visitors who just click once (non-recurring).
Step 5 - Types of campaigns
Every campaign has a start and an end date, a goal and sometimes a budget. You also need a lead magnet that is going to help you capture email addresses from your audience. It’s important that all of these components are combined into one, clearly defined campaign so there isn’t any confusion about what is being marketed or sold.
The different types of campaigns are explained below. If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing in general, we recommend reading our guide on affiliate marketing strategies for beginners .
Step 6 - Tracking and optimizing your campaign performance
No matter how good you are at picking out relevant keywords and writing content around them, if you don’t track your campaign performance and make changes as necessary, you won’t have much success with PPC. Before we get into tracking your PPC campaign's performance, I recommend reading Google's free eBook on Pay-Per-Click Advertising : Beyond Your First Click: Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns (2017).
You can read it in about an hour. It contains a lot of valuable information that will help increase your AdWords account CTRs. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from working with thousands of clients over the past 10 years, it’s that CTR is king in PPC.
Once you’ve set up your PPC campaign, you should be able to check on its performance in Google AdWords. To do so, click on My Ads in AdWords and then choose All online campaigns. Now, click on Performance and select View performance statistics by dimensions. From here, you can see a number of different metrics that will give you insights into how your campaign is performing. You can add other reports or columns as well if you'd like.
Step 7 - Key tips to success
Think big, but start small. Many affiliate marketers have grown their businesses by thinking long-term and working hard. That doesn’t mean that you should try to be an overnight success; think about how much time it will take before you can quit your day job. Set realistic goals with your business, such as $500 per month in sales within three years.
Another important part of affiliate marketing success is asking for referrals. People are more likely to buy from you if they have a positive experience with your product or service. It’s a good idea to offer a special deal on your products, such as 10 percent off. Let people know how much they can save and how long it will last; that way they’ll be more likely to share your link with their friends and followers online.
Earn passive income with successful affiliate marketing
Passive income is something everyone should be striving for. However, affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as it might seem and takes a lot of work to get off of the ground. There are many routes you can take with affiliate marketing, such as picking a niche and focusing on that audience or choosing products you like and advertising them in your content.
No matter what type of affiliate marketing strategy you employ, there are tips that can help make your program more successful. Whether you’re just starting out or want to brush up on some techniques, these tips will help any affiliate marketer drive more sales through their programs.
Most affiliate marketers will tell you that finding a niche is one of their greatest challenges. This isn’t just because it takes time and energy, but also because you need to be passionate about what you’re doing or your success will be minimal.
It’s important to choose a topic that interests you enough that you can write in-depth articles and follow up with customers frequently via email or social media without getting burnt out.
That way, not only will more people read your content, but they might share it on social media themselves as well! The other major challenge with affiliate marketing is creating a program that works for everyone involved. You need something that customers like and want to buy, but also something your affiliates are interested in promoting as well.
To make your affiliate marketing more successful, you need to be able to promote something that people want. If you pick a niche that no one is interested in or you don’t promote products your affiliates find appealing, they’re not going to work hard on your behalf.
Think about what kind of products are popular and find ones that will appeal to affiliates who might promote them through social media or their own websites. Look at affiliate networks if you have problems finding suitable products, but do keep in mind that quality is important! You want something customers will come back and buy time and time again, so picking high-quality items is an absolute must.
Conclusion of Affiliate Marketing Beginners Guide
No one will make you an affiliate marketing expert overnight. But, if you follow these simple steps, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a pro! And remember that practicing makes perfect. Continue experimenting with different types of affiliate programs and keep learning new skills along your journey as an affiliate marketer. Knowledge is power and it’s never too late to learn more about how affiliate marketing works. Start now and never stop learning!
