A Beginner’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing

Now that we are in the digital age and most of us rely heavily on the online world, we tend to spend so much of our time browsing and surfing the internet. Throughout the years, the worldwide web has become an effective platform for marketing. We even now have the term “e-commerce” or electronic commerce. 

With e-commerce, transactions for buying and selling products are entirely made online. Business owners and manufacturers can just put up their products on a website, and buyers can easily purchase whatever they need. Now, all they have to do is find ways to promote their business — and trust me, with the power of the internet, marketing opportunities are endless. Gone are the days where you have to buy a slot for a TV advertisement or a section in a newspaper just to advertise. And this leads to one type of online marketing, which is affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a type of online marketing where a merchant or a business owner boosts their product sales by providing existing content creators or potential affiliate marketers with the same niche links that they can incorporate into their content. Once clicked by the audience, these links will direct them to the website’s shop to purchase the products. 

Affiliate marketers or affiliates earn a commission when someone purchases an item through their link. Their income is solely based on the number of items sold using the link. Depending on the affiliate network, the commission can be a percentage of the sales or a fixed rate per sale. Although no training is required to become an affiliate, there are classes that you can take that can guide you in the industry. Look for the most recommended courses on affiliate marketing to have an in-depth introduction about being an affiliate.

What do you benefit from affiliate marketing?

It is very easy to start.

To be an affiliate marketer, all you need is a device and access to the internet. Other than that, you must be able to create content consistently. You also must study how to learn affiliate marketing in a professional way. Your content,  it can be a blog post or a YouTube video, must be in line with the merchant’s niche or you can simply review their product. 

It would not cost you anything.

Merchants do not require any fees for aspiring affiliates, so you have nothing to risk at all — except maybe your time and effort for content creation. However, beginners in this industry must ensure that they can widen their audience as their income solely relies on the number of people who purchase with their links.

You get an opportunity to increase your income.

As soon as they get into that groove and people start to purchase products through their links, affiliate marketers can easily earn an income. For your income to constantly grow, you need to keep promoting your website or account through your content to gain loyal followers who can potentially buy your chosen merchant’s products.

It can be done with several platforms.

Affiliate marketing works with almost all platforms, including blogs, Youtube, as well as Instagram. So, if you have been a long-time video creator on Youtube or you already have thousands of followers on Instagram, then you might have an advantage as an affiliate. Building your audience through those platforms can now be easy nowadays.

You can create a wide variety of content.

Depending on which type of content you prefer, you can find an appropriate merchant through affiliate networks. It is at your advantage if you are flexible and can create several forms of content, like blogs, videos, posts, etc. Instagram has this new feature where you can add affiliate links to your stories, and interested followers can just swipe up to get directed on the website.

It can elevate your platform.

If people keep interacting with your affiliate links, the more engaging your account becomes. As a result of this, you get better standing on these platforms’ algorithms, especially with Instagram recently, where the more engagements you have, the more visible you become.

How to become successful in Affiliate Marketing?

Although it is easy and risk-free to start getting involved in affiliate marketing and possibly earn an income, you still have to maintain good practices to help your earnings grow and be more consistent. To help you with this, here are nine tips and steps that you can follow to become successful as an affiliate marketer:

1. Choose proper platforms for you.

As we mentioned, you can choose from a lot of platforms for affiliate marketing. One factor that can help your success in this career become faster, you must select a platform that you are comfortable using. If you are not a writer, then blog posting would not work for you at all, and you would not need a website. You can always try Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook, where creating accounts is free, and content posting can be pretty straightforward.

2. Stick to your niche.

Before you start, you must choose two to three related niches that you want your content to revolve around. For example, one of the most popular niches nowadays is sports and fitness. If you are a woman who religiously works out and an enthusiast of anything health and fitness-related, you can post about those things and choose merchants that maybe sell workout clothes, protein shakes, sports equipment, etc. In addition to this, if you love fashion, you can post content about that too. Remember, too many niches mess up your content, confuses your audience, and you lose the potential of gaining loyal followers.

3. Build your credibility to attract followers.

Credibility is vital for you to gain organic followers or followers that are legitimately engaging with your posts — in short, not bots. Remember that for affiliate marketing to become an effective source of income, your stats are key. You need to have more followers or an audience that anticipates every post and reacts to each of them. The more followers you have, the more chances of having people that purchase with your affiliate link.

4. Find an affiliate network.

The easiest way to find merchants or sellers that seeks additional promotion through affiliate marketing is by visiting affiliate networks. These networks are what serve as middlemen between merchants and affiliates. Merchants have their products listed in the networks, and affiliate marketers just search through them to find the products relevant to their niche, and they can create content about.

5. Carefully choose the products.

Only choose relevant products and merchants. This way, your content becomes consistent, and you stay within your niche.

Create high-quality content consistently.

Lastly, you have to keep your audience engaged and interested in your content, so they stick around. And when you finally post content on your affiliate links, make sure that you will be able to captivate their audience and persuade them to buy the product. Writing positive reviews about the products is the most common way to incorporate affiliate links.

The secret to becoming successful in this career is to be consistent and dedicated to your content. You have to lure in your audience and convince them that they need these products, so they should click your link and purchase. In affiliate marketing, this is pretty much the only way to earn income.