Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Hasn’t it always been the dream to develop something that functions on its own and earns you money? Well, here’s something that you can use to make sure that you always have a steady source of income, and it’s called affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing programs have emerged to be one of the most popular methods to generate a steady line of revenue. Affiliate marketing generated more than 170 million transactions worldwide in 2017.

  • If you own a business, you can use affiliate marketing programs to ensure that your business is provided with a steady supply of inquiries, and a certain level of customer outreach is available.
  • If you are an employed individual, you can use affiliate marketing programs to pursue your areas of interest outside of work and generate a steady alternative income for yourself.
  • If you are a full-time affiliate marketing professional, then opportunities are boundless for you to make a name for yourself and establish a rewarding revenue model for yourself.

To understand how affiliate marketing can help you, you need to first understand its mechanics. This guide on affiliate marketing for beginners will help you achieve your goals.

Understanding Who is All Involved within the Program

Stakeholders in Affiliate Marketing Programs

There are mainly the following stakeholders involved in the entire affiliate marketing process:

Merchants

This is the category of stakeholders who are the producer of the product that needs to be sold. This could also be any business owner who is into the reselling of the products.

Affiliates

This is the category of stakeholders who are the ones extending the marketing support needed for selling the merchants’ products. In return, they get paid as per the merchant’s affiliate program policy.

Customers

These are the people who are at the heart of the entire affiliate program. The ones who will eventually buy the product.

Affiliate Networks

This is an important part of the affiliate system. These are intermediaries between the merchants and affiliates that provide many value additions like secure payment transactions, right product deliveries, etc. These provide secure platforms to merchants and affiliates and fosters fair trade practices.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: How Does It Work?

How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing

There are two ways to look at when getting into an affiliate marketing program. Are you the Seller or the Marketer?

Seller - You can look at it from the product seller’s point of view. This marketing technique ensures that your products are marketed, and you pay only for what you get. You are liable to pay only when the affiliate ensures that your product is sold, which means you save money when the affiliate fails to sell your product. This helps in tuning your marketing budget in such a way that you spend only a part of your revenue and that too, only after the revenue and payment collection has been guaranteed.

Marketer - You can also look at it from the product marketer’s point of view. Whether you run an affiliate business or it’s part-time work for you, you get to deal in product categories that you find interesting or easy to sell. There are a plethora of product options available in today’s market. The affiliate networks put in place that the entire transactions are secure and transparent; you will experience a hassle-free process. Moreover, the more traffic you can manage to pull into your site, the more popularity and reliability you gain. This can then be explored as an opportunity to add to your income through additional business models like advertisements or pay-per-click.

After you have understood how the affiliate marketing program will help you generate income, the next question that naturally requires answering is how to start affiliate marketing. Even though the end objective is the same, but the path to it will vary depending on whether you fall into the merchant’s category or the affiliate category.

Becoming a Merchant

Step 1 – Envisage the idea. You know what the areas that interest you are. Find out what are the pain-points of a customer and conceptualize a product that will address their concerns. Putting a customer’s needs at the center of your product idea is the only way that will ensure success.

Step 2 – Validate the idea. You have come up with a product idea; now it is time to check whether this product is required by customers. Decide what should be the minimum number of customers that will be suitable for you to go ahead with your idea. Test out your idea on different platforms and check if people are willing to pay for it.

Step 3 – Convert the idea into a product. Ideally, you should start by developing a product that doesn’t require too much financial involvement. Just the optimal amount as per your budget to create the sample product and test its acceptability with a set of customers.

Step 4 – To expand your business, enlist your products on affiliate networks. Find suitable affiliates, negotiate your terms and you’re on your way to generate steady revenue streams.

Starting as an Affiliate

Step 1 – Choose the product. There is a huge number of products available in the market that have affiliate marketing programs. You can’t do it all. You need to focus on the ones that you find interesting. You can have genuine value addition to your target audience, only if you have in-depth knowledge about the products.

Step 2 – Create content. It has become very easy to post your content on the internet. A simple way to start is by reviewing products. You can post videos or blogs on various platforms. You can conduct live sessions to update your viewers about the product and address their queries. You should have a consultative approach so that solving customer’s pain-points becomes the primary objective.

Step 3 – Build a customer database. You should gather the contact details of your audience so that you can reach out to them with more relevant content. Keep in mind to strike an optimal balance and use these contact details for sharing only relevant content, so that they don’t feel spammed.

Step 4 – Add revenue sources. You should explore additional income generators like pay-per-click advertisements, etc.

With the markets opening to globalization, competition is increasing every day. Every person who is either employed or running their own business needs a source of income that can sustain itself on its own. Irrespective of which side of the affiliate marketing program you are on, the crux remains that the program is designed to generate sustainable revenue for you.