Affiliate Marketing Guide For Beginners – How To Get Started

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If you’re wondering how to make money with affiliate marketing, this guide will walk you through ways to get started. It teaches all the tricks of the trade, so you can begin earning more money today.

Smart entrepreneurs know there’s always more they can do for their business. One way to take things to the next level is by trying alternate income streams, such as Affiliate Marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing entails earning a commission by recommending a retailer’s or advertiser’s product or service to an audience.

It is a model in which you, as an affiliate or marketer, are compensated for every sale you make from a product. You get rewarded a percentage on every sale through your unique affiliate link that tracks each sale.

Affiliate marketing is one of my most recommended businesses to start any time any day and this is why – It does not necessarily need any start-up capital as most businesses do and you can start and scale this business from anywhere.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing is a business model where you market products on behalf of another person or company. So the model we’re going to be looking at mainly is one where you sell digital products for people and you get a commission off each sale.

You typically receive a commission for a sale, but some affiliate programs can compensate you for getting leads, customers on the free trial or people simply clicking your link.

It often involves sharing information about a product or service, with the affiliate earning a commission each time their audience purchases the recommended product.

How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?

As an affiliate marketer, you are to promote products using special links from the product owner or company on your social platforms, this link is called your affiliate link. Any time somebody clicks on any of the links and buys that particular product you’re promoting, you get paid a commission off each sale.

How Can You Market Affiliate Products?

You can market affiliate products by promoting them through blogs, on social media pages, through paid advertising – simply put, by creating content about that particular product, product review or even by just telling people how much the product can help them.

What You Should Know Before You Start

Listen to my podcast episode on – What You Should Know About Affiliate Marketing Before You Start

Advantages and Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing (Pros and cons)

Seeing the recent popularity of Affiliate marketing, top brands like Statista have estimated the industry to be worth $8.2 billion by 2022, from a previous rate of about $5.4 billion in 2017.

Now, this should tell you that Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative means to make money since it is also a low-cost business venture. So can you can profit from it immensely. Let’s take a look at the pros.

Advantages (The Pros)

In addition to industry growth, entrepreneurs may use referral marketing to try to grow their businesses.

• Easy To Implement

Simply managing the digital marketing component of creating and selling a product is your side of the equation. The more difficult duties, like creating, sustaining, or accepting the offer, are not your concern since the product creator already handles that task.

• Low Risk

Without any upfront cost, you can make money with a growing affiliate product or service. With affiliate marketing, you’ll be able to generate steady passive income through commissions. Though initially, you’ll have to invest time creating traffic sources, your affiliate link will continue to provide a paycheck. Isn’t that awesome?

• Easily Scalable

You have a huge potential to increase your income dramatically through effective marketing without having to hire extra help. You can create new campaigns for products and introduce them to your current audience, doubling your earnings with affiliate marketing.

This way, your current job can continue to produce affiliate revenue in the background while you introduce new products to your audience and create campaigns for new ones.

• An Easy Business Model

Be aware that effective affiliate marketing is founded on trust, so you can build a business just by recommending something you use.  Though there seems to be a limitless amount of goods or services to advertise, it’s preferable to focus solely on ones you personally use or would suggest based on your experience. Even if a product appeals to you or fits into an existing pastime, it takes a lot of effort to succeed as an affiliate marketer for that product.

Disadvantages (The Cons)

Comparing affiliate marketing business to of other forms business models, there are a few challenges you might face as you start and build an affiliate marketing business. Let’s take a closer look at a few obstacles you’ll encounter on the road to success in affiliate marketing before we move forward.

• You Need Patience (Lots of it 😃)

Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It requires time, patience and an audience to develop the proper influence.

The most important thing to do is figure out which channels your audience engages with. Look for authoritative sources and credible co-promotion opportunities, spending time blogging and publishing content on social media.

• It Is Commission-Based

This means, no sale, no pay! Affiliate marketers don’t receive a fixed paycheck, rather they make money depending on the number of customers they’ve convinced to buy their product.

However, be rest assured that if you do your marketing job well as an affiliate marketer, you definitely will get enough sales to get you to the point of scaling your affiliate marketing business.

• You Have NO CONTROL Over the Affiliate Programs

Everyone who participates in affiliate programs must follow strictly, the guidelines set by the company. Most companies have strict terms and conditions on how to generate leads for their programs and you’ll have to create content that fits their terms. This is why I always recommend that newbie affiliate marketers should opt for a great program, to avoid unpredictable stress with non-profitable and cheap programs that’ll pay way less.

You might want to sign up for my top recommended program, keep reading, you’ll find it below.

How Much Money can you Make as an Affiliate Marketer?

Occasional affiliate marketers can make a few hundred dollars, and some people earn six figures. It mostly depends on the product being marketed and the amount of influence a marketer has. A person with more reach or who invests more time in marketing the products will generally have higher overall earnings.

Can you Start Affiliate Marketing as a beginner?

Yes, you definitely can! Affiliate marketing is a great choice for you as a beginner or even an intermediate who is already in the business but unable to get results. Simply put, anyone can start this business, so far they can read and write and as well have a functional mobile phone. Below is a program recommendation for you to start an affiliate marketing business from scratch or scale an already existing one.

Recommended Program for Old and New Affiliate Marketers

My recommendation for anyone who wants to start affiliate marketing or scale their affiliate earnings this year is “First Affiliate Steps Program (The FAST Program)“. FAST is a 6 months coaching program that teaches a newbie Affiliate Marketer how to go from zero to earning at least 6 Figures in Affiliate marketing.

This Program simplifies affiliate marketing to the simplest form and shows you easy and workable steps to making a sustainable income as an affiliate. Do you know the best part?

With the FAST Program, you can even become an affiliate marketer promoting different offers from different platforms. This means that you promote products from different sellers and also earn US dollars. Anyone from any country, both in Nigeria and outside Nigeria can learn and implement affiliate marketing with the FAST Program.

Click here to ask me about the FAST Program and find out how you can become a member.

The 3 Key Takeaways

1. Affiliate marketing is a business model where a company pays partners/affiliate marketers for sales generated through their affiliate marketing programs.
2. Marketing is the major role of an affiliate marketer since he is to devise ways to sell more products to more people. This single model has made affiliate marketing a billion-dollar industry.
3. You need to be part of a great affiliate program to be able to make it in this business because your marketing can only be as good as the program itself and the offers inherent.