How To Become an Affiliate Marketer

If you want to become an affiliate marketer, a unique career option, you need the right step-by-step guide. Learning how to become an affiliate marketer isn’t exactly easy. However, there are many strategies and opinions available to consider.

The good news, you won’t need any degree or education to become an affiliate marketer. Most affiliate marketers are self-taught through online reading, guides, and videos. Let’s look at some of your tasks as an affiliate marketer and the steps you will take to become one.

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Maybe you’re not even sure what affiliate marketing is, but it sounds interesting. Affiliate marketing is rather simple. You become a referral center for a company or product owner.

As an affiliate marketer, you will work with a merchant that provides a service or a product. Then, you will promote their product or service on your website. When a customer clicks the link or ad and makes a purchase, you get paid a commission on that sale.

Job Duties of an Affiliate Marketer

Since you will be working for yourself, you decide the job duties you will take on. Many affiliate marketers outsource the things they need to be done but don’t want to do themselves. As a beginner, however, you might be handling many responsibilities, such as:

• Website development and design
• Content writing
• Search engine optimization
• Affiliate product research
• Email subscriber list building
• Keyword research
• Social media posting and marketing

You will take care of everything necessary to promote your websites, which will make you money.

How To Become an Affiliate Marketer in 5 Steps

Step #1 – Pick a Niche

It all starts with your niche. First, you will choose the topic you want to build a website around and create content for. Most affiliate marketers start with a niche they understand already or are interested in.

The goal of affiliate marketing is to spread information that helps others. Yes, you want to make money, but you won’t really make any money until you learn to provide content that helps others.

Choosing a good niche you can research and write about is a big first step. Make sure you choose a narrow niche instead of something general, such as kitchen appliances or weight loss.

A narrow niche allows you to be super-focused in a specific area. This will allow you to become an expert in the area much easier. For example, instead of kitchen appliances, narrow it down to air fryers or coffee makers.

Step #2 – Start a Website and Blog

You will need to start a website and a blog to become an affiliate marketer. This will require you to buy hosting, a domain name and either design the site yourself or hire someone to do it for you.

Depending on the affiliate products you plan to use, you will need specific pages. So before you build your website, make sure you check the terms and conditions for Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, ShareASale, and other affiliate marketing programs.

While you certainly can make money with YouTube and other platforms without a website, you don’t own those platforms. You could spend months building up a YouTube following and watch it vanish overnight. However, if you build your own website and blog, you own it, and it cannot be taken away from you so easily.

Your website and blog will become what many refer to as the money site. Therefore, all your other social media and other platforms efforts should be designed to send traffic to your website.

Step #3 – Start Creating Content

The key to any successful affiliate marketing website is the content. Therefore, you want to start creating content for your blog as soon as possible. The more content you create, the larger your reach will become.

Of course, you need to create good content people will want to read. So it’s also a good idea to understand how to write content for the search engines and the readers.

When you start creating content, you want to sharpen your keyword research skills. So it might be a good idea to invest in a good keyword tool.

It would be best to create at least 25 articles before you move on to the next step. These articles need to be in-depth and not short articles. Aim for at least 800 words per article, if not more.

Getting a good foundation set up with 25 or more in-depth articles is vital in this process. These articles should be written based on keywords you believe you can rank for easily. Using a good keyword research tool can help you to pick the right topics.

Step #4 – Start Marketing

Once you have your 25 articles created, it’s time to build your audience. This can be done in many different ways. Commonly, affiliate marketers will use SEO (Search Engine Optimization). However, you will also want to use other options, such as:

• YouTube – Turn your articles into videos
• Podcast – Go further in-depth about each article’s subject to create podcast episodes
• LinkedIn – Share articles on your profile
• Facebook – Share and promote your articles
• Instagram – Create images and videos to share about your niche
• Twitter – Share your articles and other content on this social platform

There are also forums, newer social media platforms, and many other ways to promote your website and blog. You can use paid traffic to build up your audience, too.

The key is to get people to come back to your site often. It takes multiple visits for someone to trust your site, so you want to get them to follow you on social media, if possible.

Step #5 – Start Monetizing Your Website/Blog

At this point, it’s time to start signing up for affiliate programs. You haven’t monetized your website yet, and that was on purpose. There are many affiliate programs to consider, including:

• Amazon
• ShareASale
• CJ (Commission Junction)
• Clickbank
• JVZoo
• FlexOffers

Your niche may determine the right affiliate programs for you. It’s also possible to search for a specific brand name with the word affiliate to find out if they have an affiliate program you can join.

Once you’ve chosen a few affiliate programs, you can start adding links to your content and ads onto your site. Contextual links tend to work very well. You can also add banners to your site to advertise different products within your niche.

For example, if you chose to focus on air fryers, you can become an affiliate with Amazon. Maybe you wrote articles specifically about different types of air fryers and what they can cook. Now, you can choose the top air fryers from Amazon to advertise on your site.

Frequently Asked Questions About Becoming an Affiliate Marketer

How much can an affiliate marketer make?

The earning potential is unlimited for affiliate marketers. Top affiliate marketers make well over a million dollars per year, and even an average affiliate marketer can make a full-time income.

You are running your own business, so you are only limited by the amount of time and money you invest. Many affiliate marketers will start small and build their businesses. They will likely outsource tasks, such as SEO, website design, and even content writing. This can help you to build more affiliate websites in other niches.

If set up correctly, affiliate marketing can earn you a passive income. In addition, some affiliate programs pay a recurring income. For example, web hosting companies often charge every month and pay affiliates every month for the life of the customer.

What is the cost to get started with affiliate marketing?

The cost can range quite a bit, depending on what you plan to do and how you grow. For example, you can start your first website and blog for as little as $25 with a recurring hosting cost each month under $10. Most beginning affiliate marketers will spend less than $200 for the first year.

However, you can spend more if you prefer to outsource tasks. If you plan to do any paid marketing, it will cost more, as well.

How do I get paid as an affiliate marketer?

There are multiple ways you can get paid as an affiliate marketer. For example, some programs pay a commission for each sale you make, while others pay you for each click, lead, or even for impressions.

The most common way to get paid is through a commission for the sales you make. This is usually a percentage of the product or service cost. If it’s a subscription service or product, you might get paid a recurring commission.

Is Affiliate Marketing Right For You?

Those looking for an opportunity to work at home and run a business can become affiliate marketers. You can use the steps above to get started. There are numerous guides for different strategies you can use, but the basics are the same.

Start by choosing a niche, building a website, creating content, and promoting your website. If you provide good content, it’s just a matter of putting in the time and promoting your website. Now you know how to become an affiliate marketer. After that, it’s up to you to make the rest happen.

Jordan Fabel

Covering different 'paths' that people's lives can take. Creative, foster parent, ticket dismissal, you get the idea. Exploring the requirements, certifications, exams, and obviously, approved courses along each path.