Affiliate Marketing in 2020: A Step-by-Step Guide
Affiliate marketing is the most profitable way to earn money online. Want to understand what affiliate marketing is? Keep reading to know all about this popular passive income method.
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates by each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
For 99% of people, affiliate marketing is how to get started.
The idea behind this is that you promote other people’s products, often through an affiliate network, to earn commissions if people actually buy them thanks to your marketing.
It is based on revenue sharing. If you have a product and want to sell more, you can give financial incentives to promoters through affiliate programs. If you don’t have a product and want to make money, you can promote a product that you feel has value and earn income from it as an affiliate.
Over the past 2 years, SUPER310 has inspired millions of people around the world to help them earn passive income through affiliate marketing. This would not have been possible if I had not done a call center job to pursue my passion. When I think about it, I find it amazing how my life was when I took the courage to start something by myself.
With this affiliate marketing guide, I want to provide you all the information about:
- Basics of Affiliate Marketing
- How Affiliate Marketing Works
- How to get started with affiliate marketing
- Affiliate marketing terminology
Definitions:
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning commissions by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You get a product that you like, promote it to others and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.
However, Wikipedia talks about 4 different parties that include: merchant, network, publisher, and customer.
I will explain to all 4 parties in a second. But, when it comes down to actual marketing, there are 2 sides to an affiliate equation: product manufacturer and seller, and the affiliate marketer.
Affiliate: This party is sometimes referred to as a publisher. Affiliates can also range from single individuals to entire companies. An affiliate marketing business can produce a few hundred dollars or millions of dollars in commissions each month.
This is where the marketing happens. An affiliate promotes one or several affiliate products and tries to attract and convince potential customers of the value of the merchant’s product so that they can actually buy it.
How to start affiliate marketing for beginners:
You can start with affiliate marketing in many ways.
Here are some that you can choose from:
- Create a blog and use it to promote a product
- Buy traffic from Facebook and take it to landing pages.
- Create a YouTube channel and promote products
- Create an email list by creating a mini-website
- Podcasting
Here are the steps to get started with affiliate marketing through your blog:
- Start a blog
- Select a profitable industry and then choose a niche for your blog
- Choose Affiliate Products You Can Promote
- Build content around those products
- Drive traffic to your website/affiliate post
- Use email-marketing services to capture visitors’ emails
- Create an email sequence to automate the funnel (we’ll discuss it soon)
- Focus on driving more traffic and repeating the process.
Blogging is one of the most effective ways to get started with affiliate marketing as it requires minimal investment and you can learn everything around it in no time. From here on, what really matters is how much dedication, time and smart work you do to develop your affiliate business.
Affiliate Marketing Terminology:
Some common terms associated with affiliate marketing are:
- Affiliates: Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and create sales.
- Affiliate Marketplace: There are many marketplaces such as Shareasale, CJ and Clickbank. These serve as the central database for affiliate programs in various niches.
- Affiliate Software: Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product.
- Example: FirstPromoter.
- Affiliate Link: A special tracking link provided by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate program.
- Affiliate ID: Similar to affiliate links, but many affiliate programs provide a unique ID that you can add to any page on the product site.
- Payment Mode: Different affiliate programs offer different modes of payment.
- Examples: Check, wire transfer, PayPal and others.
- Affiliate Manager / OPM: Many companies have a dedicated affiliate manager to help publishers earn more by offering tips to optimize the affiliate manager.
- Commission Percentage / Amount: The amount or percentage you will receive in income associated with each sale.
For companies offering affiliate programs, this is one of the best ways to get free promotions, thus saving significantly on advertising.
For example, whenever you see coupons or discount links, most of the time these are affiliate links, and when you shop, webmasters make money.
Every affiliate program has a set TOS.
For example, payment status, cookie policy, etc.
Many of the affiliate products offer a cookie period of 30–150 days, which means if a visitor clicks your affiliate link to land on an affiliate product, even if they do not buy anything immediately, the re-visite next 30-150 days, visit the site again you will earn an associated commission.
Affiliate Marketing: Frequently Asked Questions
At this point, you should have a basic understanding of what affiliate marketing is and how it works.
Now, let me answer some common questions asked by webmasters and marketers about affiliate marketing:
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning income every time you promote a person’s products or services. If you generate sales for the company, you are paid. If you do not make the sale, you do not get paid.
How do I become an affiliate marketer?
- Step 1: Create a website or a blog
- Step 2: Choose an industry, and then down below
- Step 3: Research products in your niche that you can review
- Step 4: Sign up for the Amazon Affiliate Program
- Step 5: Find affiliate programs for other products you want to review
- Step 6: Create content in the form of a tutorial, review post, resource page or email and use your affiliate link
- Step 7: Optimize the page and track your ranking in Google
- Step 8: Rinse and repeat!
Which affiliate program is the best?
Here’s a list of top beginner affiliate programs for those of you just getting started:
- Fiverr Affiliate Program
- Media.net
- Shopify Affiliate Program
- Amazon Affiliates
- Ebay partner network
- Target partner
- AliExpress Affiliate Program…
How are affiliate marketers paid?
- Pay per sale: In this program, a merchant pays you a percentage of the selling price when the purchase is completed.
- Pay per click: In this program, you pay based on the number of redirected visitors from your affiliate site to the merchant’s website, whether the sale has been made or not.
- Pay Per Lead: You are paid after providing your contact information to the targeted site by filling out a simple contact form to referred visitors.
How much money can you make as an affiliate marketer?
“Boundless”
There are affiliate marketers who are earning millions of dollars a month through affiliate marketing. I personally make over $ 3000 / month from affiliate marketing. The key here is how you are interacting with the entire process. Are you using a blog or marketing affiliate products using PPC? What I have been using for the last 04 years is through blogging. It was the most effective ever.
