Are you fascinated by affiliate marketing? Are you an affiliate marketer or a brand?

Affiliate marketing is equally advantageous to the brands and the marketers. It helps businesses achieve their marketing goals, while affiliate marketers get an opportunity to generate passive income. It is a step-by-step guide to becoming an affiliate marketer and affiliate merchant. But let’s first learn about affiliate marketing and its benefits for businesses and marketers.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is performance-based digital marketing in which online merchants (businesses) reward or compensate affiliates (third-party publishers) for promoting products or services. Affiliates or third-party publishers refer to services and products in their content and get rewarded for each click, lead, or sale generated through the link on their blogs, social media, or websites.

The three important components of affiliate marketing are affiliate merchant, affiliate marketer, and affiliate network.

Affiliate Merchant

The term merchant refers to the seller, the brand, the retailer, or the vendor wishing to hire an affiliate to reach out to a wide range of customers.

Affiliate Marketer

An affiliate is a third-party publisher the merchant hires to promote products or services on his blog(s), website(s), or social media through banner ads, text ads, or links. An affiliate can also run a promotion through email to target potential customers.

Affiliate Network

An affiliate network is a platform or service that connects affiliate merchants with affiliate marketers. It serves as an intermediary, helping merchants and affiliates find each other conveniently. The following are a few popular affiliate networks:

• Amazon Associates.
• ShareASale.
• CJ Affiliate.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing promotes products and services through embedded links, banner ads, or pop-ups. For example, in the content shown below, Bluehost is the affiliate partner:

“Bluehost is among the best hosting servers…..”

An online merchant or affiliate partner provides a unique link to the affiliates for embedding within the content. The unique link is used to trace who handles the sale.

You can promote affiliate links in various ways and generate income. The most effective methods of promoting affiliate links are:

Influencer Marketing

Influencers have become known faces of affiliate marketing. Different merchants and companies pay influencers to promote their products and services. Among the top influencers are celebrities like Selena Gomez and Kim Kardashian. However, many other ordinary people have earned the status of influencers through engaging content and a huge fan following.

Although influencers get paid to promote products, they can also share affiliate links with their fans or followers to earn commissions. You can consider influencer marketing to generate income if you already have an established loyal audience base.

Blogging

A successful way to make money with affiliate marketing is through blogging. Bloggers use affiliate marketing to monetize their blog posts. Blogs have a specific niche, and, as a blogger, you must only promote products and services related to your niche. This way, you can gain the interest of your audience and are likely to generate more sales.

As an affiliate marketer, you can add referral links in the content, add banners, or display pop-ups. You can also include links in social media posts, emails, or newsletters.

Remember, instead of focusing on increasing sales, provide value to your audience.

Social Media Marketing

Affiliate marketers use various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, for promotion with the help of advertisements or affiliate links. Please remember your advertisement must comply with the guidelines of those platforms.

Email Marketing

Email lists are yet another way to make money with affiliate marketing. AWeber, GetResponse, ConvertKit, Moosend, ActiveCampaign, and Pabbly are famous email marketing services marketers use to get the best results. Sometimes, these services offer other incentives for signing up, such as training sessions, templates, or eBooks.

Video Marketing

Creating videos is an excellent way to promote products or services. Marketers can post videos on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. A large number of audiences prefer video content over written content. Please note that you can add affiliate links to a YouTube video.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing for Affiliates

Affiliate marketing offers many benefits to affiliates, such as:

• No or little prior expertise is required.
• Easy sign-up for affiliate programs.
• Your income increases with the number of sales.
• Your followers and subscribers increase.
• Work timings are flexible. You can work full-time, part-time, or as a freelancer.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing for Merchants

Affiliate marketing is a cost-effective method of increasing sales and acquiring new customers. It offers several benefits to businesses, a few of which are:

• You reach a broader base of audiences from around the world.
• Your website traffic increases.
• More people become aware of your brand.
• Your reputation boosts.
• You pay affiliates only when they generate a sale.

Six Steps to Become an Affiliate Marketer

Step 1: Select a Suitable Platform

Carefully choose a platform you will use to create content and promote products. The two most popular and convenient platforms for beginners are YouTube and Blogs. It is easy to start a blog with WordPress, a website builder used by most bloggers, small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies.

Creating a blog will only cost a few dollars monthly for web hosting services. Bluehost, Hostinger, Elementor, HostGator, and Cloudways are popular web hosting platforms.

Creating and uploading videos on YouTube is free and ideal for many beginners.

Below is a detailed comparison of YouTube and Blog:

Other suitable platforms for affiliate marketing include:

• Instagram
• TikTok
• Facebook
• Pinterest

Step 2: Select Your Niche and Create Quality Content

The competition in affiliate marketing is extensive, and attracting an audience and making loyal fans is hard. One thing to help you grow your audience and survive the competition is to narrow down your niche.

Instead of selecting a generic field, focus on one specific category and create content. For example, instead of “pets”, create content about a particular pet, such as a dog or cat. More focused topics attract more dedicated readers and get more clicks on the affiliate links.

Choose something that excites you or about which you would love to create content. Your content should reflect your personality, and your audience should connect with you. You must have authority in your niche and create engaging content.

Most new affiliate marketers need to realize that their target audience comprises those interested in buying the product but are still determining if it is worth buying. Your content must give them a reason to purchase the product. You must provide an honest opinion about the products as an affiliate marketer.

You can build a fan base effectively only if your reviews are genuine. The followers will trust your opinion and likely return for more reviews or blogs.

The following are a few features of high-quality content:

• The content is authoritative and engaging.
• There are no spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and WhiteSmoke are among the popular grammar-checking tools used by content creators.
• The content is plagiarism-free. Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and WhiteSmoke all come with plagiarism-checking features.
• The content incorporates high-quality images and infographics. Canva and Visme are famous tools for creating professional images and inforgraghics. However, for stock images I recommend Shutterstock and Envato. 
• The content is inclusive and caters to diverse audiences.

Step 3: Generate Traffic Before Promoting Affiliate Links

To generate more sales, you need to have high traffic. With an increase in organic traffic, affiliate sales will automatically increase. It is, therefore, critical to have enough visits per day before you include affiliate links in the content.

Most affiliate programs also require you to have considerable traffic before you can start promoting their products.

Step 4: Sign Up for the Affiliate Program/Network

You can join several affiliate programs or networks to make money with affiliate marketing, but choosing the right program is critical for success. The different affiliate programs can be divided into three categories:

High-paying, low-volume affiliate programs

These affiliate programs pay high commissions, but their potential customers are limited. For example, digital marketing tools GetResponse, AWeber, and SEMrush have high-paying affiliate programs, but their customers are limited.

Low-paying, high-volume affiliate programs

These affiliate programs have a broad customer base but offer less commission. For example, Amazon Associate Program offers up to 10% commission on products you sell, and their customer base is enormous because of the variety of products available.

High-paying, high-volume affiliate programs

Most web hosting services, such as Bluehost, WP Engine, Liquid Web, and Kinsta, fall under this category. In addition, eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify, while digital marketing platform Builderall is among the high-paying, high-volume affiliate programs.

Other factors to consider while choosing the affiliate program include:

• Cookie life. The longer the cookie life, the higher the chances of earning a commission.
• Commission structure: Recurring commissions are better than one-time commissions, while commissions that increase with sales are better than fixed commissions.
• Payment methods.
• Payment frequency.
• Payment threshold.
• Promotion method.
• Affiliate support provided by the company.
• Supporting material supplied by the company.
• Brand reputation and product quality.

Step 5: Promote the Affiliate Products in Your Content

Once you have signed up for affiliate programs that match your niche, it is time to include affiliate links in your content. Affiliate links’ placement, style, and frequency are pivotal in generating sales and making money with affiliate marketing. Following are a few tips you should consider when adding links to your blog:

Use links only when appropriate

Remember not to use links out of context to make money with affiliate marketing. Instead, include links if they are in line with your content. Random links will damage your credibility, and you may lose readers.

Use different styles of promotions

To make promotions visually attractive, you should use affiliate links in different forms, such as banners, sidebar widgets, referral links, and pop-ups. OptinMonster is a great lead-generation tool that can add affiliate links to lightbox pop-ups, slide-in sign-up forms, floating bars, etc.

AdSanity is another ad management plugin for WordPress to place banners on the website’s header, sidebar, and footer.

Placement of links

You should include links early in your post, as many readers may not read till the end. Placing links at the beginning of the posts increases the chances of clicks.

Affiliate link Plugin

Before adding hundreds of affiliate links across multiple blogs, I advise investing in a good affiliate link plugin to save time and energy. Imagine you are unaware of expired links on your blog that result in a wasted profit.

These plugins have an auto-linking feature to add affiliate links to specific keywords automatically. You can also set up a redirect page for links returning a 404 error. These plugins also let you see which affiliate links are generating more sales.

Pretty Links is one popular affiliate link plugin trusted by 200,000 websites. ThirstyAffiliates is another valuable affiliate links management tool to manage affiliate links effectively. A noticeable feature of both tools is cloaking long affiliate links to make them appear short and neat. Cloaking also helps protect your earnings from theft. Most importantly, cloaking increases email delivery rates as long and complex links often trigger spam filters.

Affiliate Disclosure

It is mandatory to disclose in your content that it contains affiliate links. Including an affiliate disclosure is a legal requirement, and you must not skip it. Affiliate disclaimer or disclosure also helps build customer trust, leading to a better relationship with them. For example, the affiliate disclaimer that I use for my blogs is something like this:

“This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.”

Step 6: Drive Traffic to Increase Revenue

Generating traffic to your site is critical if you want to make money with affiliate marketing. Google Analytics shows the performance of webpages, which can be very helpful in optimizing and creating content. MonsterInsights is a WordPress plugin that sets up Google Analytics in your WordPress, and you get all the information in your dashboard.

Based on the analytics, you can devise a strategy for optimizing content. You can use various methods to generate traffic to your blog, some of which are:

Paid Traffic

You can run paid ads such as PPC (pay-per-click) to drive traffic to your blog. However, this method will cost you money and is advisable only for high-paying affiliate programs. The traffic will also drastically reduce after you have stopped paid ads.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the method that generates consistent and passive traffic. It is the method to ensure that your page or website ranks higher in search engine results.

Keyword research is the most important thing to consider for SEO. Using the appropriate phrase or keywords likely to generate more traffic is essential for the success of your blog. Two popular and most widely used keyword research tools are SEMrush and Ahrefs. To understand how to find the best keywords for your content, please check out SEMrush’s Guide to Keyword Research.

For beginners interested in other keyword research tools, Serpstat and SpyFu can be good options.

Some other factors to consider for search engine optimization are:

• Use of Meta tags.
• Easy navigation of pages.
• Use of images.
• Use of headings.
• Quality of content.

Create Email Lists

It is a common practice that readers visiting your page will not return. Therefore, building an email list can help you communicate with your readers anytime.

With the help of email, you can share newsletters, articles, new product promotions, etc.

There are several ways to gather the email addresses of readers, such as:

• Have a “subscribe” link in the menu bar.
• A slide-in box at the end of the blog.
• A pop-up asking to subscribe.
• Asking for an email address at the time a visitor leaves a comment.

Most successful bloggers use email marketing tools to optimize their email campaigns. Best email marketing tools enable the creation of highly engaging emails (through the drag-and-drop editor), sending personalized emails to bulk readers, managing contact lists, grouping users, and managing the performance of email marketing campaigns.

Affiliate marketers’marketers’ popular email marketing tools are AWeber, GetResponse, ConvertKit, Moosend, ActiveCampaign, and Pabbly.

6 Steps to Become an Affiliate Merchant

Step 1: Set the Marketing Goals

The first step towards becoming an affiliate merchant is to decide your marketing goals. Your brand or business can aim to achieve the following goals:

• Increase traffic to the website.
• Enhance brand awareness.
• Generate leads.
• Increase sales and revenue.
• Acquire new customers.

Business goals will help you decide on the affiliate program features, including affiliate acceptance criteria, promotional methods, commission rates, payment policy, etc.

Step 2: Prepare for the Affiliate Program

Now that you have set your goals, the next step is to prepare for the affiliate program based on the goals. The following are the major decisions you will need to make:

Decide commission rates and payment policy: You must decide the commission rates, payment methods, frequency, and minimum payment threshold. For example, if your goal is to increase traffic to your website, you may choose pay per click method.

Hire a manager: Depending upon the number of affiliates you aim to accept, you may need to hire a manager. The manager will oversee the affiliate program’s day-to-day activities, including assisting the affiliates.

Prepare supportive material: For best results, you may need to provide supporting material to your affiliates, such as text ads, banner ads, promo videos, etc.

Choosing the right mechanism to track sales and payouts: You will need a proper mechanism to track the sales and payouts accurately.

Step 3: Create Affiliate Terms of Service

Affiliate Terms of Service is a document that specifies the terms and conditions of the affiliate program, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Affiliates enrollment and acceptance process.
• Rights and obligations of the affiliates and the merchant.
• Rules related to affiliate links and brand promotion.
• Intellectual property rights.
• Prohibited actions.
• Commission rate.
• Payment policy.
• Tracking mechanism used to track affiliates’ performance.
• Rules related to affiliate program suspension or termination.

Terms of service help avoid disputes or misunderstandings between affiliates and the merchant.

Step 4: Announce the Affiliate Program

You can announce your program in several ways:

Announce the affiliate program on your website: The most common way of announcing an affiliate program is to publish it on your website. Those interested in promoting your products or services will sign up through your website.

Reach prospective affiliates through email or call: Another effective way to announce an affiliate program is to contact industry experts and influencers. You can contact them through call or email, requesting to become affiliates.

Join an affiliate network: The most convenient and time-saving method of announcing an affiliate program is to join an affiliate network. Affiliate networks provide a platform to find and connect with affiliates.

Step 5: Choose the Right Affiliates

Choose the right affiliates to ensure a high ROI. While choosing the affiliates, consider the following factors:

Expertise of affiliates: Affiliate marketers promote your products and services through content. Well-reputed affiliates with authority in their niche create high-quality content, generating more sales. Therefore, choosing affiliates who are experts in their field is essential.

Number of visits and followers: Ideally, you want more and more people to know about your services and products. Potential affiliates should have a reasonable amount of traffic to the website and a decent number of followers on social media.

Engagement Level: Affiliates promote products on their websites and social media. The better affiliates interact with their followers, the higher the sales. Therefore, before choosing the affiliates, check how they interact with their followers.

Step 6: Offer Assistance to Affiliates

No one knows your products and services better than you. Providing relevant information and material to affiliates will only help them generate more sales. For example, the affiliate may need photos of your product, company logo, or other product-related information. Additionally, you may provide discount codes or other incentives to high-performing affiliates. Therefore, assisting your affiliates to succeed in affiliate campaigns is essential.

Conclusion

The popularity of affiliate marketing is growing day by day. Businesses get to reach a broader audience base, and marketers generate passive income conveniently. Therefore, whether you are a brand or a prospective affiliate, you can start affiliate marketing by following the steps outlined in this guide.