A Beginner's Guide to Affiliate Marketing: What to do and how to get started

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to monetize a website.

You wouldn’t be the first to have never heard this term before, and you’re probably wondering, “What is affiliate marketing?”.

Simply put, affiliate marketing is when a business markets its offers through a third party with affiliate links that people can click on to take them to the product that’s offered.

When you add affiliate links to your website, you’ll receive a commission from each person that clicks your affiliate link and completes a conversion action.

This means that you make money when your customers buy another company’s products that you marketed on your website or blog.

When this is done effectively, it’s a win-win situation for everyone!

Let’s start with the basics — affiliate marketing is made up of three parts:

These are the fundamentals of affiliate marketing, and we’re here to walk you through every step of the process.

Let’s dive into more details on how affiliates get links from businesses to market, what you can expect to earn, and how you can expect to be paid.

An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between sellers and affiliates where businesses can submit their links, and affiliates can choose from the array of offers they want to market.

Some popular affiliate networks include Clickbank, Refersion and Amazon Associates.

A neutral space is created by the top affiliate networks where both businesses and affiliates can join to interact with each other and find what they need.

The advantages include small businesses gaining great exposure to affiliates that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to, and affiliates are provided with an extensive variety of offers to choose from.

However, on the downside, most affiliate networks also require a service fee for sellers or merchants.

Affiliate programs, on the other hand, are set up solely by businesses.

Affiliates then join a business’ affiliate program and gain access to the business’ links which they can market to their own customers.

The main advantage is that businesses have more control over their program and more direct access to their affiliates which allows them to build closer and stronger seller-affiliate relationships.

Systeme.io gives you everything you need to run your own affiliate program — including powerful affiliate tracking so you can make the most of it!

Plus, it’ll literally cost you nothing to get started.

With our affiliate program, you can:

Affiliate marketing is a legitimate way to grow your online business. It alone can bring you as much as a 20% increase in your annual revenue.

In fact, here at systeme.io, we’ve paid more than $3 million to our affiliates so far — safe to say, we’ve significantly benefited from our affiliate program.

Still not sure which affiliate program to go for?

High-paying affiliate programs aren’t difficult to find — Click here to see the top 50 best affiliate programs that’ll make your decision easier.

For all the overachievers out there, there's one more division that separates growing a tree from growing a forest.

You can become a super affiliate and make more than $10 000/day!

But don’t become discouraged if you’re struggling to reach your first $1000.

It’s estimated that it can take anywhere between 12 and 18 months to reach your first $1000 — but from there it really gets easier.

Put in the hard work, and it'll be worth it in the long run.

Your success will depend on your content, niche, how often you post, and the search engine optimization (SEO) strategies you follow.

Remember that affiliate marketing is a part-time passive income source — but you can still wake up with thousands of dollars in your bank account if you do it right by standing out from other affiliate marketers.

In this first model, the affiliate is paid for the online traffic they send to the business’ website that they’re marketing.

The affiliate’s only goal is to pique the reader’s interest just enough for them to want to know more — so whether or not the prospect actually purchases something from the business, the affiliate earns money.

More traffic doesn’t always equal more sales, yet the affiliate still gets paid.

In this model, for every lead that is converted, the affiliate is paid.

This means that it's the affiliate’s objective to get the lead to follow the link as well as perform the desired action, whether it's submitting a form, signing up for a trial, joining the email list, or buying a product.

This one requires a bit more enticement from the affiliate.

This is the most common model as it takes all the pressure from the business and hands it off to the affiliate.

Now, the affiliate only gets paid if a successful purchase is made.

Affiliates need to pull out all the stops for this one, as they not only need to interest the reader but also convince them entirely to make a purchase.

Here, the affiliate earns a commission based on the sales their recruits make.

This means you’ll earn a bonus commission over and above the regular rate offered to affiliates.

For example: systeme.io allows you — when setting up your own affiliate program — to set a percentage of commission you want to give to your main affiliate related to every affiliate they bring to your affiliate program.

It would be impossible to create content that caters to every person on the internet — this is why it’s critical to find your niche market.

Your niche market is a distinct sector of the larger market that is made up of your potential customers that you’ll target in your online business or blog.

Your niche should coincide with your interests, skills, and expertise — it’s vital that you find a profitable niche you can see yourself being passionate about for years to come (and that’ll make you good money!).

In affiliate marketing, your niche market is the people most likely to enjoy your content, click on the link, and make a purchase.

This group of people should all be interested in the same thing, and they must have something in common — because finding this shared trait or interest will help you to target your niche market.

These similarities could be demographics, lifestyles, budgets, cultures, needs, professions, hobbies, and many more!

It’s your job to find out what sets your niche market apart from the rest — and you can do all of this through research.

Researching your niche market is the only way of getting to know them.

So let’s go through 3 of the most effective ways to research your niche.

Keyword research is an often-overlooked aspect of SEO because finding the right keyword takes time — and every niche has its own keywords.

You should start by identifying the relevant keywords potential customers are using to find products, services, and information in your niche.

There are 3 types of keywords:

If you’re trying to find what works within your niche, why not look at the people that are already succeeding?

By evaluating the leaders within your niche, you can identify everything they're doing right that effectively engages with your niche market.

You can employ the same tactics but in a way that separates you from your competitors — because simply being a copy of them won’t get you very far.

Search trends can tell you more about your niche than you would think.

A useful tool is Google Trends — Which will show you what's being searched within your niche and when.

This is extremely helpful for learning what is popular at the moment, so you can create relevant scheduled content to keep up with the trends.

Defining your niche market is crucial to finding your own place within your market — and by extension, finding which affiliate program is right for you.

This will play an important role in choosing the offer you want to market and in creating content that is optimized for your audience.

Maybe you already have space where you cast your content out onto the internet — and maybe you've also already established a loyal reader base.

If this is the case, this section will teach you how to pick your platform.

But if this isn’t the case, well, you’ve got a lot to learn!

Think about the content you have consumed today. Did you check your Instagram?

Maybe watch a YouTube video? Did you read a blog post or see any banner ads?

These are all platforms that are used by influencers or affiliate marketers to promote affiliate products.

Choosing a platform for your content is dependent on the content itself.

Blogging has become affiliates’ favorite medium, so let’s do this one first:

Next up is video content — and here YouTube reigns supreme, although there are lots of platforms out there such as TikTok, Vine, and many more!

Lastly, there are social media platforms that have largely become populated with businesses and marketing — with a lot of visual content:

With your platform chosen, your next step is to build a reader base — this is the group of loyal users that keep returning to your content.

This means more traffic and more clicks on your affiliate links!

Now that you've found your footing and chosen your platform, it’s time to become an affiliate and get the ball rolling.

But there's still an age-old question — affiliate program or affiliate network?

Fortunately for you, as an affiliate, there are free affiliate networks and programs, so money is not an issue.

So, let’s weigh up the options.

The main advantage of affiliate networks is that you have access to a variety of brands, meaning you don’t have to scour looking for individual products.

Some extra bonuses are standardized tracking, reliable payment methods, and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for links and reporting.

But there are two sides to every coin.

Affiliate networks not only have a lot of competition for products, but it can also be a struggle to apply and negotiate with brands, plus brands can move to another affiliate network creating a broken link.

When it comes to affiliate programs, you work directly with the brand, which helps you to build a better relationship.

With that being said, it can be difficult to find dependable and effective affiliate programs that make the process super easy.

So, the question remains — affiliate program or affiliate network?

Why not both? You can easily try out affiliate networks like CJ, and affiliate programs like systeme.io (60% recurring commission) and see what works for you.

Once you’ve chosen your affiliate network or program, you're ready to choose your products so you can make offers.

Creating and selling products is one of the oldest strategies to get an income from your business — both digital and physical products work.

Sell an ebook, an online course, or even limited-edition t-shirts!

Remember that product sales can either be digital or physical:

If you have an online business, then you might already know how to sell physical products — but are you making money from digital products yet?

With digital products, what’s required is time and mental energy.

Plus, you don’t have to continually replenish inventory, and once the product’s done, it’s done! Simply update it every now and then to keep it relevant to your audience.

Need some ideas for creating digital products? Click here to find out more about the digital products you can sell.

Choosing your products may seem like a frivolous decision but choosing the right offer can make or break your affiliate marketing.

So, to set you on the right track, here are some things to keep in mind when deciding on your offer:

This is what we’ve all been waiting for — content creation!

What would a link be without content? A very bad affiliate marketing strategy, that’s for sure!

We've discussed the different platforms needed for each type of content, but we haven’t spoken about the approaches your content could take.

Here's a list of the most popular content formats for affiliate marketing:

Make sure to make use of social media and SEO tactics to ensure your content is seen far and wide — so that you can increase your audience size.

That covers the 5 steps to becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

Affiliate marketing strategies are the only way to transition from a low-level to a high-level affiliate — and to start making more money!

These are the strategies you put into place to optimize your content, drive traffic, and ultimately convert more leads.

If you’re going to try affiliate marketing, keep these things in mind:

You never want to close yourself off to opportunities — a simple and powerful strategy is to affiliate yourself with more than one brand.

This supplies you with more leads, more traffic, and more money.

Affiliate marketer and course creator, Jonathan Montoya, suggests using a tactic called the affiliate stacking ecosystem where you have a core high-ticket offer with side offers that support it, to give your clients the most value.

You can also set up a steady stream of income — if one offer drops in popularity, another one of yours may rise.

First, you need to test and analyze your conversion rates.

This refers to the number of people that click on your links as compared to the number of people that actually purchase the offer.

The next step is conversion rate optimization — it simply means incorporating certain strategies into your online business with the goal of getting more out of your existing customers.

An excellent way of doing this is through A/B testing which checks which ways of phrasing content or placing call-to-action (CTA) buttons work best.

To do this, you set up two different versions of your webpage and see which one gets a better response, focusing on the conversion rates.

You can also perform A/B tests on your website or blog’s design, CTAs, visuals, coupons and deals, sense of urgency, and the placement and presentation of your links.

Want to learn more about optimizing your conversion rates? Click here.

Honesty is really the best policy!

We know you’re excited to get started with affiliate marketing. But before you do, we have a word of caution you should keep in mind.

And that’s to put your audience first.

They’re your most valuable asset — and you don’t want to lose your customers or readers in the long run because you got a little too excited and implemented affiliate marketing that didn’t resonate with them.

It’s important that you invest your time in making sure you grow and maintain your website’s audience.

Be honest with your audience that you’re using affiliate marketing — because people don’t like it when you pretend that you’re not selling them anything when it’s clear that you are.

In addition, it’s a legal requirement to let your audience know that you're an affiliate and will be earning a commission.

You can promote our Free plan, annual plans (which are offered at a 30% discount), lead magnets, and also, our $7 online courses.

Additionally, you can browse our marketplace to find tons of other offers to promote.

For additional tips and tricks on how to successfully promote systeme.io, you can join our Facebook community and communicate with like-minded entrepreneurs and other systeme.io affiliates.

Not only does systeme.io offer an affiliate program, but it also allows you to set up and run your very own program!

— You can read more on how to set up your own affiliate program here.

There’s no doubt an affiliate income is a smart way to earn money online.

In fact, affiliate programs can be a very effective monetization strategy since the commissions are usually based on the sale price of the items in question.

As you have learned, the question of, “How to make money with affiliate marketing” has a fairly simple answer.

All you have to do is create a platform within your niche, choose a product through an affiliate program or network, craft your content, and get paid.

Understanding the inner workings, as well as the major strategies, can also teach you how to succeed in affiliate marketing.

Are you interested in affiliate marketing?

Well, what are you waiting for?

Start your affiliate marketing business today with systeme.io’s forever Freemium plan — we won’t ask for your card details!