If you’ve ever landed on a blog post or seen a YouTube video before, you’ll have heard of affiliate links. In simple words, affiliate marketing is when you promote other company’s products. As an affiliate marketer, you find a product you enjoy, promote the product, and then earn a part of the profit from every sale.
What Is An Affiliate Link & How It Works
Every affiliate marketer gets a unique link from the seller. Those links are used to track who is responsible for a sale. The link will have a reference name or number. When someone clicks the link, an affiliate cookie is stored on their device. The cookie is a small file that helps the seller identify the affiliate who made the sale. Since the cookie doesn’t expire straight away and is stored on a device for a certain amount of time, as an affiliate you’ll get commission even if the buyer delays the purchase.
How You Get Paid
Basically, every time someone clicks an affiliate link placed on your platform and buys the product you’re promoting, you’ll get a commission. How much money you’ll get depends on the affiliate program you’re a part of. For example, the ClickBank affiliate program normally offers over 50% commission. If it’s a physical product you’re promoting, profitable commissions start at around $40.
How To Become An Affiliate Marketer
Essentially, you become an online salesperson for the company when you join an affiliate program. All you need to get started is a platform where you can reach other people and promote goods. The best part here is that you’re not limited to one company or even one type of product. You can promote items or services from many different companies and earn commissions from all of them at the same time. To become an affiliate marketer, you need to follow this general strategy:
Decide On a Platform For Promoting Goods
Most people think of a blog or YouTube when it comes to affiliate marketing. However, you can choose any social media platform to get started. So if you have a big following in TikTok (for example) – that would be your best choice to start using affiliate links.
Find Affiliate Programs To Join Or Products To Promote
Choosing what products and services you’d like to promote will take some time. Here you need to consider a few important factors like how much commission you’re likely to make, and whether you want to be associated with these products and services.
Place Your Affiliate Links & Earn Your First Commission
Once you find and join the affiliate programs you’re happy with, all that’s left to do is to create content and place your affiliate links where appropriate. When people start buying the products you’re promoting, you’ll get your first commissions.
What Are The Best Affiliate Link Programs?
Choosing the right affiliate link program to join can be tough since there’s more than one factor you need to consider.
What type of products you’d be promoting? How complicated is the acceptance process? Do you like the payout structure that the program uses?
Those are just some of the questions you need to answer before joining an affiliate program. To make your choice a little easier, here’s a list of some of the best affiliate programs out there suitable for beginners. On the downside, the commission rates aren’t the best. So you might want to look for another affiliate program in addition to this one.
Skimlinks
Skimlinks is also a good choice for beginners. The best part about this program is the automatic approval process. You only need to fill in the application to get started. Skimlinks offers a big variety of products in every popular niche, so you’ll definitely find the right products for you. Plus, you don’t need to apply to every merchant separately – you can promote any Skimlinks products right after they approve your application. The biggest drawback here is low commission rates. However, it’s still a good platform to get started.
ClickBank
If you’re looking for higher commission rates, you won’t find a platform better than ClickBank. While it’s also beginner-friendly and easy to use, the biggest advantage of ClickBank is that you’ll earn more money from fewer sales. However, this affiliate program isn’t suitable for anyone who wants to promote non-digital products. ClickBank’s main focus is eBooks, so your content will have to relate to that category in one way or another.
ShareASale
ShareASale is a great choice for someone who wants to use affiliate links across different websites. For example, if you want to advertise the products on your blog, Instagram, and YouTube channel. This platform has an easy to use interface and allows you to quickly add affiliate links to multiple websites. ShareASale offers many different products that you can choose from. The signup process is also free and very straight-forward. The only downside of the platform is the payout threshold of $50, meaning you won’t be able to withdraw a lesser amount.
Make Money While You’re Sleeping
From all of the ways of making money online, like selling your photos or teaching an online course, affiliate link marketing is probably the least-demanding one. While it’s not exactly passive income, it still doesn’t require your time and attention 24/7, and you still make money even when you’re sleeping. Are you looking to get into affiliate marketing? What sort of products would you like to promote? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
