Last updated on October 21st, 2023
This is a beginners guide to the whole new world of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing is a very interesting way of making money from a blog.
But, if you are beginner blogger or have yet to start a blog; affiliate marketing can sometimes be very confusing.
The true fact is, Affiliate marketing doesn’t have to be difficult to understand. This is a step by step guide for beginners who are not sure what affiliate marketing is.
I hope by reading this post beginners will have a better understanding of “What is Affiliate Marketing and how does it work” in its simplest form.
Definition:
What is Affiliate Marketing?
According to Investopedia definition:
Affiliate marketing is define as an advertising model where a company pays compensation to third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third-party publishers are referred to as affiliates and the commission fee incentivizes them to find ways to promote the company.
What is an Affiliate Marketer?
Base on the blogging context, the blogger will
Thus, all this simply mean that if a blogger who is the affiliate marketer promotes a certain company’s product or service on their blog.
When someone purchased the products or services through their affiliate link, the blogger (that is the affiliate marketer) will get a commission for that sale.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work On A Blog?
Affiliate Marketing program is a business model that is widely used in the blogging world.
Bloggers around the world have been using this popular method to monetizing their blogs. This has helped them make $1000+ or even $10,000+ dollars every month through affiliate marketing.
Thus, how does an affiliate link look like on a blog and how does a blogger make money online as an affiliate marketer?
When a blogger joins a particular affiliate marketing company. That company will provide the blogger with a unique affiliate link or code.
For Example, this is how an Awin Esty affiliate link looks like:
When you click the link above, it will lead you to the Esty product that the blogger is trying to promote.
Therefore, if the visitor purchased the product, the blogger will earn a commission. It can be 4%, 15% or even more. It greatly
But the thing is placing such a long link is not aesthetic and I doubt anyone will click on it.
This is the reason why some affiliate marketing company will sometime provide marketing promotional material such as Graphic banners, button, text link, etc to help the blogger promote their products.
This is how it finally looks like in the blogger’s blog post:
For Text link: Printable Blog Planner
For Graphic link:
Now this is much more appealing, isn’t it?
When you hoover over the text or graphic link, you can see the affiliate link at the bottom of your screen.
Do y ou have an example of a website using affiliate marketing?
Off course I have!
1. A Pint Sized Life Blog
Meet Alix from A Pint Sized Life.
In her blog posts, she is sharing with her audience a numberr of winter beauty products that she uses.
If you look closely those beauty products name that the arrows are pointing (see above picture) are where the affiliate links is.
For her case, she is mainly using text and graphics link for her affiliate links in this blog post.
2. CNET
CNET publishes reviews, news, articles, videos, deals, etc on technology and consumer electronics.
What I observed was that they are mainly using in-text advertising network – Viglink to monetized their website.
Frankly speaking, I never come across in-text advertising network before I write this posts. Interesting!
Beside using Viglink, They are also Amazon affiliate marketer (see below attachment)
3. Local Adventurer
The travel blog is one of my favorite blog.
According to Local Adventurer Jan 2019 income report. They made a total of $1,462.92 in affiliate marketing.
Now let us take a look at which affiliate marketing company they belong to.
- Amazon Associates Affiliate
- Avantlink
- Commission Junction
- Others (
e bay, Skimlinks, Awin, etc)
Below picture is an example of how they used their affiliate links in one of their post.
How bloggers Implement These Affiliate Links In Their blog?
First, I will talk about what you shouldn’t be doing with all those affiliate links.
I ever visited a website where the blogger place a lot of affiliate links on his website. He used the banner, button and even text links all over his blog
There was fashion, the
I left the website immediately because it was so messy and I have no ideas what his blog was about.
Hence, before you add all these affiliate links on your blog. You must first decide what kind of topic or blog niche your blog is.
To understand more about blog niches you can read my post: 7 profitable blog niches that get more traffic and makes more money
With that in mind, you can then look for affiliate company who have the products or services that are suitable for your blog niche.
Take Local Adventurer for example. Their blog is a travel blog. Everything they blog about is related to travel.
For this reason, the products they recommend are mainly travel
Sharing or recom
Another way is by writing products review just like CNET.
Example Of Affiliate Marketing Networks And Programs
There are many affiliate marketing networks and programs in the market. You can join as many or as little as you want.
Here Are The Lists:
Share A Sale
Share A Sale has been in business since the
Awin
Awin has been driving sales for
Rakuten
Rakuten has been in business since 1997, innovation has been at the core of who they are.
CJ Affiliate
CJ Affiliate has over 20 years of experience. They are one of the most trusted and established
AvantLink
AvantLink is a leader in innovation for affiliate marketing technology. They are recognized as one of the top 100 fastest growing companies in the state in 2014.
Amazon Associates
Amazon was founded in 1994 as an online book store. Now they are the largest e-commence marketplace and cloud computing platform in the world.
eBay Partner Network
I personally did not know Ebay has an affiliate network. Now I know thanks to this post. Ebay has now been online for over 20 years.
How To Become An Affiliate Marketer
To become an affiliate marketer is very easy. All you need is to fill out their online application form to be their affiliate or publisher. One thing you need to take note is you do need to have is a blog of your own
The reason why you need a blog is because when you sign up to become an affiliate marketer. The affiliate marketing company will ask you to list down your primary website.
They will also ask a few questions about your website and most of the affiliate marketing company do not allow Affiliates to place advertisements on sites that you don’t own.
Once you have your blog set up and with few posts published. At that time you can decide which affiliate programs or networks you want to join.
It only takes about 5 to 7 minutes to fill out the application. Once the application is complete, the affiliate company will review it, and send you an email notification upon approval. This normally takes about 1 to 3 business days.
If you do not have a blog yet, as a visitor of Exploringim.com, I am offering free domain name plus Free WordPress SSL certificate if you sign up with Bluehost today. To sign up, just click on the image below and go through their set up process. In a few minutes, you will have your very own blog.
How to Promote Your Affiliate Products And Services Links?
This is the part where most new affiliate fails and give up after one of two years of trying without earning any money. Learning how to promote and where to promote is very important as it will directly affect the amount of money you will be making.
Hence, how and where to promote your affiliate links?
1. Write Great Contents
One thing that is common in all these money making blogs are they all have great contents.
You might be thinking why is having great contents got to do with making money with your affiliate links?
Take Local Adventurer blog for example. They write great travel content targeted at people who love to travel.
Knowing that their visitors love to travel, they can write posts to recommend the best travel shoes or even best luggage. In these posts is where they can add their affiliate links.
This is one way you can add affiliate links in the content you are writing.
Here is another blog which I find the way she incorporated the affiliate links in her posts very subtle and effective.
There are many other ways to add affiliate links in your blog. All you need to do is visit other blogger’s blog and observer how they do it.
2. Email List
Your email list is another great way to promote your affiliate products and services. As they say the money is in the list.
If you have a blog but have
Offer something is of value to your visitors when they visit your blog: such as printable, free e-book, etc This is to encourage them to join your email list.
3. Social Media Networks
I recommend using Pinterest to promote your affiliate products. I personally have good result pinning my own affiliate product link on Pinterest.
Pins that I have pinned last year are still bringing in sales for me.
You can drive traffic to your posts via Pinterest too. Many bloggers have seen great result using this way.
4. Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is any advertising that that you have to pay for.
This simply means that the marketer pays the owner of the ad space in exchange to use that space. The price payable for the ad space are mainly through a bidding process.
Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, etc are some of the places you can place your advertis
For me at this moment I personally prefer free traffic than the paid traffic.
In Conclusion,
Knowing and understanding what is an affiliate marketing is actually simple even for beginners. The challenge is how to implement it and become successful in it.
The truth is , down the years, many have tried, some has succeeded but most have failed.
Therefore, if you’re really KEEN on learning the art of blogging and affiliate marketing, my advise is cut short your learning curve by investing in yourself first.
