Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most economical ways of earning money online. However, you will need to invest some time and have a commitment to learn affiliate marketing.
While the process of affiliate marketing is quite simple, there are some important aspects of it to learn in order to be successful.
We will describe the whole process to you here and guide you to one of the very best training platforms for learning affiliate marketing.
Before starting, though, you will need to fully understand what is affiliate marketing, so here is a brief overview for you.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Simply put, it is the process by which you can promote the products of other people or other organizations. You are provided with a personally identifiable tracking link. When a customer makes a purchase using your link, you will receive a small commission.
The infographic below demonstrates the process:
Here is my #1 Recommendation for the training you will need to learn affiliate marketing.
So, now I want to take you through the six stages of getting started as an affiliate marketer. Here’s how you learn affiliate marketing.
Stage 1: Choose Your Niche.
One of the most successful forms of affiliate marketing is niche marketing. So, how do I choose a niche, you might ask?
A niche can be described as a small segment of the market. This is the focus for your business.
For example, you may be passionate about “weight loss” but this is a very broad topic and will have significant competition in the weight loss marketplace.
Your passion about the niche you choose will be vital in the process of writing heaps of content (blog posts) about it.
So, this needs to be refined down to a smaller segment, such as “weight loss for women”. This, too is still quite broad.
The next step would be in defining what type of women, such as “weight loss for women over 60”.
And now you have a niche!
The following infographic describes this process, with thanks to Mick Meaney of Profit Copilot:
Stage 2: Build Your Website
Wow! Where do I even start? Isn’t it complicated to build a website?
It used to be, yes. But nowadays, there are many website-hosting hosting sites that have tools to build websites, almost instantly.
These include BlueHost and Wix as well as several other well-known hosting companies. However, we would like to suggest that you pursue this through our #1 Recommendation for website building right here.
On this platform, you can build your very own affiliate marketing website completely free of charge. You can join Wealthy Affiliate as a Starter Member and no credit card is required.
This is a kind of “try before you buy” free trial and you get seven days to check out the Wealthy Affiliate platform and training.
Your website will be built for you in a matter of seconds on the siterubix.com sub-domain and you get the first 5 lessons in Level 1 of the training with your free membership.
After the free trial, you can decide if you wish to upgrade to Premium Membership at $49 per month, or remain as a free member but with strictly limited access to the platform and training.
Building a website has never been easier, and with some affiliate marketing training, you will soon be off and running with your online business.
Stage 3: Create Content.
Now that your website is up and running you must start creating content.
You will do this by writing articles of a minimum 1,000 words about your niche. I*’m sure you can understand now the reason for you to be passionate about your niche.
The objective for affiliate marketers is to become an authority in your particular niche. This is how you appear in search results.
Authority websites can have thousands of articles about a niche. Thus, you will aim for at least 100 articles when you get started and add to that as time goes on.
It may seem overwhelming to start with. But if you are able to write at least two articles a week, you will have 104 blog posts by the end of your first year.
Of course, if you can write more than that, you will much sooner achieve your goal.
Stage 4: Generate Traffic (Visitors).
This may seem alien to you now, but it will very soon become a part of your everyday life. Generating traffic for your website relies upon you having an understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
So, to get Google and other search engines to find you on the internet, you will need to use keywords.
For instance, using the example above, “weight loss” is a keyword. “Weight loss for women over 60” is a long-tail keyword. The use of long-tail keywords is more likely to generate traffic to your website than short ones.
Long-tail keywords can be up to 10 words in length. Whereas shorter keywords are only one or two words.
You begin your keyword search by searching on Google for your long-tail keyword. This will firstly tell you if people are searching for that term.
Then, if you scroll down the page, you will come across a heading “People Also Ask”. These are actual questions searched for on Google.
See the image below:
The questions can either give you headings to paragraphs within your blog post. Or they can be titles of additional blog posts for building our your content.
All this is taught at Wealthy Affiliate.
Stage 5: Join Affiliate Programs.
Ah! Affiliate programs. You will first need to find programs and networks associated with your niche. Affiliate Programs are those run by individual companies for their own products.
Affiliate Networks are organizations that represent a range of companies and manage their affiliate programs. These include CJ.com, Clickbank, Shareasale, Rakuten, LinkConnector, just to name a few.
Some of the Affiliate Networks represent hundreds of companies, so there are great opportunities for finding products in a range of niches.
The best way to find programs suitable to your niche is to undertake a Google search – “your niche + affiliate programs”.
Once you have joined a Network or Program (free to join), you can apply for your affiliate link. This is a personally identifiable, trackable link that you include in the articles on your website.
You should aim to write numerous informational posts about your niche before adding links.
Stage 6: Start Earning Money.
One thing you must understand is that affiliate marketing is not a “get-rich-quick” scheme. Your aim should be to develop long-term passive income.
Accept that it will be at least six to 12 months before you are able to generate income.
There are sometimes exceptions to this rule, but on the whole most people do not start making money until at least six months have passed.
Nevertheless, one of the great things about affiliate marketing is that you are laying good foundations for future passive income.
Your website never sleeps, it is working for you 24/7.
So, it is likely that while you sleep, it will be earning money for you.
Recapping How To Learn Affiliate Marketing.
Hopefully now, if you have read this far, you understand how to learn affiliate marketing. So, to recap our discussion:
- Choose your niche.
- Build your website.
- Create content.
- Generate traffic.
- Join affiliate programs.
- Start earning money.
If you’d like to see just how easy it is to get started, you can check out this video on my YouTube Channel.
So, now you know what affiliate marketing is and how you can get started with no financial outlay. What are you waiting for?
Thank you for such an informative post. I recently started my online affiliate marketing journey. I am mainly focusing on digital products.
I think that you should select a narrow niche and you must keep updating your website with newer and newer articles.
I think to be successful in this field will take time but one should be patient and the main objective should be to gain the trust of your readers by providing them genuine information.
Thank you for your comment on my article about how to learn affiliate marketing, Hari. Digital products can be quite profitable in the online space. And, yes, you do need to become an authority in your niche and provide your customers with the right information to help them make thoughtful decisions. Best of luck with your business. Jenni
This is a very convincing text. Whoever wants to do this job must be persistent and not give up in any way. The results will be seen for sure. You have explained everything well here and one piece of advice from me, don’t think that you will get rich overnight,
Thanks for your comment, Bojana. Persistence and commitment is certainly essential to anyone starting out on affiliate marketing. It’s great that you emphasized the point that it is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
This is a very good article on the topic of affiliate marketing. I think if one applies the steps and do not miss any then they will be successful at it. I remember when I first started I did not stick to the steps and made it harder on myself. I got sidetracked several times by other marketing avenues to be explored, it can be very overwhelming.
Jamila, I’m glad you liked my article and thank you for your comment. I totally agree that it is so easy to get distracted by the “shiny object syndrome”. When that happens you feel like you are not making progress on your core business. Glad you found your way through it.