What Is Affiliate Marketing? How Do I Get Started? [Guide 2023]

In this article I will explain in detail what affiliate marketing is and how to start making money with it.

Get ready as you will discover a totally new world that you have most likely never considered before.

At the end of this guide you will have all the information you need to get started right.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing basically allows you to earn a commission by promoting products from other companies.

The affiliate is a reseller who earns a commission for each product he will be able to sell, a bit like offline resellers, that is, those door-to-door or those in call centers. I know, it doesn’t sound very tempting, but trust me, it’s completely different online.

There are 3 parties involved in this market.

The advertiser , or the one who makes the advertisement available
The publisher or the one who promotes the ad
The consumer or the end user

The beauty of affiliations is that in the end they all win!

You are happy because you have earned your commission
The company is happy because it has made a sale or received a new contact
The user is happy because thanks to you he found what he was looking for

Doing affiliate marketing is not just about promoting and selling products created by others, but you could also be the one to affiliate your own product .

For example, if you have created an info-product , such as a video course, you can decide to share it on an affiliate network and allow others to sell it in exchange for a commission. This also means doing affiliate marketing .

Don’t worry, you will understand everything by continuing to read. This work is basically divided into 2 parts:

The merchant or the person who creates the product
The affiliate or the person who will promote the product

The merchant makes a product available to sell through its website or through an affiliate network (we will see what it is later on) which generates a link that ends with a reference (ref = “affiliate-code”).

That reference indicates that any user who starts browsing the merchant’s site through that link will do so in the name of the affiliate, who will earn a commission on any purchase / action.

The only thing that the publisher will have to do is to promote that link by all means at its disposal.

On paper it’s all very simple, in practice a little less, as without relevant traffic sources, it will be difficult to bring home considerable commissions over time, but don’t worry, in this guide I will show you everything you need.

The possible traffic sources are different and we will see them shortly, but first I want to explain to you why starting to do affiliate marketing can be a great idea.

4 Reasons to Do Affiliate Marketing

To better understand what affiliate marketing is and how it works, let’s try to examine all the advantages of this fantastic world.

The affiliations are a great way to earn money online , both for those who are among the beginners, and for those already experienced in the field.

Here is a short list of the main reasons:

1. Getting started is easy

As an affiliate you don’t need to create anything, you just have to sell an existing product, this will save you a lot of time and money.

Starting to work as an affiliate is extremely simple, just sign up for the affiliate program of the product you want to promote, and get the link identifying your account , which will track all the user’s movements through cookies .

Basically:

You won’t have to spend time and money to create a product
You will not have to buy physical products, let alone have a warehouse to store them
You will not need to manage an eCommerce and any payments
You won’t have to deal with customer support

Basically your only task will be to be able to bring quality traffic to the product landing page , for the user to convert .

Through affiliation you can earn commissions even higher than 70%, it depends a lot on the type of product and the network.

2. It is easy to grow

Not having to personally create the product to sell, it is extremely easy to test different solutions and find the one that best suits you.

In addition, you can also start multiple campaigns at the same time and devote all your energy to promotion.

3. There are no access limits

No previous experience or skills are required to start working in this field.

Of course, being an expert web designer or web marketer will certainly benefit you not a little over the competition, but I can guarantee you that many successful affiliate marketers have started from scratch, it just takes a lot of effort and perseverance.

You will learn how to best optimize your campaigns in the field. Surely at the beginning you will not get the desired results, but with each mistake you will have a greater awareness of the right path to follow.

The only skills required to get started are:

Basic use of computers and internet
Determination and perseverance
Learning ability
Patience, a lot of patience

4. Minimum initial expenses

One of the biggest benefits of affiliate marketing is the start-up costs. You don’t need large amounts of money to get started.

Basically you will need around 10 euros for a domain and 50 euros for the web space. I usually recommend SiteGround.

Paradoxically, you could do affiliate marketing even without a website , simply by taking advantage of social media, but nowadays it is no longer so easy to earn significant amounts of money in the long term using only these tools.

How to be successful in affiliate marketing

To better understand how to get started in affiliate marketing, we need to clarify a few points.

There are many small, more or less important phases during the sales process , which we can enclose in 4 fundamental steps.

1. Choose a niche

The very first thing to do is to choose your niche . A niche is a small part of a larger market, where you may be specialized.

Don’t choose topics that are too large or varied, they will drastically decrease your chances of success. Try to be as specific as possible, people like specialized sites , they find them more reliable and worthy of attention.

The more specific the niche, the better, always remember that.

Last advice: Look for an evergreen niche , that is, one that lasts over time, avoid transitory or limited-effect fashions.

2. Market analysis

Having chosen the niche, the second thing to do is to find the product to promote and evaluate through accurate market analysis whether the product you have chosen is actually sought after by people and if consequently it can generate profits.

To do this, you can do research on Google and evaluate the competition.

Also check for advertisements within the search results. If people invest in that sector, it means there is a market.

3. Building a website

Once you have chosen the product, you will have to build an entire specialized site around it, or develop a landing page , or a sales page.

I usually use the WordPress CMS for creating and managing my sites. Unfortunately, having a simple website is not enough to guarantee you sales, everything must be optimized to the best in order to convince the user to make a purchase.

4. Attract visitors to your site

No visitors = No sales.

Of course, you will need to generate constant traffic to your site. There are many possible traffic sources , below you will find out which ones.

Traffic sources

Obviously, once you have everything created, you will need to generate as much traffic as possible to your site and therefore to your affiliate links.

Well, here are the main traffic sources you can tap into:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

The best technique to attract organic traffic, that is, in a natural and free way is SEO .

Using advanced SEO techniques, you will be able to optimize your website so that search engines notice you and show your site among the first pages of search results for certain keywords.

PROS : It’s free and can attract many top quality visitors over time

CONS: It’s not easy, especially for some niches and it’s basically a slow method, you won’t see immediate results.

2. Social Media

The social networks like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube have become a constant in the life of each of us. Being able to create a solid presence on social networks can bring many advantages.

PROS : Great potential and free traffic, especially if you can create viral content.

CONS : The most difficult part is precisely that of being able to create a solid and authoritative presence on social networks and consequently viral content.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing today is one of the most functional strategies ever , if you manage to generate a relevant and quality contact list (email) you will get great results.

In this way we will decide how and when to contact our users and selling will be much easier.

4. Paid traffic

This is definitely the preferred traffic source of the vast majority of marketers .

It is a fast and effective method. It basically consists of creating paid advertisements through social media, search engines or banners, which entice the user to click and access your offer. You will typically be charged every time someone clicks on your link.

The tools to generate paid traffic are countless, the most famous are certainly Google Ads and Facebook Ads .

Almost all the tools around the web allow you to target users, i.e. filter only those potentially interested in your product.

PROS : You can get quality traffic immediately, plus once you check the potential of an ad, you can scale the campaign and earn more, paying more.

CONS : Of course, you need money to invest!

Affiliate network

An affiliate network is the tool that acts as an intermediary between the merchant and the publisher.

If you intend to put your product in affiliate, let the network take care of the management of payments and the generation of links for the affiliate, you will save time and money, also the network will give you a lot more visibility.

The affiliates instead often go on these networks is for convenience, as they can have the most offers available to choose from, and because some companies give exclusivity to a particular network for the sale of their product.

Some examples of famous networks are Amazon, Rakuten, ClickBank and MaxBounty

Conclusions

Well, in this article we have understood in a more or less detailed way what affiliate marketing is and how it works . Certainly a fascinating path that can bring huge gains without large investments.

Obviously it’s not all as easy as it seems, the obstacles you will encounter along the way will be many, but with the right strategy and determination you can reach your goal.