Alright, I will simplify this process as much as I can for you because there is so much outdated, and confusing information and total misinformation, as to how affiliate marketing works. It isn’t complicated at all, and you are just as capable as I am of creating an affiliate marketing business (if you have fingers, and a drive to succed).
So if you have a few minutes, I am going to show you how I have built successful affiliate marketing businesses over the years and have helped others do the same through the WealthyAffiliate.com platform.
So let’s take a look at the overall process of affiliate marketing, and how it all works …and then I am going to be jumping directly into the process on exactly how to start an affiliate marketing business, step by step, what it looks like and how you can get started TODAY, (no joke), with your own business online.
How Affiliate Marketing Works
There is a plethora of information out there on affiliate marketing, but the problem is with so much information there is going to be bad information, really good information, confusing information, and information that lies somewhere in between.
I have been running successful businesses within the affiliate marketing space since 2009, and during this time not a lot has changed to be honest. The same “simple formula” that worked back then, continues to work to this day. You have a product, and you have a customer. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to align these two things. That’s it!
Here is a diagram outlining how affiliate marketing works:
Now I am oversimplifying this a bit, but I am doing this for a reason. I don’t want you to be scared of the word “affiliate marketing”, because you are just as capable of creating a full-time and very successful affiliate marketing business as me and many others. All you need is the right training, the right guidance, and the tools necessary to get you there.
The thing is, affiliate marketing at its core is a very simple process. There are a few terms that you will want to become familiar with.
Affiliate (YOU). You are the affiliate, this means that you can join companies like Etsy, eBay, Walmart, Amazon (and 10,000’s of others) and promote their products and services. When you join these companies Affiliate Programs, they will give you a special “affiliate link” that is exclusive to you, and allows you to track all of the sales you generate.
Affiliate Program (company like Amazon). Most companies have an affiliate program, 99% of all of the brands in the world in fact can be promoted online and you, as an affiliate, can earn a commission. Amazon is one of the biggest affiliate programs in the world and will allow you to promote 100’s of MILLIONS of products, with a single account. Pretty awesome right?
Earning Affiliate Commissions. Affiliate programs will give you a kick back if you can send people to their website, and they end up buying something. Say you send someone to Amazon through your affiliate link, and they end up buying a fridge, Amazon will pay you a % of the total sale. Amazon offers around 3-6% commissions, so a transaction like this may yield you $50-100 (depending on the price of the fridge). Depending on the company and affiliate program, they will typically pay between 2% and 75% in commissions.
Unlimited Potential. As an affiliate marketer, your potential has no limit. The more people you can get buying through your affiliate links, the more money you make. Many affiliate marketers make several million dollar per year, and this can be a reality for anyone that is willing to put forth the effort to build an affiliate marketing business. But HOW do you build an affiliate marketing business? I am going to cover that in the next section.
The 4-Steps to Starting a Successful Affiliate Marketing Business
So how can YOU create your own successful affiliate marketing start-up business? There are actually only 4-steps to creating a successful affiliate marketing business, and if you can follow these and have access to the training, tools and support necessary to run your business (which I will be helping you with), you are going to be off and running!So I am not only going to be giving you the exact steps, but helping you understand how you can accomplish these steps.
Step 1: Choose an Idea.
The first thing you are going to need to do before you start the build out of any business, is come up with an idea for your business. This is also called the “niche” stage of your business, where you get to choose the audience and the category of your business. This could be anything, from training a puppy, to basketball sports betting, to video games, etc. There are literally millions of potential directions that you can head with your business. This is the exciting part.
I tend to recommend people to choose a passion/interest as their niche. This way, you will truly love your business and when you love what you do, you never have to “work” a day in your life. The Internet and the affiliate marketing industry has allowed us all to have this amazing opportunity.
How to Choose Your Idea: Choose a niche or a passion. There are close to 5 BILLION people online today, so even the most obscure niches have vast audiences. If you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you have direct video classes walking you through the niche selection process along with direct help from the community (and myself) who can give you feedback on your niche.
Step 2: Build a Website.
Your website is the foundation of your business. Think of it like a shop or storefront within the offline world. If you have no “storefront”, you don’t have the ability to attract and help customers, or the ability to sell anything. Your website is in essence your storefront, where you are able to help your audience, communicate with your audience, and promote products/services to your audience.
If you don’t have a website, you don’t stand a chance running a successful online business. It is the first and key necessity you need to creating a long term business.
How to Accomplish: You can build high performing and profit-ready websites with ease, at Wealthy Affiliate. You can even get up and running with one for completely free, within the Starter account. Another perk to using the website platform over at Wealthy Affiliate is that their hosting (where your website lives) is high speed and ranks better than other providers. This can give you a competitive advantage and can lead to a lot more opportunity as you build out your profitable website.
Step 3: Get an Audience.
In the Internet world, your website is also the place where your “traffic” will arrive. Without people coming to your website, there is no way to make money. So it is important to understand how to attract traffic to your website.
Traffic can come in many forms, but one of the most sustainable and long term traffic methods is through search engine optimization. This means, getting ranked in search engines like Google, and as a result getting all sorts of FREE traffic to your website. Once you have traffic, you have opportunity. Not only is this traffic free, but it is extremely targeted traffic. People who are actually searching for what you have to offer.
So this is the next focus, once you have your website up and running. Building out your website in a way that leads to traffic.
How to Accomplish: You need proper “traffic” training, along with a website that is set-up to rank well within search engines. These are both things that are provided within Wealthy Affiliate, you have access to elite SEO training, along with classes and access to experts that will personally help you with your traffic campaigns. People who actually know what they are talking about.
Plus, there are many other ways you can get traffic to your website as you build it out. Social media channels, YouTube and video blogging, podcasts, and paid traffic channels. These are all covered in detail within the training at Wealthy Affiliate.
Step 4: Make Money.
Last but not least, the “make money” part of your business. This is where you earn money through affiliate programs. Basically there are over 550 MILLION products/services that you can promote as an affiliate marketer, in exchange for a commission. You will be adding these special links on your website from companies like Amazon, Etsy, Nike, Apple, eBay, etc…and you will then earn a “kickback” if someone goes from your website to theirs and ends up buying something.
The affiliate marketing industry is growing at the fastest pace ever, and affiliates stand to earn $12 BILLION online this year alone…with this growing even more next year. You can get your chunk of this pie.
How to Accomplish: Finding affiliate programs can be an inefficient task at the best of times. You typically have to go through a bunch of Google searches, just to find what you are looking for. Within Wealthy Affiliate, you have instant access to an Affiliate Program search where you can search through 10,000+ affiliate programs, across some of the top affiliate networks online.
Not to mention, the training you will be getting on how to properly integrate affiliate promotions into your website to maximize conversions….along with some insight into the customer purchase lifecycle, critical information if you want to become a high performing, and successful affiliate marketer online.
So there you have it, how to effectively start an affiliate marketing business in a nutshell. If you are interested in creating your own affiliate marketing business and have no experience, or you are currently trying to build out or scale an affiliate marketing business and you are not getting the results you want, I CAN PERSONALLY HELP.
Again, I have been at this for a long time and I work full time from the comfort of my home office and you can immediately connect with me within my homebase, WealthyAffiliate.com. Upon creating your account, you will get access to the training, websites, hosting, research tools, networking, mentorship and direct support.
It’s also free to try, you can get a “test drive” Starter account for no cost…no credit card required. I highly recommend if you are even the slightest bit interested in becoming an elite affilate marketer, you get rolling right now with your account. I will be reaching out to you within 30 minutes or so, of you joining. 😉
===> Click Here to Create Your Test Drive Wealthy Affiliate Account!
And if you have any questions you want to leave here for me, feel free to do so. I will make sure I get back to you as soon as I can (usually within a few hours).
This article is straightforward when it comes to build an online business, especially in affiliate marketing. It’s not as difficult as some people might think.
The four steps outlined are exactly what people need to understand. I’ve gone through the process by building my own niche website, and it’s worked out well.
It’s amazing to think that there are many affiliate programs out there. That can be an inefficient task. If you just search on Google, that’s what I like about Wealthy Affiliate’s affiliate program search tool- as it does limit it down to the niche that you’re in.
There are a lot of great products to promote on Amazon; however, their commissions are relatively small. Having said that, do you recommend people use Amazon when starting out? Or should they look at other options where the commissions are higher than that?
Thank you for sharing this great article. It was very helpful, and definitely a great starting point for those exploring the make money online world.
Thanks for visiting my site Eric. Yes, the niche search feature within Wealthy Affiliate is amazing and so easy to find great affiliate programs. To answer your question, it really depends on your niche. Amazon is a great affiliate platform, and although the commission’s are lower, it can still be quite lucrative once you start generating consistent traffic. The thing is, if someone lands on your site looking for what they searched for, many start looking at other product as well and since they came from your site, anything they purchase, you get the sale.
Wow! The fact that you have been doing this for so long gives us more hope that affiliate marketing is possible. I have thought so many times of quitting and thinking that I have been wasting my money, but no, I keep on doing my best and I know the payout that I’m aiming for will eventually flow in. Wealthy Affiliate is such an amazing place to start and grow as you go on. It has helped me expand my knowledge and it has brought me so many great opportunities along the way.
thanks Stephanie for visiting my site. Yes, persistence is the key. Keep learning, and more importantly Apply what you learn and FOCUS (Focus on One project Consistently Until Successful).
Hey a great post you have here!
Though I am aware of affiliate program and its potential, the knowledge is vary basic so this post was a great and certainly an educational read for me
I like how you have broken down what affiliate marketing consists of, making it much easier to understand! I am currently a little stuck on building the audience so I’m going to follow what you have stated here to see if I can manage to increase it.
Thanks again and have a great day!
Thanks for stopping br my site Sariyah! I am glad you enjoyed the article and found it valuable. Contine creating good content and using the Jaaxy keyword tool and you will certainly build that audience. You want to also make sure you are following the training on good off-stage and one-page SEO. Great stuff!
This is a great article on how to get started making money with affiliate marketing! I love that you kept the process super simple. Too many people complicate the making money process and it’s the reason why most don’t become successful. The process really is as simple as the four steps you mentioned. It’s hard work, but simple work.
Hi Kevin, thanks for the feedback. That is very true. It is very simple to make a great income through affiliate marketing in that you just follow the step by step training provided by Wealthy Affiliate. Anyone at any experience level can do it as long as they put it consistent effort.