Affiliate Marketing Tutorial: Get Started With These 4 Steps

Do you want to make money online with affiliate marketing? Then you’re in luck because this is the only affiliate marketing tutorial you’ll need to get started. Just to warm up, let me tell you that the affiliate industry will hit $8.2 billion in the US alone. 

Don’t you want your chunk of it? 

The best thing about affiliate marketing is that it’s almost passive income. It means you’ll be making money even if you don’t work after some time. But before that, you need to work hard! Even a slice of $8.2 billion will change your life forever.

So let’s get started with affiliate marketing basics first. 

The Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Tutorial: Basics

Before you start making money with affiliate marketing, you need to understand a few concepts about it. This section will walk you through business models and types of products and services available for marketing. 

But let me define what affiliate marketing is!

What is Affiliate Marketing

It’s a type of marketing in which you, as an affiliate, earn a commission from marketing a product or service that you don’t own. You search for a product or service, enjoy it, and recommend it to your audience. 

84% of publishers benefit from affiliate marketing, according to Web Market Support. It means there is a huge potential for you to make big bucks online. Affiliate marketing is based on a revenue-sharing model.

That brings me to the second concept of affiliate marketing, which is the business model. If you promote a product or service, the owner gets the sale or beneficial action. And you get your commissions for that. 

Affiliate Marketing Tutorial: Models

There are two primary business models for affiliate marketing – cost per sale and cost per action. Understanding these models will help you pave your way into affiliate marketing. 

Cost Per Sale Affiliate Marketing

With this business model, you make money only if your audience buys something through your affiliate link. It can be software or a physical product like a gaming laptop. CPS merchants are small and large. And sometimes, they have a brick-and-mortar business. 

For example, Amazon Associates help you earn a commission if someone buys a product on Amazon using your link. Even if you send millions of visitors to the Amazon e-commerce store, you won’t make a single dollar unless they become buyers. 

Cost Per Action Affiliate Marketing

It’s been speeding up for years now. This is comparatively easier than CPS because you don’t need a sale to make a commission. But it’s highly competitive. And most affiliate marketers may spend money to make money. 

For example, Ian Fernando has spent $8000 on ads to make $9500. It’s $1500 in pure profits. Not bad! You need to carefully examine all the factors. It’s because a slight increase in cost per click could mean a loss for you.

Don’t worry; it doesn’t happen a lot if you are a niche promoter. It means you need to create a site or landing page based on the niched category. And then, if you run ads, you’ll convert a lot of visitors into customers as well.

But first, you’ll need to understand the type of product or service you will promote as an affiliate.

Types of Products or Services

There are many products and services you can choose from. Affiliate marketing can be for a paid membership to a course to physical products. Let me divide them into three major categories and shed light on them now. 

Digital Products 

Digital products can be quite valuable without a doubt. You cannot touch, hold, and taste a digital product, yet you can consume it. For example, you may enjoy music videos, but you’ll never touch or taste them. 

And that’s why you must promote it to get affiliate commissions for you. These products often come in the form of downloadable or streamable digital files. Marketing these products is a little more challenging than physical products. 

But why? It’s because you compete with free content available online. Digital products that make substantial conversions include:

• Educational products like courses
• Memberships for sites
• Digital templates or tools
• Music and art
• Licenses to use your digital asset

From where can you get digital products for affiliate marketing? For that, you may want to visit some of the best networks and platforms like:

• ShareASale
• Awin
• CJ Affiliate
• Rakuten
• ClickBank

And the list continues. First, you need to create your account there. And then search for the products related to your niche. Start promoting them and earn affiliate commissions. Affiliate marketers like Pat Flynn earn as much as $100K per month. 

Physical Products

If you want to go for a less competitive type of product, then go for physical ones. I’m not saying that you should opt for selling iPhones because they’re still competitive in the market. But of course, you can dig into several products to choose from. 

Here’s how you select a physical product for affiliate marketing:

• Go to e-commerce giants like Amazon, eBay, or Alibaba
• Search the product categories
• See the positive reviews
• Select a solid product

And start creating content around it. Incorporate your affiliate link into it and make affiliate commissions for each sale. If you’re interested in promoting physical products, go for Amazon Associates, the biggest affiliate marketing program. 

Online Services

Some may consider it a digital product. But I believe online services are different things. Services may be based on software as a service (SAAS) or soft skills. You can promote a Saas product like Canva or SEMRush.  

Pick a Product or Service

First, you want to choose a product or service you want to promote. It’s like choosing a niche for your blog or website. Why? If your niche is football, you’d want to sell a football, net, and related products. 

Some people choose a niche based on their interests. In contrast, some are money-oriented and go for the perfect product to sell. Regardless of what niche you choose, you must pick a product or service to create content around it. 

The first method to choose a product to promote is to go to affiliate programs or networks. This may be CJ, ShareASale, ClickBank, and more.

Set Up Your Blog or Landing Page

To make money with affiliate marketing, you need a platform. That can be a blog, site, or landing page. That’s where you publish your content to help your audience and promote different products to earn commissions. 

Go to systeme.io, and that’s the landing page of system.io. 

This is Bluehost’s landing page. 

That’s the page where you pitch your idea to your audience. 

Here’s how you can set up a blog:

• Buy hosting from the top hosting services
• Get a domain name from NameCheap
• Connect the domain name and hosting
• Install WordPress to manage your content
• And start creating content in your niche

You can make one special page dedicated to pitching your audience. That page will be called a landing page for you. But if you want to get more sales, create as many posts as you can.

But if you want to create a landing page or a blog for almost free, this is how you can do it:

• Go to Systeme.io
• Enter your email address
• And click on ‘Get Started for Free
• Log into your Systeme account
• And create sales funnels, landing pages, and more

You can do it all without paying a single penny. You will only pay as you grow. That’s why I believe that systeme.io has everything you need to create an online business. 

What to do after you have created and published your content? Introduce affiliate links, of course. You can promote your affiliate products using:

• PrettyLinks (Plugin that helps you incorporate affiliate links naturally)
• Banner Ads (Copy the code from the affiliate program and paste it into your blog)
• Recommendations page (That’s a wonderful page to recommend the products)
• Tutorials, tips, and guides (Add value to your audience, so they trust you)

Most marketers sit and wait after they have created content in their niche. But I recommend you run a campaign and actively market your content across different media. 

Run the Campaigns

Running campaigns on email, social media, and search platforms is the fastest way to generate affiliate revenue. The campaigns may be free and paid as well. Running paid campaigns is even quicker than free ones. 

This is how you run a campaign on email:

• Start building your list with lead magnets and more
• Decide on your goals and stick with them
• Understand your audience
• Create awesome opt-ins
• Plan your emails and schedule them as well 
• Craft the perfect subject lines
• Go to an email marketing service like Convertkit or Constant Contact
• Or you can use Systeme.io
• Create an email drip campaign

And start sending the emails to your audience. Talk to them and be friendly. Understand and help them genuinely. Gradually you will build trust and start making money with affiliate commissions. 

Here is how you can run a social media campaign:

• Understand your audience
• Decide on the goal of your campaign
• Choose the best social media platform (where your audience spends most time)
• Create a content calendar for the week, month, and year
• Design visual content as well
• Schedule posts and monitor the response
• Follow up and start promoting the products

Running a campaign is not just about running it. But you need to keep analyzing the performance and act accordingly. The number one tip I can give is to analyze some of the top successful campaigns, and you’ll know what you need to do.