The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Beginner to Advanced

Affiliate marketing is a great way to monetize your web traffic and earn additional income. It's a versatile stream of revenue that you can leverage no matter what your industry or niche. In this comprehensive guide to affiliate marketing, we're going to show you exactly how to get started with affiliate marketing, grow your affiliate marketing business, and share some tips to take your affiliate marketing business to the next level.

You've probably heard people promote affiliate marketing by saying something like "earn money while you sleep." While that's a distinct possibility, we wouldn't be doing our job if we let you believe that affiliate marketing doesn't take work. Affiliate marketing is absolutely one of the best ways to generate passive (or nearly passive) income online, but it's not going to happen if you don't go about it the right way. Fortunately, this affiliate marketing guide includes everything you need to leverage affiliate marketing so you can start waking up to a bigger bank account morning after morning.The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Beginner to Advanced:What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting and selling another company's products or services for a commission. It's a simple enough concept, but the process itself can involve a lot of moving pieces. At its core, though, affiliate marketing simply means that you sell someone else's stuff and earn money for it.How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

We already mentioned that affiliate marketing is a simple concept, but there are a few moving pieces to understand. With affiliate marketing, there's a seller who creates an affiliate program and provides affiliate marketers with a unique link that the affiliates then use to promote the seller's products. The links are unique to each affiliate marketer so it's easy to track who made the sale.

When someone clicks the affiliate link, a cookie is stored on their browser. The cookie lets the seller know who sold the product and lets the affiliate earn a commission even if the person clicking the link decides not to buy right away. Cookies do have an expiration date, so in order to get credit for a sale, the consumer needs to make a purchase before the cookie expires.

For example, let's say that you've clicked on an affiliate link that has a 30-day cookie but decided not to buy the product. A few days later, you go back and end up completing a purchase. The affiliate marketer will get credit for your purchase because it happened within the 30-day window of the cookie being stored.Who Are the Players?

There are three or four key players in affiliate marketing:Affiliates: the people who promote the productSellers: the people who created or are selling the productNetworks: networks managing the affiliates (optional)Consumers: end-users of the product

Let's look at each of these players a bit closer.Affiliates

Affiliates, sometimes called publishers, can be individuals or businesses. More often than not, affiliates are content creators in the same niche of the product they're promoting. They promote products and services through content like social media posts, blogs, videos, and a number of other types of content. Affiliates can also use paid ads to bring in traffic, but there are typically rules around the keywords that affiliates can use for the products they're promoting, such as not using the brand name or trade names of the products.Sellers

Sellers are the creators of the products or services that affiliates promote. They're the ones who pay affiliate commissions for sales. Sellers can be individuals or companies—anyone willing and able to pay for affiliates for sales. Sometimes, as in the case of the Amazon Associates Program, the seller might not even be the creator of the product or service.Networks (optional)

Many sellers opt to work with an affiliate network to manage their affiliate marketing programs. The network handles third-party checks and manages relationships between sellers and affiliates. Some of the top affiliate marketing networks are ShareASale, ClickBank, and Rakuten.Consumers

Consumers are the ones buying products and services through affiliate links.How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?

This is one of the more common questions we get about affiliate marketing. Generally, affiliates are paid when a consumer completes an action like a form submission, click, or sale.Per Sale

Pay-per-sale is the most popular affiliate marketing model. In this payment model, affiliates get paid for each sale they generate.Per Click

In the pay-per-click affiliate marketing payment model, affiliates get paid for clicks generated, no matter whether or not a sale was complete. This model is pretty rare.Per Lead

In the pay-per-lead model, affiliate marketers get paid for the leads they generate.Common Types of Affiliate Marketing Channels

Affiliate marketers can bring in traffic and make sales in a number of ways. Of course, some affiliate marketing channels are more popular than others. Here are some of our favorite marketing channels to succeed with affiliate marketing.Blogging

Blogging helps affiliates rank in search engine results and can drive traffic to affiliate offers organically (aka "free"). Typically, bloggers will use reviews, tutorials, how-tos, and other educational content to promote the affiliate product. They then link to the seller's site using their unique affiliate link to get credit for the sale.Influencer Marketing

As you can probably imagine from a site named Influencer Marketing Hub, we're big fans of influencer marketing. Influencers are people who hold a lot of sway over the people in their sphere of influence, typically on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. People follow influencers because they're interested in what the influencer has to say and are already primed to be open to trying whatever the influencer might promote.

Influencer marketing for affiliate sales can take many different forms like live videos, product reviews, account takeovers, and more.Paid Search Microsites

Microsites are branded pages (or a single page) that are separate from your main website. These sites provide another avenue with which you can offer detailed information and a sales pitch for affiliate products. Since they're separate from your main website, you can offer a more targeted, relevant message that's free from the distractions that usually come with a traditional website.Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for a long time, and for good reason. The ROI on email marketing is high. Like, really high. Depending on which study you read, numbers range from 3500%–4400% return. That means you have the potential to bring in $35–$44 of revenue for every $1 you invest in email marketing.

For affiliate marketers, your email list can be a great source of potential affiliate sales. While you don't want to sell, sell, sell with every single email you send, there's nothing wrong with sending a promotional email for every three value emails you send. You can add your affiliate links to your email newsletters and watch the affiliate sales roll in.Coupon Sites

Coupon sites have become increasingly popular in affiliate marketing since eCommerce and online shopping have taken off. Posting your affiliate links on coupon sites can bring in lots of sales from the savvy shoppers out there.Mass Media Sites

Mass media sites, or large media sites, are built to bring in tons of traffic. On these sites, you'll find reviews and comparisons of different products, many of which are affiliate products. These sites act as a depository of social proof for the products and services on them. They tend to promote products through banners and contextual affiliate links.Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Now that you know more about affiliate marketing, you may have noticed that it's not exactly something you just turn on and it works. Affiliate marketing takes effort to get going. You'll spend time creating content, attracting traffic to your landing pages or microsites, and promoting products on social media. The good news is that affiliate marketing offers up several benefits. Let's explore those benefits now.

Outside of content creation and promotion, affiliate marketing can make you money at any time of the day or night, making it a nearly passive income option. And you don't have to be actively participating in the transaction to make it happen. If you have a system set up to keep things running, you have the potential for a great return with very little ongoing effort.Flexibility