If you are looking for ways to start making money with affiliate marketing in 2020 then you are in the right place.
You might have heard people making $1000-$5000 per month using affiliate marketing!!
If you look at the last 5 years data affiliate marketing term is on the rise and all the biggest internet marketers have started their journey with affiliate marketing.
If we check the “affiliate marketing” term in google trends. Here is the data that populates and you can see its a clear uptrend since 2015 and is not going to stop anywhere near in the future.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
- Work from anywhere in the world.
- Absolutely start with $0.
- No need for any tools or website.
- Increases reputation and social presence.
- The sky is the limit, there is no limit on how much you can earn per month or in a day.
Very successful marketers like Pat Flynn and Neil Patel make 6 figures a month in affiliate revenue. Instagram influencers, without even a blog, make huge money promoting other people’s products.
Jason Stone a.k.a @millionaire_mentor made $7 million in affiliate revenue using Instagram and also featured in big publications like Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com.
affiliate marketing = Sky is the limit
You don’t need to have thousands of dollars to start your affiliate marketing journey. All it takes is just a couple of dollars to buy a domain and hosting and your all set. If you don’t know how to set up a blog.
Let’s dive more into how you can make money with affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Before you get into an affiliate marketing you need to know the fundamentals and how does affiliate marketing works.
Affiliate Marketing is a process of promoting other companies or people’s products and services in exchange for a commission.
In simple terms, you promote someone’s else product/service and you get paid for every person who buys from your affiliate link.
How much does it cost to start Affiliate Marketing?
You can start Affiliate marketing with absolutely ZERO. It doesn’t cost any money to sign up for affiliate networks and companies.
But every business comes with a bare minimum investment to give it a push. We need visitors to our affiliate link so the visitors buy and we get paid.
It totally depends on the way you want to promote the products. To start affiliate marketing using Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube all it takes is good content and providing value to your audience.
If you are planning to do affiliate marketing, as a long term business, and build a personal brand. Then there are definitely a few costs incurred to start a blog.
★ Domain
The first and the most important thing you will need is a domain, come up with a domain name, either you want to build a niche site or authority website choose an appropriate domain. You can buy a domain for less than $5 a year from Namecheap.com
★ Hosting
This is where you host all your website files and your CMS. Once you buy your domain you can buy hosting at Bluehost for $2.95 per month. We recommend Bluehost, it is the cheap and fastest web hosting company best known for newbie affiliate marketers. Some other optional spends which is a necessity after your blog has skyrocketed.
★ Premium Themes and Plugins
You can get a lot of premium themes & plugins from Themeforest and Mythemeshop but these are optional. If you are looking to invest in a premium theme then Genesis Framework by Studiopress gives you a super clean, mobile responsive, and crazy fast loading speeds you can also customize the framework with other child themes.
Advanced Tools:
When I say advanced tools these are not much necessary for a newbie blogger. These tools help you fast forward your blogging journey.
1. Keyword Research and SEO Tools
SEO plays a major role in optimizing your blog for better rankings and build authority in your niche. SEMRush and Ahrefs are the best keyword research tools.
These tools also provide many services like competitor analysis, site audits, position trackers, and other main SEO tools which help us grow the blog and drive more traffic.
Newbie affiliates can use KW Finder & Ubersuggest which provide some freemium services but are limited to usage.
2. Email Responder
“Money is in the list” this is not only said by me but other top marketers like Neil Patel agree to it. An e-mail list has outperformed every other source of traffic.
An e-mail has the highest reach when compared to other social media platforms.
Because of the recent changes to Facebook and Instagram algorithms, these platforms have limited their reach and less than 5% of the total audiences see our posts.
So collecting emails from day one of blogging helps also build trust and convert them to a hot audience.
3. Facebook Ads & Google Ads
After you have selected a product and started building a blog around it. Its time to give a little push to and test out if the product is really worth it.
Because SEO takes a lot to time to master and ranking a new blog takes so much effort and quality backlinks.
So spending around $500 for testing the products and your landing pages really helps you understand the market and other affiliate terms that we learn in the latter part of the post.
This step is totally optional and if you want to do affiliate marketing traditionally by driving organic traffic to blog, then it is completely alright.
4. Tracking Tools
Google Analytics is pretty much a free tool that allows us to track the user data, location, no. of sessions, page views, and many more tools which help us understand how the website is performing and how you can improve your website.
How much can you earn from Affiliate Marketing?
There is no limit on how much money you can earn from affiliate marketing. Super affiliates make around 6 figures a month.
It varies depending on the offer and the type of product you are promoting. High ticket affiliate programs pay a huge share for there affiliates.
Also, check out How Much Does Blogging Really Pays?
Some affiliate programs promoted by super-affiliates.
- Binary Options / Forex
- Gambling Offers
- CPA Offers
- Web Hosting
- E-mail Marketing Software
I have promoted a high ticket affiliate offer that has 50% Rev-share commissions for a lifetime and I earned more than $55,000 in affiliate earnings from that offer.
Anil Agarwal by BloggersPassion.com made over $250,000 with the BeRush affiliate program. Below is the screenshot of his earnings from BeRush Dashboard.
Steps to Become an Affiliate Marketer
Step 1: Selecting a Niche
There are millions of products out there in the market and a lot of people already promoting those products.
As a beginner, you have to select an industry and niche down to as low as possible to avoid competing with big players in the market.
For example, When you type in “Best gaming router” in the search you are now seeing IGN, Cnet, TechRadar, PCGamer these are big publications with 100s of professional guys.
Step 2: Research Affiliate Programs in Your Niche
Not every niche has an affiliate program. So after you have selected your NICHE its time to see if there are any products or services available to join and promote.
To do this type in “your niche“ affiliate program and there comes a list of affiliate programs available.
You can also join affiliate networks to find out if there are any programs available in your niche.
- Shareasale
- Commission Junction (CJ)
- Clickbank
- Flex Offers
- Rakuten
- Amazon Associates
- eBay Partner Network
- Vcommission
These affiliate networks have a huge list of programs and offers. If you stuck with selecting a niche then this could be a good source to find new niches.
If you couldn’t find any program in your niche then it’s best to consider changing the niche.
Step 3: Building Your Blog or Setting Up Website
Setting up your first WordPress blog doesn’t even take 10 minutes. But before there are a few things to keep in mind.
I’m not trying to start a debate it’s my personal opinion after working with niche sites for 2+ years. Now ask yourself these questions and come to a final verdict.
- Are you trying to set up a niche site or an authority site?
- Are you going to make affiliate marketing a long term business or just a side hustle?
- How much are you going to invest in building an online business?
After you have selected which kinda website to build, now its time to take your first domain & Hosting.
Related Articles: Step By Step Guide To Start Your WordPress Blog & Make Money Blogging
We recommend Bluehost.com which is the most reliable hosting provider. They are the official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting service.
A domain usually cost $10/yr separately. You can buy a domain from Namecheap.com But when you sign up for Bluehost you get a free domain for 1 year & free SSL certificate worth $79.99/yr included in any hosting plan you buy from Bluehost.
Step 4: Sign up for Affiliate Programs or Networks
Once everything is up and running now sign up for the affiliate program. There are three types of affiliate programs
- Physical Products
- Digital Products
- SAAS Products
We will look more deeply into each type of affiliate products and how you can promote them.
Physical Products:
These types of products are mainly e-commerce items, most affiliates prefer physical products because they are easy to promote.
Amazon has a wide range of products available on its website so if anyone buys any product or multiple products from your link you get paid a commission ranging from 4-10% depending on the product category.
Check out the List of amazon associates commission rates based on product categories.
What’s cool with Amazon Associates is that they have a 24 hour cookie period and 90 day cookie period.
- In a 24 hour cookie period. If the user buys within the 24 hours after clicking the link you get paid.
- To get into a 90 day cookie period the user must add the product to the cart and Now if the user buys within the 90 days you get paid.
Physical Products typically range from 4-10% which is very low, even you sell a high-valued item we only make a small commission.
Informational Products:
These types of products are courses, webinars, coaching services, ebooks which help us educate and learn new things.
The commissions range from 30% to 50% as these are high ticket products that provide immense value.
Clickbank is the biggest marketplace place for informational products with a wide range of categories.
Informational products have very fewer return rates and high customer value because these products are created by successful bloggers, marketers, and authors.
Service Products:
These are products like Hosting, Email Marketing, Funnel Builders, Landing Page Builders &, etc. All these products are like software where you can pay a monthly fee and access them.
Some of the services I use Ahrefs, Clickfunnels, Canva Pro, Bluehost, Hellobar, and other few tools to keep my website up and running.
JVZoo is one of my favorite website where they have a list of high paying SAAS Products.
All these products have their own affiliate programs that pay recurring commissions every month ranging from 10-40%.
Beginners can also try their hands on promoting these types of products using Google and Facebook Ads.
Step 5: Creating Content
The main focus of creating content must be around providing value to the user.
But, how do you do that?
I say it’s pretty easy because people come on Google for finding solutions for their problems. Roughly 8% of the searches in Google are question-based.
How-to guides, comparison posts, review articles, list posts, and resource pages these types of posts help users find solutions for their problems.
I have promoted Skrill to over 900+ members using a how-to guide and made over $700 from 1 single program.
Email Marketing is an advanced way to drive traffic to your affiliate link which typically has more conversion rates than any other promotional method.
Step 6: Optimizing your Website
This is the most challenging part of affiliate marketing if you are trying to drive organic traffic completely.
You must have a well-optimized website with On-page and Off-page SEO Techniques implemented.
Some of the On-page SEO techniques:
- Proper use of H1 & H2 tags
- Interlinking posts
- Including alt tags in images
- Increasing Dwell time
- Use Images, Videos, and anything that improves user experience
Check out Brain Dean’s definitive guide on On-page SEO to learn more in-depth about on-page SEO.
OFF-page SEO techniques:
- Backlinks
- Content Marketing
- Social Bookmarking
- Guest posting
Neil Patel has written an amazing article on OFF Page SEO techniques to improve the rankings.
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Conclusion
I have put all the information and knowledge of How to Start Affiliate Marketing but always remember affiliate marketing takes a lot of testing before you can make a decent amount of money from affiliate marketing.
All the bloggers and marketers have not made $1000s overnight.
Slow and Steady Wins the race. If you are trying to fast track and make money overnight this isn’t for you.
Setup new goals and try pushing you to newer heights every day.
Got doubts? Let us know in the comments section below.
