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Growth hacks

Affiliate Marketing Guide For Beginners

Ayush Mourya 6 Stories

Friday September 20, 2019 , 6 min Read

If you are looking to add an extra stream of income in your bank account affiliate marketing would be an answer for you. It is one of the most popular ways to monetize your content and make money. In this blog, I have explained what is affiliate marketing and how can you start your journey in just four steps.

What is affiliate marketing

Definition - ” Affiliate Marketing is a process where you refer a product/service to others and when they buy the product/service through your referral you earn a commission.”

Affiliate marketing is different from other similar sources of revenue like CPC (cost-per-click) and CPA (cost-per-acquisition). Because here you don’t make money from referral clicks but earn a commission when the product is purchased.

Many people choose to only monetize their blog with affiliate marketing and avoid other revenue streams like Google Adsense. Because of the amount of revenue which you will generate from affiliate marketing will far exceed Google Adsense and other revenue streams.

A good amount of research is required in order to start promoting the product and make money. There are a number of other things you need to consider like Size of market, Proper strategy, to maximize the output of your sales and also better understand your audience.

How affiliate marketing work

In affiliate marketing, the first step towards the process is to find a company (which is also known as a merchant) and then choose the product or service you want to promote.

Once you find the product you want to promote, then you need to join their affiliate program. Some companies may have a different name like partner program or an associate program.

After you have registered yourself with their program, They will provide you with an special link with your affiliate code. Which you will use to refer to other people to earn a commission.

The affiliate link track behavior of your audience through cookies and automatically detect if the purchase has been made or not.

There are a number of ways to promote your affiliate product, Such as writing a review about the product or Ranking different products in the same category. Also, you can advertise your affiliate link in your blog.

How will I get my money

All your monthly revenue is mostly shown in your sales page of your affiliate software. Your income is divided into two parts approved and pending.

Approved - This is the customers who have successful purchased the product and have not asked for a refund or replacement in the first 10 days of their purchase. The time-frame is different for other programs' depends on the policy of your affiliate program. Approved payment can be withdrawn at any time.

Pending - This is the customers who have successful purchased the product but have either not yet reached their first 10 days or have asked for a refund. Typical to get your payment fully approved to withdraw it takes around 30 days.

Why you should join affiliate marketing

1) Free to start

You don’t require to pay anything to participate in affiliate programs. It is completely free so getting started is very easy.

2) No additional cost for your commission

When you refer someone to your affiliate link and they purchased the product they are not required to pay any extra cost for your commission. Its a win-win situation for everyone.

3) Low risk

In affiliate marketing, there is no risk involved because the product which you are promoting is not yours so you don’t have to deal with the after sales problems like a refund, replacement or dissatisfaction. Generally, you need to always promote a high-quality product to your audience to build trust. The only thing you have to do is bring the customer on the sales page.

4) Passive income

The idea of passive income sounds like a dream Like you can make money even when you are sleeping. Because somewhere around the world, people are awake and surfing the internet and they will buy products and you will make sales day and night. This is one of the most lucrative sources of revenue.

4 steps to start making money online

1) Choose platform

Before you start making money from affiliate marketing you need to choose the platform you want to promote the affiliate product. There are different platforms to promote your content but I am sharing three of the most popular ways.

Blog - It is one of the most used platforms by affiliate marketers. It allows you to give value to your audience by writing reviews or comparing certain products and then recommending them to buy from your affiliate link.

Social Media - Many choose to invest their time in building their social media accounts and build a personal bond with the audience. It becomes very easy to sell products on social media.

Youtube - As the consumption pattern of people is changing many audiences prefer to consume information through videos. So increasing your presence on youtube would be a good investment.

2) Choose product

There are millions of products available on the internet which you can sell and make money. But there are different types of products and different commission rates. Broadly, there are two types of products digital and physical.

Digital Product - Online Courses, Online book, Membership website.

The commission on digital products is significantly higher compare to physical product as there is no limitation for creating digital copies. The production cost for digital is almost zero after the initial product.

Physical product - Laptops, Mics, any tangible product.

The commission on such a product is quite low as they are physical, not digital so you can't just copy and duplicate a product.

3) Identify your audience

One crucial step for a successful affiliate marketer is to identify your audience whom are you going to sell your product.

You can't sell dog food to a cat owner's. Identify the right product for your audience. You need to create content on a niche in which your potential customer would be interested. Such as if you want to sell a laptop then write content about the laptop its that simple.

4) Bring traffic.

The most important part of affiliate marketing is to bring traffic to your affiliate link. To do that you need to invest your time in learning and understanding SEO and social media advertisements.