What is affiliate marketing and how does it work for beginners (7 key steps)

How do I become an affiliate marketer for beginners in 2020

Your Google search may have brought you here because you’re fed up with the day job and you want to get out of the rat race. Alternatively you may have already begun your affiliate marketing journey and you’re looking for more ideas or help. Whichever your reason for being here, welcome and let’s look at what is affiliate marketing and how does it work for beginners.

What is affiliate marketing and how does it work for beginners?

What is affiliate marketing and how does it work for beginners quick answer: Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products. You as the affiliate simply choose a niche you’re interest in. Search for a product or service in that niche. Then promote that product or niche and earn commission from each sale you make.


How does affiliate marketing work as a beginner?

As a beginner to affiliate marketing you need need to focus on how you connect people to products or services in a niche of your choice.

Affiliate marketing involves promoting products or services which are owned by another person or company. In exchange for promoting these products or services you get paid a commission after the person you referred buy’s their services or their products.

In order to send people to affiliate products or services, you need to join affiliate programs. Make sure to look for reputable affiliate products or services to promote. It’s then your job as the affiliate marketer to promote and share those products or services with your target audience.

Finding affiliate products or services isn’t the difficult part, in fact it’s extremely easy. There are affiliate programs everywhere on the internet. In most cases these are easy to sign up for.

US affiliate marketing spending between 2015 and 2019 has risen from $4.21 billion to $6.4 billion. This represents a 52% increase. Affiliate marketing spend is expected to rise to $6.82 billion in 2020! But not only that 81% of Brands Use Affiliate Marketing Programs.”

Source of data – Web Market Support

But where the difficulty lies for most beginner affiliate marketers is in finding delivering “traffic” or people to the affiliate’s website in order to make affiliate commissions.

But it’s not just about any traffic, it has to be targeted traffic. You need to find people who are interested in the product or service that’s on offer or else you’ll fail before you begin.

More Reading: How to promote ClickBank products without a website (Make cash 7 ways)

Take action and you’ll make affiliate commissions! Take massive action and you’ll succeed big time

In reality the truth about most beginners to affiliate marketing is they don’t take action. But if you are prepared to take action and work hard, you will start to get paid affiliate commissions. But in the words of Tony Robbins, if you take ‘Massive Action‘, you’ll do more than just succeed, you’ll fly!

I pretty much guarantee that you’ll never forget the first affiliate commission you make. The feeling you get when you receive your first affiliate commission is amazing! That moment when you open your affiliate account and see that someone has purchased a product or service, which was as a result of your referral.

It still gives me a real buzz.

Make it a side hustle first

Before you jump headfirst into affiliate market and leave your day job, first make it work before you hand your notice in. Affiliate marketing can easily be a side hustle and can run alongside your day job. Only when you’re earning a steady income should you consider jacking in your job.

How to start affiliate marketing – the 7 key steps to master

So how do you start affiliate marketing? To simplify the process of getting started, here’s the 7 steps for how to start affiliate marketing:

  1. Decide on your niche.
  2. Sign up for an affiliate program that includes products or services in your niche. This could be the company’s own affiliate program like Amazon or it could be you use an affiliate market place like ClickBank that promote multiple company affiliate programs.
  3. Find a product in that niche you want to promote.
  4. Decide how you’ll find your target audience; starting a blog, using social media like Facebook, Youtube or Instagram.
  5. Set up a PayPal account, as many affiliate programs offer payment via PayPal. Alternatively, they’ll pay directly into a bank of your choice.
  6. Start promoting the affiliate program.
  7. If any of the people in your target audience buy the product or service you promote, you get paid a commission.

More Reading: Can I promote ClickBank products on Facebook? (Promoting affiliate links in 2020)

Affiliate marketing companies

As already mentioned, there are many affiliate marketing companies to choose from. This might be to sign up to a company’s own affiliate program, like Amazon Associates or eBay, or it could be you sign up to what’s know as an affiliate market place or affiliate marketing network like ClickBank or Commission Junction.

Here are some of the best affiliate networks for companies looking to sell more of their products:

The following lists are split between individual company affiliate programs and those that are affiliate market places or affiliate marketing network:

Company affiliate programs:
  • Amazon Associates.
  • eBay.
  • Rakuten.
Affiliate market places (affiliate marketing network):
  • ShareASale.
  • LinkShare.
  • Affiliateprograms.com.
  • ClickBank.
  • FlexOffers.
  • Commission Junction.

Find an audience and traffic for your chosen niche and product or service

As I’ve already explained, the easiest part to affiliate marketing is finding affiliate products and services. But the hard part is delivering traffic (or people and buyers) to those affiliate products and services.

This is what I recommend you get some education in affiliate marketing before you begin. This way you’ll speed up the process and not waste time fumbling around on the internet not making any money.

Get some training in affiliate marketing

To learn to promote affiliate products and services, here are a few links to recommended training programs:

  • The ClickBank University (a great place for beginners to start) – Click here for more information.
  • John Crestani’s Super Affiliate System (for beginners and for those looking to take their affiliate journey to another level and earn the big bucks) – Click here for more information.
  • Paul O’Mahony’s Left Click Right Click Online Business Mastery Program (for beginners and to enhance your learning as an existing online marketer) – Click here for more information.

Deciding whether to promote affiliate products using a website or not

Your first decision to make when it comes to finding your audience, is whether or not you’re going to promote affiliate products or services with a website or not.

I personally enjoy affiliate marketing using a website or blog, as I love to write. But you may not enjoy writing and may prefer to use social media channels instead. But in any event, you need to focus on creating and building an email marketing list.

If you don’t have a website and you choose to find an audience using social media, this can be extremely successful. For example, the likes of John Crestani have made many millions of Dollars with online marketing and selling affiliate products on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and especially on YouTube.

For those of you who want to begin your affiliate marketing journey without a website, please take a read of this article here how to promote ClickBank products without a website (Make cash 7 ways). Otherwise, please read on.

How to start affiliate marketing on your own blog

If you decide to promote affiliate products using a website, these are the steps you’ll need to take to do so:

  1. Choose your niche.
  2. Buy a domain name.
  3. Buy a hosting package.
  4. Create a website or a blog – I recommend using WordPress.
  5. Research products in your niche you can review and write articles about.
  6. Sign up for the Amazon Affiliate Program.
  7. Find affiliate programs for other products you want to review in your chosen niche.
  8. Create content in the form articles, tutorials, review posts, resource pages or emails and use your affiliate links.
  9. Optimise each page or post and track your search engine rankings and progress in Google, Alexa and Semrush.
  10. Buy a subscription to an autoresponder like Aweber to build your email list and send your emails.
  11. Rinse and Repeat!

More Reading: Pathway to Passive review Affilorama (Content affiliate marketing)

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What is affiliate marketing and how does it work for beginners (7 key steps)

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