How to start your own affiliate marketing business?

• Decide on a Niche.
• Select a Platform.
• Create a Website.
• Join an Affiliate Program.
• Write Excellent Content.
• Drive Traffic to Your Affiliate Website.
• Cloak Your Affiliate Links.
• Track Your Affiliate Campaigns.

It was about a week before I’d have to flee the country due to a government crackdown, and I already had to leave my apartment due to gunfire and grenades going off constantly for 48 hours. (Seriously, true story).

My (now) good friends Derek and Clay had an apartment across town that they’d just moved into. Despite only knowing them for a brief period of time they let me come crash for a few days while I figured out my next steps.

While all of this was happening, author Chris Guillebeau was launching his latest product called the Empire Building Kit. Among other things, it featured an email a day for a year and was designed to help you build a business during that time.

I’d hardly done anything during the previous year to monetize Location Rebel.  But when this was released, I figured “why not?” and wrote a review talking about how cool the program was.

I went down the street to grab a coffee and when I came back and refreshed my inbox it was 11:05 – 5 minutes after the sale began.

I refreshed my email as soon as I got back, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

There were 4 emails, each of them saying “Sean Ogle You’ve Just Referred a Sale! You’ve earned a commission of $126.99.”

In a matter of 5 minutes, I’d made $500.

I’d never made money like this via my website before. But it was that moment that I truly understood the power of building an audience and monetizing it through affiliate links.

In this post I’m going to walk you through everything you need to know to start affiliate marketing on your blog, even if you’ve never made a cent online before, don’t have a huge audience, or even if you haven’t started to build your website.

We’ve obviously got a lot of work to do, so let’s get going!

This is one of the most in-depth videos I’ve shot on how to start affiliate marketing, so tune in while you read this post:

This is one of the most common questions we receive, and it’s actually quite simple:

Affiliate marketing is a way for you (the affiliate) to earn a commission for recommending products or services to your friends or readers.

To simplify it, here’s the 5 step process for how to start affiliate marketing:

Pretty simple, right?

It can get much more advanced, but in this post, we’re just going to start with the fundamentals and get you to the point where you’re ready to make your first commission.

Check out our more detailed post for a bit more about the specifics of what affiliate marketing is.

There are a lot of different ways to track affiliates these days, but nearly all of them are based on someone clicking your special tracking link.

The most common and basic type of tracking is via a cookie.

When an affiliate link is clicked, a small file called a cookie is stored on the user’s computer. Then they buy a product, the merchant can see that they were referred by you.

There are also more advanced methods based on the email used or IP address – but we won’t get into those here, we’ll stick to the most important stuff you need to know.

The amount you can make will vary wildly – it honestly falls somewhere between zero and millions.

Your income will be directly related to the type of offers you promote, how much traffic you get to the site, and your grasp of other online marketing skills like email marketing and SEO.

But in this post you’ll get a pretty good sense of the earning potential from different types of promotions.

I personally make multiple six figures a year through affiliate marketing.

But it wasn’t always that way:

Here’s the thing, you can pick just about any product that you can buy online, and there will be an affiliate program that will pay you a finders fee for referring a sale.

However, just because you can promote anything, doesn’t mean you should.

The most important thing to consider when selecting a product to market is, “is it relevant to your audience?”

For instance, for me to try and advertise for dumbbells on Location Rebel probably isn’t the smartest thing, because 99% of my audience could care less about them.

However, for me to promote, say, WP Engine a WordPress hosting company – makes much more sense, since almost every one of my readers either has or has considered starting a website.

And just recently, we promoted Streak as an awesome tool for freelancers to use to monitor leads right from their inbox. Once again, that’s something that speaks directly to the audience.

I thought about walking you through this whole process within this post, but honestly it’s all pretty straight forward and a lot of that is stuff you probably already know.

So rather than do that, I want to really focus on the specifics of understanding what makes a good affilaite product, and how to successfully promote it.

Go check this out if you’re looking for a full breakdown of how to build and monetize an affiliate blog or niche site.

There are three different types of affiliate products you can promote as a marketer

Each of these has pros and cons, and we’re going to look at those now.

Physical products are probably the easiest thing to promote for one reason, and one reason only: Amazon.

Amazon has the world’s largest affiliate program, and once you sign up, you can get a link for any product on the site, earn a (small) commission on it!

As it sits currently, you can earn between 1 and 4.5% on any product you promote through the Amazon affiliate program. What that percentage is depends on the category it falls into. You can see that breakdown here.

Most of the stuff I promote I get a 3% commission on.

One of the nice things about promoting via Amazon is that you get a commission on everything the buyer purchases – not just the specific product link they clicked on.

So let’s say that I’m promoting some golf balls on my golf website.

The balls cost $50, so I’ll only earn $1.50. But, what if that same person also buys a set of golf clubs for $1,000, and a new golf rangefinder for $300?

Then all of a sudden that $1.50 turns into $41.50.

Amazon has a 24 hour cookie. So what that means is that if someone clicks on your link, they then have 24 hours to make a purchase in order for you to get credit.

It also doesn’t have to be for the product they clicked on. If they click on your golf ball link and then buy a new TV? You still get credit!

So in a lot of ways, Amazon is like the gateway drug to promoting affiliate products because it’s very easy, and hundreds of millions of people use it on a daily basis.

But as you get more experienced, you’ll find there are more lucrative ways to promote physical products.

For instance, the REI affiliate program has a 5% commission and a 15 day cookie. If you have an outdoor-themed website, you have the potential to make nearly twice as much money on the products you promote, and you’re able to give people more time to buy.

Do as many people buy from REI as Amazon? No, but within your niche, you may find REI to be preferred and more trusted by your readers.

Many companies also offer their own affilaite program where they pay even higher commissions.

In the golf world I work with about a dozen companies directly that have affiliate commissions of between 8-20%. With most falling in the 10-15% range.

To give an example I promote golf rangefinders.

With one brand, if I sell a $500 rangefinder on Amazon? I make $15.

But if I sell that same one direct through a company’s affiliate program? I make $50.

Not as many people buy direct from the website, but considering I make over 3 times as much per sale, it’s worth it to promote it there!

In a recent month for this specific brand I sold 140 rangefinders with commissions of $1,377.15 on Amazon.

I also promoted it directly through their website, where I only sold 53 rangefinders, but made a commission of $1,687.83.

This doesn’t take into account other products people bought at the same time on Amazon – but it gives you an idea of how expanding to other physical product affiliate programs can be beneficial.

If you’re serious about Amazon affiliate marketing? I’d recommend you check out “The Affiliate Marketing Video Course” it’s a small investment, and the dude behind it is the smartest affiliate marketer I know. I can’t recommend the course highly enough.

Signing up for Amazon’s affiliate program is an excellent starting point.

Why?

Because the chances are good you already use Amazon, are familiar with it, and your readers are too.

You can sign up and get links immediately from the Amazon Affiliate program right here.

We’ve got you covered as well if you want to learn more about Amazon Affiliate Marketing.

Most larger companies will use what’s called an affiliate network to host their products. These are sites you sign up for that might represent dozens of brands, and it’s how you get your special links and marketing materials.

Other smaller companies might do this in house, so it’s worth reaching out and doing a little research here.

But the major affiliate networks that I’ve used are:

Many of the largest companies work with them (for instance many of the golf companies I work with), and building a relationship with a larger affiliate network can lead to more opportunities that you might not have found otherwise.

Honestly? I love promoting information products.

What is an information product? It’s a digital product, course, or community that is created by an expert in their field.

For instance, our flagship product Location Rebel Academy is an information product.

There are a lot of reasons that information products are so great to promote:

Generally, it can be a little bit more work to become an affiliate for these products because often the creator is a bit more protective of who they let market the products.

There’s also no central place you can go to join like you could with Amazon. Usually, you’ll need to talk to the author directly or look for an “affiliates” page on their product site.

Another significant benefit of promoting information products is that they usually have higher commissions than physical products.

30-50% is fair standard when it comes to promoting info products. Why? There are no hard costs associated with it.

And if a product creator can pay a percentage of any sale to an affiliate rather than have to spend significant amounts of money on ads? That’s a win for everyone involved.

When I promote information products I usually look for high-priced products created by people who are good at marketing. Why?

Because all I have to do is send traffic to their funnel, and they convert the sale. My work is relatively minimal.

I mentioned my Bangkok story above, but one of my first really big wins came through marketing an information product for building software businesses. Over 12 months I made over $20k in commissions from a blog post, 2 webinars, and a handful of dedicated emails.

That’s it.

So if you have a course or product that you’ve personally used and seen a lot of success from, check and see if there’s an affiliate program – because if you’re going to recommend it anyway, you might as well get paid for it!

The third type of product you can promote is a service. This is another big one for me, because of the nature of what I write about here.

My business doesn’t function without hosting, a theme, email software etc.

So it can be easy to make a sale on services because if I personally love and use them, there’s a good chance you will too.

If you’re lucky, you can find a service that pays recurring commissions based on monthly payments.

For instance, SEMrush for years paid 40% referral fees each month for the life of the account. So if someone I refer joins for $99/month? I’d be making nearly $40/month for as long as they were a customer.

These days we’ve seen a lot of companies shift to one time payments. Now, SEMrush pays a flat fee of $200 for each new customer. Still, not too shabby.

Content at Scale, which is the one AI writing tool I actually recommend pays a recurring 15% on every customer referred. Considering their base price of $500, this has the potential to be a pretty serious income stream.

But if you find those recurring commissions, you can build a solid stream of passive income if your promote it properly.

Think about which services you use and if it makes sense to promote them on your site. You can usually expect commissions between 15-30% on service products – sometimes higher or lower depending on what it is. Or if it’s a single payment, you can expect it to be equivalent to 2 months of payments.

If you have a website related to online marketing, blogging, or business, there are fortunately a lot of really solid affiliate programs out there for different services.

I wanted to share a few of my favorites so that you can get a sense of what an affiliate program entails, and start to get a feel for what might work on your site.

Most new bloggers assume that advertising or banner ads are the best way to monetize your site.

Up until a couple of years ago, I’d say you couldn’t be more wrong.

Why?

Because you needed a ton of traffic in order to make a significant amount of money, and the ads themselves would devalue your site and make it look horrible.

These days, this isn’t exactly true.

If you get to the point where you have 50k views a month, you’re able to qualify for certain ad networks (I like Mediavine) that actually pay pretty well for display ads.

They’re still ugly, but you can make some serious money as your traffic grows. About 3 years ago I decided to put ads on my site for a 3 month trial. I wanted to see if anyone would complain, and what revenue would look like?

In that entire time I haven’t had as single person complain about the ads. And last month? I made just over $7,000 from ads. That’s $7,000 for doing literally nothing extra. Hard to argue with that.

If you’re curious about how to make passive income through display ads, then watch this video:

But this post is about affiliate marketing.

So why would I choose affiliate marketing as a primary revenue stream over display ads?

A lot of reasons, but a few of them are:

These are just a handful of the reasons affiliate marketing is such a good way to monetize your site, but they certainly aren’t the only ones.

And keep in mind, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have display ads and affiliate links. Just be sure you’re not trying too hard to make money that you’re losing trust in the process.

Here’s an example of a recent post I did on Breaking Eighty, where I reviewed the best golf launch monitors. I wrote a post, and shot a video. I have affiliate links for all the products.

Not only that for some of the products I was able to negotiate coupon codes with the companies, that provide a discount for my readers. Best part is? If that coupon code gets used, I make a commission as well, just as I would if they clicked the link.

As you’re getting going, there are three specific types of products I recommend starting to market. These are ones that will give you the best chance of success in growing your business and actually making commissions early on.

I cover those here:

Ok, now the most important part.

By now you should have a good sense of what affiliate marketing is, have an idea of what products you want to promote and know how to get your affiliate links for them.

But if you don’t know how to properly promote them, it doesn’t really matter now, does it? Nope.

In this section, we’re going to look at some of the easiest and most successful ways to promote an affiliate offer.

This is probably the easiest thing you can do right now to bring in a few sales over the coming weeks: create a resource page.

Regardless of what your business is, there are tools, products, and services that you use to run your blog or business. By putting together a page of all of your tools and resources, you’re creating something that’s shareable, as well as useful.

You can also do a variation on this, and do a gift guide.

Our Best Gifts for Writers is a good example of this, and around certain holidays this brings in a nice bit of side income.

If you’ve built up a lot of trust with your audience, product reviews are a fantastic way to generate some sales. This works for all three types of products you can promote, and I’ve personally seen success with each.

They key to a successful product review is honesty.

I’d generally only review things you like, but if there are drawbacks or little things that bother you – be upfront about them. Most people know that no product is perfect, so if you set expectations and are open with them, there’s a good chance they’ll buy it anyway.

Make sure you include the following items in any product review:

I’ve done this with a lot of success on my golf site.

Here’s a review a golf product that makes up to a few dozen sales a month. I said why I like it, I discussed the downfalls, and then made it clear why I’m ok with them.

And another I did on Bluffworks, an awesome travel pant that I love for trips.

This post goes into way more detail about how to make money affiliate marketing through product reviews.

Tutorials are easily one of the most effective strategies for driving affiliate sales. They can take a long time to put together, but it’s also totally worth it.

So what is a tutorial exactly?

Simple, you create a post that shows people how to accomplish something step by step – you then make a product or service one of the key components to success.

I’ve done a couple of these.

With my How to Build a Niche Site post, I talk about all the steps you need to take to get a niche site up and running. So that includes some of the tools I know and love like a hosting service and ConvertKit.

I have another post, How to Set Up a Blog, that brings people step by step through the process using Bluehost. Readers can go through that post with no website at all and have their site ready to rock in less than 15 minutes using the tutorial.

You can also do it via video. Here’s an affiliate post I did walking you through how to do keyword research using SEMrush.

I make hundreds of dollars a month off of both of these posts but I know they are also really valuable to readers and we make sure to update them frequently.

These can be another really effective strategy for making affiliate sales.

It works well when there are either two products that are very similar and people are thinking about one or the other.

A great example would be comparing the PlayStation 5 vs the Xbox Series X.

If people are looking for a new game console, it’s probably going to be one of the two. That said, I don’t recommend you choose these because due to the overwhelming amount of information about both – it’d be hard to rank well in the search engines for any terms related to them.

A recent example I did is this post comparing the Garmin R10 vs. the Mevo Plus.

These are two golf products that consumers are very often trying to choose between.

Here’s an in-depth post that compares and contrasts all of the different options for hosting – and helps the user to select the best option for them.

This is probably the most effective (and most advanced) method we’ll talk about for making affiliate sales: your email list.

If you’re getting to the point where you have a sizable list, you can create a series of emails to promote a product. This works best if it’s an information product with relatively high commissions.

For this to work well you should have the following:

I’ve found a 3 email series usually works well for this, but don’t start going this direction until you’ve had some experience with either email marketing or the other affiliate strategies we’ve talked about.

Over the years, I’ve made a lot of affiliate marketing mistakes, so check out that post and make sure you don’t fall into some of the same traps I did as you’re getting started with your affiliate promotions!

Or if video is more your thing? Watch this:

If you follow along with the strategies above, you’ll be making affiliate sales in no time off of your blog.

To improve your chances even more, I’ve got a couple more tips for you.

I’ve been using Lasso on Breaking Eighty for about a year now, and I absolutely love it.

The major benefit it provides is that it gives me essentially an affiliate link database. So if my link changes? I can update it in one place, and it’ll update it across every single link on the site.

It also does a great job of displaying affiliate links in a way that makes them more prominent and more clickable.

Here’s an example of that:

Most major affiliate programs for physical products or services will have an affiliate manager, whose sole job is to help you generate more sales.

You’ll need to prove to them that you have some potential, but do your best to get them on the phone before you start doing any major promotions. They’ll be able to give you a good sense of what works, what doesn’t, and potentially even give you a boost in commissions.

One phone call nearly doubled my commissions for one hosting company in particular.

Inside Location Rebel Academy we have a course called “Make Money Blogging.” It’s literally the most step by step course I know of for creating a niche website that makes money.

So if you’re looking for community support, help from us, as well as over a dozen other blueprints for building an online business? I think you’ll love the Academy.

If you want something solely dedicated to affiliate marketing, I’d take a look at “The Affiliate Marketing Video Course” (real clever name, Matt).

My friend Matt Giovanisci is probably the best affiliate marketer I know. He makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with his affiliate sites.

And this course is extremely user friendly and covers a lot of the topics I mentioned here in more depth.

If after all of this, you think freelancing may be a better fit? Then snag our free 6-day course that walks you through all the basics of getting started.

This page contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and buy one of the products on this page, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you!) This doesn’t qffect our opinions or our reviews. Everything we do is to benefit you as the reader, so all of our reviews are as honest and unbiased as possible.

Valued at $12 billion, the affiliate marketing industry offers a great potential to make money online. Apart from being flexible and low-risk, this online business model requires little to no costs to start.

When starting your own affiliate marketing business, understanding the basics will help you set fair expectations and avoid affiliate marketing mistakes.

This article will explain all you need to know about how to start affiliate marketing – from choosing a niche to tracking online success.

Learn how to start affiliate marketing from scratch and make passive income online!

In the following sections, we’ll walk you through the steps to start affiliate marketing.

The first step in any successful affiliate marketing strategy is to select a segmented target market and audience, also known as a niche.

A niche market is typically characterized by a shared interest or demographics, which subsequently influence product quality and price point.

For instance, within the skincare industry, particular niches could include skincare for kids, anti-aging, or acne-prone skin.

Targeting a small market segment is more effective than trying to follow trends or appeal to an entire industry. Thus, it is easier to establish brand recognition, grow expertise, and build authority.

Here are several considerations to help you select an affiliate marketing niche.

After choosing an affiliate niche, the next step is deciding on a platform to publish your content. The two main options to start affiliate marketing are social media and personal websites.

With 4.62 billion regular users, running your affiliate marketing business on social media is a great option, especially if you have pre-existing followers.

Social media platforms provide good opportunities to engage with established communities, build an audience, and demonstrate credibility.

When deciding on a social media platform, consider your audience demographics. For instance, users between the ages of 10 and 19 make up Tiktok’s largest age group. Therefore, beauty bloggers targeting teenage girls might want to utilize that platform as their main channel.

Next, determine where your niche is mostly visible. For example, to promote career acceleration courses, consider advertising on a professional networking platform like LinkedIn. On the other hand, for fashion or travel-related niches, Instagram is more suitable.

Moreover, starting a YouTube channel could really benefit those entering a highly competitive niche since using videos to advertise your product could increase leads by 66%.

While promoting affiliate marketing products on social media platforms is a great way to build an audience, having a separate website makes your brand appear more professional and attracts potential customers. In fact, nearly 65% of affiliate marketers generate traffic by blogging.

Furthermore, blog posts provide more opportunities to include affiliate links naturally and optimize them for search engine results.

An affiliate site provides a central hub for all your affiliate marketing content, giving you more opportunities to highlight other promotional materials.

Here are a few essential steps:

Get Web Hosting

Web hosting is the service that enables you to store your website files and make them available on the internet.

While several types are available, shared hosting is a great option for affiliate marketers, as it’s affordable and doesn’t require technical knowledge.

Moreover, you’ll also need a domain name. A domain name is your affiliate site address. As it is what internet visitors type to access your site, pick a unique yet simple one, aiming for short names that will reflect your brand and avoiding special characters.

Here at Hostinger, our Premium and Business Shared Hosting plans include a free domain – you only need to use our instant domain search to check its availability.

Choose a Website Building Platform

Thanks to content management systems (CMSs) like WordPress and website builders, you don’t need coding knowledge to create a website from scratch.

A website builder simplifies website building tasks, often featuring a drag-and-drop interface for easy customization. It is a great option for users who want to set up their websites quickly and without coding.

Offering a lot of flexibility, a CMS is ideal for users who want more control over their affiliate sites. However, it has a steeper learning curve than a website builder.

In addition to WordPress, other popular CMSs are Drupal and Joomla.

We also recommend reading our beginner-friendly guide that explains how to build a website using different platforms.

Customize Your Site With Themes and Plugins

For WordPress users, various free themes are available to download in the official directory. Just make sure the chosen theme is not only visually appealing but also loads fast and is responsive.

Moreover, install the best WordPress plugins to improve site performance and security, and help you better manage the website.

With a target audience in mind and a platform to start publishing content, the next step is signing up for an affiliate marketing program that fits your niche.

You can simply research brands within your niche and see if they offer affiliate programs that you can join. Alternatively, apply for an affiliate network to obtain access to a variety of affiliate programs at once.

When looking for the right affiliate program, there are some aspects to consider:

Cookie Period

All affiliate sales are attributed to you through a tracking cookie attached to your affiliate links that could last from one to over 30 days. While a shorter cookie period can still be effective, programs with a longer one provide more time to convince your audience to convert.

Commission Structure

Subscription-based businesses usually offer recurring commissions, enabling you to get money for as long as the customer pays for the service. Others require you to generate a certain amount of sales before sending the payout.

Moreover, pay attention to the commission rates. Depending on the type of products you’re promoting, there are three types of affiliate programs:

Brand Alignment and Reputation

Partnering with unreliable merchants is going to negatively impact your brand. Before deciding on an affiliate partner, check out online reviews, discussion forums, or social media conversations to evaluate their brand reputation.

Moreover, ensure you are partnering with brands suitable to your content and audience group. Otherwise, you’ll risk losing the audience’s trust.

Support

See if the program provides additional resources to help you market their product, such as visuals or workshops. For instance, affiliates joining Hostinger Affiliate Program get extra assistance from a dedicated affiliate manager.

Once you’ve decided on an affiliate marketing program to join and the products to promote, it’s time to create content.

Poor content and careless placement of affiliate links will not be enough to convert your audience into buying customers. A successful affiliate marketer prioritizes connecting and engaging with the existing audience to earn their trust.

Thus, creating valuable content that resonates with your audience is a must.

Not only does high-quality content convince the existing audiences, but it will also help boost your site’s performance on search results. A higher ranking increases the chance of getting more organic traffic and attracting new visitors.

Whether it’s a YouTube video, blog post, or newsletter, you should aim to produce original, informative content that addresses the audience’s queries or helps them solve a particular issue.

For inspiration, start by conducting keyword research and determining their problems and pain points.

A good rule of thumb when you first start is to target a specific, long-tail keyword since they are easier to rank for than generic keywords. Using keyword research tools like Semrush or Google Keyword Planner can help with this process.

Additionally, combining non-time-sensitive and trend-driven topics is a great way to ensure brand relevancy all year round.

Here are some common types of content to create for your affiliate site:

Once you have a good amount of published content, it’s time to drive traffic to your affiliate site. Doing so is necessary to generate leads, boost conversions, and attract potential customers.

Hence, creating an SEO strategy is a must – the higher your site appears on search engines, the more traffic you’ll get. This includes keyword optimization, link building, and ensuring the site is mobile-friendly.

Here are a few other methods to generate traffic to your affiliate site:

The next important step to optimize your affiliate marketing efforts is link cloaking, the practice of hiding the affiliate ID from a URL by redirecting it to another page.

Cloaking affiliate links helps to prevent link hijacking, one of the biggest security risks in affiliate marketing. It occurs when malicious users try to steal valuable commissions by replacing your unique ID with theirs.

For instance, instead of a long, complicated URL containing numbers and characters like the example below:

www.youraffiliateprogram.com/?affiliateid=123qwerty*

You can make the affiliate link more visually pleasing and user-friendly:

www.yourwebsitename.come/affiliate-product

A cloaked link is perceived as more secure as it tells users exactly what to expect when clicking on it.

Moreover, it is also easier to remember and share, which helps to increase brand recognition and expand audience reach.

To cloak the links, you can use WordPress plugins such as Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates.

Properly monitoring affiliate links is essential for creating an effective strategy that generates revenue. This includes tracking which pages, links, and visual elements get the most traffic and conversions.

While most affiliate programs provide sales data through an affiliate dashboard, you can use additional affiliate marketing tools to optimize your campaigns.

They will help keep track of your affiliate campaigns across different marketing channels and enhance your affiliate strategies. Examples include Post Affiliate Pro, LinkTrack, and Voluum.

Alternatively, free tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager also help track affiliate links.

If you’re a WordPress user, there are several affiliate plugins to simplify the process.

MonsterInsights, for example, enables users to see traffic volume for individual product pages from the WordPress dashboard. It integrates with your Google Analytics account for affiliate link tracking and link cloaking plugins like Pretty Links to set up redirection for your affiliate links.

While the previous steps will help start your affiliate marketing career, there’s no guarantee it will bring in affiliate revenue. In addition to tracking the links, constantly optimizing your marketing efforts is necessary to increase affiliate income.

Running tests on your content is a great start. For example, identify which posts get high traffic but low RPM (revenue per thousand impressions).

Then, tweak some elements to see what triggers more conversions and increases your affiliate income:

An affiliate marketer’s main responsibility is to direct their audience to complete an action – whether it’s a purchase, a form submission, or visiting the merchant’s site.

To do so, marketers include affiliate links on their websites, blogs, or social media posts. A tracking cookie within the link helps affiliate networks determine where the sales came from. Therefore, whenever a customer makes a purchase, the sale will be attributed to the corresponding affiliate.

Based on the level of association with the product promoted, there are three main types of affiliate marketing:

Here are the primary methods of payment in affiliate marketing:

Affiliate marketing is a rapidly growing industry – by 2022, the spending will reach $8.2 billion in the United States alone, up from $5.4 billion in 2017.

Plus, the business model is a win-win for the business and affiliates. In addition to helping businesses attract new customers, it’ll help your audience find the best products and services. As for your affiliate platform, it’ll help you create content and generate affiliate revenue.

Here are additional reasons why affiliate marketing is worth starting:

Affiliate marketing doesn’t require a large initial budget. Unlike starting a conventional business, like an online store, you won’t have to worry about the logistics and costs of product development, maintenance, and shipping.

While there might be a few upfront costs, mainly when creating your website, no further investment is expected once it’s set up.

It is also low-risk since there’s no penalty fee for unsuccessful sales.

There is no limit to scaling your affiliate marketing business. You can simultaneously introduce new products to the current audience while the existing affiliate content continues to generate profit.

In addition, you can sign up for different affiliate programs to increase your income.

Affiliate marketing enables you to earn a steady stream of passive income. However, it doesn’t guarantee success.

Investing time to establish promotional platforms, build an audience, and create traffic sources is necessary. Nevertheless, once set up, your affiliate links have the potential to make money continuously.

As an affiliate marketer, your earning potential depends on factors such as the niche, products, affiliate programs, traffic volume, and audience size. Of course, a larger following increases your chance of generating more traffic and conversions.

The average affiliate marketer makes $53,000/year, with the lowest tier earning $39,000/year and the highest $73,000/year.

Most successful affiliate marketers, like Pat Flynn, earn even higher. The net worth of the founder of the online marketing blog Smart Passive Income is estimated at $3+ million.

For new affiliates, finding merchants and affiliate products might be a confusing yet necessary task.

An effective way to get started is by joining an affiliate network, which acts as an intermediary between affiliates and brands.

Here are some of the best affiliate networks for beginners:

While it’s a fairly simple and lucrative business model, affiliate marketing is also highly competitive. To thrive in the industry, you should have an affiliate strategy that converts. Knowing what not to do as an affiliate marketer is a step in that direction.

Here are a few examples of affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid:

Affiliate marketing is a low-risk, easy-to-scale business model that enables you to make money online by creating promotional content. Starting affiliate marketing doesn’t require advanced technical knowledge or a large budget.

Once you have a niche and a platform, research affiliate programs to join. Then, create high-quality content to promote the affiliate products and diversify the traffic sources to generate more leads. Lastly, track your affiliate campaigns and run tests to optimize them.

Keep in mind that affiliate marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. If you’re just starting, it might take a while before your content starts generating conversions. Thus, it’s important to devote time to learning and implementing affiliate marketing tips.

Finally, like any other successful business, the most important step is to start. With sufficient knowledge on how to start affiliate marketing, you’re well equipped to begin the journey. Good luck.

In this section, we will explain some frequently asked questions about how to start affiliate marketing.

Thousands of independent creators, entrepreneurs, and online publications use affiliate marketing to drive millions in revenue every single month.

So do hugely respected websites such as the New York Times, Forbes and NerdWallet.

And according to Statista, spend on affiliate marketing programs by businesses grew to $8.2 billion in the US last year. That's up 76% in the last 6 years alone.

But getting a slice of the billion-dollar pie isn't as simple as slapping a few affiliate links on your blog.

In fact, most beginners who try affiliate marketing fail to see the financial results they were promised by countless blogs and videos on the internet.

Read on to avoid common mistakes that hold beginners back, plus the most important affiliate marketing tips to help you become successful, sooner.

Here's our guide to start affiliate marketing the right way:

But first, a few affiliate marketing fundamentals you need to know.

Affiliate marketing is a business model where brands share revenue with publishers and content creators in exchange for leads and sales. It works similarly to a salesperson being paid a commission for a successful sale.

The more sales you make, the more money you earn. Affiliate commissions can range from cents on the dollar to hundreds of dollars per referral. Done right, affiliate marketing could help you earn more than your current job or diversify the revenue of an existing content business.

Here's an overview of how affiliate marketing works:

There is no single profile for a successful affiliate marketer. They range from independent entrepreneurs to teams at well-known news outlets and online publications.

And since you aren’t responsible for the delivery of a product or service, affiliate marketing is low risk. You don't need a degree in marketing or any specific qualifications to be a successful affiliate marketer. With the right resources, almost anyone can generate affiliate revenue.

In today’s world, the success of an affiliate depends heavily on their ability to capture an audience and attract the right kind of traffic. To do that yourself, you need to craft quality content and optimize it for conversion.

And it all starts with understanding and creating affiliate links.

The main way affiliate marketing works is through affiliate links. Affiliate links are trackable links with a unique URL assigned specifically to you. They help advertisers know that you sent them a specific customer, so they can pay you a commission if that customer makes a purchase.

Here's an example of the structure of a typical affiliate link:

The most important thing to know as a beginner is that in order to earn a commission, the customer who converts needs to come through your unique affiliate link.

Then there's the way you earn your commissions. For the most part, there are two main models for earning affiliate revenue:

Different affiliate programs will offer different payment models, and some may even pay you for both leads and conversions. We'll cover how to pick good affiliate programs later in this guide.

While you're here, here are a couple more key affiliate marketing terms you should get familiar with. These will also help you pick affiliate programs with a high earning potential:

As an affiliate marketer, your earning potential is unlimited. And how many people can say that?

How much you earn depends on you, your chosen niche and your ability to optimize your content and revenue streams. But that doesn't mean that most affiliate marketers end up becoming online millionaires.

According to PayScale, the average Affiliate Marketer earns between $3,000 and $6,000 per month (or, $36K to $72K annually).

And the top 1% of earners generate tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. They tend to be full-time affiliate marketers with dedicated teams, and several years of experience.

But you don’t have to go full-throttle to create a sustainable business. The best part of affiliate marketing is that it can supplement your 9-5 income from day one.

And with enough patience and dedication — replace it entirely.

The biggest, open secret to affiliate marketing is that your earning potential is highly dependent on the niche you choose. That is, what kind of audience you want to serve and the types of products that audience needs to buy. So you need to know what to look for in a niche before launching your affiliate marketing business.

Here are the steps you need to get right from the beginning:

Rushing to catch the latest fads can lead to trouble when these trends end faster than they appear (fidget spinners, anyone?).

Doing niche research is the best thing you can do to make sure your affiliate business has high earning potential and will make money for years to come.

In the process, you'll analyze the competitive landscape, learn about affiliate programs available in your niche, and be able to create a sustainable affiliate marketing strategy and content plan.

Here's an overview of the niche research process:

If you’re looking for niche ideas, there are plenty of free niche research tools that will help you get the ball rolling. Just quickly, here are three popular tools for niche research:

That said, if you're starting affiliate marketing with no money or a small budget, I recommend picking a topic you're passionate about. That way, you won't get bored or hate your niche when you're writing 50+ articles on the topic.

But a topic you like isn't enough — it needs to be able to make money.

Again, tools like Google Trends are good for vetting niches that you discover and making sure they're not just passing trends. In all likelihood, you're going to want to choose an evergreen niche which generates income all year, every year.

Finally, it’s also important to understand the competition to find your entry point into the market.

You might want to start a blog about web hosting (one of the most lucrative affiliate niches), but the amount of capital and content it takes to compete might be out of reach for beginners.

Look for medium-competition niches, where there are a few established players, but you can better serve a smaller audience, distinguish yourself, and expand later on.

For example, instead of "web hosting" for everyone, you could start with "salon website builder" and focus on teaching professionals in the beauty industry. By starting niche, you can build a tight-knit community around your brand and even gain an advantage in ranking on Google.

Further reading: Niche Research: 5 Steps to Finding Profitable Affiliate Niches

With a niche in mind, it's time to decide where to host your affiliate content and what type of content you want to create.

There are two main choices for affiliates starting out: a website or a YouTube channel.

YouTube can be an excellent place to grow an audience, build a brand, and promote affiliate products to an audience that trusts your recommendations.

But there are some downsides to starting with only a YouTube channel:

Ultimately, it's great to have both a website and YouTube. Embedding videos on an affiliate website is also an excellent way to boost conversion. But if you're a total beginner, you'll probably find it easier to start affiliate marketing with a blog.

Signing up for affiliate programs is easy. But spreading yourself too thin is one of the top affiliate marketing mistakes beginners make.

You want to start with a finite number of affiliate programs with good commissions, solid conversions, and reliable demand.

Here are three key ways to pick a good affiliate program:

Affiliate programs vary greatly in terms of payment scale. Some programs offer a few cents per conversion. Others pay out hundreds of dollars for a single lead.

Programs with lower payouts are often easier to join and promote, which makes them appealing but require a higher number of sales for the same amount of revenue.

Here are the three main ways to make your affiliate math "work out":

While you're at it, check the affiliate program's cookie duration. Longer cookie durations (over 30 days) give you time to get your audience to a buying decision.

Shorter cookie periods can still be effective for those customers who have already made the decision to buy. If you choose to work with programs with shorter cookie durations, be sure that your content targets people later in the buying journey.

I'll explain how the buyer's journey fits into affiliate marketing in a second.

Some competition can be a good sign. If other people are doing well in the niche, there's a good chance you can too. The easiest way to find competitors is to simply google for the kinds of search terms you'd love your website to show up for.

Then, check which affiliate programs your competitors are promoting most heavily on those pages. Find out what terms they offer, and how to join the program.

This is one of the most effective ways to vet affiliate programs, as long as your competitors are further along than you are.

You are building your own brand and image at the same time as you’re promoting the products and services of other businesses. Be selective in choosing who you represent. Working with businesses that don’t align with your brand leads to audience mistrust and harm your brand long term.

You also want to check that the brand you're promoting is likely to convert. That means looking at their sales pages, mobile-friendly design, and other online reviews. Think about what you would consider when buying the product as a consumer.

Now that you've selected some affiliate programs in your well-researched niche, it's time to create content.

None of the previous steps matter if you don’t have high-quality content that converts.

Creating content for affiliate marketing is more than simply adding links to an existing blog post. You need to help your audience make a decision on a product or service, directly on your website, through strong copywriting and appealing design.

Some examples of high-converting affiliate marketing content include:

Affiliate content also goes by other names, such as commerce content. But no matter what you call it, don't forget to include an affiliate disclosure which informs your audience that you may earn a commission if they buy from your links.

Once you've chosen a content format, it's time to optimize the page for conversion.

Here are some of the most important ways you can do that without a ton of complicated plugins.

Button placement: Good button placement and design is particularly important for getting people to respond to your call to action, whether that be to sign up, subscribe, or learn more. Button placement should be noticeable, with CTAs that spark interest like "Read more reviews", "Check the price", and "See more photos".

Here's an example of a product review with a prominent button above the fold of the browser:

Callouts: Also called text boxes, these visually separate important information from the rest of the blog. You can use them for compelling quotes or statistics that influence your visitor's decision in their buyer journey.

Here's an example from Themeisle's review of Elementor:

Positive reviews and install count both act as social proof that this product works great.

Graphs, charts, and comparison tables: As much as quality written content is necessary, visual summaries of information are just as important. Give users a glance overview of key details by including graphs and charts.

Here's an example from a site comparing smart watches for kids:

Images: People often make purchase decisions based on emotion. Images that reinforce a particular feeling embodied by your content nudge readers towards converting. Even better if you can include photos of the results a product has helped you to achieve.

For example, in this makeup review, the author shows themselves trying each product:

Banners: Banners may be eye-catching and stand out, but they also are easily ignored due to a “banner blindness” and people tend to ignore banners entirely. You can include them, but make sure to have plenty of tasteful text links and buttons — those will be your main conversion drivers.

Popups: Although controversy surrounds popups because they can be annoying, they are also highly effective at converting your readers. Each popup is an opportunity to recapture audience members through strategies like discount codes and limited time offers.

Now it's time to drive traffic to your carefully selected offer. This can be done through social media platforms, SEO blog posts, and email lists.

The key is you want to either reach people who are looking to buy, or capture their email address to educate and inform readers before prompting the purchase.

Here are some of the best free traffic sources for affiliate marketing:

Social media sites like Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit are all great free traffic sources for affiliate marketing, but they do require some time and effort to make them work.

But the most successful affiliates also invest in growing traffic through SEO.

By targeting buyer intent keywords, you can reach visitors who are heading to Google right before making a purchase. Using this technique, it's much easier to get clicks on your affiliate links and earn commissions than trying to sell to people who aren't ready to buy.

Another free traffic source we can't recommend enough is affiliate marketing through email.

The direct nature of emails means tailored messages are delivered straight to your prospects' inbox. This helps them learn more about a product and moves them towards a buying decision.

Email works great for regular product curations, sharing time-sensitive deals, and reinforcing your top recommendations to your audience.

An affiliate marketing funnel is a carefully laid out process that guides users from the start of their buyer journey to the point where they are a repeat customer.

Funnels are critical if you need to take an audience who isn't ready to buy (such as most visitors from Pinterest or other "inspiration"-based channels), and warm them up to your brand and offer.

By using a funnel, the reader sticks with you through all the stages of the buyer's journey. Even if they joined you weeks or months before they're ready to make a purchase.

Here's how you can visualize the buyer's journey:

The buyer’s journey consists of four main stages:

Here's how to practically implement a simple funnel, so you can convert cold traffic into customers.

After a visitor lands on your website, it's time to convert them to an email list using free offer opt-ins. This can be a downloadable PDF guide, email course, resource library, or other gated content.

Getting started with email might sound intimidating, but it's an early investment you won't regret.

Read our related post about affiliate marketing through emails for how to get started, step by step.

Further reading: Email Affiliate Marketing: How To Use Emails To Boost Your Affiliate Revenue

Once a prospect is on your email list, you have better control over their buyer’s journey to guide them as needed and fill in the gaps. This is your opportunity to provide information specific to where they are in their journey.

Emails about yourself, the results a product helped you to achieve, testimonials from other buyers, tutorials and guides can all help the prospect become confident enough to make a purchase.

Once they're ready, you can link to your affiliate landing page. These are yet another space to connect with your audience, encourage them to move to the buying stage, and help you build trust before your prospect lands on the advertiser’s sales page.

What makes marketing funnels incredibly helpful is they show you where to adjust and improve your processes. With a funnel, you can pinpoint the exact stage where someone drops off the journey.

When you know that, tweak it to provide an improved process for the next person through the funnel.

Customers that have made their way through the funnel are still good prospects for other offers.

Your email list now gives you the opportunity to provide additional email content that will lead them through a new buyer’s journey and guide them through the funnel for a different product.

Further reading: How to Build a High-Converting Affiliate Marketing Funnel in 5 Steps

Finally, it's time to talk tracking.

Proper tracking is one of the most important aspects of successful affiliate marketing.

It's the difference between fumbling around aimlessly in the dark for your keys, or taking a step back and turning on a light switch.

Giving yourself visibility into what's working and what isn't in your affiliate marketing strategy is what helps you make more money, faster, and with fewer pieces of content.

And there is no better time than the very beginning of your affiliate website to set up a system that will scale with you. Here are the two main ways to level up your affiliate strategy with tracking:

There are two types of affiliate tracking:

To handle the second case, you can use SubID tracking. SubIDs are additional data that you attach to your affiliate link, which ultimately gets recorded next to every conversion that results from that exact link.

Typically, a SubID is a query parameter you can add onto existing affiliate links. Here's how SubIDs fit into your affiliate links:

If you're familiar with Google Analytics, SubIDs work similarly to the utm_campaign parameter.

For more information on SubIDs, read our guide to SubID tracking for affiliates. It's a little technical, but you'll be grateful you set it up right from the beginning.

You can also forego doing this manually, and use an affiliate marketing tool like Affilimate to fully automate this process.

Now that you have tracking in place, the first step is to choose which blog post you want to run tests on. Consideration needs to be given to high traffic posts, posts with new traffic, posts with high intent but low RPM (revenue per thousand visitors).

Once you’ve chosen your blog post, run tests to assess its performance and how it can improve. Here are some ideas for tests you can run on your affiliate content:

You can test which techniques are converting by using unique SubIDs. You want to assess not only whether the new elements are causing more clicks and revenue, but also how much the piece of content is generating relative to the number of viewers.

Again, you can use a tool like ours to automate this process without resorting to gluing together data from multiple sources in complicated spreadsheets:

Running successful tests is also one of the most effective ways to invest in and flip websites, once you've developed a feel for it.

Get these two strategies right from the beginning, and you're several steps ahead of most affiliate marketers today.

Once you nail the broad overview of affiliate marketing, make sure you don’t slip up on the details.

There are several small, seemingly unimportant decisions that add up to make or break your success. Here are some of the most common affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid:

Avoid these mistakes, and you'll be doing better than 90% of new affiliate marketers who lose their readers before the very first click.

Consumer behavior has changed dramatically in the last year. Affiliate marketing has to keep pace with new technical and legal requirements in order to stay relevant, accurate, and privacy compliant.

Starting is the hardest step, but don’t let your efforts go to waste. Keep these affiliate marketing trends in mind to build a sustainable business model and future-proof your revenue.

Affiliate marketing hasn’t always had the best reputation, but with a bit of a refresh, the win-win business model is still full of promise for brands and publishers alike.

This shift comes in the form of a rebrand from affiliate marketing to “partnership marketing”.

Brands and businesses are moving towards quality partnerships instead of quantity relationships. Before, brands would have their business promoted by thousands of influencers and content creators. Now, greater selectivity is being employed to choose the right people to represent and promote them.

Creators that have genuine connections with their audiences will be favored by brands to promote their image in a meaningful way. Brands are looking for creators that will use their audience trust to represent them with authenticity and integrity.

You can demonstrate this to brands with engagement metrics, such as an email list with solid click-through rates or a social media account with an active comments section. This also gives you leverage for negotiating higher commissions.

Success in the affiliate space is seldom tied to a single income source. Robust income as an affiliate means diversifying your streams and being a part of a variety of programs. If you stick to only one program, rate cuts and program adjustments are a massive blow to your expected earnings.

This is exactly what happened to Amazon affiliates both during the early stages of the pandemic and again in early 2021.

Programs that rarely engage with their affiliates on a one-to-one basis also offer very little recourse for affiliates when things go wrong. Although programs like Amazon can be convenient and lucrative, introducing alternatives guard against dramatic loss of income as well as add to your current earning potential.

A multi-channel approach supersedes any results that can be achieved through a single platform.

Combining both “owned” platforms, such as your website, blog and email lists, with “rented” platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest provide you with the best of both worlds.

Social media is a key component of expanding your reach and gaining new audience members. YouTube alone ranks as the second most popular search engine globally. Content that succeeds across social media platforms drive your target audience to your “owned” online space, namely your website.

Reaching your target audience and creating a direct connection with them as an affiliate marketer requires a multi-channel approach in order to achieve the desired result for driving revenue and creating repeat buyers. Rented platforms are a great way to start an audience, but driving traffic to owned media is essential to future-proof your business against changes to social media platforms.

Diversification and multi-channel approaches play a big role in future-proofing your affiliate marketing business.

That means most successful affiliates end up juggling multiple logins and platforms to make the most of their business.

Instead of logging into what feels like a million hard-to-use dashboards, you can use Affilimate to access one central location for all information relating to your affiliate programs.

The Affilimate dashboard also gives you an at-a-glance understanding of how your affiliate marketing content is performing. Keep track of your revenue, identify top-performing content and gain insights into optimization all in one place.

We have put together this simple guide to starting your affiliate marketing business. These steps will ensure that your new business is well planned out, registered properly and legally compliant.

A clear plan is essential for success as an entrepreneur. It will help you map out the specifics of your business and discover some unknowns. A few important topics to consider are:

Luckily we have done a lot of this research for you.

Choosing the right name is important and challenging. If you don’t already have a name in mind, visit our How to Name a Business guide or get help brainstorming a name with our Affiliate Marketing Business Name Generator

If you operate a sole proprietorship, you might want to operate under a business name other than your own name. Visit our DBA guide to learn more.

When registering a business name, we recommend researching your business name by checking:

It's very important to secure your domain name before someone else does.

Costs are relatively low to get started in affiliate marketing, depending on what a person hopes to do. A blog or social media platform are excellent places to get started, and they don’t cost a thing.

Most affiliates won’t increase their expenses much as they start to take off in popularity. You may choose to invest in more professional equipment, or to hire people to help manage your business affairs.

Companies with a primarily consumer audience are the biggest market for affiliates, but they're certainly not the only option. Political candidates or other celebrity figures may turn to affiliates for endorsement, as will commercial or private entities that may want to boost their reputation to the public.

The most traditional way an affiliate makes money is by receiving a certain commission or fee each time their partner receives a click or sale. For example, if a blogger mentions Product X’s company in a post, and Product X receives 1,000 click-throughs from the blogger's site to theirs, then the blogger will make a certain amount of money off each click. The amount the blogger will make is based on their following and perceived credibility in their niche. However, some affiliate marketers will choose to be paid a flat rate for dropping the name into the post.

Kim Kardashian can charge brands $250,000 or more for a single post on Instagram, so it’s clear that companies are willing to pay for affiliate marketing. When you’re first getting started, you can negotiate either a flat fee, a cost-per-click arrangement, or a commission fee. For example, you’ll receive 10% on every sale generated from your posts.

There are some affiliate marketers pulling in $2 million a year, so it’s clear that affiliates can turn their popularity into a business. However, realistically speaking, most affiliates will make a modest supplementary income until they can fully build up their client base. The biggest income bracket for affiliate marketers in $20,000 or less a year.

Affiliate marketers need to be in the public eye as much as possible. You may want to consider public engagements, speeches, or a larger website presence to accomplish this goal. You can also consider developing your own line of products to generate additional profits for yourself.

The most common business structure types are the sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company (LLC), and corporation.

Establishing a legal business entity such as an LLC or corporation protects you from being held personally liable if your affiliate marketing business is sued.

You can form an LLC yourself and pay only the minimal state LLC costs or hire one of the Best LLC Services for a small, additional fee.

You will need to register for a variety of state and federal taxes before you can open for business.

In order to register for taxes you will need to apply for an EIN. It's really easy and free!

There are specific state taxes that might apply to your business. Learn more about state sales tax and franchise taxes in our state sales tax guides.

Using dedicated business banking and credit accounts is essential for personal asset protection.

When your personal and business accounts are mixed, your personal assets (your home, car, and other valuables) are at risk in the event your business is sued. In business law, this is referred to as piercing your corporate veil.

Besides being a requirement when applying for business loans, opening a business bank account:

Getting a business credit card helps you:

Recording your various expenses and sources of income is critical to understanding the financial performance of your business. Keeping accurate and detailed accounts also greatly simplifies your annual tax filing.

Make LLC accounting easy with our LLC Expenses Cheat Sheet.

Failure to acquire necessary permits and licenses can result in hefty fines, or even cause your business to be shut down.

Certain state permits and licenses may be needed to operate an affiliate marketing business. Learn more about licensing requirements in your state by visiting SBA’s reference to state licenses and permits.

Just as with licenses and permits, your business needs insurance in order to operate safely and lawfully. Business Insurance protects your company’s financial wellbeing in the event of a covered loss.

There are several types of insurance policies created for different types of businesses with different risks. If you’re unsure of the types of risks that your business may face, begin with General Liability Insurance. This is the most common coverage that small businesses need, so it’s a great place to start for your business.

Another notable insurance policy that many businesses need is Workers’ Compensation Insurance. If your business will have employees, it’s a good chance that your state will require you to carry Workers' Compensation Coverage.