The 1990s saw the dawn of the internet, which gave birth to affiliate marketing courtesy of a man named William J. Tobin. Tobin started encouraging website owners to display banner ads on their site in return for a commission on sales. Fast forward to the present day and the concept of making money with affiliate marketing is known worldwide and is translating to immense profit for hundreds of millions of people.
If you’re wondering how to make money with affiliate marketing as a beginner, keep reading. This article outlines the basics that will teach you how to succeed with affiliate marketing with no investment.
To help you navigate the maze of earning a full-time income with affiliate marketing (which can help you earn money on autopilot while you sleep), we have segmented this article into the following sections:
- What is Affiliate Marketing?
- How Do Affiliates Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?
- What are the Benefits of Affiliate Marketing?
- What are the Drawbacks of Affiliate Marketing?
- How Much Money Can I Earn with Affiliate Marketing?
- Do I Need to Spend Money to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?
- How Many Hours Do Affiliate Marketers Work Daily?
- What are the Most Common Affiliate Marketing Strategies Implemented by Marketers?
- How Can I Start Making Money with Affiliate Marketing as a Beginner?
- What are Some Examples of Successful Affiliate Marketing Strategies?
- What are the Best Affiliate Programs and Top Affiliate Networks to Join?
- Affiliate Marketing Tips for Beginners and Experienced Online Marketers
- Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
- Recommended Tools for Affiliate Marketers to Start Earning Money Online Fast
- Courses for Beginners to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing in 2024
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when an advertiser invites a publisher to promote his/her company’s products in exchange for a commission. All sales are tracked between websites, so even if a company has thousands of affiliates working for them, they will still be able to distinguish between who made what sale and when. This means that you’ll always get your payment when someone buys through your link.
Let’s look at an example: You promote a sofa on a furniture blog and someone buys that sofa. Consequently, you will earn a commission, with the profit depending on which company you team up with as an affiliate. So effective is affiliate marketing that expenditure in this avenue of online marketing surpassed $8 billion in 2022.
Do I Have to Show My Face to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?
You can if you want to, but it’s not necessary to show your face as an affiliate marketer. Faceless affiliate marketing is on the rise, and some people are even using social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to create faceless channels and accounts that inform, educate, and generate a substantial income. (You can find out how to do this here.)
Although you don’t have to show your face to make money affiliate marketing, you will, however, need to use your accurate personal information (e.g., your full name, address, and tax information) when applying for an advertiser’s affiliate marketing program. This is essential and failure to provide your genuine personal information could get you in serious trouble with the law. Additionally, showing your face may instill extra trust with your audience, but it is not critical to success.
How Do Affiliates Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?
Learning how to make money with affiliate marketing as a beginner is not rocket science. Once you learn the basics, you basically rinse and repeat the methods (tweaking them when necessary) to drive immense traffic and convert leads into recurring customers.
It goes something like this: the affiliate signs up for an affiliate network, before choosing a product in their preferred niche and copying their tailored affiliate link to promote wherever they desire. Profits are generated each time someone buys a product/service via one of the affiliate links.
Aside from making money with affiliate marketing by selling products and/or services, you can also earn money with website clicks, free trial sign-ups, and even app downloads! However, this depends on the company with whom you apply to become an affiliate partner. You must first join an affiliate network to get the ball rolling and generate your affiliate tracking links. (Keep reading to find out the best networks worth joining today.)
What are the Benefits of Making Money with Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a dream job for most. This line of online work enables people with minimal, limited, or a lot of experience to generate unlimited income from anywhere on the planet with an Internet connection. To help you decide if this avenue of making money online is right for you, consider the following benefits of affiliate marketing for beginners:
- Freedom to set your own working hours
- Opportunity to select your desired working location
- Access to a wide variety of niches (e.g., health and fitness, beauty, food and drink, travel, education, fashion, business…)
- Multiple payout options (depending on the affiliate network)
- UNLIMITED EARNING POTENTIAL.
What are the Drawbacks of Making Money with Affiliate Marketing?
Just like every type of online job (and offline job), there are potential drawbacks to consider before diving into the ocean of affiliate marketing. Let’s explore those drawbacks:
- The market is saturated, but is continuously growing, thus allowing newbies to slot in seamlessly
- Requires dedication and perseverance
- Some affiliate networks are picky about who they accept
- Many people are promoting the same products, meaning that the competition can be fierce
- Minimum payout threshold may be high for certain affiliate programs
How Much Money Can I Earn with Affiliate Marketing?
Living a comfortable lifestyle is a reality for millions of affiliate marketers. A fairly experienced affiliate marketer usually generates $1,000-$10,000 income monthly. Conversely, an expert affiliate marketer with a generous source of traffic and leads (potential paying customers) might rake in $10,000-$100,000 per month or more.
The reality is that the majority of affiliates make approximately $0 and $80,000 annually. Your earnings depend entirely on how much effort you put into affiliate marketing, as well as the commission rates on the programs you promote. For example, high-ticket affiliate products will provide you with larger commissions than cheaper products.
Do I Need to Spend Money to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing?
Not necessarily. It is usually free to sign up as an affiliate on the top affiliate networks (which we discuss below). Most affiliate marketers start with no money and gradually begin investing in lead generation to amplify their success at making money online. Nonetheless, it is possible to generate organic leads for free by running a blog, posting on social media, sending emails, etc.
To become an affiliate marketer with no money, you should have a good understanding of the industry and commit to working on your campaign(s) every day. It is entirely feasible to build an organic traffic stream without investment. While this process may take time, it will be worth it. After all, you need followers, leads, website visitors (traffic) or an email list to promote your affiliate links to. Without this, you cannot make money with affiliate marketing as a beginner.
How Many Hours Do Affiliate Marketers Work Daily?
If you’re wondering how many hours a week do affiliate marketers work, the answer is, “it varies.” In fact, it varies greatly. Why, you ask? While some affiliates promote just one product on a single platform, others will promote numerous products via multiple methods. Dedicate at least 2-3 hours daily at the beginning of your affiliate marketing venture (or more) for the best results. As time progresses, you can build affiliate campaigns that run on autopilot and, if you’re really successful, earn a full time income working 2-3 hours per week.
What are the Most Common Affiliate Marketing Strategies Implemented by Marketers?
The goal of affiliate marketing is to promote a product or service to a targeted audience via the internet. If you already have an audience, you’re halfway there. Not to worry if you don’t, however, because good things take time and Rome wasn’t built in a day!
Here are a few strategies that deliver huge commissions when making money with affiliate marketing:
- Sending emails featuring informative, educational advice and well-placed affiliated links to targeted audiences
- Creating niche social media pages and promoting affiliate links in the post description or account bio
- Writing ebooks and selling affiliate products within the digital download
- Reviewing products with YouTube videos and including affiliate links in the description
How Can I Start Making Money with Affiliate Marketing as a Beginner?
Let’s break down the process of successful affiliate marketing with the following steps:
- Sign up for an affiliate network
- Choose a product with a suitable commission
- Get your link and save it in a Google Document for easy access
- Decide where to promote affiliate links
- Start generating content related to the product
Who are the Best Examples of Successful Affiliate Marketers?
Numerous successful affiliate marketers are earning $10,000-$100,000 monthly (or even more!) Making enough money to pay your rent, groceries, kid’s tuition fees, or annual family vacations is entirely possible, too. The sky really is the limit when it comes to earning money online as an affiliate marketer. To inspire you to get started today, let’s discover a few famous affiliate marketers and the strategies they implement to turn over sizeable profits, time and time again.
Take Matt Par, for example. This well-known YouTuber generates $100,000 every single month via 10 YouTube channels, some of which are faceless channels. Then there’s Pat Flynn, who has earned a whopping $3 million via blogs, podcasts, and videos. Another inspiring affiliate marketing success story is Abby Lawson. While she identifies as a blogger, Abby generates a substantial amount of her monthly income (which rests at around $41,000+ per month) via affiliate links scattered around justagirlandherblog.
Disclosure: Some of the links contained in this blog post are affiliate links and may earn us a commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting Fortune Medicine so that we can help you to thrive financially!
What are the Best Affiliate Programs and Top Affiliate Networks to Join?
The list of the best affiliate marketing programs is ever-growing. Joining a handful of the leading affiliate marketing networks is recommended if you want to increase your chances of making sales and have access to a wider range of products in the marketplace. Listed below are a few options for beginners and experienced affiliates:
- dr.cash
- Click bank
- Referral Rock
- Partner Stack
- Invite Referrals
- CJ Affiliate
- JVZoo
- Digistore24
- Amazon Associates
- ShareaSale
- PoshFriends
- ADLEADPRO
- Rakuten Advertising
- Magic Click
- Ad.Combo
- FlexOffers
- Avangate Affiliate Network
- Shopify Collabs
- AWIN
- Rainmaker
- Adsterra
- Pin-up.Partners
- Offerrum
- Leadbit
- CPALead
- ClickDealer
- Trafee
- Affmine
- iMonetizeit
- LosPollos
- CPABuild
- Datify.Link
- OpenAFF
- TerraLeads
In addition to the above affiliate marketing networks, you can contact pretty much any brand or business and ask if they have an affiliate program. Chances are, they will, but you’ll probably need to prove your experience and demonstrate which website(s) and/or social media networks you intend on using when advertising the company’s products to be accepted into their affiliate program.
Affiliate Marketing Tips for Beginners and Experienced Online Marketers
Making money with affiliate marketing in 2024 could provide you with greater quality of life, freedom, and happiness, not to mention the financial aspect. Get off on the right foot with your online business adventure by taking the following affiliate marketing tips on board to earn money online as a beginner:
- Find products and services you’ve already used/are currently using
- Avoid promoting affiliate products to unrelated audiences, since it looks (and is) spammy
- Take inspiration from similar websites and blogs in your niche to observe their affiliate marketing techniques
- Try to focus on a single niche, rather than numerous niches
- Create valuable content that solves a problem and gain reader/viewer trust
- Create an email newsletter to generate an email list and regularly promote new products.
Avoiding Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes
Mistakes teach us and help us to grow, but if you could avoid them, you would, right? Of course! Don’t be disappointed if you make common affiliate mistakes. Even the most successful affiliates made heaps of mistakes before they got where they are today (and probably still do from time to time!)
It’s about the journey, not the destination, but keep in mind the following common affiliate marketing mistakes so that you can steer clear of potential potholes when making money online:
- Choosing the wrong product
- Promoting to the wrong audience
- Not tracking links to observe the best source(s) of traffic
- Sending too many spam emails and scaring your leads away
- Lacking on the creative aspect when developing content
- Lack of research and appropriate planning
- Failure to set goals and stick to schedules
- Expecting that everything will happen without any effort! (Wouldn’t that be nice?!)
Recommended Tools for Affiliate Marketers to Earn Money Online Fast
With a few simple tools, you can get your first affiliate campaign off the ground today (if you want to) and start tracking your results!
Imagine how excited you will feel when you receive an email notification alerting you of your first affiliate sale. If you remain consistent after the initial sale, revenue can snowball and you’ll be earning money on autopilot!
So, what are you waiting for? The following tools do the hard work for you, so you only need to decide which products you want to promote before making money with affiliate marketing!
Do not delay and get started today with the following recommended tools for affiliate marketers to earn money online in 2024:
- Leadsquared – Leadsquared is one of many partner marketing and lead management tools. However, this one stands out for its efficiency at capturing profitable leads from widespread sources, before assembling them in a central database to grant affiliate marketers simplicity in fostering trust with leads and converting them into customers. If you want to generate leads for your affiliate campaigns quickly, you can sign up for LeadSquared here.
- MailChimp – Affiliate marketing without an email marketing service certainly won’t be as successful. You stand a better chance of earning money online every month if you utilize MailChimp. This trusted email marketing service provider helps affiliates to create personalized and highly profitable campaigns with minimal effort. Start your first affiliate marketing email campaign today by joining MailChimp. Click here to create an account
- Google Analytics – This well-known web analytics service provides insightful performance data for your website that other analytics tools simply aren’t capable of. Digital marketers can use Google Analytics to analyze traffic trends and assess campaign metrics. With Google Analytics, you can figure out what’s working for your affiliate campaigns and what’s not.
- SEMRush – SEMRush is used by a large chunk of affiliate marketers. This keyword tool allows you to find relevant keywords and phrases based on competition and search volume. Keyword implementation is crucial if you want Google to index and rank your content highly based on search engine optimization (SEO), so you’ll need to use a tool like SEMRush if you want to be a successful affiliate marketer. Oh, and a little bit of advice – the free keyword tools are usually a waste of time. (Sad, but true.)
- Bitly – You won’t want to start affiliate marketing without an URL shortening tool to cloak your affiliate links. Links contain your info and are trackable, so each time somebody purchases a product after clicking on the link, you earn a commission. However, with a URL shortener tool like Bitly, you can post it on your social media profile without your bio looking like a heap of mess. Sign up for Bitly here.
- Unbounce – Each time you have an irresistible product that you want to put right in front of people’s faces, you should create a landing page. Instead of fretting about website code and all that jazz, sign up for Unbounce. This company provides landing page templates, so you don’t have to do any confusing legwork. Create your first landing page by signing up for Unbounce here.
Courses for Beginners to Start Making Money with Affiliate Marketing
To conclude this article, we have compiled a list of the top-rated affiliate marketing courses created by successful affiliate marketers who want to share their wisdom and help you succeed. Amplify your chances of succeeding with affiliate marketing with the following digital downloadable courses:
Learn how to make $10,000 per month with the expert advice featured in this guide. It will also teach you how to make money with dropshipping and other methods. You can absorb the information laid out in this guide and apply it today to start generating regular income. Plus, you can trust it because it is written by a millionaire!
Download Millionaire Secrets here.
Feeling too lazy to make money online, but want the money? We feel you, as do many, many other people around the world. Thankfully, you’re in luck! If you’re willing to invest a little bit of money in return for a lifetime of freedom and wealth, check out this digital download. It basically automates everything, so your affiliate campaigns start running like clockwork, while you sit back and make a fortune.
Download Remixable here.
Over 250 million shoppers visit Amazon every single month searching for products and preparing to hand over their cash. This means that Amazon is a prime marketplace for making affiliate sales. This incredible downloadable guide teaches you how to make six figures with Amazon as a beginner. The tried-and-tested guide has taught normal everyday people how to grow their bank balance quickly and steadily, so why not join them?
Download Amazon Affiliate Profits here.
Note: Although it’s not necessary to download these courses, it is highly recommended if you want to cut corners and become an expert in profitable affiliate marketing niches within a short space of time.
For further information about earning a full-time income with affiliate marketing and other online jobs, join the Fortune Medicine newsletter! We deliver a daily dose of non-spammy advice aimed to help you start an online business without any experience and earn your fortune from the very comfort of your own home (or wherever in the world you wish to work)
