How Much Money Can You Make As An Affiliate Marketer? - The 2022 guide to making money with affiliate marketing for beginners

Mohamed Sirag

5 May, 2021

New to the world of affiliate marketing? Do you know you want to do something, but you need a guide to get started?

You're in the right place.

This ultimate guide on how to make money with affiliate marketing for beginners gives you the steps you need to get started.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways for beginners to make money online. You may already know that.

Either way, here are a few reasons why beginners and veterans alike love affiliate marketing.

It is mainly a passive income business.

You don't have to worry about inventory or customer service.

You can help others by sharing products and services that you really like.

Every time you make an affiliate sale, it is a profit for you and the customer!

I remember Googling How to start affiliate marketing and how to make money with affiliate marketing and feeling overwhelmed. I was lost and didn't know where to start... or... if I ever knew.

I didn't know which niche was best for me, which affiliate programs were good and what source of traffic I would use to get people to my affiliate content.

After a fairly paralysis analysis, I knew I had to start with the affiliate marketing industry. I started with YouTube content and made a lot of mistakes.

In short, I am now a successful affiliate marketer and I earn a commission from products/services that I advertise in different niches.

This ultimate guide is the accumulation of my experiences and lessons learned over the last four years in affiliate marketing.

This article will help you,:

• Getting started step by step

• Avoid Beginner Traps

• And give you tips on how to speed up your learning curve!

• Dive.

What IS Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the business model of selling other people's products or services and receiving a commission. And it's basically revenue sharing from a company's perspective.

You may have already done affiliate marketing (anyone can do it)!

Have you ever shared a discount code or offer with a friend or family member to be rewarded with a benefit?

If so, you may already have a taste of affiliate/referral marketing!

For example, I shared my Instacart link (an online grocery delivery service) with my friend so he could log in and add 1 10 to his account (and that's what I do).

It works great until you run out of friends and family with whom you can share your link!

This is where affiliate marketing skills come in.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Many affiliate programs (aka. partners or referral programs) can be found in the footer of the company's website.

Affiliate marketing is similar to being a seller. Your content is your sales pitch and your employees are your partners.

A traditional seller, say in the mobile phone industry, makes a commission for every Android or iPhone they sell.

He or she uses persuasion and sales techniques to identify a problem (i.e. update a customer's phone) and present a correct solution (i.e. a better phone).

This is basically affiliate marketing, except that our" sales area " is the Internet.

We work with companies, markets, and private suppliers to earn commissions on the sale of their products through our online content creation efforts.

Suppose you recently bought a new Smart Thermostat for your home. You can go to the website of this company to see if you have an affiliate program.

If you have one, you can sign up to access your affiliate links.

Once you have your links, you can promote the link in an article in your Blog or save a video and insert your partner links in the description of your YouTube video(there are also other methods).

Regardless of how you want to promote your affiliate links, you will receive a commission if someone buys through your link, as all affiliate programs can track which affiliate has referenced a prospect on their product or service.

But that's not all. There's this thing called affiliate cookies that makes an affiliate business one of my favorite business models on Earth!

Affiliate Marketing Cookies, 101

All affiliate programs have involved affiliate marketing Cookies.

An affiliate Cookie is just a Code that your affiliate link inserts into your potential affiliate customer's browser (this is only done when you click on your link, so the affiliate program can track whether a sale comes from you or not).

Here's the best part. As a general rule, an affiliate marketing Cookie remains in users ' browsers for 30 days.

That is, if this person does not buy the first time and returns to the purchase 15 days later, you will still receive a commission!

There are affiliate programs where Cookies last 60 days, 180 days, and even a year!

Are you starting to get how affiliate marketing works?

Are you starting to understand why your favorite influencers, YouTube channels, podcasts, and bloggers have sponsored products (also known as affiliate products) in your content?

Two Words: Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate marketing offers added value to the customer and rewards you with a sales commission.

If you start getting good, you can create content and do it last, so you'll be paid passively every time someone clicks on your links.

Can you benefit?

Definitely! Everyone can be a successful partner, but making money takes time and effort.

Can you write an article or create a YouTube video that solves your audience's problems?

YouTube is a great choice to start your affiliate marketing journey. This is how most affiliates get their departure.

Sean from Think Media started promoting Amazon products by solving the problem of an audience. Watch his VidSummit story, how he started promoting affiliate offers with YouTube.

Do you think you can handle creating a simple YouTube video and improve over time? If so, you have the option to become an affiliate marketer.

If you can do that, your next question might be, how fast can I make money with affiliate marketing?

The answer to this question depends on two things:

Supply and demand of content in your niche

How good is your content to solve your audience's problem

For example, if you have a YouTube video of Best X for y (that is, the best cold juicers for 2021) and it gets several views a day, you can make money in a few days.

The more a content creator continues to create high-quality content, the more money you make from your affiliate links. The same goes for Blog posts.

If you don't have content on the Internet, don't worry. It is unusual for a beginner affiliate marketer to have existing content. I hope you work on it soon enough.

How Much Money Can you earn?

Frankly, the sky here is the limit. There is no cork.

I started making YouTube videos in my first niche, which brought me closer to a four-figure month.

As I progressed, I added a website (mostly Blog posts) to complete my channel, eventually exceeded my goal, and started earning an average five-figure amount per month.

Disclaimer: These results are not typical-I was very "hungry" and forced to be a successful affiliate marketer.

Creating YouTube videos and blogging is what online marketers call Free Traffic (aka. Targeted traffic).

Affiliates who are just starting out can earn their first Dollar, or hundreds of dollars a month, using only free traffic. Some may even reach the average range of four to five figures per month through one of these two marketing channels.

At the other end of affiliate marketing is the super affiliate revenue spectrum. These are affiliate traders who have sharpened their trade and can make anywhere from $1,000/day to $10,000/day and more.

Usually, these affiliates make affiliate campaigns of paid traffic, free traffic, or a combination of both.

Some even create an email list to conduct email marketing campaigns (an advanced affiliate marketing strategy).

You see, there is no answer to the question because it ultimately depends on you.

A step-by-step guide for beginners to affiliate marketing

Let's start with the intent of consumer research.

Consumer Search Intent understands why your reader clicked on your content.

Are you there to understand something complex?

Are you there to make a purchase decision?

Are you here for entertainment?

One of your main goals in affiliate marketing is to attract readers/viewers into your niche who have a problem with your content.

You can solve a problem or pain point with your content and finally your affiliate link. This is how the game is played.

Sounds pretty simple, right?

Well, over time, it becomes easy. However, just Warning, This is not for the faint of heart.

They must first fight the resistance because this will be the first time for most people that they switch from consumer to producer.

If you accept this, then let's start with the affiliate marketing guide below.

Step 1: Choose Your Niche

Now that we've covered the basics of affiliate marketing, your first step is to choose a niche that interests you. It will be better if you have a passion for it, but it is not necessary now.

If you already have a niche in mind, you can take the next step.

Niche selection is one of the most important steps when starting an affiliate marketing business. Beginners are usually concerned about the following:

• Are there any affiliate products I can sell in my desired niche?

• There are online shoppers in this niche?

• Can I compete with the competition in this niche?

• Let's approach them one by one, shall we?

Are there products I can promote in my desired niche?

More than likely. I'm sure you were on Amazon.com before. And you may have noticed that you have products for every imaginable category (niche)!

So do not let this question hinder the choice of your niche.

Amazon is one of the largest affiliate programs in the world, it is beginner-friendly and you can promote products in your inventory.

We will discuss the Amazon affiliate marketing program in Step 2, as well as other affiliate programs and marketplaces.

There are online shoppers in this niche?

If you are interested in your niche, you can understand the desires and needs of your target audience.

This includes thinking about how your audience thinks.

If you are thinking about what your potential buyer would get into Google (and other search engines) and/or YouTube (which search engines are called searches or keywords), this is an important skill that major affiliate marketers have.

Ubersuggest is a free tool to penetrate deeper into keywords. This tool gives you a good idea of how many people in your niche are looking for products and content.

Here is an example in the home brewery niche:

The volume ("flight") column shows the number of people searching for the keyword per month. Be sure to analyze the requirements of your market.

We will cover traffic sources again in step four.

Can I compete with the competition in this niche?

Competition is not a bad thing. It would be nice if there was no competition.

But this does not mean that competition will not be more intense. As digital marketing tools and guides (like these) are better and easier to use, competition intensifies.

To counter this, I recommend YouTube, especially as a beginner, as it is easier to stand out from the competition.

There is much less friction compared to launching an affiliate website and learning the traditional SEO game (search Engine Optimization).

However, if you are interested in creating niche sites, I recommend reading our best affiliate marketing and online training courses.

Managing an affiliate site includes a domain name, web hosting, installing themes, creating blogs (product reviews, guides, comparisons, etc.).), Improve domain authority and page Authority, keep site visitors on the page, and more.

Anyhoo, back to YouTube…

On YouTube, videos are not only categorized by keyword when people search for content, but they can also be categorized into "recommended" videos (usually on the right side of a YouTube videos page).

In order to further counter the competition, it would be a good idea to set up two sources of traffic. Two is enough to treat like a beginner. The two options I recommend are Google and / or YouTube Traffic.

They came out a few years ago with a free traffic source for a company, but not in 2021 and so on.

That's fine if you haven't picked a niche yet, but make sure you have three in mind as we go through the rest of the steps.

Step 2: Become An Affiliate

The next step is to become an affiliate marketer by signing up for an affiliate program or affiliate marketplace.

What Is An Affiliate Program?

An affiliate program is another way for a company to make money.

When a company offers an affiliate program (sometimes called a referral program), it creates another source of income by registering individuals (partners) who market and sell their products/services for a commission.

All affiliate programs have rules and agreements that they usually say:

How much % commission is paid and how often

How long do your affiliate Cookies last (remember how long after someone clicks your link, you can still get paid if the end user ends up buying)

How and how you can not promote your products or services (for example, some affiliate programs do not allow you to promote your brand keywords in Google Ads)

In which countries can you and can you promote your products or services

Once you have signed up for an affiliate program(you usually need to create an account), you can access your affiliate links.

Most of the time, affiliate programs give you promotional material to promote your products!

Affiliate links, if you've never seen one, have a tracking Code in your link URL. At least one of these Codes is a unique tracker for affiliate marketing. In this way, the company can track the traffic and sales it produces.

This is for example my link to advertising for ClickMagick, a click-tracking tool (convenient for affiliates): https://clickmagick.com/go/clik4543

If someone clicks on this link, ClickMagick will save on your page of things and track whether it has made a referral sale, and give credit to the sale accordingly.

How affiliate Marketing programs work!

Types Of Programs

As you progress through your affiliate marketing journey, you will come across other Blogs, Facebook groups, forums and notice some unique Lingo for different types of affiliate programs.

Let's cover them briefly.

One-level programs: this is your Standard custom affiliate program. You will receive a commission per sales transaction if a sale is made through your affiliate link.

Two-step programs: with this type, you receive commissions when you refer other affiliates to the main affiliate program and when you earn money as an affiliate. This is little more than a tiered Marketing approach. As a rule, these types are found in the online niche making money.

Recurring programs: have you ever signed up for a service that will charge you monthly? Well, there are affiliate programs that offer recurring monthly payment commissions! These are services such as email autoresponders. And supplements are an example in the health market.

Site-wide Commissions: some affiliate links give you credits for each Affiliate product a potential customer purchases on the company's website. Amazon Associates is a great example.

Pay-Per-Lead: with this type of program, you generate leads for the company and receive a commission (usually lower than other types). It can be as simple as a potential prospect to populate an Opt-in page with your link.

Pay-Per-Call: this causes someone to call and stay on the phone for X minutes. If the criteria are met,you will be paid to provide a lead.

Affiliate programs vs markets

So far, we have discussed individual affiliate programs.

Here's what the Clickmagick affiliate program looks like, a custom affiliate program:

But there are also affiliate markets (aka. Affiliate networks). These are their Clickbank, ShareASale, Commission Junction and Market Health (to name a few).

The markets have hundreds of traders, usually in different industries, and you can choose the dealer you want to promote.

Since you are in a market and you have options, traders show some statistics (Commission, EPC). profit per click, Conversion rate, etc.) to be competitive in acquiring affiliates (you) to promote your products and services.

Which program or market should you join?

To help you choose your ideal affiliate program or marketplace, here are some criteria to consider.

Does the company have an excellent reputation in the sector?

Does it have a reasonable commission payment? High commissions are excellent if you are serious.

Do you have products or services that have been heavily converted?

Do you offer a long Cookie duration?

Do you have low repayment rates?

Bonus: if it is a recurring program and meets the above criteria, you have found a hot program!

Every affiliate dreams of a reputable product with super high commissions, but is this always the best scenario?

It honestly depends on your niche. Your niche usually determines the types of programs available to you.

For example, if you're in a health and wellness niche, your products are usually on the lower commission page, so you rely on traffic volume to drive affiliate sales.

The same can sometimes be said for the market of love and relationships. They usually rely on search volume for sales. Don't be fooled – bulk volume can add up significantly and generate tons of sales.

On the other hand, if you are in a rich niche, your commissions usually range from medium to high commissions. Therefore, you do not have to rely on the volume of sales.

In both scenarios, affiliates were successful (i.e. living more than in the comfort of their living room).

The best programs for beginners

In this short section, I will discuss the best programs for beginners based on the 3 markets.

Excerpt from Russell Brunson's book Expert Secrets: the 3 markets disintegrate into sub-markets (aka. sub-Niches)

The Asset Market

In your fortune niche, you will eventually discover the tools of commerce. These tools are perfect for your audience if you:

(a) use them for your business

(b) can show that life would be easier if other people used it.

For example, everyone in the online Marketing niche needs two things:

An autoresponder email

A landing page software or website

The above two fees are monthly fees. Thus, you can expect recurring affiliate commissions.

If you are in this niche, the ideal is to sign up for the affiliate program of an autoresponder and landing page software so that you can promote them. I use GetResponse and Clickfunnels consistently, so these are my first two programs.

Healthcare market

In the healthcare market, the obvious choice is to be an Amazon partner. They are perfect for converting people. And you get affiliate credits for every purchase made by a customer for the next 24 hours after clicking your link (Site-wide).

The disadvantage is that they offer lower commissions (up to 10% – and this is on the high side). Unless you sell fitness equipment or the like, there will be nothing to write home about – at least not at first.

But this is where volume comes into play again. In a health niche, commissions on products and services are usually lower, so you need to compensate for this in your content (see Step 3).

Alternative, but not equal, options at Amazon (which pay more) are:

• Clickbank

• ShareASale

• Market Health

• Affiliate programs supplement

• These (except ShareASale these days) are the most beginner-friendly markets.

Let's say you're in a health detox niche (or a diet niche). Clickbank has a few products to choose from:

The Clickbank affiliate network does not have too many additions. A popular is Organifi.

However, if you have a supplement in your niche that you take every day, there is a good chance that the company has an affiliate program or is hosted in a marketplace!

The Relationship Market

I will be totally transparent here; I have never entered this market as an affiliate. However, I know that affiliates are successful in this niche.

Clickbank is a decent market here. I have seen dating products and spirituality products being the best performing for affiliates on Clickbank.

If there is nothing you like about Clickbank, I would think about the programs or services that you have personally used in this market and check if you have an affiliate program that you can sign up for.

Step 3: plan your content strategically to solve people's pain points

Note: in this article, we only cover free traffic sources, because paid traffic is more advanced for an advanced topic.

As mentioned before, there are two simple ways for every beginner to create content: Blog posts and / or YouTube videos.

Both of these content options can be designed to allow your readers or viewers to solve a problem using your solution (your partner link).

But first we need to make a list of problems and pain points.

I will give you a keyword research strategy that you can use in your niche to get many content ideas for articles and/or videos. We used Ubersuggest.com to do it.

Here is a brief overview of what you will do…

By simply entering the best tents for (I'll use tents for this example), I get a lot of data.

I upload the CSV file and add these keywords to a main content marketing table. I can repeat this for as many keywords as I want.

Note: currently, Ubersuggest only displays Google data. You can still use it for YouTube. Just be aware that YouTube search volume data is usually slightly lower than Google search results.

Now it's your turn. Try this with your niche!

Go to Ubbersuggest or the search tool of your choice and enter keywords like:

Best X

Best X for Y

X-Product Evaluation

Like X

Like X Y

X-product vs. Y product

X-Product Prices

Y-Alternative Products

Gift ideas for X

These are just a few keyword suggestions that you can use to create a list of content topics. You need to create a list of results with content topics!

Once you have a good handful of ideas in your main content marketing table, proceed to the next step. The more keywords you have compiled, the better. We filter them down.

Step 4: Get the right visitors to your content

Now that you have your main content Marketing table (also known as a list of keywords you can create content on) from Step 3, you can get picky.

We can focus on the intention of the researcher.

You will notice that some keywords are "hotter" than others. That is, the search query tells a story.

It will let you know if the person immediately looking for a solution or when they start exploring the topic.

In both cases, you can filter your main list for a thin list of monetary keywords before directing traffic to your website or videos.

By analyzing the search intent of your keyword list, you can focus on:

the content you want to create

the content that has the best chance of creating an affiliate ROI.

Once you've filtered your main content marketing table even further, it's time.

It's time to create your content.

Whether you're posting videos or Blog posts, you need to get started.