How to become an affiliate marketer is a question that anyone who has Googled “How to make money online” has wondered. After becoming an affiliate marketer, I know the answer.
With a computer or laptop and internet access, you will be able to request access to affiliate networks. You will need to promote your affiliate links on different traffic sources. Having internet and a computer or laptop will be necessary to promote your affiliate links.
You can be an affiliate marketer and use different strategies. What is best for you and your business depends on what your business goals are.
Your strengths and weaknesses also play a role in determining what affiliate marketing strategy you should implement when becoming an affiliate marketer. Knowing this information can mean the difference between success and failure.
For the Google Story version of this information can be found by clicking the link below:
Further down we will discuss the following topics (click on the link to skip down):
- The easiest way to become an affiliate marketer
- What affiliate networks should I join?
- How much money can you make with affiliate marketing?
- How can I start affiliate marketing with no money?
- Is affiliate marketing passive income?
- Is affiliate marketing hard?
- Is affiliate marketing recession-proof?
The easiest way to become an affiliate marketer
The easiest way to start your affiliate marketing business will be different from person to person. What may be easy for you may be difficult for someone else.
Step 1 Choose an affiliate marketing vertical
Discover what vertical you want to start your affiliate marketing business in. There many different verticals that you can choose from and some pay a lot more than others.
The payouts should not play a factor in what you decide on. You have verticals like video gaming, kid games, kid toys, books that do not pay very much. Other high paying verticals are money investing, gambling, solar, boating.
The typical person that is interested in boating has dispensable money and these type of leads are valuable because they are more likely to buy. A person that is interested in video games is probably still living at home or does not have dispensable money to make purchases.
Besides the money that the typical lead may have in their bank account the actual product has more of a profit associated with it in the boating vertical.
Someone may buy a bar table for their boat and if they use your affiliate link you could make 15% of $2,999.
With other verticals like video gaming the products sell for under $100 and the margins are low so your commissions will a lot lower.
The commission rates should not be what makes you choose a vertical. If you choose a higher paying vertical just because of the high payouts, you will not make any money.
Becoming an affiliate marketer will be a long difficult road full of roadblocks. There is a huge learning curve and what you are first starting your affiliate marketing business you will not have a big budget so you will have to do all the work yourself and you will get burned out if you are working in a vertical that you do not care for.
If you are not into stocks and do not know anything about the stock market I would not recommend that you choose any stock market affiliate offers because you will not be able to relate to the audience.
Your ad creatives will have a low click-through rate and your conversions will suffer.
It is best to choose an offer that you are familiar with.
This will help you write ad copy that will catch the attention of your audience.
Step 2 Choose an affiliate marketing offer
Find affiliate networks that have offers that are in the vertical that you want to start your affiliate marketing business in.
If you want to start your affiliate marketing campaigns in weight loss you can search for “affiliate marketing program with weight loss offers”.
You will be able to search for any possible type of offer and get a list of results.
Find a few affiliate networks that have offers that you want to promote and apply to these affiliate networks. If you do not have a website you probably will not be accepted.
I recommend getting a website for your affiliate marketing business. This will make it a lot easier to be accepted for affiliate offers. It also will make it easy for you to promote offers.
If you can drive traffic to your website you will be able to get conversions from this free traffic. If you are going to pay for traffic you can still benefit from having a website.
For more information about owning an affiliate marketing website click here.
Step 3 Traffic
After you have applied to affiliate marketing networks I would recommend deciding what will you do for traffic.
When it comes to traffic you will have a few options. Traffic to your links is extremely important because with no traffic you get no sales.
This is why you should learn how to get different types of traffic. Do not put all your eggs in one basket because if that traffic source fails, your revenue goes to zero.
For an in-depth article about traffic sources for affiliate marketers click here.
Here are a few popular traffic sources that you can choose from:
- Google paid ads
With Google paid ads you can target people who are actively in need of the product that you are searching for.
For example, if you are promoting a weight loss product, you can set up a Google ad campaign and target words like “lose weight fast” or “lose belly fat”.
When someone types this keyword into their search bar your ad can appear on top of the search results.
With a good ad title, you will be able to have a good click-through rate on your ad. The more people that click on your ad the more likely you will get a conversion.
With Google Ads, you can target specific searched words that are relevant to your offer.
The downside to Google ads is that it will cost more than other traffic sources. This is because the lead is hot.
The person that is searching for your product is more likely to buy than someone who is scrolling through their media feed on a social media platform.
For example, if you are promoting a fat burning product and someone searches on Google the term “best fat burning product” and your ad is on the search results, they have a high probability of buying.
If someone is scrolling through their social media feed and they see an ad for a fat burning product, the likelihood of them buying is far less than the person who typed it in the Google search bar.
This is the power of Google ads for your affiliate business.
- YouTube ads
With YouTube, you can target people who are searching for your product in the same way you can with Google search.
If someone searches for a fat-burning product in their Google search bar and then they go on YouTube they can see your ad appear before the video plays.
For example, if someone types in their Google search bar “Fat burning pills” and you are an affiliate for a fat burning pill product you can target this search key phrase.
Then when this person goes on YouTube to search for funny cat videos or any other type of videos, your ad can appear and they have to watch the first 6 seconds of the ad before they can skip it and watch their cat video.
This is why the first six seconds of your video is important. In these first six seconds, you have to get this person curious enough in your ad that they are willing to hold off from watching the intended video.
With YouTube ads, you do not pay for the ads unless it is watched for 30 seconds. Once the viewer watches 30 seconds of your ad, you will be charged for the click or view.
- Social media ads
With social media ads, you have many different platforms to choose from. They all have strengths and weaknesses.
Depending on what the offer is you will want to choose the right social media platform that will work best for the offer.
Facebook tends to be good when targeting an older crowd. If you have a product that may be better to target someone older than 40 years old I would recommend Facebook.
Facebook is strict with its ad policy so tread lightly when creating your ad campaigns. I have had countless Facebook account bans and you typically do not get them back.
Instagram who is also owned by Facebook is another great traffic source. They have a younger audience base.
Instagram stories are a more cost-effective traffic source and when promoting smaller affiliate offers can work well.
Pinterest is a good traffic source for affiliate offers targeting women over 30 years old. There are men you are on Pinterest but in my experience, they do not respond well to ads on this platform.
When it comes to social media as your traffic source for your affiliate offers you truly have so many choices.
Test a few out and analyze your data. See what works best for your vertical and offer.
With affiliate marketing, nothing is the same so I would recommend researching the different marketing platforms that are available but testing them for yourself is best.
- Native ads
Native ads can be great for all types of affiliate offers.
I feel that native ads are beginner-friendly traffic sources because the rules are a lot less strict when compared to Facebook ads.
If you want to know what are the best traffic sources for affiliate marketers you will find great value in my affiliate traffic sources post. Click that hyperlink to discover what are the best traffic sources when starting in affiliate marketing.
With a good affiliate network that has a few offers that are within your vertical, you can start to make money with your new affiliate marketing business.
The main three pieces that are needed for you to make money as a new affiliate marketing are:
- Approval to an affiliate network that has offers specific to your vertical
- Approval to promote affiliate offers for a good product
- Traffic source that has people who are within the targeted demographic for that offer
What affiliate networks should I join?
There truly are many different affiliate networks to choose from. You should not seek to join all of them. You only will need to be approved by a few of them to get enough offers to start with.
This is why I recommend choosing your vertical before you start to apply to affiliate networks. It will take you a very long time to apply to all the affiliate networks that you can search for online so focus in on a few that are in your vertical.
If you have no idea where to start you can go into your recent searches in your Google search bar.
If you see searches for sports-related topics then staying in the sports vertical can be a good fit.
Looking back at your search history can help you realize are things or topics that you are interested in.
Then the next step would be for you to search for an affiliate network that has offers in the vertical.
This is as simple as typing in your search bar “sports affiliate networks” or “sports affiliate programs”.
How much money can you make with affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing can be very profitable if you take the time to learn the skills that are needed to do it correctly.
Most affiliate marketers do not make over 20k a year. However, 5.98% of affiliate marketers make over 2 million a year.
The average income for affiliate marketers seems to fall in the range of $10,000 a year to $400,000. source