How Do I Start In Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing

So, how do you start with affiliate marketing? Sometimes beginners get overwhelmed trying to understand where to take that first step. The concept of affiliate marketing is simple. Publishers advertise or sell products others have for sale and get a commission. Not a bad idea, right? The problem is that many people do not know how to get started in affiliate marketing. Let me show you, and explain exactly what affiliate marketing is.

How Do I Start In Affiliate Marketing – Overview

Wikipedia has Affiliate marketing described as

Affiliate marketing is a performance based type marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliate(s) for each individual customer or visitor brought by the affiliates marketing efforts.

That’s kinda complicated. One entrepreneur defines it in a much simpler way.

Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income is an American entrepreneur who has generated 3 million from his business, describes affiliate marketing this way:

Quite simply, affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.

I would simply say Affiliate marketing is selling other peoples products, and getting paid to do it. You can start with nothing because affiliate programs are almost always free. If you are charged a fee for starting an affiliate program, look elsewhere. Any program charging a fee is suspect and could be some form of Multi Level Marketing – MLM.

Related Post: Wealthy Affiliate vs The Home Business Academy

Affiliate Marketing – Learn The Basics

Affiliate Marketing is one of the simplest ways to make money online. You market a product that has no costs for you to worry about. No product development costs, no need for product inventory, no support costs, and no employee costs.

You simply advertise other people’s products, using content or ads, to generate traffic and sales. and when you make a sale, you get a percentage of the profit from the sale. And, you are paid automatically, with the money deposited directly into your bank account. You don’t need any accounting or payroll department. How simple is that?

An entrepreneur who is just starting out, certainly does not have the time or the resources to create a product. And carrying a large amount of inventory in the beginning is not practical or even affordable. So, maybe affiliate marketing will help.

In order to have everyone understand the basics of how affiliate marketing works, I am going to keep this guide as simple as I possibly can. I will separate the first few paragraphs into the parties involved in the business of affiliate marketing first.

Then, I will explain how to actually start affiliate marketing. If you want an in-depth training program, one of the best training programs available is found below- My #1 Affiliate Marketing Training.

The Process Of Affiliate Marketing

The process of affiliate marketing consists of four different entities. The merchant, the Affiliate, the Network and the Customer.

A little more detail here is necessary for a better understanding, so let’s break it down further.

The Four Divisions In Affiliate Marketing Defined

Merchant – produces and sells the product directly. He also  supplies the product to the network or directly to the affiliate. Merchants can choose to offer and handle there own Affiliate Program, or pay a network to handle the program for them.

Affiliate – You, as the affiliate, create content on your website and/or use ads to promote the Merchant’s product. In turn you get paid a commission from the merchant whenever you create a sale for the merchant. If the merchant is using a network, you get paid by the network.

Network – An Affiliate Network specializes in handling all the sales transactions, and issuing  Affiliate commission payments to the Affiliates. If you are promoting a product that the network is offering, you will get paid from the network.

Customer – The Customer clicks your link and is directed to the merchant or network. If the customer buys the product, you get credit for the sale and make a commission.

You create content, make sales happen, get paid and never handle the product. How great is that? Now, what do we have to do to make this happen? Here is a 5 step marketing guide.

5 Steps To Successful Affiliate Marketing + Time And Effort

1. Find a niche – determine your interests , or your knowledgeable areas
2. Build a website – A place to promote your products and ads
3. Become an Affiliate – You partner with a merchant or network to sell products
4. Promote your products – use content and social networks for increasing visibility
5. Make money – now you can make money while you sleep

I describe the process of affiliate marketing as 5 steps.  I think that it is important to understand that product promotion is an area that is most important for success. The more time spent in this area, the better. This is the heart of your business, using quality content, social media, and ads to promote products. One thing you must be careful about is scams.

Start Affiliate Marketing Free

To start affiliate marketing for free, you need a good training background in how to take advantage of free search engine methods (SEO). This is a good thing to keep in mind, when you run into all the get rich promises, and high pressure sales that only result in you losing your money. One of the best programs to help you with honest training and a rock solid marketing plan is my #1 Affiliate training Program. It is no scams, no frills, honest and detailed information that is indispensable. I promise, you won’t regret it!

Let’s get started!

Step 1 – Find a Niche 

So, let’s say you have determined you like dogs, and you are going to establish a dog site selling Dog Bowls. This is now “your niche”

So, what would be a problem that dog owners would have? Maybe, their pet eats his food too fast, and makes himself sick. Then he starts to heave, and …well another mess is made. The dog owner has a problem.

You need to find a merchant that sells dog bowls and see what you can find. So, you go to Amazon online, and see what products they have. One product they sell is the Slow Feeder Dog Bowls.

With a Niche determined, now you also have a possible product that you could sell to your customers! You can drill down further and find more products later. But, for now this niche has proven products available. I am only using this as an example and would tell you the more research you do on your niche the better.

So, now that you have located a product that solved a problem for pet owners, you need a place to promote your product. A website is the ideal place for an affiliate marketer to sell and promote products.

Step 2 –  Build a Website

One of the best ways to draw traffic or get customers to buy your products, is your own website! You build out a brand for you as well, and it lasts a lifetime. No more lay-offs, work your own hours, and You are the Boss!

Never built a website before, no problem! My #1 Affiliate Marketing Training will detail everything you need to know about how to build your own affiliate website. And I will be your personal trainer and coach for as long as you like. You can have a beautiful website online today, ready for you to fill it up with your special content. Try it out right now, just fill in a name for your website below.

You as a website creator, have to determine what you niche is going to be about, and then determine what your customers need help with. You notice I said determine what your customers need help with? Well, I repeated it because this is also a key point that will provide you with success.

Get Your Site Noticed With SEO and Good Keywords

One way to help people find your site is with organic search. When people search for your products online, they use google to find what they are looking for. Google is an online search engine. So, it only makes sense to make sure your site is found. You need to use good keywords to help google find you. One product that is good for this can be found in a review I did earlier, What’s The Best Keyword Research Tool.

Great keywords will improve the ranking of your sight with search engine optimization-SEO. the higher your site ranks, the easier you are found.

Always Use Relevant Keywords

You always want to help your customers by helping them solve problems. The best way to do this and use good SEO, is to use keywords that are relevant to your niche. If you are selling golf clubs, you don’t want to be using keywords that don’t have anything to do with golf clubs. This is your business! You have to keep the focus on your niche.

That is so important! Why? Nobody wants to hear about phones or headsets when they searched golf clubs,  People are just turned off by things that don’t help them. They try to get away as fast as possible. Avoid trying to sell people unrelated products. Be a solution to problems they are searching for.

Step 3 – Become Visible – Grow Your traffic

This is where you as an affiliate, provide help for the readers of your content. Show ads of products they need to solve the problems they have. You will do the research into your niche and determine exactly what your readers want.

In order to create interest and bring people to your site, you will need some interesting descriptions and helpful reviews for people to find. You are creating your own brand. And, just as we did above in the Amazon example, you solve problems by finding and promoting great products for people.

People come to you because of the great idea’s and products you have for them. We all use products and we buy them because we need them. Affiliate marketing provides you the opportunity to do that with little cost, and no inventory.

Step 4 – Promote Products With Amazon Associate Program

So, how can you make money Affiliate marketing?

Becoming an affiliate is the lowest cost way to start making money on your website. Affiliate programs are free. The Amazon Associate Program is probably the most well known. It is free to join, and allows you to sell their products and start making money!

Amazon is one of the most recognized retailers in the world right now. They are the biggest online shopping site by far. Profit for Amazon was over 10 billion in 2018. Their gross sales were just shy of 142 billion dollars. That was almost a 20% increase in sales over $118.5 billion reported in 2017. That increase is in one year!

Those numbers alone make it a great vehicle to promote products. Amazon has an affiliate program called the Amazon Associate Program. This program  allows other people to promote their products on the amazon online platform. This model became very successful for Amazon as well as merchants and affiliates. By becoming an affiliate of Amazon, you can become a part of this as well.

Get Started In Affiliate Marketing And Get Paid While You Sleep

When you join an affiliate program like Amazon, you are given an account ID#, which is your affiliate link. Whenever you publish content about the product or sell ads, your Affiliate link is embedded into your ads or content.

Customers then click onto links or images and make a purchase, your affiliate code is credited with the sale.This is how you earn money as an affiliate.

Your basic role is to advertise the product, and generate sales for the merchant. In return you get rewarded with commissions.Your website never sleeps, it never calls off sick, just works tirelessly for you everyday, 24/7/365

Amazon Payment Methods – How Does Amazon Pay Me

Amazon commissions vary on different items and range from 1% to 10%. They also pay special program fees on their Bounty Program. These are a set rate payment ranging from $0.50 to $15.00 depending upon the product category. Amazon pays you by each sale you direct to Amazons online platform.

So, the amount of money you receive from Amazons payment methods,varies on the price of the product, the amount sold and the percentage rate of Amazon’s commission.

For example, a sale of pet supply products pays an 8% commission. Sell a few hundred and that soon adds up! It is a win-win, you increase sales for the merchant, and you get paid for your efforts.

Sell 500 products at $32 and get 8% commission, you made $1280! And remember, you don’t even touch the product! You get the picture.

You will need to set up a Paypal account for Amazon to send your commission payments to you. Then, your Amazon payments go directly into your bank account. Don’t we all dream about making money in our sleep?  Affiliate marketing makes this possible.

Amazon is only one merchant who offers an affiliate program, there are many more.

• Walmart
• Target 
• Ebay
• Jet

…. just to name a few of the more recognized brands that offer affiliate programs. There are many others. Just about any product you would like to sell has an affiliate program somewhere. Just Google Affiliate marketing programs, or the product you are interested in and check out their website. If they have an affiliate program, it is usually listed on the bottom of their website.

Discover Affiliate Marketing Networks

Some merchants want to avoid all the details involved in tracking sales and paying their affiliates, so they employ Affiliate Marketing Networks. These are free to join, but may require a number of sales to avoid small monthly accounting fees.

These networks are paid by the merchant to handle the entire process of tracking sales to affiliate commission payments to the affiliates. Some of these networks include the following:

Clickbank

Thousands of products(digital) – pays after $10 or more in sales – Easy platform to use.

Sharasale

4000+merchants – Pays monthly payments for balances over $50 – support is excellent.

CJ Affiliate

3000+ merchants – Pays monthly- dashboard requires learning – support limited

JV Zoo

Exclusively digital products, no upfront costs, pays weekly/monthly – lifetime cookies

Flexoffers

15,000+affiliate programs – pay quickly, You have your own affiliate manager to help you succeed.

Additional Ways To Start In Affiliate Marketing

B2B – Businesses to Business Affiliate Marketing  -If you already have a business or a product, you can employ affiliates to market your products. Or as a business, you could also use affiliate marketing yourself and promote or recommend products your customers might be interested in.

PPS – Pay Per Sale – Affiliate programs generally follow a PPS model, you get paid on each sale.

PPC -Pay Per Click –  Google Ad Sense  is an example, you join their affiliate program and Google will place ads on your website. Then, each visitor that clicks on your ads makes you money.You get a few cents for each click.

PPL – Paid per lead – you get paid when someone clicks your link for the merchant,  and you provide leads to merchants.

PPP – Paid for performance -Their are also some tier programs that  will increase the commission as you reach certain levels. They also pay in increments as you reach each level.

Paid Advertising – Paid ads are another way to promote your affiliate products. They can boost sales and increase profits. But, this is an area that requires some understanding and skills in advertising. It is not recommended for the marketer on a shoestring budget.You can run up costs very quickly, and profits are not guaranteed.

You can promote some paid ads on social networks like Facebook and set an amount that you can budget each day. Even at $5 a day, the cost is $150 per month and $1800 bucks a year.

Free Organic Search – you can use good SEO (search engine optimization) techniques by using good keywords and good high quality content, to help your website rank in the major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Step 5 – Make Money While You Sleep

Now, with the other 4 steps in place, you can make money and finally have financial freedom. It is a journey that takes some time to master, but can be done very quickly. In fact, in a matter of days you can have a website presence and products offered for sale.

However, a word of caution. To get a quality website established in Affiliate marketing requires quality content and hard work. Affiliate Marketing is a simple business concept. But, to make it a successful business, requires skill. Along with the know-how to keep up with the ever changing online business world.

Are You Still Asking How Do I Start In Affiliate Marketing?

I have given you a guide and answered the question, How Do I Start In Affiliate Marketing. And I  have introduced you one of the best and most affordable Affiliate Training programs anywhere online. My Best Recommendation  #1 Affiliate Market Training.

It is very complete and comprehensive training program that will teach and provide support for growing and transforming any business into a successful business. It covers all of the difficult details in making or breaking a business. And you don’t need any experience.

Congrats for reading along this far.  You have an interest in affiliate marketing. Do yourself a favor and check out my #1 Affiliate Marketing Training. It is a no nonsense, no bull honest scam free program. A program that will give you a detailed blueprint on building a successful business, and it is free to look over for a full week. You have nothing to lose. Now, it’s up to you.

Make A Change – Take Action

Remember, if you don’t make a change, nothing changes. You will still be living paycheck to paycheck a year or even ten years from now. If you would like to learn more, check out the link below.

I hope I have been able to educate everyone on affiliate marketing and answered at least some of  the questions you may have had.  I intend to add more informative articles in the future to add more detail and help for my readers.

If you have any additional questions or would like to add a comments, please feel free to leave them below. I answer all comments ASAP

Thank you for stopping by and please come back.

Chas