Affiliate marketing guide for beginners

Complete affiliate marketing guide to start with. From choosing an affiliate program to all methods of affiliate marketing everything included

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a way in which a person earns by selling other sellers’ products to their audience.

This is one of the best ways to earn money online and the best part is you don’t need your own product or services, you just have to use your audience and recommend them to buy it.

Methods of affiliate marketing

There are many methods for doing affiliate marketing but they all involve around audience building and traffic generation.

Through YouTube

You can recommend products and services of your niche to your audience and leave the link in the description. I took it first as it has the highest conversion due to its personal touch. So be careful and only recommend trustful products which you use.

Through blogging

By blogging, you can target an audience through search engine optimization and can also build an email list of your consumer and recommend other products too.

Microblogging is one of the best ways to do so in which you promote products in one niche and build content around it. It helps in building authority in that category.

If you want to learn about blogging and how to rank your articles you can read my blogging guide.

It is a slow process but can lead to unlimited traffic and commissions once you build authority and start ranking on Google.

You should also refer to some successful affiliate marketing examples

Through social media

No matter where your audience is there is always a possibility to sell a product to them and social media is the best way to do so whether it is Twitter, Facebook Instagram, or any other platform.

It doesn’t have a very high reach nowadays but if you have a good following then you can push them again and again for the same product with different posts.

Make sure you don’t spam and follow the policies of the platform.

Through paid ads

This is a very risky way of doing affiliate marketing but it can give immediate results if you do it properly.

Make sure what product you’re promoting through paid ads has a high commission rate.

Any mistake can lead to a wastage of money.

Try to advertise on the platform where you can find a similar group of people. It is not always necessary to promote only on Google or Facebook there are many other alternatives too.

Also, try to optimize the ads from time to time and double down on working ads.

Also, consider building funnels and landing pages at the time of paid ads advertisements and try to collect their information like email and name so that you can retarget them.

There are some affiliate programs that don’t allow paid advertisements and brand building so be careful about that and read the whole policy.

Direct messages

It is not recommended and it is more like a referral, not affiliate marketing but you can do so too at starting or recommending any client

I will discuss the difference between referral and affiliate marketing later in this post.

These are some of the methods you can start affiliate marketing. There will be some need for tools and programs which I will discuss later.

Dark practices of affiliate marketing

There are some quick rich themes, myths, and techniques that are not good for affiliate marketing which can lead to loss of money.

So let me discuss this one by one:

There are many fake products with high commissions which you should not promote to your audience for some quick money. Do your research and only promote good products.

Make sure you check out the whole policy or else can be banned from an affiliate program permanently. I have seen many YouTubers saying there you can earn very quickly but it is not always true.

Buying products on your own there are some affiliate programs that offer high value to affiliate marketer and has a margin over their own product they mostly have a tracking system that will track it immediately.

There are many other black hat techniques that you have to avoid.

Potential earning through affiliate marketing

There is no limit on earning potential, it all depends on your audience and your product. The more product you can sell the better result it can bring.

As long as the supplier is ready to pay you, you can promote it. To avoid out of stock or limited products make sure you have more products to advertise.

You can try a recurring basis affiliate marketing program over fixed commissions or and hybrid model too for continuous income

Some tools I recommend for affiliate marketing are:

I am going to share tools type not tools name completely. I will discuss some and give you examples but there are many that you can try in each category.

Graphic designing software

First of all, for promotion, you will need to make some graphics like banners and posters.

Some of the best software is photoshop and canva.

Website builder and hosting

If you are not a technical person you will need a website builder and good hosting to start with.

Currently, WordPress is the most popular web builder but there are many other alternatives too.

For hosting, I cannot say anything. It depends on what you want. There are many options out there.

Marketing software

If you build a sales funnel there are many good options for it like click funnel, groove funnels, Getresponse, etc. However, you can build it for free through elementor on wordpress too

Also, you will need an email marketing software mostly all of this is integrated already but you can use free options like mail chimp or CRM like HubSpot’s

Keyword research tool

If you do affiliate marketing through blogging and reviews on your website then you probably need this tool to do some keyword research. There are many good tools available like semrush, ubersuggest, etc on a free and paid basis.

Social media management tool

If you want to do affiliate marketing through social media you will need to produce a high level of content and schedule it you can use any tool but through canva, you can do it too, it will reduce your cost for it.

Management tools

You can increase your productivity through various management tools according to your needs too.

I have listed down all the major tools that can help in building a good affiliate marketing business there are many alternatives and other options too. Which you can explore in your journey as it suits you

Difference between referral and affiliate marketing

Many people confuse affiliate marketing with referral marketing there are some core differences:

Referral marketing is not for everyone, it is only for existing customers whereas affiliate marketing is open to everyone.

Referral earning can be limited in many cases but there is no such thing as affiliate marketing

Referrals are fixed mostly where else affiliate marketing can vary their commission.

How to find a good affiliate marketing program

Every niche has different types of an affiliate marketing program

You can find it through affiliate networks like Shareasale, impact, partner stake Clickbank, etc.

Also, check services you use and check if they have an affiliate program then enroll on it and promote it

If you want physical products, then marketplaces are best like Amazon.

Conclusion

I hope I have cleared all your doubts regarding affiliate marketing and given you are the start point

Comment below your story and experience around affiliate marketing