What Is Affiliate Marketing and How to Get Started

It seems ideal, doesn’t it? You set up a website, add a few affiliate links, and start earning the passive income you’ve always dreamed of.

Many bloggers are earning top dollar this way. For example, Ryan Robinson over at ryrob.com makes mid-five figures every month.

Blogging isn’t the only way of making money from affiliate marketing, though. Microsites, email lists, and video marketing are just a few methods people use to generate an online income.

Although not everyone is making six figures from affiliate marketing, you can use tips and strategies to improve your site and increase your income.

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning money (commissions) every time you promote a company’s products or services and drive a sale. You only get paid every time you drive a sale, just like a commission-only sales representative.

Now before I dive into affiliate marketing, let me tell you why you should care.

Ever since the 4-Hour Workweek was released, everyone seems to have the same goal.

To wake up in the morning, open their laptop, and look at something like

That’s the dream, right?

Make money while you sleep.

Ready to find out more? Let’s start with the basics—what it is and who uses it.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is promoting other people’s products in return for a small commission for each sale. You’ve probably seen headings marked “affiliate link” or “sponsored post” on many of the websites you visit; or maybe you’ve already taken the first step and signed up to an affiliate network.:If you are new to affiliate marketing, let’s cover how it works.

First, find an affiliate program or network you are interested in. Look at the program overview, including the type of products or services, payment methods, and commissions they offer.

If it appeals to you, sign up and wait for confirmation of your acceptance. Then, start creating content, adding the custom links the program provides. Those links track when one of your users makes a purchase, and you’ll earn a small commission.

You can work with individual companies or affiliate networks, where you register and choose the programs that interest you. The programs are generally divided into categories to make selection easier. Once approved, start promoting your affiliate links on your website, in newsletters, on social media, and anywhere else you’re permitted to share links.

The network sends you a payment when you’ve reached the minimum payment level. Payment methods vary, and usually include PayPal, bank transfers, and checks. Let’s take a more in-depth look at the parts of a successful affiliate marketing system.

The Merchant

Sometimes also known as the creator, the seller, the brand, the retailer, or the vendor. This is the party that creates the product. It can be a big company, like Dyson, who produces vacuum cleaner or it can be a single individual like Mariah Coz, who sells online courses to female entrepreneurs.

From solo entrepreneurs to startups to massive Fortune 500 companies, anyone could be the merchant behind an affiliate marketing program. They don’t even have to be actively involved. They just have to have a product to sell.

The Affiliate Marketers

This party is sometimes also known as the publisher. Affiliates can also range from single individuals to entire companies. An affiliate marketing business can produce a few hundred dollars in commissions each month or tens of millions of dollars.

It’s where the marketing happens. An affiliate promotes one or multiple affiliate products and tries to attract and convince potential customers of the value of the merchant’s product so that they end up buying it.

This can be achieved by running a review blog of the merchant’s

The Consumer

The customer or consumer makes the affiliate system go ’round. Without sales, there aren’t any commissions to hand out and no revenue to be shared.

The affiliate will try to market to the consumer on whatever channel they see fit, whether that’s a social network, digital billboards or through a search engine using content marketing on a blog.

The consumer needs to knows they are part of an affiliate marketing system. Usually a short disclaimer like “If you purchase items on this site, I may earn a small commission. Thanks for supporting our work.” is fine.

The consumer will not typically pay a higher price to the affiliate marketer, as the cost of the affiliate network is already included in the retail price.

The Affiliate Network

Only some consider the network part of the affiliate marketing equation. However, I believe that an affiliate marketing guide needs to include networks, because, in many cases, a network works as an intermediary between the affiliate and the merchant.

While you could technically promote someone else’s course and arrange a direct revenue share with them, letting a network such as ClickBank or Commission Junction handle the payment and product delivery puts a more serious note on your affiliate marketing.

Sometimes, affiliates have to go through an affiliate network to even be able to promote the product. For example, this happens if the merchant only manages their affiliate program on that network.

The affiliate network then also serves as a database of lots of products, out of which the affiliate marketer can choose which to promote.Clickbank is an example of an affiliate network.

In the case of promoting consumer products, like tools, books, toys and household items, the biggest affiliate network, by far, is Amazon.

Their Amazon Associates affiliate program lets you promote any item that is sold on their platform.Anyone can sign up and then generate a custom affiliate link to Amazon products. If someone purchases through your link, you earn a small commission.

With the basic terms clarified, let’s get an overview of how you can best get started with building your affiliate marketing business.

As I said, there are basically two sides of the affiliate marketing equation to choose from, assuming you are not going to build an affiliate network like Commission Junction.

You can become a merchant and have others promote your product, in exchange for giving them a commission from the sales that they make.

Or, you can become an affiliate marketer for several products and market those to consumers, in order to make money.

While most people start by taking the affiliate route and it definitely is the easier path to take, building enough traffic to make a meaningful income just from affiliate sales isn’t quick or easy.

That’s why I’ll walk you through the four basic steps to get started on both sides of the affiliate marketing industry.

How to Become an Affiliate Merchant

If you want to become an affiliate program merchant and then make money by having affiliates sell your product, here are the steps to follow.

First, you need to have a product idea. I’ll show you a few ways to generate those ideas, based off what’s already popular, in the next section.

Second, you have to validate your idea. You could just go ahead and build your idea. What if people don’t even want it? An idea is only good if people want it to come to life.

Third, you have to create the product. Since creating a physical product usually comes with huge investment and risks, I’ll only show you ways to create digital products. These are the best place to get started since they typically only require your time and little or no money.

Also, once your product is created and released, you need to find affiliates to promote your product — this is where affiliate networks can help.

Step 1: Coming Up with an Affiliate Product Idea

If you want to make money with an affiliate marketing business, you can’t be attached to your idea.

Instead, just look at what products and services are already out there. Consider how you can improve upon them, by delivering something that solves the problems with those products.

You can, of course, always, choose a topic you’re interested or involved in.

Imagine you’re a stay at home parent, for a second.

Maybe you want to create a product that makes household chores easier. For example, you could look for a vacuum robot to get some ideas.

This is the first Google result, a review site for robot vacuums:Therefore, a great idea could be to develop a virtual wall that works for all vacuum robots.

I imagine you could sell anyone who owns a vacuum robot a system that works as a virtual wall, so their robot only cleans a predefined space.

Now that’s a valid idea!

This works for anything, I’ll show you.

Another way to do research is to use a tool called Buzzsumo, which shows you what’s popular, based on social shares.

Even if you’re into building sandcastles, you can instantly see what content has been recently popular.

Step 2: Validate Your Idea

In order to not end up doing a great series of sandcastle videos that no one wants to buy, you have to first validate your idea.

How do you do that?

Simple: You ask people to pay you for it.

How do you find these people? Easy.

Take the URL from one of the sandcastle posts on Buzzsumo and plug it into a tool like Keyhole.

They’ll give you a list people who tweeted a link or about specific topics.

You can then directly tell them about your idea, by hitting the reply button…

Make sure to ask them whether or not they would buy your idea — not just if they like it.

Anyone will say that they like something just to be nice.

If they respond with a yes, you need to directly follow up with an ask to buy.

Saying they will spend money is not the same as spending it.

When people are interested in your product, give them a chance to buy. You can simply use PayPal and say you’re going to build it if you get a certain amount of orders.

Once you cross your threshold and make sure that people want it, you can start creating the product.

Step 3: Create the Product

There are a ton of steps to follow for creating a product and this isn’t an entrepreneurship guide, but I want to point you to some good starters.

I’m only give you resources for starting digital products, because I don’t want you to waste precious time and money on creating a physical product on your first tryOnline courses:

Ebooks:

Podcast/Audio:

These are good starting points. Creating digital products is a lot easier, since it just takes time and sometimes a little financial investment, but usually not more than a service fee or a one-time price for software.

Once you have the product created and delivered to your initial buyers, it’s time to open up the affiliate network.

Step 4: Finding Affiliate Program Partners

The tech part is the easy thing here.

With tools like Gumroad or Digital Product Delivery, you can easily set up affiliate program partners and allow them to collect commissions.

Another great affiliate marketing tool is Everflow. Not only does it help you recruit affiliates, but you can also use it to:

optimize and structure your affiliate campaigns
manage and track revenue and spend
manage and track performance, and optimize campaigns immediately based on data
automate your processes
project manage your campaigns and assign tasksAfter you selected a platform comes the tough part: finding partners that have an audience who is interested in what you have to sell.
Let’s stick with the sandcastle guide example.
Do you think there’s anyone out there who sells something remotely related?
Actually, there is.
When you enter “learn to build sandcastles,” into a search engine, several sites pop up that sell educational material about it.
Loke SandCastle Lessons, which offers classes on the subject:After you selected a platform comes the tough part: finding partners that have an audience who is interested in what you have to sell.
Let’s stick with the sandcastle guide example.
Do you think there’s anyone out there who sells something remotely related?
Actually, there is.
When you enter “learn to build sandcastles,” into a search engine, several sites pop up that sell educational material about it.Loke SandCastle Lessons, which offers classes on the subject:
Partnering up with them on a sale together would be an easy pitch because it’s a perfect fit.
The more niche your product is, the easier it will be to pitch to fellow merchants.
You can simply send them an email, introduce yourself and your product and ask them if they want to partner on a sale together, where you’ll share revenue.
Pro tip: Affiliate commissions of 50 percent or higher are very common with digital products because you have no cost of replication. Don’t be greedy here, split the pot evenly and everyone wins.
Googling “toy review blog” also gives plenty of results, where people write toy reviews.
What’s more, lots of YouTube channels review specific categories of toys. If you find one that reviews kids’ toys, they’d probably also be a good fit for your affiliate product.
Just try finding one person to partner up with and start your first affiliate promotion. You can adjust commissions and details later, the important part is to get started. Or if you need help, you can always work with an affiliate marketing agency that can help you kick start things.
However, you could also start the journey on the other side of the fence and just become an affiliate yourself.
4 Steps to Become an Online Affiliate Marketer
Similarly to becoming a merchant, there are also four steps to start your journey as an affiliate marketer.
First, you need to start reviewing products in your niche. That can be done on a YouTube channel, on a blog or even just using live streams on Periscope.
Second, you have to collect emails, so you can connect with your audience at any time you want and don’t have to hope for them to see your content.
Third, you can use joint venture webinars to make a lot of sales in a short period of time, while simultaneously growing your email list and creating new content.
Finally, once your affiliate marketing business starts making money, you can scale your growth with pay per click advertising.
Step 1: Review Products in Your Niche
It’s easier to get started as an affiliate because you’re skipping the ‘have an idea’ and ‘creating an idea’ parts of becoming a merchant.
You already use and like plenty of products, so all you have to do get started is to publicly talk about them.
Start by looking at the partners in step 4 for becoming a merchant, because that’s what you’re trying to start in this step.
Any product works.Even with less than 500 people on your list, you can create significant sales.
Just make sure to keep your audience engaged, by sending them regular updates, ideally once a week.
Don’t make it all sales. Just let them know when you have a new review up.
For example, I email out every single post that we do on Quick Sprout with a very simple description of what it’s about:Whatever you’re reviewing, make sure you are honest and even handed.
If your reviews aren’t genuinely helpful, people will sense immediately that you’re just trying to make a quick buck.
As Pat Flynn points out, in his affiliate marketing guide, involved affiliate marketing is by far the most profitable, because you can relate to the product, instead of just promoting something that might make you a lot of cash.
When you don’t even know the product, how can you credibly promote it?
Note: This is a little different for consumer products than it is for online courses or books created by individuals. If you’ve known a person for a long time and trust them and know their work is great, then that’s a different thing.
When you write reviews on your blog, you can use an affiliate link to link to the products you promote.
You can recognize them on other blogs by the long “/ref…” tail, at the end of the regular link.
This is usually the first step to start making commissions.
Simply sign up to Amazon Associates and you can then proceed to get your own affiliate link to any product on Amazon.
Just go to the product page and click on “Share affiliate link.” You’ll get a link that’ll give you a commission if people purchase through it.
However, if you only rely on people using the affiliate links in your reviews, you need lots of traffic to start making serious money.
If you can contact your audience directly, you can market to them whenever you like, not just when they come to your website.
This is where step two comes in.
Step 2: Build an Email List of Your Prospects
Email is still one of the best marketing channels today, so don’t miss out on it.
I’ll show you a few super easy ways to collect email addresses from your website visitors.The first is Hello Bar
Hello Bar puts a call to action on top of your website. Whenever someone visits your website, they’ll see this bar at the top.
You can offer them an ebook (maybe bundle together your 3 best product reviews) or a special review video.
Once they click on your Hello Bar, you can redirect people to the page where they can enter their email in exchange for the content.
You can also use Hello Bar to create an exit gate. This is a popup that will lay over the screen when visitors are about to leave your website.
It is triggered by their mouse moving to the top area of the browser.
I use it to get more Facebook likes on Quick Sprout:You can also redirect people to your lead magnet and get their email address this way.
Just don’t over do it.
If you give your visitors 20 things to do, it’s unlikely that they’ll do anything at all.
Just have one call to action in your sidebar. Again, it should offer people something in exchange for their email address.
Since you’re collecting email addresses around a very specific topic, such as finding the best straightening iron, juice maker, mini-oven, etc., you don’t need a lot of them to make the email list worth your time.
Even with less than 500 people on your list, you can create significant sales.
Just make sure to keep your audience engaged, by sending them regular updates, ideally once a week.
Don’t make it all sales. Just let them know when you have a new review up.
For example, I email out every single post that we do on Quick Sprout with a very simple description of what it’s about: