Affiliate marketing: What is it and how to start (guide step-by-step 2023)

In this article, I will explain in detail what affiliate marketing is, how to start earning money through it, what are the best websites to start an affiliate marketing strategy,

and all the tips you need to know for a profitable affiliate marketing strategy for beginners.

Get ready because you're about to discover a whole new world that you've probably never considered before. At the end of this guide, you will have all the information you need to get started. What is Affiliate Marketing?

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

The affiliate is a reseller who earns a commission for each product that will manage to sell, a bit like what happens for offline retailers, or those doors to door or those in call centers (I know it does not seem a good job, but trust me, online is completely different).

The parties involved in this market are 3:

- The advertiser, the one who provides the ad

- The publisher or the one who promotes the ad

- The consumer or the end-user

The great thing about affiliations is that in the end, everyone earns!

You are happy because you earned your commission.

The company is happy because it 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 does not only mean promoting and selling products created by others, but you can also put your own product in affiliation.

Let me explain:

If for example, 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 is also what affiliate marketing is all about.

Don't worry, you'll understand it all as you continue reading.

This job 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 I mainly use English terms as they are the ones you will find most written around the web.

The merchant provides a product to sell through their site or through an affiliate network (we will see later what it is) which generates a link that ends with a reference (ref="").

That reference indicates that any user who starts to navigate on the merchant's site through that link will do so on behalf of the affiliate who will earn a commission on any purchase.

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

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

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

4 Reasons for Affiliate Marketing

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

Affiliations are a great way to earn money online, both for those who are just starting out and for those who are already experts in the field.

Here's a shortlist of the main reasons why:

1. Getting started is easy

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

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

- You don't have to spend time and money to create a product.

- You don't need to buy physical products, nor do you need to have a warehouse to store them in.

- You don't need to manage eCommerce and eventual payments.

- You don't have to deal with customer support.

Basically, your only task is to bring quality traffic to the landing page of the product, so that the user makes a conversion.

Through affiliation you can earn commissions up to 70%, depending on the type of product and network.

2. It's easy to grow

Since you don't have to create your own product to sell, it's extremely easy to test different solutions and find the one that suits you best.

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

3. There are no limits to access

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

Of course, being an experienced web designer or web marketer will certainly give you an advantage over your competitors, but I can guarantee you that many successful affiliate marketers have started from scratch, all you need is a lot of commitment and perseverance.

You'll learn how to best optimize your campaigns in the field. Surely at the beginning, you won't get the results you hoped for, but with each mistake, you'll have a greater awareness of the right path to follow.

The only skills required to get started are:

- Basic computer and internet usage

- Determination and perseverance

- Ability to learn

- Patience, lots of patience

4. Minimal initial expenses

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

Basically, you need about 10 euros for a domain and 50 euros for the webspace, I usually recommend SiteGround (read my review).

Paradoxically you could do affiliate marketing even without having a website/blog, just using social or email marketing, but nowadays it's not so easy to earn relevant amounts of money in the long term using only these tools.

How to succeed in affiliate marketing

To better understand how to start in affiliate marketing we need to clarify some points.

There are many small and important steps during the sales process, which can be summarized into 4 basic steps.

1. Choose a niche

The absolute first thing to do is to choose your niche.

A niche is a small part of a larger market where you may specialize.

Don't choose topics that are too broad or varied, it 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 tip: Look for an evergreen niche, that is lasting over time, and avoid transient fads or limited effect.

2. Market Analysis

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

To do this you can do some research on Google and evaluate the competition. Also, check if there are any advertisements within the search results. If people invest in that sector it means that there is a market.

3. Building a website

Once you've chosen your product, you'll need to build an entire specialized website around it or a landing page.

Unfortunately, it's not enough to have a simple website to be able to guarantee you sales, everything will have to be optimized in the best way to convince the user to make a purchase.

4. Attract visitors to your site

No visitors = No sales.

Obviously, you'll need to generate consistent traffic to your site. There are many possible sources of traffic and we will look at them below.

Obviously, once you've created everything, you'll need to generate as much traffic as possible to your site and then to your affiliate links.

Well, here are the main sources of traffic you can draw on :

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

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

By using advanced SEO techniques you will be able to optimize your website in such a way that search engines will notice you and show your site in the first few search pages for certain keywords.

PRO: It's free and it can attract many high-quality visitors over time.

CON: It is not easy, especially for some niches and it is basically a slow method, you will not see immediate results.

2. Social Networks

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram have become a constant in the lives of all of us. Being able to create a solid presence on social networks can bring many advantages.

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

CON: The hardest part is creating a solid and authoritative social presence and consequently viral content.

3. Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most functional strategies ever if you can generate a list of relevant and quality contacts you will get great results.

PRO: A large list of contacts relevant to your niche will convert more than thousands of visits to your website.

CON: It's not easy to create a sizable list of quality contacts and it requires a lot of time and patience.

4. Paid Traffic

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

It is a fast and effective method.

It basically consists of creating paid advertisements through social networks, search engines, or banners that entice the user to click and access your offer. You will typically receive a charge every time a user clicks on your link.

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

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

PRO: You can get quality traffic immediately, plus once you have verified the potential of an ad, you can scale the campaign and earn more by paying more.

CON: Of course, you need money!

Affiliate Network

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

If you are going to put your product in affiliation, let the network take care of managing payments and generating links for the affiliate, you will save time and money, plus the network will give you much more visibility.

Affiliates instead often go to these networks for convenience, as they may have more offers available to choose from, and because some companies give exclusivity to a particular network for sales of their product.

Here are some examples of famous websites for affiliate marketing for beginners:

Amazon, Rakuten, ClickBank, MaxBounty.

Read also "The best affiliate programs", my list to start in 2021.

Conclusions

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

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