The Best Way To Start With Affiliate Marketing – Be a Super Affiliate!

What is the best way to start with affiliate marketing? Can someone provide a straight answer to that question?

If you ask five affiliate marketers, you’ll get five different opinions. And there is nothing out of the ordinary about that: Every marketer is on a unique journey. A strategy that works for one may not work for another.

But we’re not here to discuss advanced marketing tricks and hacks:

You’ll develop an approach to making affiliate sales as you go.

Knowing how to boost your affiliate commissions is a result rather than a starting point. That beginner’s ground is where you need to focus your attention.

After all, how you start your affiliate marketing business will influence your chances of success. Considering the field is saturated already, let’s ensure the odds will be in your favor, shall we?

This post may contain affiliate links – read my affiliate disclosure.

How Affiliate Marketing Works?

I’m sure most of you already know how affiliate marketing works since the business model is one of the most popular ways to earn online revenue. Still, let me cover the basics for those determined to learn the best way to start with affiliate marketing:

Affiliate marketing is a process where an affiliate or publisher receives a commission for marketing products or services of a company. Anyone can become such an affiliate to earn money while increasing brand awareness.

I’ll go into much more detail later in this article. For now, here are the most essential facts about affiliate marketing:

People become affiliate marketers daily – they don’t need a college degree or technical skills to benefit from the business model. Assuming you’re one of these people, getting into the affiliate marketing field should be a no-brainer:

The industry is worth billions of dollars – the numbers keep growing steadily, and that’s not changing soon.

Can I Succeed With Affiliate Marketing?

Making thousands of dollars in a monthly affiliate income is challenging.
While starting affiliate marketing is easy, hitting $1K is another story.

As mentioned earlier, the affiliate marketing industry is a saturated niche – almost every second person working online does affiliate marketing in one way or another.

What does it take to be successful as an affiliate marketer? Speaking from personal experience, consistency, and hard work are good pointers to keep in mind:

Marketers don’t make money unless they build an audience, drive traffic to their offers, and get their affiliate links to convert. Before you start panicking, here is something you can use as an encouragement:

I started this blog in March 2018 and ignored it for the first year. I was posting sporadically and didn’t take it as seriously as I should have.

Once I decided to look at it as a real business, things quickly started to change:

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not posting a screenshot of some of my affiliate earnings to brag.

No, I’m doing it because it helps me prove my point:

Anyone (and I mean ANYONE) can start an affiliate marketing business and make money online from affiliate sales.

In other words, being a successful affiliate marketer is not an impossible goal to reach once you learn the best way to start with affiliate marketing. Again, I knew almost nothing about affiliate marketing for beginners when I launched this business.

With no marketing background or online working experience, you can imagine the position I used to be in. Here is the deal, though:

You don’t have to be a college graduate to build a stable financial future for yourself. But you must be willing to put hours, weeks, and months of hard work into your business.

Affiliate Marketing Definition

Affiliate marketing is the process of recommending products and services to potential buyers for a commission. A marketer receives a unique affiliate link for each product they plan to promote.

Where do you get your referral link from? That is easy to answer – you retrieve your referral links by joining affiliate marketing programs.

Once you do that, you must put that affiliate link in front of your target audience by posting it on social media or inserting it inside blog posts, emails, etc.

Then, a customer completes a purchase through your link – the affiliate network traces that sale, attributes it to you, and sends you an affiliate commission.

Affiliate Marketing Vs. Influencer Marketing

Unfortunately, most new affiliate marketers confuse the business model with influencer marketing. Influencer and affiliate marketing are different businesses – as such, they serve different purposes:

The idea behind affiliate marketing is driving sales – your affiliate marketing efforts must focus on attracting new paying customers. That’s not the case with influencer marketing:

By all means, influencer marketing exists to boost brand awareness – influencers help companies achieve specific goals that center around lead generation and building an email list.

Why Should You Focus On Learning The Best Way To Start With Affiliate Marketing?

Above all, influencer marketing can be just as lucrative as the affiliate (maybe even more so). However, starting businesses in both industries is not a good idea:

It takes a lot of work to develop a successful affiliate marketing business – you must master the basics, go through trial and error while creating high-quality content, etc.

Meanwhile, doing affiliate marketing has many advantages – the benefits should be your main reasons to focus on this field instead of a different one. Shall we look at them?

Affiliate Marketing Benefits

• There Are No Huge Start-Up Costs: Launching an affiliate business has barely any costs. Depending on how you choose to do affiliate marketing, your initial investment will be next to nothing in most cases.
• Everyone Can Do It: Considering the concept behind affiliate marketing is simple, anyone with access to the internet can try their luck with it.
• An Affiliate Marketing Business Is Easy To Scale: Once you gain the necessary marketing experience, scaling your business further will not be an issue.
• Earning Affiliate Commissions Might Become A Source Of Passive Income: A passive income revenue will allow you to make money while you sleep.
• Creating Your Own Product Or Service Is Not Necessary: You’ll promote someone else’s products.
• Feel Free To Work From Anywhere: Affiliate Marketing will allow you to reach financial independence from the comfort of your living room.

Affiliate Marketing Examples

At this point, I’m pretty sure you understand how affiliate marketing works to benefit you as a business owner. Still, showing you one affiliate marketing example will make the picture more clear:

Chances are, most of you are familiar with Shopify. For those who are not, Shopify is an online platform anyone can use to create an online store and earn from a dropshipping business.

Let’s assume someone wants to launch an online shop but is short on cash. You can send that person a link to the Shopify trial as an affiliate partner of the platform.

Since the reader has to pay $1 to use Shopify for the first months, they’ll most likely sign up using your affiliate link. After the trial, the new shop owner can choose a plan and upgrade their membership to keep using Shopify.

When that happens, you’ll earn an affiliate commission – Shopify pays a lot of affiliate revenue per sale, depending on the monthly plan.

Do you realize how many earning opportunities you’ll face once you start working with the best affiliate marketing programs? Choosing the right products to promote and providing valuable content to a large audience is a great place to start when building your online business.

Related Read:

• Affiliate Marketing Programs That Pay Recurring Commissions
• Why Market Health Is The Best Affiliate Network For Beauty Bloggers
• The Best Referral Programs To Make Money

The Best Way To Start With Affiliate Marketing

Hopefully, you won’t mind me sharing one of the best lessons I learned after doing affiliate marketing for four years:

Around 70% of the affiliate income-related information online is useless at best and harmful at worst.

I’m talking specifically about sales presentations that try to convince you to invest in earning systems that will boost your bank account fast. With rare exceptions (Human Proof Designs), the done-for-you affiliate systems don’t work as you expect them to.

While you can automate your affiliate business at some point, you can’t do that from the start of your affiliate marketing journey.

Building a sustainable affiliate marketing business takes a lot of time. However, you can shorten the period by going through professional affiliate marketing training.

The platform I can’t recommend enough is Wealthy Affiliate, and it will play an important role in covering the best way to start with affiliate marketing.

Before I tell you all about it, let’s get back to the steps you need to take once you’re ready to jump into the affiliate marketing field:

Decide Whether To Do Affiliate Marketing With Or Without A Website

These days, there is more than one way to earn money from affiliate marketing. Believe it or not, many people do their best to score affiliate sales without starting a website at all:

They pick a Social Media platform, work to create a following, and then begin promoting an affiliate offer.

Affiliate marketing without a blog might work well if you learn how to achieve the best results possible. 12 Minute Affiliate is an excellent platform to help you do that.

Can You Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money?

Yes, you can start affiliate marketing with no money. Even though launching a website is relatively cheap, owning one comes with certain expenses.

Such expenses are the domain name and blog hosting. An excellent web hosting service like SiteGround will charge your credit card each month.

Above all, you can do affiliate marketing without a website if you plan to attract potential customers through anything but blog content. In other words, you don’t need an affiliate website when you can do affiliate marketing campaigns on social media platforms.

Meanwhile, many content creators choose an affiliate site through a free website builder. That’s another option to consider when picking a strategy to promote affiliate content.

And what about the traffic? Do you have to pay to drive visitors to your affiliate offers?

No, you don’t – affiliates can gain organic traffic through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and content marketing. Doing SEO the right way means no shortage of readers coming from search engines.

Long story short, you don’t have to invest money or start a blog to share valuable information as a content creator and promote your affiliate links.

How To Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money

1) Choose Marketing Channels To Work With

Assuming you decide to do affiliate marketing without a website, the only route you can take is creating content for social media networks. Many newbie affiliates try to promote offers on all social channels, but that’s not the best strategy for the long term:

What works on Pinterest is miles away from finding affiliate success on Twitter. Besides, what is great content for Facebook will not do you any good on TikTok.

So, the easiest way to start building a successful affiliate marketing business on social media is to work on one network. Here are the most popular choices:

Twitter (Now X)

Twitter is probably not the best way to start with affiliate marketing. After all, your content can’t contain more than 280 characters.

That limits your options when posting on the network. Still, crafting click-worthy headlines is a great way to gain traction on X.

Facebook

Do you think the glorious days of Facebook are a thing of the past? I do, but that doesn’t change the fact that the network keeps attracting billions of monthly active users.

Facebook will let you insert affiliate links in posts or comments, but you can don’t do that through a personal account – you need a business page instead.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn allows marketers to insert affiliate links in many places, such as posts and direct messages. At least, that’s how the social network operated originally:

These days, you can place your referral links in other original content like photos and videos. And that’s good news if promoting a company’s products on LinkedIn is your core strategy as an affiliate marketer.

YouTube

Think what you will, but YouTube is one of the most effective platforms for spreading affiliate content – nearly 90% of all internet traffic comes from videos. If that doesn’t convince you to start creating video content for your YouTube channel, I don’t know what will.

Another reason to promote products through a YouTube video is that the platform will let you monetize your content through ad placement. YouTube creators can share affiliate links in the descriptions of their videos.

2) Pick An Affiliate Marketing Niche

Generally, the best way to start with affiliate marketing is to pick one niche and promote only good affiliate programs that make sense for that niche. Trying to market products from different fields won’t work since you will not have a target audience willing to invest in them.

Sticking to a niche when promoting affiliate products will help you present yourself as an expert. Trustworthiness and expertise are essential for the success of your affiliate marketing strategies.

3) Join High-Paying Affiliate Programs

Choosing the best affiliate program in your niche is the next step to take as an affiliate. But how do you find such a program?

Quite frankly, what is the best referral program for one marketer might not work for another. So, you have no choice but to pick the affiliate programs you will work with wisely.

Go for programs that offer a higher commission rate. Also, join affiliate programs that pay recurring commissions and have better conversion rates. Amazon Associates is an obvious choice for most affiliates, but you have many other options.

4) Use A Keyword Research Tool To Find The Best Keywords To Target

Once you choose physical or digital products to promote and join their affiliate programs, it will be time to begin with content creation. Getting your content to appear in the search results is the best way to attract new customers to your offers.

That’s where keyword research comes in – doing it right will give your social media posts a good chance to reach their target audience.

Jaaxy is a powerful tool you can use to choose the best keywords to target. Learn all about using Jaaxy when you have a minute.

5) Create Engaging Content

Promoting different products will get you nowhere unless your audience engages with your content. How do you achieve that?

Creating relationships with potential customers is one of the best practices to follow as an affiliate marketer. A good example of the process is a simple strategy that includes replying to comments and answering questions.

Don’t neglect your social media accounts – participating in everything happening on them is a good thing for your engagement rates.

Should You Get An Affiliate Marketing Training?

At this moment, you’re probably wondering why I suggested signing up for Wealthy Affiliate as an aspiring affiliate marketer. Well, here is why:

Wealthy Affiliate will get you everything you need to build a profitable affiliate marketing business without paying anything. Furthermore, it will provide many perks without access to your credit card information.

For example, it will show you how to build a website without coding and launch it in less than five minutes. Next, Wealthy Affiliate will teach you all the essential aspects of developing a successful online business, such as choosing a niche, search engine optimization, driving organic traffic to your blog, etc.

Also, it will let you surround yourself with like-minded people – the platform has millions of members worldwide. Most importantly, Wealthy Affiliate will allow you to receive all that free of charge – you can create an account by providing only your email address.

How Wealthy Affiliate Offers The Best Way To Start With Affiliate Marketing?

I know that everything I mentioned above is quite enticing. Believe it or not, the prospect of joining WA will excite you even further once you see everything you’ll receive as a free member of the platform:

• One Website
• Website Builder
• Web Hosting Package
• Professional Customer Support
• Hosting Security Suite
• SSL Certificate
• Jaaxy Starter (Keyword Research Marketing Tool)
• Certification Core Training Level One (10 Lessons)
• Bootcamp Core Training Level One (10 Lessons)

​Again, all of that can be yours – claim it today as soon as you create your free account on Wealthy Affiliate.

In case you need some more information about the platform, I’ll answer the most common questions about WA:

Does Wealthy Affiliate Have Any Upsells?

As you already know, becoming a member of Wealthy Affiliate is free of charge.

Every starter member receives all the perks I’ve just mentioned above. To clarify – you don’t have to upgrade your membership if you don’t want to do that.

But if you want to take advantage of everything WA can offer, you can become a premium member. Learn everything you must know about the platform from my Wealthy Affiliate Review.

How Much Money Can I Make On Wealthy Affiliate?

While I have no problem showing you the best way to start with affiliate marketing, I can’t tell you how much money you’ll be able to make.

Sure, Wealthy Affiliate delivers on every marketing front imaginable. Be that as it may, the number of your future earnings depends on many factors.

For instance, some factors are the effort you’re willing to put into your business, the hours you can devote to the training, etc.

Thousands of Wealthy Affiliate members earn part-time and even full-time income, myself included.

After all, there are multiple ways to make money with Wealthy Affiliate – spare a minute to become familiar with them.

How Long Does It Take Until I See Any Real Results?

People achieve results in different periods.

Wealthy Affiliate is the best way to start with affiliate marketing (in my opinion).

Regardless, the platform won’t be able to do much for you unless you take serious action on everything it will teach you.

I made my first three affiliate sales in a few months. Considering I was still working 80 hours per week at the time at my previous job, I think I did well!

So, the best you can do is manage your expectations and work as hard as possible.

The Best Way To Start With Affiliate Marketing FAQs

What Is The Fastest Way To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?

The fastest way to make money with affiliate marketing is to create valuable content, insert your affiliate links, drive traffic to your landing page, and get your offers to convert into sales.

In addition, building an engaged email list and doing email marketing will boost your affiliate commissions further.

Can I Promote My Affiliate Links For Free?

You can promote your affiliate offers by writing product reviews, sending deals to your email subscribers, or offering gift guides and other marketing materials.

Also, you can create a free online course that contains affiliate links for relevant products.

How Do I Promote Affiliate Products On Facebook?

You can create a Facebook Page or a Facebook Group to promote products on the platform. Then, engage with your audience and run Facebook Ads to advance your marketing campaigns.

My Closing

OK, this is all about Wealthy Affiliate and why the platform is the best way to start with affiliate marketing. Do you still have questions on this topic?

Is there anything I don’t understand? Maybe you need some additional help and guidance.

Ask me anything you want in the comments below, and I’ll talk to you further!

Then, you can drop them in the comments section below, and I’ll answer them.

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