In this article we are going to explain “what is affiliate marketing and does it work”. Throughout the article, we will be answering some of the many questions raised about affiliate marketing.
1. What Does A Marketing Affiliate Do?
This question, of course, is related to the headline of this article. To explain this, we must first answer the question: What is affiliate marketing?
The simple explanation is that a marketing affiliate promotes the products of other companies, people or organizations on his/her website.
The marketer is provided with a personally identifiable, trackable link by the merchant. When a customer purchases a product through that link, the marketer is paid a commission by the merchant.
Here is an infographc demonstrating the process of affiliate marketing:


2. Do Affiliate Marketers Make Money?
Indeed, they do. There are some very successful affiliate marketers who are making tens of thousands of dollars every month.
Also, there are affiliate marketers who are making rather small amounts to supplement their other income.
Whatever their situation, they are all making money at some level. However, it should be said here that affiliate marketing requires some work on your part.
Rome was not built in a day, and neither will your affiliate marketing business be! You will need a computer, an internet connection and a website.
Here’s our #1 Recommendation for getting started with affiliate marketing.
3. Can Beginners Do Affiliate Marketing?
Beginners can certainly do affiliate marketing. There is nothing stopping you, as a beginner, from getting started with right away.
You can check out our #1 Recommendation above. We have written other articles on this subject that you can read, such as “Want To Learn Affiliate Marketing” and “Internet Marketing Training”.
One of the most important things for you to understand is that to become an affiliate marketer, you will need to put in a significant amount of work.
You must lay the foundations for a successful affiliate marketing business. It is not a “get-rich-quick” scheme. But if you get started in the proper way, you will ultimately receive a significant amount of passive income.
The above-mentioned training course will take you through everything you need to know step-by-step.
4. How Do I Become An Affiliate Marketer?
To become an affiliate marketer and set up an online business, you will need a computer (preferably a laptop), an internet connection, a website and some training.
If you have the first two items, you are ready to get started. Our #1 Recommendation for websites and training is Wealthy Affiliate.
You can learn more about it here and get started with your FREE TRIAL.
Successful affiliate marketers are able to generate lifetime passive income. To become a successful affiliate marketer you will need to follow the training carefully and do the work necessary.
There are five steps to becoming an affiliate marketer:
- Choose your niche (the segment of the market on which to focus your business)
- Join affiliate programs and/or networks.
- Set-up and build your website (and write some great content about your affiliate products).
- Get visitor traffic (learn and understand SEO – search engine optimization).
- Generate revenue (get paid affiliate commissions when someone buys).
This business is not a quick fix for money problems. But if you lay the foundations for a good and thriving online business, you will reap the benefits long-term.
5. Can A Beginner Make Money?
It is possible for a beginner to affiliate marketing to make money, but it is unlikely you will earn the big bucks at this stage of your online marketing business.
A lot will depend on what niche you choose and which products within that niche you promote.
As you can see from the above infographic, there is a lot more involved than just writing blog posts and earning money.
Once you start filling your website with great content, you will soon be viewed as an authority on the topic and get “found” by search engines, such as Google.
Then, the next thing is to get traffic (website visitors) so they see what you have to offer and potentially become buyers.
All this is done through understanding SEO (search engine optimization) and the impact of keywords on SEO. More on this subject later.
6. Can You Start Affiliate Marketing Without Money?
This is actually possible, so do not fret if you have no money to spend on getting your online business started.
In fact, we have written an article on this very subject and you can find that right here. We have also written a Review about how to start affiliate marketing without a website. Find that here.
You can start affiliate marketing with no money at Wealthy Affiliate, where I have been a member for a couple of years.
Wealthy Affiliate has a FREE Starter Membership that includes website hosting on its siterubix.com sub-domain.
Also included are the first 10 lessons in two training courses.
With this training you can set up your own website and begin your own affiliate marketing business.
7. Can I do Affiliate Marketing Without Followers?
Yes you can. You begin by setting up your website and writing regular blog posts about the products/services you wish to promote.
Once you learn the ropes and understand SEO, you will first get your articles indexed by Google, then ranked. Once you achieve good ranking (on page 1 of Google) you will begin to get followers.
By writing good quality blog posts your website will grow to become an authority in your niche. Once that happens and your articles get ranked, traffic (visitors) will flow to your website.
Be aware that success in this field does not come overnight. You must put some work into learning everything you can to become a successful affiliate marketer.
8. Do I Need A Website?
It is possible to do affiliate marketing on social media, so it is not absolutely necessary to have a website.
To do it this way, you need to be very active on several social media platforms. In addition, you should have numerous social media followers to whom you can promote your products.
However, if you want to be successful at affiliate marketing, you would be well advised to get your own website. In that way, you can develop your own brand and become an authority in your niche.
Most of the highly successful affiliate marketers have website brands that people recognize and trust. Once you get potential customers to trust you, you are well on your way to achieving your goal.
9. How Do I Start An Affiliate Marketing Website?
There are several online training programs that can help you with this project. In addition, to begin affiliate marketing with your website, you will need to understand a lot about the online world.
The platform we use for this website is Wealthy Affiliate, and this is also where we got our affiliate marketing training. You can go here to read more about this.
At Wealthy Affiliate you will be able to build your own website and learn all about affiliate marketing. You can learn how to choose your niche, how to purchase your domain and, best of all, Wealthy Affiliate will also host your website for you as part of your membership.
10. Can I Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Website?
We have partly answered this question under “Do I need a website?” So, you will see that you can actually start an affiliate marketing business without a website.
We have written an article that actually deals with this topic. You can find the article right here.
This article will give you all the details you need if you would like to start affiliate marketing without a website.
11. Can I Market Amazon Products As An Affiliate?
You most certainly can. Amazon has one of the most extensive affiliate programs available today, known as Amazon Associates.
With around 12 million products for sale on Amazon, I think you will agree that is a huge marketplace.
Nevertheless, there are some things you need to know if you wish to become an Amazon Associate. The first of these is that you must have a minimum of three qualifying sales within the first 180 days to maintain your membership.
In addition, Amazon does not have the best commission rates in the market and you should choose your niche carefully if you wish to promote Amazon products.
We have written an article on this topic, which you can read right here.
12. Which Niche Is Best For Affiliate Marketing?
It is hard to be definitive about this question. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of great niches for affiliate marketing.
So, let’s talk about some of the most popular niches for affiliate marketing.
Topping the list is Fitness and Weight Loss. If you chose this broad niche, you would need to refine it down to a sub-niche to be successful.
This could include such things as Diet Supplements, Paleo or Atkins or Keto Diet, Weight Training, Cardio Fitness.
You see what I mean about choosing a sub-niche within the main topic? There would be too much competition if you just used Weight Loss, for instance.
Other popular niches include Health, Pets, Beauty, to name just a few. Here you can read my article entitled, The Best Niches For Affiliate Marketing.
13. Where Can I Post My Affiliate Links For Free?
Most social media platforms allow you to post your links. So you can write brief ads about your products and post them on your social media pages.
There are also a number of websites that encourage free advertisements, such as The Free Ad Forum – http://www.thefreeadforum.com/postclassifieds/. You can set up a free account and start posting.
Likewise, with Free Classifieds USA – https://free-classifieds-usa.com/. You just need to set up an account and start posting.
Of course, you can post them on your own website. And, if you have email subscribers, you can post your links in emails to them.
A Google search for Free Classified Ads, will give you a whole list of places where you will be able to post your affiliate links.
14. How Do I Sell My Affiliate Products?
In our first answer about what an affiliate marketer does, we have explained the process of affiliate marketing.
So, to begin the selling process as an affiliate marketer, you will need to have chosen your niche, set up your website and chosen the products you wish to market.
At this stage you should start writing quality content about your products, including honest reviews. Your aim is to provide your readers with enough information about your affiliate products so that they can make a decision to purchase.
Your informational articles will be just that – full of useful information about your products. The commercial blog posts will contain affiliate links to the products you are promoting.
With the information you have provided, you need to bring the potential customer to the point of purchase. Once this is achieved and the customer clicks on your link. You will have sold your product and will receive a commission from the merchant.
15. How Do I Drive Traffic To My Affiliate Website?
There are a number of different ways of driving traffic to your affiliate website.
The first of these is using SEO (search engine optimization) to drive organic (free) traffic. This method uses keywords to assist search engines to find your articles on the internet.
You can post your content to social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. This also helps to generate organic traffic.
Posting ads on free classified ads websites can also help to generate traffic. Alternatively, you can pay to post ads in many places. These include Facebook Ads, Pinterest Ads and the like/
You can utilize websites such as Quora and Reddit to answer queries and post links to your website.
These are just a few ways of driving traffic. There are many more.
16. Can I Put Affiliate Links On My Facebook Page?
Yes, you can, but you need to do it carefully. If you have a Business Facebook page for your online business, then no problem, you can promote your blog posts with the links.
If, however, you only have a personal Facebook page, you should not put your affiliate link in your promotional post. Instead, you should include it as a comment in the “Comments” section beneath your post.
On the other hand, if you are using a Facebook Ad to promote your content, then by all means include your affiliate link.
Facebook can be very picky about what you can and cannot post. I recently got permanently banned from Facebook. They advised me that someone had logged into my account from somewhere unknown. Then they advised me that there were posts contrary to community guidelines on my page.
I asked them for a review because it was not me and I had not posted on my page. They ignored my request for a review and made the ban permanent!
17. What Are The Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing?
Here are a few of the benefits of becoming an affiliate marketer.
- Work-from-home.
- Set your own hours. You may be a morning person or an evening person. Once you set up your own online business, you can decide when you work.
- You will be your own boss – get paid for your actions not your time.
- Have more time-freedom. Spend more time with your family, friends, at the beach, in the mountains, or at whatever you like to do.
- Success at affiliate marketing will bring you great financial rewards.
These are only a few of the benefits that spring to mind. I’m sure there are others.
18. Is Affiliate Marketing Still Profitable In 2022?
Affiliate marketing is still one of the most profitable ways of earning money online. Now, in 2022, there are still affiliate marketers who are earning six and seven figure incomes.
One of the reasons why affiliate marketing is still profitable, is because of the minimal cost of establishing your affiliate marketing business.
You will see above that question 6 is “Can you start affiliate marketing without money?” You can, and we have addressed this there.
One of the best ways of getting started and setting up your affiliate marketing business is with Wealthy Affiliate, which offers a 7-day free trial. Check out our article about online training at Wealthy Affiliate University right here.
19. How Do I Choose An Affiliate Program To Join?
We have discussed first choosing your niche in question 12 above. Also, there are links in that question that take you to an article about the Best Niches For Affiliate Marketing.
You should not just go out and join any old affiliate program until you have done this earlier research and chosen your niche (or segment of the market) for your business.
For example, say you have chosen Weight Loss as the over-arching area. And within this you wish to focus your niche on the different diets for Weight Loss.
You could join the ClickBank Affiliate Program. In the Affiliate Marketplace you will find a whole range of diets for weight loss that you can promote, write reviews about and general informational content.
As you will see, you must first choose your niche before you can find appropriate products to promote and an affiliate program to join.
20. Is Affiliate Marketing Easy?
Affiliate marketing as a process is quite simple to understand. However, it is not necessarily easy to become a successful affiliate marketer.
There is much to learn about running an online business. As a starting point, this includes website set-up, understanding keywords and SEO, content creation, affiliate programs and networks, traffic creation, email marketing, and even more.
Nevertheless, the rewards can be great if you just follow the training and learn the ropes the right way.
One thing you should understand is that there is no such thing as a “get-rich-quick” scheme. Those scams that offer you $$$ per day for half an hour’s work each day, are exactly that – SCAMS!
You will need to put in the hard yards to learn all you can to be successful in this field. Consistency and hard work is the key!
Final Thoughts.
If you’ve made it this far, I hope you have found this article useful. If you have other questions that I have not yet answered, please leave me a comment below and I will be sure to check it out and give you an answer.
I certainly encourage you to get started soon with your online affiliate marketing business.
Why delay? You can get started here today with your 7-day Free Trial to see if this is the right business for you.