Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Affiliate Marketing for beginners: What it is, how to become an affiliate, where to sign up for different programs, and the best affiliate programs for beginners.
Basically, affiliate marketing is marketing other websites or companies products or services and earning a commission of sales or sign ups.
This can be done through social media, landing pages, or your own website or blog.
There are several ways of using affiliate marketing and creating an income from it.
In this post, we are going to go over these various ways and some important things to understand when starting your Affiliate Marketing journey.
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: What we Cover
- Choosing a niche
- Best Practices
- Getting Paid
- Clearing Houses
- Beginner Friendly Programs
Choosing a Niche
There are a ton of niches out there, and you’ll want to pick what’s best for you.
Although you can promote a bunch of different niches, focusing on one or two that you can put your time and effort into will most likely get you the best results, and additionally, save you some headache.
What do you love to do or love the idea of?
Maybe you have something you’re already familiar with doing (building websites, gardening, traveling and taking pictures, gaming and communicating, fitness training and supplements, cleaning and organizing, couponing, teaching or coaching, etc) that you can educate others on?
Pick something that inspires you, as well as, something that you love to do.
Think of it as a business – the more time and effort you put into it, the more you get paid.
Some people use affiliate marketing as a side hustle, (maybe they just want a few hundred extra dollars a month) and some people want it to be a full-time income(and make more money than they could’ve ever imagined )– so it truly is up to you.
Decide how you want to treat it, and make it happen, so you can start learning how to make money online with affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing: Best Practices
One of the best ways to make money with affiliate marketing is with a blog.
If you’ve chosen your niche based on something you’re passionate about, why not write about it, and get paid to?
Remember that it’s important to promote companies/products that you already love or know are worth the signup.
If blogging is something you’re interested in, check out our post on creating a high engagement blog.
We also provide a step by step tutorial on setting up a blog with HostGator.
Getting Paid from Affiliate Marketing
There are multiple ways of getting paid by being an affiliate.
Depending on the company/products you’re promoting, some will pay a base commission, some earnings per click, and some recurring.
Or potentially, all three.
Normally, you will get paid either through your PayPal account or your bank.
Recurring Commissions
Recurring commissions are commissions that are paid out for every month a user has a paid subscription.
Basically, when their payment for their subscription gets posted, you will get a pament as well.
Another thing to know about is cookie duration.
Cookie Duration
Ever notice when you visit a website sometimes a pop up on the bottom informs you that the site uses cookies?
When someone clicks on your affiliate link, it essentially goes into a “cookie database” that they have been on that website.
And when it comes to affiliate marketing, companies offer commissions for a certain length of time after someone has clicked on your link.
Cookie Duration is basically the amount of time you have to make a sale after someone uses your affiliate link.
Some companies are 24 hours, some are 30 days, some are longer, and some have none. It all depends on the companies affiliate program.
You will be able to view a companies cookie duration when you sign up for the program through a clearinghouse.
As far as “on-site” affiliate programs, some have a cookie duration and some do not. If it’s not available within your details, the best thing to do is email the company and ask what their cookie duration is.
Clearinghouses
Some companies like Amazon and Fiverr have their own affiliate programs; you can apply to be an affiliate directly from their website.
On the other hand, some companies use clearinghouses to find affiliates for their companies.
You will have access to become an affiliate by applying through the clearinghouse first, finding the company you want to promote, and signing up within the clearinghouse website.
There are many benefits to using clearinghouses.
For example, you can access all of the affiliate programs you’ve signed up for within the clearinghouse.
You can also manage your clicks, commissions, and your pending applications.
A lot of times when searching for a specific business or product to promote, you’ll find that they use a clearinghouse, or several, as some you’re able to access from multiple clearinghouses.
9 Best Clearing Houses for Affiliate Marketing
Some clearinghouses have automatic approval to all companies and you can get your links and start promoting right away.
On the other hand, others you will have to apply to the companies individually within the clearinghouse and wait for the approval.
Below you will find several categories with some of the best affiliate programs you can get approved for immediately and some general information about them.
Because there are an insane amount of affiliate programs, remember that it’s best to pick a niche or topic you love and run with it.
Affiliate Marketing For Beginners: On-site programs for auto-approval
Fiverr
Fiverr is great because it is user and beginner-friendly, and provides services people are already looking for.
Know someone planning on starting an online business? Will they need a website? Logo? SEO optimization? Marketing? Proofreading?
Moreover, any service you can think of Fiverr probably has it.
Not to mention, there are tons of people who don’t yet know about Fiverr that could really benefit from it.
Better yet, Fiverr offers a cookie duration of 30 days; so if someone registers with your link and purchases anything within 30 days, you’ll get a commission.
This is one of the ways many people learn how to make money online with affiliate marketing.
However, you will only get a commission on purchases for people not already registered with Fiverr.
Tip: You can make Fiverr work for you as well, by finding others who can help you create a marketing strategy for your affiliate links.
Sign up as a Fiverr affiliate.
Amazon
Amazon’s affiliate program is another that is very user-friendly.
Though the commissions are pretty low, if you market products right, or enough of them, you could earn yourself a pretty profitable online business.
There are resources that will help you here, including Site Stripe, which shows a toolbar at the top of your Amazon page to get instant links to the products you’re viewing, but it’s not required.
Amazon offers a 24-hour cookie duration, so anytime someone clicks on your Amazon link, even if they don’t buy the product you’re promoting, you’ll get commission on the purchases they do make if they purchase something within 24 hours.
Aweber
Because Aweber is a very popular and affordable email marketing service, over 100,000 businesses already use and love its platform, making promoting this company already very easy.
When users sign up, they will get a 30-day free trial to explore templates, sign-up forms, subscriber management, etc all to help scale their business, generate sales, and build a following.
Promoting this company will not only be easy, but useful to those wanting to build their presence online and they’ll have you to thank for the recommendation.
Awebers’ affiliate payout is pretty good too, starting at 30% commission on every sale.
Of course, the more people you refer, the more you earn, and your commissions are recurring, meaning for every month someone pays for the site, you get paid. (If they’re an Aweber customer for life, you’ll get paid every month for life.)
TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy is another affiliate program that you can start immediately.
Right now, it is the #1 rated YouTube Channel Management toolkit extension and is extremely useful.
In fact, it’s practically a must-have for all YouTubers to optimize their channel and increase productivity.
Additionally, there are tons of perks to signing up with TubeBuddy, and YouTubers are raving about it.
As for affiliate benefits, TubeBuddy offers aren’t too bad either.
They offer scaling commissions based on the number of sign-ups you generate and pay up to 50% recurring commissions.
Furthermore, it’s easily promotable and definitely worth the sign-up.
You should now have a pretty good grasp on how affiliate marketing works and be able to get started.
Marketing products or services as an affiliate can allow you to make a few extra dollars a month or turn into a full-time income. It all depends on how much work you’re willing to put into it.
If you are hoping to have a full-time income with affiliate marketing, your best option is to start a blog, direct traffic to your website, integrate an email subscription, and promote on social media and other sites.
Related Aricle: Creating a high-engagement blog