Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: Ultimate checklist to get started

Do you want to earn money online by recommending other products on your platform and building a profitable business? If yes, then this article is for you. 

Here I will share the complete idea about what is affiliate marketing and how it works?

I will also share some proven formulas that I follow to boost my affiliate sales and income.

So, read this carefully and implement it properly to become a successful affiliate marketer. 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process where you will get a commission by recommending another company’s product or service. 

Here when someone buys any product or service through your affiliate link, you will get a small commission from that company. 

You are like a salesperson to that company that rewards you for every successful sale. The best part as an affiliate marketer is that you can promote products from different companies at the same time without spending time and effort on building the product. 

You just need to create high-quality content and build a loyal community that can be ready to purchase your recommended products and services. You can generate sales through your Blog, YouTube videos, Email Marketing, Social media marketing, etc.

How does affiliate marketing work?

When you sign up for an affiliate program of a product, they will provide a unique affiliate link for you. It helps them track from whom the sale is generated. 

When someone clicks on the affiliate link, it will store a cookie in his browser and it has a specific expiration date. So, even if that person delays the purchase after clicking on your affiliate link, you will get the commission for that sale. 

Let’s understand this with a practical example. 

Suppose you have placed an Amazon affiliate link on your blog about the Samsung Galaxy phone. One of your website visitors clicks on your link and Goes to Amazon for shopping. 

Now he didn’t purchase the product immediately but he changed his mind and purchased it within 24 hours. Here you will get the commission from Amazon as the cookie expiration period for the Amazon affiliate program is 24 hours. 

In addition to the Galaxy phone, he purchases some additional products like phone cases, chargers, or any other category product from Amazon. Here you will get a commission for all the products even if you share the product for the phone only. 

Here in the affiliate marketing process, there are three parties involved. 

1. Seller or the product creator
2. The affiliate or advertiser.
3. The consumer.

To learn the whole process, I have designed a simple infographic here. 

Note: You’re most welcome to share this infographic. Be sure to include a credit link to this post if you republish it on your own blog.

How to get started with affiliate marketing?

I have outlined the seven-step process to help beginners start affiliate marketing and generate revenue through affiliate sales. 

1. Choose your platform
2. Choose your Niche
3. Create quality content
4. Drive traffic to your website
5. Signup affiliate program
6. Get clicks on your affiliate links
7. Convert clicks to sales

1. Choose Your Platform

The first thing that you should focus on before starting affiliate marketing is choosing a platform. 

You can start affiliate marketing with social media platforms like Facebook & Instagram but these platforms are now saturated and you will not get organic reach from here. 

The best way to build an audience and generate affiliate sales is to start a blog or a YouTube channel. 

You can easily start your Blog for free in Blogger and if you want to get long-term success then you can start your WordPress website by investing some money in the domain and hosting. 

You can easily get affordable hosting from hostinger along with a free domain name to start your WordPress website. 

Wordpress gives you more flexibility and customization options than other platforms and you can easily get returns from affiliate marketing. 

The second most popular platform to start affiliate marketing is YouTube. Here you can make videos on product reviews, software, and services reviews, and add affiliate links in the description. 

You can also simultaneously start a blog and a YouTube channel in the same niche to reach a greater audience. 

The third platform that you can take advantage of is Telegram. You can build an audience in your telegram group and provide valuable content for free. You can smartly place your affiliate link and generate sales. 

👉 You can join our telegram channel here.

2. Choose your Niche

Now starting a blog is very easy but getting leads and traffic is very difficult as competition is growing day by day. That’s why you have to focus on a targeted niche where competition is low. 

Suppose you want to start an Amazon affiliate website and cover product reviews on that. Instead of covering all varieties of products you have to target a specific category like Electronics. 

You can further narrow it down to a subtopic like headphone reviews or Laptop reviews only. In this way, the level of competition will be reduced and you can build authority around that topic. 

3. Create quality content

After creating a blog or a YouTube channel, you should first focus on creating valuable content for your readers for free. It helps you build trust among the readers and eventually, you can convert them into paid clients or customers. 

Good quality content also helps you rank higher on Google and you will get targeted organic traffic who are genuinely interested in that topic. 

So, instead of focusing on the quantity of traffic, you should focus on quality organic traffic which will eventually increase your affiliate conversion rate. 

If you want to create high-quality content for your website then you can check our content writing techniques article here. 

4. Drive traffic to your website

Now you have created quality content on your website. The next step is to invest some time and money to market your blog/article and drive traffic to your website. 

There are various ways to get traffic to a website. Some methods are free and in some cases, you have to spend some money. 

Here are the three main ways to get traffic to your affiliate website. 

• Search engine optimization
• Paid traffic
• Email marketing

A. Search engine optimization (SEO)

The best and most effective way to get traffic is SEO (search engine Optimization) which needs consistent efforts. It is the technique to optimize your website for search engines along with your actual readers. 

Here are some basic SEO practices that you can follow. 

⇒ Understand your target audience

⇒ Creating high-quality content covering all aspects of that topic. (Blog posts, videos, Infographics, product pages, etc.)

⇒ On-page optimization like creating a catchy headline, outlining content with proper heading structure, Image alt tag, etc. 

⇒ Focusing on Off-page SEO like link building, Guest blogging, etc. 

B. paid Traffic

If you want to drive traffic quickly in a very short period, then you can invest some money in paid advertisements. 

You can promote your blog or videos on different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and you can also run PPC (pay-per-click) ads on Google.  

Here you can get instant traffic to your website but I recommend you focus on organic traffic at the beginning and once you reach a certain point you can invest some money in paid traffic to scale your business. 

C. Email marketing

You should focus on building an email list to get recurring traffic to your site. You can easily communicate with your readers and offer your new products and services. 

It helps you generate more clicks on your affiliate website and you can also add the affiliate link directly in the Email template. 

To grow your email list you have to offer some free services or products to your readers for free. You can provide free Ebooks, courses, themes, or software after email signup. 

Here you have to be a little creative to persuade your readers to sign up for your email newsletter. 

You can use several autoresponders for your email marketing campaign which helps you automate your task and give you detailed analytics like the number of email openings, link clicks, etc.

5. Signup affiliate program

Choosing the best affiliate programs is very necessary as some of the affiliate programs are too competitive and in some cases, the affiliate commission is very low. 

You should also check the quality of the products that you are referring to your readers. Signing up with bad affiliate programs can hurt your brand and the trust will be lost. 

So, always try to find a good quality product that has a decent affiliate commission and competition is not that high. 

For example, the affiliate commission of Amazon products is a maximum of up to 12 percent but you can sell the product in a very large quantity. Whereas in the case of products like hosting you will get a very high commission but the chances of a sale are low. 

So, choose the right product according to your website niche and where you can compete with others and get a decent affiliate income. 

If you are targeting consumers, then you should go with the low commission with high-volume affiliate programs, and if your target audience is primarily business people then you can join high-paying and low-volume affiliate programs. 

In the next chapter, I will show you the best affiliate programs for the Wordpress niche you can join. 

6. Get clicks on your affiliate links

Now you have written some high-quality articles, driven some organic traffic to your website, and joined affiliate programs but the important question is how to get users to click on affiliate links. 

You can solve this problem by following some basic but important methods below. 

Link placement has an important role in how many clicks you get on your affiliate link. If you place too many links in your content or place the same link again and again throughout your content then it looks spammy and users will not click on your link. 

On the other hand, if you place your affiliate link at the bottom of your article then the chances of getting a click on your link are low. 

That’s why keep a balance between them and place links both above and bottom of your page. 

You can also use callouts like buttons, tables, and boxes in your articles to attract your readers to get click on your link. 

You can use review tables, and comparison charts on your website and can place affiliate links in them. 

7. Convert clicks to sales

In Affiliate marketing converting clicks to sales depends upon two factors. 

The first conversion is when the customer clicks on the link and lands on the product page. The second conversion is when the customer actually buys the product within your affiliate link. 

Here you can control the first conversion by encouraging your readers to click on your links but in the second case it totally depends upon the merchant and you have no control over that. 

So, before sending any customer to a landing page or product page make sure to give accurate information about the product or services and clear all of their doubts. 

Don’t create content solely for the purpose of the affiliate sale, as it doesn’t help you in the long run. Try to create in-depth and research content about that product and give some value to the readers. 

Here you have to understand the concept of the Sales funnel which mainly consists of four factors. 

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Decision 
4. Sales

The sole purpose of your content is to aware the customer of the product which takes 71 percent of the sales funnel. 

Now in the interest phase, you have to properly analyze the product and help your customer narrow down their options. 

Now in the decision step, you have to clear all doubts and follow up with the customer by sending personalized Emails. 

Now in the sales part which takes around 15 percent in the sales funnel where you have no control but if you focus on the above three then you can easily convert your clicks into affiliate sales. 

There are other methods to increase affiliate clicks and sales which will be discussed in the upcoming chapters. So, make sure to sign up for our Newsletter to get timely updates about our new posts.

FAQs

Final thoughts

Affiliate marketing is a consistent process just don’t expect overnight success and it takes some time to build an audience, market your affiliate products, and generate sales. 

In this article we have covered all the basic fundamentals and applying them to your website or Youtube channel can help you kick-start your journey. 

Just focus on your first affiliate sales and then set new records and achieve them. 

If you have any doubts you can ask me in the comment section or ping me on Twitter.