Boost your online income with affiliate marketing for beginners.
Reading Time: 8 mins
Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn money online.
Plus, learning how to create a blog for affiliate marketing can be about anything.
But is affiliate marketing even worth it in 2022? The short answer is yes!
Some people earn hundreds of thousands each month with affiliate marketing.
So it’s worth your time to figure out how to make it work for you!
If you want to learn how to become successful with affiliate marketing, keep reading.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when a company pays you a commission for every customer referred to them.
If someone clicks an affiliate link on your site and then buys something from the seller, you earn a commission for sending them to the seller’s website.
How does affiliate marketing work?
As mentioned, affiliate marketing is the process of promoting other people’s products on your blog.
For example, If someone has a product like this simple eBook template, they will pay you to promote their product on your site. Except you are typically only making money if people click or buy the product. Whereas you would earn a flat fee in a sponsored post, regardless if anyone clicked on the product.
You can use affiliate marketing to sell physical products or digital products (like this downloadable daily digital planner).
Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways for people to actually start making money. That’s because it doesn’t need a lot of work. Other than taking some time from your day to add content and links into your posts or website pages.
Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
It’s easy to get started with affiliate marketing for beginners. Here’s how you can do it.
- Create a website or blog
- Choose an industry and niche down
- Research affiliate marketing products to promote
- Conduct product reviews
- Get organic traffic
1. Create A Website Or A Blog
You’ll need a website or a blog where you can display the affiliate offers you choose to promote. It doesn’t have to be something complicated or expensive.
Create a website that will get the job done and help people learn about affiliate marketing.
Make sure your website looks credible. Especially since your content is trying to get people to buy. So your website should signal trust and legitimacy.
Get a website template to launch a blog fast
Website templates are the easiest way to get a website launched fast. Plus, all the TOP TIER x Showit website templates include a pre-designed blog template already done for you. You can download a website template in one click and customize as much (or as little) as you like! You can have your new website up and running in less than a few hours. Shameless self-promotion plug here.
You’ll also need a domain (get a cheap one from Domain.com) and if you’re not using a TOP TIER x Showit website template, you’ll need to buy website hosting. Self-hosted websites are best so you can have more control over your site.
TOP TIER TIP: Make your domain a keyword like “top online finds” or something related to your niche. This improves your SEO and can increase your chances of discoverability online.
2. Choose An Industry and Niche Down
Next, decide what industry you want to focus on promoting your affiliate offers on. For example, if you enjoy fashion, then you could decide to promote offers related to fashion accessories and clothing.
Look to other blogs sharing product recommendations to validate the market you want to promote.
How do you know what niche to promote as an affiliate marketer?
Take some time to do some research into affiliate marketing and look at what products are being sold. Choose a topic that is currently promoted but has room for new content.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when choosing an affiliate marketing niche:
- Is there a lot of competition in this niche?
- What kind of traffic does the content for this niche currently get?
- Is it likely to grow or change over the next few years?
- Are you able to reposition the content already promoting this product in a new way?
- Are there other affiliate marketers having success in this niche already?
Now that you have chosen your niche. Take some time to review the most popular articles and posts related to this topic.
What topics are they not covering? What questions are people asking? Where are the content gaps that you could fill?
You can also use tools like Google Trends or Pinterest Predicts to find topics related to your niche. Look at the search volume for certain keywords over time and see if there are any trends. You can use this information to predict what will be popular to promote as an affiliate.
3. Research affiliate marketing products to promote
Now that you’ve decided which industry and niche (i.e. category) you’re going to focus on, it’s time for some research!
Start by searching keywords related to your niche.
For example, say you’re going to write about office gadgets. Type “modern office gadgets 2022” into Google. This will bring up the results for “modern office gadgets 2022”.
Keep in mind, not every post will be affiliate content but most likely most of it is. This type of content should include some sort of disclaimer. This disclaimer should state that if you buy or click, the writer may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Next, research the products that pop up in your niche. After you’ve seen what products companies are already selling in your niche. Research their affiliate programs. You can join affiliate programs to generate affiliate links for you when shopping on the web.
Choose profitable affiliate marketing products to promote
The most important part of affiliate marketing is product research and selecting which products you choose to endorse. These are the two elements that will lead to sales and commissions for you.
You need to do some research on the products that you want to promote. Visit the manufacturer’s websites, read reviews, and make a decision on whether you want to promote the product or not.
Not every product will suit your niche. So only recommend products that are appropriate for your readers. As well as in line with your blog’s subject matter.
How do you find profitable affiliate marketing products to promote?
There's so many ways to find affiliate products with high demand:
- Perform extensive keyword research and shortlist the most profitable products.
- Choose companies whose products are already successful in their market. As well as brands that have a solid reputation for delivery and customer service.
One of the best ways to find profitable affiliate products to promote is to search on Clickbank or Google.
- In Clickbank, you can sort affiliate products by gravity and the highest-paying affiliate programs.
- You want to select products that have a gravity above 20 because these will be most profitable for you.
You can also explore TikTok search for "TikTok made me buy" terms or "Amazon finds" if you're wanting to know how to find profitable affiliate products on Amazon, "course affiliate" "beauty affiliate" etc.
Using a keyword strategy helps you find profitable affiliate products that have social proof and are already selling well.
- Look for affiliate products with high conversion rates. It will help inform what products to promote and not to promote.
5. Create your own affiliate marketing product reviews
Write a review of a product that you're promoting and include some photos of it in action.
If possible, use it yourself and take a video with it. Write down or explain your experiences with it and why you think people should buy it. Post this review on your website or social media.
After you’ve spent some time researching products in your niche. Now, it’s time to find which affiliate products you can review on your blog or website.
You can do this by Googling products with low search volumes. If you pick a product with a high search volume it will be competitive. On one hand, it means there is a lot of demand for the product but you'll have more affiliates to compete against.
6. Get organic traffic
This is the most important part of becoming an affiliate marketer. You aren’t going to get any sales or be able to make any profits without traffic.
The best way to get organic traffic is to leverage social media marketing (SMM) and search engine marketing (SEM).
Focus on creating video content related to the products you want to promote. Use Pinterest, YouTube and TikTok primarily to promote your affiliate links and create as much blog content optimized for SEO as you can. Learn more tips for starting a successful blog, monetization strategies for new bloggers, or follow these simple steps to start your own blog if you're completely overwhelmed with how to make money with affiliate marketing on your blog.
Tips on how to be successful with affiliate marketing for beginners
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, it’s important that you differentiate yourself from other affiliates. You want your audience to trust you and your recommendations.
Don’t push products for the sake of making money. Make sure you’ve actually used the product. In order to give a comprehensive review of the benefits. This is how to be successful with affiliate marketing.
If you lose the trust of your audience — you can lose the potential to make money with affiliate marketing at all.
Make sure your website or blog is easy to navigate
Think about what would help your readers the most and make sure that there is a clear path for them to get there.
One way to do this is by creating categories for your content. So that people can find their favorite topics in one place.
Also, be sure to link out to other sites in these categories. So that they can provide extra information or resources on a particular topic. Apply this same thought process if you're using Instagram for affiliate marketing or LTK and Amazon.
Optimize your social media with link pages that include multiple links to your affiliates
You can use sites like Linktree as the URLs in your social media.
However, if you want one that’s well-designed and visually appealing… Every TOP TIER x Showit website template comes with a Link page you can use as your destination URL.
The best part? You can add endless content and links to these pages to drive traffic to your affiliate products without paying a monthly fee to a third-party.
Create a lot of content
Once you're finished creating your first blog, start sharing as much content as possible with your audience. This way, they will begin to see you as an authority in your niche.
You need to focus on creating quality content and promoting profitable products to drive clicks. Clicks and purchases from your audience are how you’ll make money and get paid.
Top benefits of becoming an affiliate marketer?
If you learn how to become an affiliate marketer, the benefits are endless.
- Ultimately, you sell another company’s product without having to invest the time and money into creating your own product.
This means minimal risk for you. You can happily stay within your budget when starting out and not have to worry about sourcing a product. Instead, you can focus 100% on your selling skills (which is the most important part).
You’ll also learn a lot about what types of affiliate marketing products to sell and how to market them. Further, you won’t have to do any of the product fulfillment, customer service or take on any risk associated with product development on your own.
How can I become an affiliate marketer in three steps?
- Step 1: Join affiliate programs. Make sure to read the seller’s affiliate terms and conditions. You can find affiliate programs to join like Clickbank, ShopStyle, Amazon associates and more.
-
Step 2: Find affiliate products with high commission prices. This is important because you want to make money off of the commission. You can still promote affordable products if they are high in demand and you know they’ll sell fast. But if they don’t sell, it’s best to do a little more research and pick another product.
- Step 3: Find a niche with good sales but low competition. The best product niches for beginners are ones that have low competition so that you can actually make some sales. If there is a lot of competition, it can be harder to create content that converts fast.
How to get started with affiliate marketing for beginners?
Affiliate marketing can be very rewarding if you take the time to learn how to do it the right way. These steps should get you started with affiliate marketing and how to become a successful affiliate marketer with patience and perseverance.
The key to affiliate marketing is to continue researching and testing different products until you find a niche or product that converts for you.
If you don’t sell out one product, try another! Don’t give up. It can take time but once you figure out affiliate marketing, it can be a lucrative passive income stream for you.
Learning how to make money with affiliate marketing isn’t an overnight process. But if you keep at it and apply yourself, eventually merchants and brands will want to work with you — and as your reputation grows, so will your income.
Want to unlock more brand deals and monetize your content? Download our marketing templates. Specifically, this media kit template optimized for UGC portfolios and perfect for content creators or freelancers looking to showcase their work and attract more partnerships.
