How to Make Money Online with Affiliate Marketing: A Beginner's Guide

Affiliate marketing is a popular and lucrative way to make money online. It involves promoting other people’s or companies’ products or services and earning a commission for each sale or action you generate through your unique affiliate link. Affiliate marketing can be a great source of passive income, as you can earn money even when you are not actively working on it.

But how do you get started with affiliate marketing? What are the best practices and tips to succeed in this field? And what are some examples of successful affiliate marketers and programs that you can learn from?

In this blog post, we will answer these questions and more. We will cover the basics of affiliate marketing, how it works, the types of affiliate marketing, the pros and cons of affiliate marketing, how to make money with affiliate marketing, how to start your own affiliate marketing business, and some tips and tricks to help you along the way. We will also share some examples of affiliate marketing programs that you can join or emulate.

By the end of this blog post, you will have a clear understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how you can use it to create a profitable online business.

Table of Contents

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a form of online marketing where you promote other people’s or companies’ products or services and earn a commission for each sale or action that you generate through your unique affiliate link.

An affiliate link is a special URL that contains your affiliate ID or username. When someone clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase or completes an action on the merchant’s website, you get credited for it and receive a commission.

The commission rate for affiliate sales varies depending on the product, the merchant, and the affiliate program. Some products may offer a low commission rate of 5% or less, while others may offer a high commission rate of 50% or more. Some affiliate programs may also pay you for leads, free trials, clicks, or downloads.

Affiliate marketing is usually done through a third-party platform called an affiliate network. An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between affiliates and merchants. It provides affiliates with tools to create and track their affiliate links, access to various merchants and products to promote, and payment processing and reporting. Some examples of popular affiliate networks are Amazon Associates¹, Shopify², ClickBank³, and ShareASale⁴.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing works in four simple steps:

You join an affiliate program or network and choose a product or service to promote.
You create an affiliate link for the product or service using the tools provided by the affiliate program or network.
You share your affiliate link on your website, blog, social media, podcast, email list, or any other online platform where you have an audience.
You earn a commission when someone clicks on your affiliate link and makes a purchase or completes an action on the merchant’s website.

Types of Affiliate Marketing

There are different types of affiliate marketing based on the relationship between the affiliates and the merchants, the payment model, and the level of involvement.

Relationship-Based Affiliate Marketing

Relationship-based affiliate marketing refers to how affiliates and merchants interact with each other. There are three main types of relationship-based affiliate marketing:

Unattached Affiliate Marketing: This is when affiliates have no direct relationship with the merchants they promote. They simply find products or services that match their niche or audience and share their affiliate links without any personal endorsement or review. This type of affiliate marketing requires minimal effort and involvement from the affiliates, but it also has low conversion rates and trust factor.
Related Affiliate Marketing: This is when affiliates have some relationship with the merchants they promote. They may have used their products or services before, have met them in person or online, or have received some incentives or benefits from them. This type of affiliate marketing requires more effort and involvement from the affiliates, but it also has higher conversion rates and trust factor.
Involved Affiliate Marketing: This is when affiliates have a strong relationship with the merchants they promote. They may have created their own products or services in collaboration with them, have co-branded their websites or platforms with them, or have received exclusive rights or privileges from them. This type of affiliate marketing requires the most effort and involvement from the affiliates, but it also has the highest conversion rates and trust factor.

Payment-Based Affiliate Marketing

Payment-based affiliate marketing refers to how affiliates get paid by the merchants they promote. There are four main types of payment-based affiliate marketing:

Pay Per Sale (PPS): This is the most common type of affiliate marketing, where you get paid a percentage of the sale price of the product or service that you promote. For example, if you promote a product that costs $100 and has a 10% commission rate, you will earn $10 for each sale that you generate.

Pay Per Lead (PPL): This is when you get paid for each qualified lead that you generate for the merchant. A qualified lead is someone who signs up for a free trial, subscribes to a newsletter, fills out a form, or performs any other action that indicates interest in the product or service. For example, if you promote a software that offers a free trial and pays $5 per lead, you will earn $5 for each person who signs up for the trial through your affiliate link¹².
Pay Per Click (PPC): This is when you get paid for each click that you generate on your affiliate link. This type of affiliate marketing is usually used by search engines and online advertising platforms. For example, if you use Google Ads to promote a product and get paid $0.50 per click, you will earn $0.50 for each person who clicks on your ad.
Pay Per Action (PPA): This is when you get paid for each specific action that you generate on the merchant’s website. The action can be anything from downloading an app, completing a survey, watching a video, or registering for an event. For example, if you promote an app that pays $1 per download, you will earn $1 for each person who downloads the app through your affiliate link.

Involvement-Based Affiliate Marketing

Involvement-based affiliate marketing refers to how much affiliates are involved in creating and delivering content to their audience. There are two main types of involvement-based affiliate marketing:

Content-Based Affiliate Marketing: This is when affiliates create original and valuable content around the products or services that they promote. The content can be in the form of blog posts, reviews, tutorials, videos, podcasts, ebooks, or courses. The content provides useful information, solves problems, answers questions, or entertains the audience. The content also includes affiliate links to the products or services that are relevant and helpful to the audience. For example, if you write a blog post about how to start a podcast and include affiliate links to podcasting tools and platforms, you are doing content-based affiliate marketing.
Display-Based Affiliate Marketing: This is when affiliates display ads or banners on their website or platform that contain their affiliate links. The ads or banners can be provided by the affiliate program or network, or created by the affiliates themselves. The ads or banners are usually placed on strategic locations on the website or platform to attract attention and clicks from the audience. For example, if you place an ad or banner on your sidebar or footer that promotes a product or service that is relevant to your niche, you are doing display-based affiliate marketing.

Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has many advantages and disadvantages for both affiliates and merchants. Here are some of them:

Pros of Affiliate Marketing

Low-Cost and Low-Risk: Affiliate marketing is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to start an online business. You don’t need to create your own products or services, deal with inventory, shipping, customer service, or refunds. You also don’t need to spend money on advertising or marketing campaigns. All you need is a website or platform where you can share your affiliate links and drive traffic to them.
Passive Income: Affiliate marketing can generate passive income for you as long as your affiliate links are active and visible online. You can earn money even when you are not working on your website or platform. You can also scale up your income by promoting more products or services, creating more content, expanding your audience, or joining more affiliate programs.
Flexible and Creative: Affiliate marketing gives you the freedom and flexibility to work from anywhere and anytime. You can choose your own niche, products or services, content format,

and marketing strategies. You can also be creative and experiment with different types of content, products, or services to see what works best for you and your audience.

Cons of Affiliate Marketing

No Control: Affiliate marketing means that you have no control over the products or services that you promote. You don’t own them, you don’t set the prices, you don’t handle the customer service, and you don’t make the rules. You are also dependent on the merchants and their affiliate programs. They can change their terms and conditions, commission rates, payment methods, or tracking systems at any time. They can also discontinue their products or services, close their affiliate programs, or ban you from them for any reason.
High Competition: Affiliate marketing is a highly competitive industry. There are millions of affiliates promoting thousands of products or services in every niche imaginable. You have to compete with other affiliates for traffic, clicks, conversions, and commissions. You also have to deal with fraudsters, scammers, hackers, and thieves who may try to steal your codes, links, commissions, or identity.
Limited Growth Potential: Affiliate marketing has a limited growth potential compared to other online business models. You are only earning a fraction of the sale price of the products or services that you promote. You are also limited by the demand and supply of the products or services in your niche. You can’t create your own products or services, set your own prices, or build your own brand. You are essentially a middleman between the merchants and the customers.

How Do Affiliate Marketers Make Money?

Affiliate marketers make money by generating sales or actions for the merchants that they promote. They do this by creating and delivering valuable content to their audience that includes their affiliate links.

The content can be in various formats, such as blog posts, reviews, tutorials, videos, podcasts, ebooks, or courses. The content provides useful information, solves problems, answers questions, or entertains the audience. The content also includes affiliate links to the products or services that are relevant and helpful to the audience.

The affiliate links are tracked by cookies or pixels that record the source of the traffic and the actions taken on the merchant’s website. When someone clicks on an affiliate link and makes a purchase or completes an action on the merchant’s website within a certain time frame (called a cookie duration), the affiliate gets credited for it and receives a commission.

The commission is usually paid by the merchant or the affiliate network through various payment methods, such as PayPal, direct deposit, check, wire transfer, or gift card. The payment frequency and threshold may also vary depending on the merchant or the affiliate network. Some may pay monthly, bi-weekly,

or weekly, while others may pay quarterly or annually. Some may have a low payment threshold of $10 or $50, while others may have a high payment threshold of $100 or $500.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing

If you are interested in starting your own affiliate marketing business, here are the basic steps that you need to follow:

Choose your niche: A niche is a specific topic or category that you want to focus on. It can be anything that you are passionate about, knowledgeable about, or interested in. For example, you can choose a niche like fitness, travel, beauty, gaming, gardening, etc. Choosing a niche will help you narrow down your target audience, find relevant products or services to promote, and create valuable content for them.
Find products or services to promote: Once you have chosen your niche, you need to find products or services that match your niche and your audience’s needs. You can do this by browsing online marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, or AliExpress. You can also use tools like Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, or Ahrefs to find popular and profitable products or services in your niche. Alternatively, you can join an affiliate network like Amazon Associates¹, Shopify², ClickBank³, or ShareASale⁴ and browse their catalogs of merchants and products or services.
Create a website and start publishing content: To start affiliate marketing, you need a website or platform where you can share your affiliate links and drive traffic to them. You can create a website using platforms like WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify. You can also use social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Pinterest. Once you have a website or platform, you need to start publishing content that is relevant to your niche and your audience. The content can be in various formats, such as blog posts, reviews, tutorials, videos, podcasts, ebooks, or courses. The content should provide useful information, solve problems, answer questions, or entertain your audience. The content should also include affiliate links to the products or services that you promote.
Build your audience: To make money with affiliate marketing, you need to build an audience that trusts you and follows your recommendations. You can do this by promoting your content on various channels, such as search engines (SEO), social media (SMM), email marketing (EMM), paid advertising (PPC), guest posting (GP), influencer marketing (IM), etc. You can also use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or Affiliate Manager Dashboards to track your website traffic, audience behavior, affiliate links, and conversions. You can also use tools like Excel or Google Sheets to organize and analyze your data.
Join affiliate programs and get your links: To start earning commissions from your affiliate marketing, you need to join affiliate programs and get your affiliate links. You can join affiliate programs directly from the merchants’ websites or through affiliate networks. You can also use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to find affiliate programs in your niche. Once you join an affiliate program, you will get access to your affiliate dashboard where you can create and manage your affiliate links. You can also use tools like ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links, or Bitly to shorten and cloak your affiliate links.
Add affiliate links to your content: The final step is to add your affiliate links to your content. You can do this by inserting them in your text, images, videos, buttons, banners, or widgets. You can also use tools like Lasso or Geniuslink to create attractive and responsive affiliate boxes that display product information and prices. Make sure to add your affiliate links naturally and ethically in your content. Don’t spam your audience with too many links or irrelevant products. Also, make sure to disclose your affiliate relationship and comply with the FTC guidelines and the merchants’ terms and conditions.

Tips to Level-Up Your Affiliate Marketing

If you want to take your affiliate marketing business to the next level, here are some tips that can help you:

Choose a profitable niche: Not all niches are created equal when it comes to affiliate marketing. Some niches have more demand, more products, more competition, and more potential than others. You want to choose a niche that has a large and engaged audience, a variety of products or services with high commission rates, low competition, and high growth potential. You can use tools like Google Trends, Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to research and validate your niche ideas.

Create high-quality content: Content is the backbone of your affiliate marketing business. It’s what attracts, educates, persuades, and converts your audience into customers. You want to create high-quality content that is relevant, valuable, engaging, and optimized for your niche keywords and audience intent. You want to create content that solves problems, answers questions, provides solutions, or entertains your audience. You also want to create content that showcases the benefits and features of the products or services that you promote and how they can help your audience achieve their goals or overcome their challenges.

Build trust and authority: Trust and authority are essential for successful affiliate marketing. You want to build trust and authority with your audience by providing honest and unbiased reviews,

providing valuable and relevant content, showing your credentials and qualifications, disclosing your affiliate relationship, and complying with the FTC guidelines and the merchants’ terms and conditions. You also want to build authority with your audience by showcasing your expertise and experience, getting endorsements and testimonials from other experts and customers, getting links and mentions from reputable sources, and engaging with your audience on social media and comments.

Optimize your website and content: To increase your traffic, conversions, and commissions, you need to optimize your website and content for both search engines and users. You want to optimize your website for speed, security, mobile-friendliness, navigation, design, and user experience. You also want to optimize your content for keywords, titles, headings, meta tags, images, videos, links, and calls to action. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Google Mobile-Friendly Test, Google Search Console, Yoast SEO, or Lighthouse to audit and improve your website and content performance.

Test and experiment: Affiliate marketing is not a one-size-fits-all business. What works for one niche, product, or audience may not work for another. That’s why you need to test and experiment with different types of content, products or services, affiliate programs or networks, marketing channels or strategies, and tracking tools or techniques. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Google Optimize, VWO, or Optimizely to run A/B tests, multivariate tests, or split tests on your website and content. You can also use tools like Hotjar, Crazy Egg, or Mouseflow to analyze your website’s heatmaps, scroll maps, click maps, and user recordings. By testing and experimenting with different variables, you can find out what works best for your niche, products or services, audience, and goals.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular and profitable ways to make money online. It allows you to promote other people’s or companies’ products or services and earn a commission for each sale or action that you generate through your unique affiliate link.

Affiliate marketing has many benefits, such as low-cost, low-risk, passive income, flexibility, and creativity. However, it also has some challenges, such as no control, high competition, and limited growth potential.

To succeed in affiliate marketing, you need to follow some basic steps:

Choose your niche
Find products or services to promote
Create a website and start publishing content
Build your audience
Join affiliate programs and get your links
Add affiliate links to your content

You also need to follow some tips to level-up your affiliate marketing:

Choose a profitable niche
Create high-quality content
Build trust and authority
Optimize your website and content
Test and experiment

Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It requires hard work, dedication, patience, and persistence. But if you do it right, it can be a rewarding and fulfilling online business that can generate passive income for you for years to come.

We hope this blog post has given you a clear understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how you can use it to create a profitable online business. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. And if you want to learn more about affiliate marketing or other online business topics, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media.

Happy affiliate marketing! 😊

How to Make Money Online with Affiliate Marketing: A Beginner’s Guide