What Is Affiliate Marketing and How Do I Get Started Online Money

1.  What Is Affiliate Marketing and How Do I Get   Started Online Money

Learn the ins and outs of affiliate marketing and how you can start doing it yourself.

Affiliate marketing is a marketing technique in which third-party publications promote a merchant's goods or services in exchange for a share of the resulting sales or web traffic. 

It is often regarded as an important component of current digital marketing.

Affiliate marketing appeals to companies because it enables them to achieve their marketing objectives, and it helps affiliates by providing the potential to earn passive income.

Making money as an affiliate marketer requires time spent on creating a platform and an online audience.

Learn more about affiliate marketing and how it works in this post, as well as concrete steps to become an affiliate marketer.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing marketing approach in which an affiliate, such as a blogger or YouTuber, advertises a company's goods or services to assist the company in meeting its sales or marketing objectives. 

Affiliates are paid a portion of revenue or consumer visits generated as a consequence of their marketing efforts.

A company may collaborate with an affiliate for a variety of reasons, including:

• Boosting revenue, website traffic, and brand recognition
• 
  
• Getting in touch with a certain affiliate audience (e.g., a shoe company that partners with a fitness blog to target fitness-minded readers)

While revenue sharing is not a new marketing concept, modern affiliate marketing primarily refers to online digital marketing in which affiliates connect to a business's product or service online in exchange for a portion of sales or web traffic. 

According to some estimates, $8.2 billion will be spent on affiliate marketing in 2022 [1].

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing contains four primary players, each of whom plays a distinct role in the marketing process:

• The affiliate (or “publisher”): The individual or entity that promotes the merchant’s product or service 

• The merchant: The individual or entity selling the product or service promoted by the affiliate 

• The affiliate network: An intermediary between an affiliate and a merchant’s affiliate program. While an affiliate network is not strictly necessary for an affiliate and merchant to connect, it is a common channel for such relationships. 

• The customer: The individual who purchases a product through an affiliate. Merchants and affiliates collaborate to connect them with the affiliate’s audience in order to convert them into customers.

Typically, the affiliate and the merchant collaborate via an affiliate network, which may also recommend additional merchants that match the affiliate's profile. 

A network, for example, may recommend a variety of tech goods to an affiliate who assesses telephones.

An affiliate and merchant may occasionally connect naturally with direct outreach. 

For example, a cake pan manufacturer may collaborate with an affiliate who blogs about baking to promote their product in front of the affiliate's audience.

Affiliate marketing examples

Even if you didn't know it, you've probably seen examples of affiliate marketing before.

The reason for this is straightforward: the most effective affiliate marketing is typically partnered with high-quality content that users appreciate and find valuable. 

Though it may be tempting to advertise items in order to increase sales and traffic for merchants, affiliates who have built trust with their audience by showcasing excellent products in which they believe are more likely to convert readers. 

To put it another way, quality sells.

Some popular affiliate marketing examples include:

• Websites covering general topics that occasionally include affiliate links in blog posts or articles, such as in this list of Kitchen Essentials compiled by the cooking-focused website Kitchn. 

• YouTube videos that include affiliate links in the description, such as the one attached to MKBHD’s “My Every Day Tech 2022” video.

• Dedicated review websites that cover products that appeal to a targeted readership, such as Gear Patrol and Wirecutter.

Affiliate marketing salary 

Affiliate income is highly variable and can often fluctuate from year to year. Furthermore, it can take time for an affiliate marketer to build up an online audience and begin to make a profit. 

On the high end of the spectrum, Zip Recruiter lists the average salary for an affiliate marketer in the United States at $154,983 [2]. On the lower end, Payscale says the average annual income for an affiliate marketer is $53,167 [3]. Glassdoor, meanwhile, puts the average affiliate marketer's salary somewhere in the middle at $69,073 [4]. 

How to start affiliate marketing

Becoming an affiliate marketer might be a wonderful alternative for people searching for a passive income and prepared to put in the effort to establish an online following. 

If this seems like an interesting prospect to you, the steps below may help you on your way to becoming an affiliate marketer.

1. Pick your niche.

Affiliate marketers are useful to merchants because they can reach out to particular groups of potential clients. 

The more specific your specialty, the more probable it is that you can create an affiliate platform that provides original material to an underserved audience. 

At the same time, you should choose a niche with a substantial audience share.

Affiliate marketing in action

OutdoorGearLab reviews outdoor equipment used for sports, camping, hiking, climbing, and travel. The site offers their readers value by testing, reviewing, and promoting equipment that outdoor enthusiasts like them would find useful. As a result of serving this niche audience,  OutdoorGearLab has become one of the most successful outdoor product review sites.  

Ideally, the niche you pick for your affiliate marketing efforts should be something that not only interests you but also offers value to a sizeable, underserved audience. As you are brainstorming ideas, it can be helpful to conduct research with Google Trends to see if there is increasing or correlating interest in the topic. 

In this exploratory phase, some questions you might ask yourself include: 

• What is a topic, hobby, or field that is of particular interest to me that’s not currently being served? 

• How can I add a new angle or perspective to a topic with a lot of competition? 

• What kind of content would I like to make to best serve this niche and my skill set? 

2. Pick a platform that matches your niche.

Once you've settled on the topic, audience, and items your affiliate marketing platform will cover, you'll need to decide on the platform itself.

While building a specialised review website, such as OutdoorGearLab, is a popular strategy, you may also undertake affiliate marketing on social media sites like as Instagram. 

The platform you choose will ultimately be determined by the nature of your project. 

In certain circumstances, combining platforms will benefit your affiliate marketing efforts the most.

Some popular methodologies and platforms are as follows:

• A dedicated product review website specifically oriented around offering readers products 

• A website or blog covering a specific topic that includes affiliate marketing in articles or posts about that topic     

• Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube.

3. Join an affiliate marketing network.

Affiliate networks bring together affiliates and merchants. 

While joining an affiliate network is not always mandatory, you will likely discover that doing so can speed the relationship-building process with merchants and increase earning prospects.

The affiliate network or marketing programme you join will be determined by the items your target audience is interested in. 

In truth, there are several affiliate marketing networks and programmes available, each offering a unique set of products and services. 

To increase your chances of success, conduct research on the networks and programmes that are best suited to your target product and audience.

Some examples of popular affiliate networks and programs include: 

• Awin

• ClickBank

• Amazon Associates

• Rakuten

• Etsy Affiliates

• eBay Partner Network 

• Coursera Affiliate Program 

4. Expand your network. 

It takes time and effort to build a successful affiliate marketing platform. 

However, it is beneficial to utilise a combination of digital marketing methods to boost your total audience size.

Popular digital marketing tactics include the following:

• Content marketing 

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Social media marketing 

• Email lists 

While any of these methods may be useful for increasing your audience size, a deliberate combination of them would most likely be most effective. 

For example, you may discover that a mix of timely email blasts and SEO content improves your marketing efforts more than each one alone.

5. Be consistent and master your skills.

In addition to taking time and dedication, affiliate marketing also employs a wide range of skills, including marketing, writing, communication, presentation, videography, and editing. The exact mix of skills that you employ in your marketing pursuit will likely depend on the platform, audience, and approach that you decide to take. 

For example, if you are running a YouTube channel that reviews collectible toys, then you will likely need a combination of video production, presentation, and social media marketing skills. However, if you are instead running a website that only features written reviews of collectible toys, then you will likely need to focus on expanding your writing, communication, and digital marketing skills. 

In many cases, you might find that you even use all of these skills—and maybe even some more—as you work to drive traffic, produce eye-catching content, and increase affiliate sales. 

Get started.

Affiliate marketing has the possibility to provide a passive income stream for those who create compelling content and put in the time and effort to grow their audience. Start building your marketing skill set with Digital Marketing from the University of Illinois, or get job ready by completing the Meta Social Media Marketing Professional Certificate or the Google Digital Marketing and E-commerce Professional Certificate

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Article sources 

1. Statista. “Affiliate marketing spending in the United States from 2010 to 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/693438/affiliate-marketing-spending/.” Accessed January 4th, 2022. 

2. Zip Recruiter. “Affiliate Marketing Annual Salary, https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Affiliate-Marketing-Salary.” Accessed July 28, 2022. 

3. Payscale. “Average Affiliate Marketer Salary, https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Affiliate_Marketer/Salary.” Accessed July 28, 2022. 

4. Glassdoor. “Affiliate Marketer Salaries, https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/us-affiliate-marketer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,2_IN1_KO3,21.htm?clickSource=searchBtn.” Accessed July 28, 2022.