Affiliate Marketing Guide For Beginners [New & Updated]

Affiliate Marketing Guide For Beginners [New & Updated]. Fed up of your 9-5 life? Slogging day and night to get a promotion at your office work?

What if we tell you that you could earn money from anywhere and at any time? In fact, even while you are sleeping. This is where the power of passive income comes into play and that’s also the concept behind affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a popular technique brands and companies leverage to increase their sales and conversions. This technique also helps bloggers and affiliate marketers in making money online. 

Here are some mind-blowing stats related to affiliate marketing:

1. 81% of brands and 84% of publishers leverage affiliate marketing to increase their sales and earn money online.
2. In the USA, affiliate marketing spending reached $6.8 billion in 2020 and it is expected to increase further.
3. In 2017, Amazon changed its structure of affiliate commission between 1-10% thereby offering more commission to influencers, marketers, and promoters. 

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a technique by which bloggers, marketers or a promoter earns commission via promoting other people’s product. The affiliate searches for a perfect product that they can recommend to their audience then promotes the product and earns a commission for each sale.

The commission varies from product to product.

Currently, hosting is one of the best high-paying affiliate niches.

It offers a commission between $50 to $100+ per sale.

How does affiliate marketing work?

The affiliate marketing system works by dividing the product promotion and marketing responsibilities across various pirates. It leverages the power of a variety of individuals, bloggers, and influencers who have the right audience for promoting any particular product or service.

In general, there are three parties involved in affiliate marketing;

• Seller and product creator:

The seller or product creator may be an entrepreneur, solopreneur, brand, or a company with a product or service to sell. The product can be a physical product like a makeup kit or a digital product like web-hosting, e-course, or ebook.

In affiliate marketing, the seller is not actively involved in product promotion and marketing. They only share a part of their commission with the promoter.

• Affiliate or advertiser:

An affiliate or advertiser is a person who promotes or recommends the product of the seller to a particular set audience. Most affiliates are bloggers or influencers with a large following or fan base.

They often have a highly targeted audience as their followers to whom they promote or market their product. In return, they get a commission for each sale.

• Consumer:   

Consumers are the last party in the channel of affiliate marketing.

They are the ones who purchase the product which is recommended to them by bloggers or social media influencers.

When a consumer purchases the product or service via an affiliate link, the product creator and affiliate share the commission.

How does an affiliate marketer get paid?

We agree that affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn money online and live a boss-free life. But, have you wondered how an affiliate marketer gets paid?

Well, the answer is a bit complicated. You might be thinking that an affiliate gets only paid when someone buys a product or avails a service from their link.  However, this is not the case. There are many other ways by which an affiliate gets paid:

• Pay-per-sale

This is one of the most common ways by which affiliates make money.

Whenever a consumer purchases any product via an affiliate link, then the promoter gets a small commission which may range from 40%-50%.

In fact, some affiliate programs also offer 100% commission per sale. That’s why this is one of the most common and preferred types of affiliate commission structure.

• Pay-per-lead

The next way by which an affiliate gets paid is via a pay-per-lead program. This program pays a commission to promoters depending upon the number of leads generated and their conversion rate.

In order to earn via pay-per-lead, you must direct consumers to the promoter’s website and compel them to take the desired action. The desired action can be anything like filling out a form, downloading something, or making a purchase.

• Pay-per-click

The last type of affiliate program is the pay-per-click program which offers a commission to promoters when someone clicks on an affiliate link and is redirected to the merchant’s website. 

Generally, this type of affiliate program offers less commission as compared to the above two.

Why be an affiliate marketer?

Following are the best reasons to become an affiliate marketer in 2022:

• Be your own boss.

The very first reason to become affiliate marketing in 2022 is that it can help you be your own boss. Yes, affiliate marketing can also replace your soul-sucking 9-5 job with a full-time business.

In fact, many affiliate marketers around the world are minting millions of money by promoting other people’s products.

So, if you want to be your own boss then start affiliate marketing today itself.

• Earn passive income

Who does not like earning money without doing much effort?

Regular corporate jobs require you to slog your ass for 30-days or even more to make money. On the other hand, affiliate marketing can help you in earning passive income even while you are sleeping.

However, to earn a decent amount of income via affiliate marketing, you need to put in a lot of hard work and effort.

• Work from home or anywhere

If you are someone who hates traveling and going to the office, then you must try your hand at affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you’ll be able to promote other people’s products and earn commission via it while sitting at your home or anywhere in the world.

We personally know a few affiliate marketers who travel the world while making money only.

Isn’t it cool? Of course, it is.

• Cost-effective.

You might be thinking it requires a huge amount of money or capital investment to get started with affiliate marketing.

However, this is not the case.

One can easily start affiliate marketing and make money online without spending a penny. You can create a Facebook or Instagram page or start a YouTube channel and start promoting other people’s products.

Another popular way to promote affiliate products is via blogging. This requires an initial startup cost but will surely give you returns.

• Flexible

The next benefit of affiliate marketing is that it is flexible in nature. It allows you to work in the morning, night, afternoon or at any time which you prefer. 

We already said that affiliate marketing is a great way to get rid of your regular 9-5 job. Hence, it also gives you freedom and flexibility to work at any time from anywhere.

• Get performance-based rewards.

This is yet another benefit of affiliate marketing. With your regular 9-5 job, you might be working for 25 days a month and still be getting the same salary. However, this is not the case with affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you could make more money as compared to your salaried job.

Common types of affiliate marketing channels?

The majority of affiliates promote similar products but most of them don’t promote them in the same way. In fact, there are different types of affiliate marketers that use various channels to promote other people’s products.

Following are various types of affiliates:

• Influencers

Influencers are the people who have a fan following on their social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

They have a highly targeted following base and hence it becomes easy for them to promote products that are specific to the needs of their audience.

Apart from affiliate marketing, influencers also make money via brand deals and sponsorships.

• Bloggers

The next category of affiliates is bloggers.

With the ability to rank content on Google, bloggers earn a ton of money via affiliate marketing. Most bloggers promote the product by writing a review or comparing it with other similar products in the niche.

This gives them the maximum conversion rate.

Bloggers are awarded a commission for every single sale made via their affiliate link. 

• YouTubers

Next to bloggers, YouTubers are another type of affiliate marketer who promotes other people’s products by creating video content. Since the content consumption pattern of people is moving towards video, YouTube gives a good opportunity for affiliates to earn money via affiliate marketing.

• Paid ads experts

Blogging and YouTube take time to give you success in affiliate marketing. So, if you are looking for a quick way to win the affiliate marketing game, then start levering paid advertisement. You can create a microsite about the product and services which you are promoting. Later on, you can run a paid ad campaign for that site.

• Social media marketer

The last in this list of types of affiliate marketers are social media experts. 

These are the people who are having the upper hand in social media marketing.

They can use social media for generating leads, increasing website traffic, improving sales, and promoting affiliate products.

Not to forget that these people don’t spend a penny while promoting affiliate products.