What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a moneymaking system where individuals and companies can earn a commission by promoting and recommending various products and services offered by companies participating in affiliate marketing programs.

Is affiliate marketing legit?

Yes. This is a legitimate way to earn money online. You do need to be sure to choose ethical companies that care about offering the best quality products/services to their target audience. Do your best to stay away from promoting scams and low-quality products that get bad reviews.

Can I do affiliate marketing as a side hustle or part-time?

Yes. This is a long-term business opportunity, and you can learn how to do it successfully in your spare time.

How does affiliate marketing work?

The first step is researching affiliate marketing networks and programs to see which ones you want to join. The second step is joining those networks and/or programs. Each network and program has its own application and verification process.

Once you are accepted, you can then find specific products and/or services to promote using customized affiliate links. These are called tracking links and they contain tracking “cookie” that identifies you as affiliate who made the referral. You can add those affiliate links to blogs, websites and social media pages.

When people click on your affiliate link and make a purchase, you are credited with the referral and earn a commission based upon a designated percentage of the sale. You are paid commissions based upon a payment schedule and commissions are sent to a third party payment processor such as Paypal, Payoneer or Stripe or to your bank account.

How much money can I make with affiliate marketing?

The truth is that you can make anywhere from $0 to $5,000+ per month as an affiliate marketer. Your success (or failure) at earning affiliate commissions is based upon knowledge about affiliate marketing, products and programs chosen, quality of content created, promotional strategies, time and effort put into your affiliate marketing projects, commitment to being successful, patience, persistence and unknown variables which may create challenges or roadblocks.

Affiliates who understand that affiliate marketing isn’t a “get rich quick scheme” but a real opportunity to gradually build a reliable source of online income, have the best chance of being successful.

How do I become an affiliate marketer?

Start by learning everything you can about how the best programs and strategies to become successful. Make an affiliate marketing plan that works for your lifestyle, and then, act on your plan. Start slow and gradually build upon your successes.

Are there any upfront costs associated with affiliate marketing?

While it doesn’t cost anything to join affiliate networks and programs, you should plan to spend between $50 and $200 to start. Costs may include training information, creating a blog and/or website, keyword research tool, AI writing tool or paid content writers.

Can affiliate marketing be done without a website?

Yes, but having a website is highly recommended. Why? Because a website is an online platform that you create and control. Otherwise, you are relying on social media platforms that require you to follow specific rules, and who have the power to either prevent you from posting affiliate links or remove those posted links at any time.

However, there are people who do earn affiliate commissions without a website. These people are usually social media influencers with hundreds to thousands of followers. Keep in mind that building a social media following requires a lot of time and effort and earnings are not guaranteed. So, this method isn’t that much easier than the website method.

By the way, the same thing is true for posting affiliate links on a YouTube channel.

What are the best practices for promoting affiliate products?

Be relevant. Only promote products or services that are relevant to your niche and target audience. Brands should align with your personal values and those of your audience.

Disclosures. Make sure you make it clear you are an affiliate promoting a product or service and that you may earn a commission if someone makes a purchase through your referral links. Follow all mandatory affiliate marketing disclosure guidelines to avoid losing your affiliate program accounts.

Be Authentic. Share your honest opinion about the products/services you are promoting. Not every product is all good or all bad. People appreciate it when flaws (cons) are pointed out. Keep in mind that if you give a glowing review and the product turns out to be bad or harmful, your reputation for being truthful is sure to take a hit, which can be bad for your earnings.

Provide educational value. Help people learn more about the products and services offered. Go into detail about what it is, what it does and how it can help your target audience. Don’t sell – teach. Reviews and tutorials are a great way to provide this kind of value and build trust.

Focus on quality over quantity. Try your best to make each piece of content you create for your affiliate marketing projects high quality. Do not simply cut and paste what others are doing. Do not create bland, mediocre content that doesn’t help your audience solve an issue or problem.

Be unique. Think about how your content can stand out and be unique from all the similar content out there. Why should someone like or share your content?

Engage with your audience. If you have a blog or social media account, respond to comments and questions. This helps to build a sense of community and it builds trust.

How do I find affiliate programs to join?

Best Creative Income Ideas has an entire section that provides you with information about the most popular affiliate networks and programs. Go [here] to find out more about them.

How do I choose a profitable niche for affiliate marketing?

This requires some research on your part. There are a large number of affiliate marketing programs that have excellent profitability but earning those profits requires you to be fully engaged in educating and helping a niche audience.

To increase profits, some affiliates focus on promoting products and services with higher commission payouts and/or recurring payments. For instance, SAAS (Software As A Service) companies tend to pay high commissions.

Generally, you’ll have more success at earning profits if you choose niches that you are genuinely interested in and like the products in that niche.

What is the role of cookies in affiliate marketing?

Tracking cookies are a key part of how affiliates are credited with earning referral commissions. The cookies are embedded into the affiliate link generated for each affiliate. This is the only way that companies can track who should get the commission when a person buys from an affiliate link referral.

How do I disclose affiliate links and comply with regulations?

Add a brief disclosure statement following legal guidelines that clearly informs people who encounter your content that you are an affiliate and may earn a commission should they make a purchase after clicking on the links you provide.

How do I create high-converting content for affiliate marketing?

Create useful content that is relevant to the niche you are in and helpful to people reading or watching your content. People are more likely to make purchases through your affiliate links when they like you, trust you and know you are giving them lots of valuable information that helps them out in some way.

How do I optimize my website for search engines (SEO) for affiliate marketing?

Use keyword research tools that help you quickly find relevant keywords for the content you are creating. These tools should also show you the competition levels for keywords so you can find keywords with low to medium competition. You can still use some high competition keywords to cover all keyword bases, but these are going to be hard to rank for in the search engines.

Do not overuse keywords to the point of being spammy. And make sure the keywords you choose are used in a way that makes sense to site visitors. Keywords should be a natural part of a sentence, instead of looking forced and awkward.

Make sure that all of the content you create is highly relevant for the niche you are in. For example, if your niche is traveling, don’t suddenly start sharing content about home electronics. These are two different niches, and you should create two separate sites for them to ensure there is a high degree of relevancy for the products you want to promote.

How can I drive traffic to my affiliate links or website?

• Create high-quality, high-value content.

• Make good use of relevant keywords.

• Create lots of content on your blog/website.

• Create content on other sites such as Medium and share links to your blog/website/content pages. Share links to your content on social media channels.

• Create free valuable content using an automated email messaging service like GetResponse and encourage people to sign up.

How long does it take to see results in affiliate marketing?

It can take, on average, anywhere from 3 to 6 months to get your first affiliate sale, so patience and persistence is required to be an affiliate marketer. When you take affiliate marketing seriously and follow the best tips and strategies, sales start to trickle in gradually. Eventually, that trickle turns into a steady stream of affiliate earnings, as long as you remain committed and active in creating good quality content that keeps readers and potential buyers engaged.

Affiliate Marketing FAQ

by Donna Gets Real, an affiliate marketer and experienced online content writer.