Interested in learning what is affiliate marketing and how does it work?

You’ve come to the right place!

Affiliate marketing is by far the most favorite choice among bloggers (including me) to make money blogging.

In fact, when I heard about affiliate marketing for the first time in 2016, I thought it must be really complicated to learn how affiliate marketing works, let alone make money from it.

But the good news is, affiliate marketing is not just easy to learn, but it also provides an opportunity to earn $$$ while you Zzz.

And that’s the dream, right?

Waking up without the sound of an alarm clock, making a nice cup of coffee, opening the laptop and checking how much referral commission you earned the previous day.

Now I know you must be really excited to learn how to get started with affiliate marketing, start making a full-time passive income, ditch your regular day job, and live a boss free life.

But before we get started, let’s be realistic for a minute.

Learning affiliate marketing is fairly easy and anyone with an average IQ can master it.

But, in order to make passive income from affiliate marketing regularly, you must be willing to:

• Work hard & smart
• Be consistent
• Avoid get-rich-quick traps

So, if you’re really committed to doing whatever it takes, then I’m here to help you achieve all your passive income goals.

In this affiliate marketing guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about affiliate marketing, so you can turn your life around and live life on your own terms!

Are you excited?

Let’s dive right in then!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is basically a popular marketing tactic where the bloggers get paid for promoting other people’s (or company’s) products or services on their blogs.

(Don’t already have a blog to start affiliate marketing? Check out my guide on how to start a blog in 2020.)

In layman’s terms, you promote other company’s products on your blog and earn a referral commission each time someone buys the product from your affiliate link.

Bloggers (like you and me) basically have to find products in their niche from different affiliate networks, promote it among your blog readers, and earn a commission for each sale made through your affiliate link.

It’s a revenue-sharing model where every party gains some benefits.

According to Wikipedia, there are a total of 4 parties involved in affiliate marketing cycle:

1. The Merchant – This is the party that creates a product and wants to sell as many as possible through the affiliate marketing tactic.
2. The Network – It’s a marketplace platform where the merchants upload their products and find the right publishers (bloggers) to help them market their products. Though most companies are creating their own affiliate marketing system to directly connect with the publishers.
3. The Publishers – These are basically the bloggers, influencers, and industry experts who market other company’s products and encourage their audience to buy it using their discount link.
4. The Customers – These are the people who purchase products that they were already interested in buying by using the publishers’ affiliate links to save some money.

So, these are the main 4 parties of an affiliate marketing program.

Now, let’s move forward and see how does affiliate marketing work so that you can fully understand it and make it work for you.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

As I explained earlier, affiliate marketing is about earning a referral commission by promoting other company’s products to your blog readers.

Basically, you find the products in your niche to promote, sign up to join their affiliate marketing program, and they give you a special tracking link that you need to place on your blog.

If a reader clicks on your link, it will send a tracking cookie with your and visitor’s information to the company so they know to attribute that particular sale to you.

The company also provides a dashboard where you can check your stats.

It generally shows how many impressions your affiliate links generated, how many people clicked on it, how many made a purchase using your link, and how much money you earned in referral commissions.

So, the general idea behind affiliate marketing is this! – If you can send people to the company’s website through your special affiliate link and get them to make a purchase, you can make money in passive form.

Now, if you don’t know how to find such affiliate products in your blog niche, I have already found the best affiliate networks where you can find affiliate products to sell for almost every niche.

• ClickBank
• Rakuten
• CJ Affiliate
• Shareasale
• Amazon Associates
• eBay Partner Network

How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing?

Up till now, we’ve discussed what is affiliate marketing and how does it work, and I hope you now have a clear understanding of it.

But, if you’re still struggling to get started with affiliate marketing, below I’ve shared a simple step-by-step process you can follow to start from scratch and build your way up to earning a full-time passive income from affiliate marketing.

It’s really simple.

Here’s a brief overview:

Research a profitable blog niche, start a blog, find some products to promote on your blog, and encourage your blog readers to purchase the products they’re interested in using your special affiliate link.

Sounds too complicated?

Let me explain in detail.

To make passive income from affiliate marketing, you need to get all the affiliate marketing basics right in the beginning.

Here is the simple 4 step-by-step process for you to learn how to get started with affiliate marketing.

1 – Understand Your Audience

Before you start a blog, you must know who your target audience is, where do they hang out the most on the internet, and what do they like to do on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Okay, the last information is not really needed but the point is, you need to identify your core target audience and understand their needs and interests.

For example, if you’re planning to launch a home theater DIY blog but then promoting laptop accessories, you’re not only going to make zero sales, but you’ll definitely lose readers’ trust as well.

So, conduct proper research to better understand your readers’ needs and choose products that your readers will love and would be interested in purchasing.

2 – Build Trust Among Readers

Once you know your target audience and have a firm understanding of their interests, it’s time to dive deeper into your blog niche.

At this stage, you really need to connect with your readers, solve their most painful problems, and build trust among them.

Check popular forums related to your blog niche, take frequent surveys, and be active on social media to learn what your readers need the most and find a way to give it to them.

For example, if you’re thinking of starting a healthy cooking blog, identify what are the things your readers struggle with the most and give solutions through your content.

The more useful content you’ll create, the more trust you’ll be able to build among your target audience, which would be much needed when you finally start putting affiliate products’ links on your blog.

This brings us to an important point…

3 – Use the Products Before Encouraging Your Readers to Buy Them

Once you’ve built sufficient trust among your readers, it’s time to start finding the products to sell through affiliate marketing.

Now, please know that your readers can easily spot B.S. products faster than you realize. So, don’t even think about finding cheap quality products that give out a larger piece of the pie.

It’s the fastest way to lose your readers as they’ll know that the content was solely created for the cash and not to solve their problems.

So, it’s better to focus on choosing only genuine products, which not only solves a specific problem efficiently but also provides great value to your readers.

Better yet, before you choose any product to market it on your blog, use the product yourself, understand how it works, and make sure it can fully solve the readers’ problems.

This process will not only help you get a better understanding of the product, but it will also help you sell it better through your content.

4 – Optimize Your Affiliate Links Placement to Maximize Clicks

There are many different ways a blogger can place affiliate links in his blog.

For example, you can put a banner ad in the header, in the sidebar, and at the end of the content with your affiliate links and it should work just fine.

However, if you really want to reach the full revenue potential of affiliate marketing, then you must learn how to naturally add products through your words.

And as you mention the product throughout your content, remember to add your affiliate links, which will take readers to the company’s website to make a purchase.

Pro Tip: Make sure that you provide useful content first and then sprinkle a few of your affiliate links of the product you’re promoting.

For example, take a look at my Grammarly Review post.

As you’ll read the content, you’ll notice that I have tactfully placed my affiliate links naturally in the content, which not only helped me to maximize the clicks but also the revenue.

What Are You Still Waiting for?!

You’re now armed with all the right information you need to get started and succeed in affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is absolutely one of the best ways to make money blogging and gives you the freedom to live your life as you always wanted to.

So, follow the step-by-step process included in this post and get started already!

FAQs About Affiliate Marketing

Q:1 – Is it important to have a blog to start Affiliate Marketing?

Not necessarily. But a blog is undoubtedly the best way to reach the maximum revenue earning potential in affiliate marketing. Here’s a beginner-friendly guide on How to start a Blog in 2020.

Q:2 – How much money can you make from Affiliate Marketing?

Limitless! That’s the beauty of affiliate marketing. You can make millions of dollars via affiliate marketing if you can sell high-ticket products to a mass amount of audience through your blog or any other marketing channel.

Q:3 – Is Affiliate Marketing still profitable in 2020?

You bet. Affiliate marketing is still profitable in 2020 and people are still making fortunes from it.

Q:4 – How long does it take to start making money from affiliate marketing?

I would say from 12 to 18 months if you’re starting from scratch. Although, you must be active and consistently in touch with your target audience.