Affiliate Marketing for Beginners (15 Things You Should Know)

Last updated on January 30th, 2023 at 08:28 pm

Interested in having a share of the billion-dollar affiliate marketing industry?

This affiliate marketing program for beginners guide will help you get started.

According to Statista, businesses investing in affiliate marketing will reach $8.2 billion in the U.S by 2022.

Start today, and you will be well-positioned to make a passive income with affiliate marketing.

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Things to Know Before Starting Affiliate Marketing as a Beginner

1. What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is simply just the process by which an affiliate (A person or something that is associated with a larger or related organization) earns a commission for selling or marketing another person’s or company’s product.

All the affiliates have to do is to search for the product they enjoy, then market or promote that product and earn a little profit from each sale of the product.

2. How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing works by spreading the responsibility of product promotion or marketing among and across parties.

It leverages the ability of individuals for a more effective marketing strategy while providing shares from the profit made to the individuals who contributed to the sales.

3. How Many Parties are Needed to Make Affiliate Marketing Work?

In other to make affiliate marketing work, three parties must be involved. The parties should include:

Seller and Product Creators.
The Affiliate

The Consumer.

The relationship between these three is important to make a successful affiliate marketing process.

Seller and Product Creators

The Seller, who could be a solo entrepreneur or a large firm, is a vendor, product creator, merchant, or retailer with a product to market or sell.

The products can be physical objects like household goods or cars or a service like tutorials for makeup.

Also, the Seller does not need to be actively involved in the marketing, but they may be the advertiser of the product or brand being promoted.

For instance, the seller could be an eCommerce merchant that starts a business let’s say Dropshipping, and wants to reach a new and more audience by paying affiliate websites or marketers to promote their products.

The Affiliate

It is also known as the publisher or advertiser. The affiliate can be an individual or a group, or a company that markets products in a strategic way to potential customers.

In other words, it is the affiliates that promote the product or services to customers to persuade and convince them to purchase the product.

And if the customer finally gets to purchase the product or service marketed by the affiliate, the affiliate gets a portion of the revenue gotten from the sale of the product or service.

Affiliates usually have a very specific target audience to whom they market the product or service. Also, this would make the marketing process easier and solves the customer’s problem.

The Consumer

Consumers are the most important party for a successful affiliate marketing process. Whether the consumers realize it or not, they are the drivers of affiliate marketing.

They usually get to be notified about the product from the affiliate who would probably have marketed to them (consumer) in one way or another.

When the consumers buy the products or services, the seller and affiliates get profit to share.

Sometimes in the line of marketing, the affiliate may decide to disclose to the consumer that they would be receiving a commission from the sales of the product or services, other times they might just withhold disclosing they would be receiving a commission from the sales.

4. Can Anyone Start Affiliate Marketing?

The answer is Yes! Anyone can start affiliate marketing. It is free and easy to join. Most affiliate programs are usually free to join and no experience is a prerequisite in most cases.

All you need to do is fill out a signup form and begin to promote offers. It’s Just Join, promote and earn. No financial risks the business you are promoting is someone else’s.

5. How do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?

Yes, this is a very important question as everyone would be curious to know how to get paid after all being said.

The answer can get complex. Sometimes the consumer doesn’t always need to buy the product for the affiliate to earn. It is all dependent on the program, the affiliate’s contribution to the seller’s sales can be measured differently.

The Affiliate can be paid in various ways such as:

Pay per sale

This is the actual normal standard Affiliate structure.

The merchant in this program pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale of the product or service after the consumer purchases the product or the service as a result of the affiliate marketing strategies.

Therefore, this means the Affiliate must have to get the consumer to buy the product before they can receive an affiliate commission.

Pay per lead

Pay per lead is a more complex system. The affiliates get commissions based on the generation of leads.

It means the affiliate has to convince or persuade the consumer to visit the merchant website and complete some desired actions like filling out a contact form, signing up for a product trial, downloading software or files, or subscribing to a newsletter before they can get paid.

Pay per click

This program focuses on paying the affiliate to redirect consumers from their marketing platform to the merchant’s website.

What this means is that the affiliate gets rewarded for every consumer they successfully get interact with on the merchant website.

In addition, the affiliate is gets paid per increase in web traffic.

6. Do I Need Money to Start Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is cost-effective! Many Businesses usually need startup fees and a cash flow to finance the product or service being sold. Affiliate marketing, however, can be done at a low cost, meaning you can get started as quickly as possible with no much stress.

There are no Affiliate fees to worry about or any need to create a product.

7. Can I Make a Living from Affiliate Marketing?

Absolutely! You can make a living from affiliate marketing. Even though it can be lucrative, it would take a commitment to make it a real business.

With affiliate marketing, you can earn from $10,000 to $400,000 annually.

8. What Kind of Affiliate Marketing Can I do?

There are many varieties of affiliate programs to choose from starting off as a beginner.

However, your success solely depends on your determination towards affiliate marketing and what type you would prefer to do.

Some of the types of affiliate programs you can choose are as follows:

Content marketing programs (blogs and web pages)
Review site programs

Loyalty portals
Coupon site programs
Email marketing

The incentive program, etc…

Also, it would be best to choose the most preferable types of affiliating marketing programs available to you.

9. What Are The Top Paying Affiliate Programs?

Many affiliate programs are available in all countries. Some of the are:

Impact Radius
Amazon affiliate program

ShareASale
Clickfunnels
Commission Junction

Flex offers
TravelStart
Clickbank

Rakuten Linkshare

10. What Can Affiliate Marketing do for my Business?

As a seller or a product producer, affiliate marketing would greatly boost success if you are having problems struggling as a startup business owner.

For Example, Groupon which is a voucher offering company started originally and as almost every business, they were struggling in the year 2009.

But after opening affiliate programs, they now have over a 50million active users and still counting.

So it is safe to say affiliate marketing would boost sales and growth of business owners.

11. How do I Withdraw My Earnings from Affiliate Programs?

Some affiliate programs may allow for direct transfers to your bank accounts. But most times you would need to have a Paypal or Payoneer account.

And if you are a Nigerian, you can create a PayPal account in Nigeria.

12. Why be an Affiliate Marketer?

There are many reasons why you should start an Affiliate marketing career besides making earnings from it also comes with other cool reasons why should consider starting one.

Income (Passive)

Unlike other regular jobs that require you to work to make money, affiliate marketing makes prone the ability to make money while you sleep comfortably.

All you need do is invest a little time into a campaign, you will see continuous returns on that as consumers purchase the products or service over the following days and weeks.

Work from Home

The world is in the digital era and people have resorted to making a living from the comfort of their homes.

Perhaps, if you are someone who does not like going to the office to work, affiliate marketing may be a perfect solution for you.

It is Not Expensive

Many a time, starting a business might be capital intensive. However, affiliate marketing can be done at an effective low cost, meaning you can get started without much stress.

You don’t have to worry about creating a product or service.

No Customer Support

Companies and individual sellers offering products or services usually have to deal with the satisfaction of their consumers concerning the product or service purchased.

Also, with affiliate marketing you need not worry about the satisfaction of the customer, all you need do is to link the consumer to the merchant or seller.

13. What are the Common Channels of Affiliate Marketing?

Many Affiliates have different practices they employ to ensure that their audience is engaged and receptive to purchasing the products or services they are marketing.

These are some of the different channels that they may use.

Blogging

With the ability to rank in search engine queries, bloggers would excel very well at increasing a seller’s conversion.

The best part of it, the blogger just has to sample products or services and write a concise review that promotes the brand in a very compelling way, thus driving traffic to the seller’s website.

You can start a successful blog today as an affiliate marketer.

Influencers

These are individuals who hold the power to impact purchasing decisions on a large population of people. Influencers are in a great position to benefit from affiliate marketing.

They already have lots of people who follow and are willing to go with ever they suggest to the public, so it is easy for them to direct consumers or customers to the sellers’ products or services.

Also, you can become an influencer on social media platforms.

Email Lists

Email marketing- even as old as it is, it is still viable to affiliate marketing. Affiliates may have some email lists they can use to promote the seller’s product or services.

Also, a good method for affiliates is to build an email list over a period by using various campaigns to collect emails in mass and send out emails in regards to the products or services they are promoting.

14. How Can I Become Successful in Affiliate Marketing?

In order to become successful in affiliate marketing, you would be required to develop some skills over time not forgoing patience and determination.

Firstly you would have to know how to rapport. By establishing yourself as an expert in fluent communication would allow you to tailor campaigns.

Sometimes, you have to study to know the product if possible you can go for a trial and know how best to market the product you are promoting.
Do not focus all your marketing strategies on one pattern use all available channels to you. That is reaching out by all means available to you from blogs, emails, social media, etc…
Always select products that are viable to your niche as your skills won’t matter if you are selling the wrong product.

Also, try to stay up to date with the affiliate marketing trend as it is a very competitive marketing sphere.

15. What Affiliate Marketing Strategy Should I Apply?

Applying strategies would help you to stay top and successful in affiliate marketing. Apply these strategies and you may be guaranteed success in your affiliate marketing career.

Only recommend products that you are extremely familiar with. You can’t sell what you don’t know. You may be faced with certain questions or situations that may prompt you to talk extensively and knowing what you are promoting would help ease that.
Promote products from many different merchants or sellers. It is advisable not to place all eggs in one basket. More products mean more money for you. Also promoting for a single seller, you won’t be open to other offers from other different sellers who might have a higher paying rate.

Focus on your traffic sources. It is sources that would determine your success in affiliate marketing, always know your target audience where you are promoting a product.

Conclusion

Lastly, affiliate marketing is a great solution for people looking to gain control of their income.

With determination, affiliate marketers can be able to achieve a passive income from the comfort of their homes without having to worry about producing their own services or products.

Although the prime success of the job depends on your affiliate marketing skills, it can prove to be an effective way to meet your income, fix bills and payments either primarily as a career or as a profitable side job.

We hope that by following this guide on affiliate marketing programs for beginners, you can launch into the world of affiliate marketing.