Affiliate marketing step-by-step guide for beginners in 2022

A Complete affiliate marketing guide that can actually bring you some good results on the table up front.  

Content 

1. Q&A of A TO Z Affiliate Marketing.

2. Profitable Product & Niche Selection.

3. Content Creation for Promotions

4. Find Affiliate Program To join

5. Drive Traffic to Your Affiliate offer.

6. Convert clicks into sales.

7. Affiliate Marketing Expert's Secrets. 

 

Before going any further, let's have a fact check. Affiliate marketing is just not the side hustle or part-time money-making scheme, it's actually in fact is an online business. Where anyone can make money in their sleep if they know the exact process of running affiliate programs on autopilot mode. 

Affiliate marketing gives an equal online opportunity to everyone regardless of their age, gender, and profession to create a living with social media and digital mode of working. 

It's an equal opportunity for everyone but not everyone is willing to do what it takes. Anyone can start earning with zero cost of investment but if one doesn't believe in self-investment then their journey could be tough as hell but as you already here to learn everything about it, I can tell you that, you have that potential and you will make it through.  

1. Q&A of A TO Z Affiliate Marketing.

Q.1. What is Affiliate Marketing?

- Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people’s (or company’s) products. You find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.

Q.2. What does Affiliate Marketing do?

- Affiliate marketing is the marketing strategy used in several businesses to get growth on the fast track. Marketing affiliates are like salespeople for a company, brand, or product. They not only do the hard work of promoting the product but they actually make more sales with their independent and unique marketing strategies. The more affiliate sales, the more growth company, brands, and businesses get. Actually, affiliate marketing is one of the greatest and most successful yet evergreen strategies to grow a business on the fast track.  

Q.3. What is the best way to start making money online with affiliate marketing?

- Affiliate marketing is nothing more than promoting someone else’s product/service and earning a piece of commission for each sale you made. The best way to start making money online with affiliate marketing is to start off by building your PERSONAL BRAND.
All you need to do is, get active on the social media front, and create your experience & expertise around your niche. Once you get your followings, you can actually turn your social activities into an online affiliate business. But it's not as simple as it sounds, therefore I am here to guide you to get the best out of it. 

Q.4. Why affiliate marketing is the best way to make money online?

- It's a 100% legit way to make money online. You actually work for it. "Make money online" these three words have made a  wrong image of making effortless money online. People actually look for an effortless money-making scheme when they search "how to make money online". Whereas in affiliate marketing, you only earn money when you work for it. So affiliate marketing is not a rich quick scheme, it is actually a real profession of so many people who are living a laptop lifestyle. 
And why affiliate marketing is the best way, because there is no limit on making sales, which means there is no limit on how much you can earn per day. That's why it's one of the best sources for creating passive income online.  

Q.5. Why Affiliate Marketing is the future?

- As you already know, this was the year of digital transformation where everybody went online to get something done due to current circumstances around the world. People not only went online but a lot of them went offline as well, they loosed their jobs due to the current economic breakdown. In this case, the only profession that is blooming right now is e-commerce, online services, and online learning businesses. While people were depending so much on their cooperative companies, now they can self-create the opportunity for themselves by being affiliate marketers and promote the business which is already blooming and that's why affiliate marketing is the future of digital transformation. 

Q.6. Why affiliate marketing does not work?

- The only people who failed in affiliate marketing are those people who misunderstood affiliate marketing as a rich quick scheme. When it's clearly not. If you don't learn about it, you will definitely not do it in the right way and so you may fail. The best way to start with affiliate marketing success is by taking it as a serious profession or business. You need to learn everything about it and then start it to get success in affiliate marketing. 
Here are some reasons, most the people fail with it.

1. No learning about it.

2. Choosing a non-profitable niche.

3. Not equipped with the right kind of tools.

4. Don't learn about marketing at all.

5. Don't give time to content creation and building social capital.

and whatnot. 

Q.7. Where to start doing affiliate marketing? 

- There are two ways or can say to platforms through which you can start with affiliate marketing, One is to get associated with any affiliate networks and the second is to be a part of affiliate programs.

In both ways, you can choose your best interest product and promote it to your audience and then you can start making money with your first sales.  

Q.8. How much money anyone can make with affiliate marketing?

- Seriously, there is no limit. You sell more, you make more that's it. There are no such limits in affiliate marketing and that's why it's one of the best sources of making passive income. 

2. Profitable Product & Niche Selection.

Choose a product or a niche that you are already interested in, but you need to be very specific with it as per the competition nowadays. If you pick any niche like food, food is a very broad term, you can always be specific and create a niche inside food like grilled food. So that you can stand out and can be on the fast track of being successful in affiliate marketing. There are three big niches that people are crazy about, food, money, and health and if you choose any of these niches and then make it specific, you can really do great.

Choosing a profitable niche is a very crucial part of being a successful affiliate marketer as your entire journey depends upon what you do about your niche in your life. 

How important that niche is to you and how crazy you are about that particular niche is going to decide how far you are going to go in your affiliate marketing career. 

Remember that, people always want to buy from an expert, so if you are not an expert in your own niche, you will not make it.

3. Content Creation for Promotions

You need to understand, that every step is part of a ladder that you need to climb up in order to get success in affiliate marketing.
After choosing your niche, you need to build your fan following around that niche, and in order to create that fan base, you need to showcase your love to that particular niche.
Create content that can help people with your niche. Make people follow you for all the helpful content around that niche. Learn how to create content to make your audience your permanent customer.

Once you get successful in building your social empire, it's time to choose an affiliate product to promote and make your first income with affiliate marketing.

4. Find an Affiliate Program To join

The best affiliate marketing programs make it simple and easy to earn income from your website, while also being user-friendly.

Here are some of my personal favorite affiliate programs. 

 

1. Amazon Associates

2. Awin

3. CJ Affiliate

4. ShareASale

5. Clickbank

6. JVZoo

Amazon Affiliate Program

Just about everyone already has an Amazon account and buys stuff from them, so it certainly makes a ton of sense to partner with them as an affiliate marketer in their Amazon Associates program. They also sell, well, just about everything, so you can be sure that they have a product to market that is relevant to the content on your website. It is also free to join, and once accepted to the program you can sell any Amazon product, including third-party ones without getting into individual programs. 

You also get the opportunity to get commissions on not only the specific product that was advertised but any other purchases that are made at Amazon for 24 hours post referral. Signing up to Amazon Associates is a generally pain-free experience - unlike some other platforms where you need to apply for each affiliate product/service separately, with Amazon you have a single sign-up and can promote any of their products and services afterward. This can be especially handy as Amazon frequently do promotions specific to services, such as Amazon Prime or business accounts, making it potentially more lucrative than individual product links.

However, Amazon does change its terms quite frequently, and sometimes this has resulted in a reduction of commission across various product ranges so that the earnings potential available now is lower than it was a few years ago. Even still, it can be a handy way of monetizing existing links to Amazon that you might be using anyway, and the ease of use is second-to-none.

Awin

Awin is a huge affiliate marketing platform that boasts nearly 15,000 advertisers, and over 200,000 active publishers, and generated $147 million in sales through 2019. Publishers can sort through different advertisers to apply for the products or services that might work best, then if accepted, apply targeted links to generate an affiliate income.

CJ Affiliate

CJ Affiliate is a popular affiliate marketing program with global reach, formerly known as Commission Junction which goes back to 1998. CJ Affiliate features Product Widgets that are embedded on your site, and can then feature multiple products via a slideshow, collage, or grid to increase sales. Additional functionality includes deep link automation to automatically monetize links that lead to a CJ advertiser domain and real-time transaction monitoring. While this all sounds good, the stumbling block is the application process. First, you need to apply with your website, which needs to be found worthy of becoming a partner, based on traffic, optimization, and quality of content. However, this is only the first step, as then you need to apply individually to each vendor for the products that you wish to sell, and you may not be accepted into their individual affiliate programs, making this one of the harder programs to get up and running with.

ShareASale

ShareASale is another affiliate marketer, with a longstanding reputation across eighteen years, and was acquired last year by Awin, an international affiliate marketer.

They feature a large catalog of products to partner with from beauty supplies, to branded sports gear, luxury goods, and eyewear- almost 5,000 vendors in total, making it easy to find products that tie into your site. With so many options, ShareASale uses a Power Rank system to clue you in to the most popular vendors.

The signup process to get started has no cost, and is quite painless, with owners of multiple sites able to sign them all up in ‘one fell swoop.’ The drawbacks of ShareASale center around the payouts. The payout threshold of $50 can be difficult to reach for newer websites still building their traffic. In addition, to add insult to injury for a struggling site, they can actually delete your account if your account remains under $25.

Clickbank

Clickbank is a major affiliate marketer that has been around for years, with 200 million customers. They feature a variety of products to partner with, across many categories, particularly eBooks. It is simple for a novice to get started as anyone can create an online account, and it is free with no signup fee, so it is great for startups. They are also notable as Clickbank is known for having a higher commission rate than other affiliate marketers. They even run a Clickbank University to teach the ins and outs of affiliate marketing to those new to the field. The downside of Clickbank is most of the products for sale are eBooks, and while they span several categories, most are lower quality offerings, without name brand recognition.

JVZoo

JVZoo is a relative newcomer with six years of experience, and takes a SaaS approach to affiliate marketing; they must be doing something right as they were named by Inc among the ‘5000 Fastest Growing Companies in America for 2016 and 2017. Product creators can list their products in their marketplace for free, and JVZoo gets a standard 5% commission on anything that sells - and nothing before that. Marketing affiliates get instant payments to their PayPal accounts as soon as the item sells, with no payout threshold required. In addition, there is an opportunity to make money as affiliates can get a cut of sales of any affiliates that they have recruited, termed a ‘Second Tier Commission.’ Finally, if the buyer that was referred purchases another product (that was not specifically referred), the affiliate gets the commission- permanently.

5. Drive Traffic to Your Affiliate offer.

Once you get your affiliate link for your product, now the game is all about driving traffic to your affiliate offer. 

There are two ways of doing it

1. Buy The Traffic - which includes running online ads and doing social media campaigns with social media influencers. 

2. Work for Traffic - Create the content on social media and search engines to get notified by the people in an organic way. If you put your content according to the platform's algorithm, you can reach out to more people. 

Whatever way you choose, there should be only one aim, Convert all the visitors, first into a follower and next into a customer.

So learn the best way to get traffic to your affiliate offer, so that you can get your first 1000 sales ASAP. 

6. Convert clicks into sales.

You need to understand that, not everyone is going to buy from you just by their first click on your offer. So why waste your clicks as your first impression of what you do. Most of the people may also unfollow if you just keep posting your sales pitch on them. There is a right way to do it, here's how,

1. Don't divert your traffic directly o your offer - Create a landing page on your website, where you are going to offer some free help to all your first visitors in exchange for their email id. Your entire focus on getting your traffic should be collecting their email ids. 

2. Build your email list - Once you have a long list of emails, now start working on your sales pitch and recommend them your affiliate product.

Email converts more sales than any other mode of marketing, so invest yourself in email marketing.

7. Affiliate Marketing Expert's Secrets. 

- Understand the Needs of Your Audience and Promote Benefits

Before you start creating content, choosing products, or even setting up your website, you need to ask yourself some key questions about your target audience. 

Who are my buyers? 

What are their needs, problems, and challenges? 

What are their aspirations and dreams? 

What are their fears and doubts? 

What is it about their lives that they want to change? 

What are the products that can help them solve their problems and achieve their goals? 

Why would they buy that product from me? 

The expert marketers that you dream to emulate one day, spend hours upon hours understanding the real needs and wants of their target audience.

- Understand Your Role in the Affiliate Marketing Cycle

 People can buy whatever they need directly from Amazon, eBay, Walmart Target, or any other retailer. Why do they buy from middlemen (affiliates) like you? You need to understand this to fully appreciate the importance of your role in the affiliate marketing cycle. 

As an affiliate marketer, you play the role of a bridge between the customer and the supplier. Though that doesn't simply mean you can just dump yourself down in the middle between a Google searcher and Amazon and hope to skim off a click via your affiliate link and net an easy commission for no work. 

You can't simply regurgitate product features, specifications, pros and cons, and other basic benefits that can be found already on Amazon. No, you must learn how to give added value to the consumers so that they have good reason to go through your website instead of the direct source.

Here are some ways you can give value as a middle-man / affiliate:

By solving the problems of your visitors and connecting them with the best product for their situation over just hard pitching products at them. 

By providing information or value that the end retailer like Amazon isn't providing or making clear. 

By offering bonuses on top of the product that compliments or extends the purchase. 

By showing ways to use or benefits of the product that aren't obvious. 

By helping users find the best price or discount that they wouldn't get by going directly to the end retailer. 

By answering all their questions and objections around the product that are holding them back from purchasing.

By clearly showing how the pain, problem, discomfort, or inconvenience they are experiencing will be removed when they own the product.

- Solve Problems, Build Trust, and Overcome the Fear of Selling 

What comes to your mind when you think of the word "salesman"?

 A slimy car salesman, a pushy door-to-door salesman, or a cold calling agent hellbent on making a profit by selling you products that you don't need, want, or even like. 

Like it or not, people hate salesmen. But you're not a salesman. You're a marketer. And there's a clear difference between the two. Marketers don't sell products, they solve problems and sell dreams. 

When you adopt the right strategy, people not only buy from you but also thank you for offering products that they needed.

It's all about building trust with them, showing them that you care about their needs, and understanding how to solve their problems.

So get these three points in your notes and start accordingly with affiliate marketing. 

I hope this guide brought you a lot of bright sides to affiliate marketing and I want all of you to work your way in, to get that financial freedom for yourself.

Get on board with the affiliate marketing profession while you can because there is going to be a tough fight to be in the spot as an affiliate marketer in the future.

You know the future is all about it. So learn early adopt early and earn early!!!

Share this blog as much as you can to help your other friends too.

All the very very best, make your fortune all by yourself.

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