What is affiliate marketing??? When you want to make money online, you might have asked this question to yourself. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. Famous bloggers and big websites make passive income only by using affiliate marketing. You may not find ads on this blog because I earn money only by using affiliate marketing. This tutorial will give you a straightforward and essential guide to What is Affiliate Marketing? And how you can start it. Learning about affiliate marketing takes time. If you want to save time, I suggest you take any one of the Affiliate Marketing Courses from Udemy.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Video Tutorial:
For the reader’s convenience, we always create a video tutorial. Either you can watch and learn or simply skip the video and continue with the steps mentioned afterward.
Affiliate Marketing seems strong word. But actually, it is very easy to understand. Just see below infographic, you will learn.
- Company or factory or Advertiser develops or manufactures products.
- You (Publisher or affiliates) are the middle man who promotes or refers the products to customers.
- When a client buys a product through your referral, you will get the commission from manufacturer or advertiser.
Just promoting some others products and getting the commission from their sales is called Affiliate Marketing.
How Affiliate Marketing Works?
Affiliate marketing works based on the affiliate link and cookie.
Affiliate link contains your user id, product id, and many other parameters depends on your affiliate network. Some networks just append website link with your user id.
Cookie: When any visitor clicks on your affiliate link. That will install a cookie on browser. That will note down the click time and date. Some advertisers use 30 days cookie period. That means your visitor has clicked your affiliate link today. He did not buy the product today. But if he buys the product within 30 days, still you will get the commission. Some advertisers use up to 120 days cookie period or may be more. Amazon uses 24 hours cookie time. If your visitor purchases any product within 24 hours, you will get a commission.
When you want to make sales to any product, you must get an affiliate link for that product and place that link in your website or blog or social media or emails. When a visitor clicks that link, a cookie will be installed. If he buys the product within cookie period, you will get the commission.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing?
When you want to start affiliate marketing, you need one platform to promote a product and some tools to effectively manage affiliate products. If you ready with tools, you need to join in affiliate networks from where you can apply to the affiliate program, and you can get product links from there.
Essential Tools for Affiliate Marketing
When you want to start affiliate marketing, you must have some essential tools.
Website or Blog: You can do affiliate marketing without a blog. But you will get less money. If you don’t have a website, many advertisers will not approve your request. It is must have a website. If you don’t have a website, just buy the hosting plan from Siteground(60% discounted link). If you have less budget go with Bluehost(60% discounted link). Start a blog using WordPress. First, develop a website. Then start Affiliate marketing.
Affiliate link Cloaking plugin: It is must use an affiliate link cloaking plugin. Because it is very easy to manage your affiliate links. ThirstyAffiliates is the best affiliate link cloaking plugin for WordPress. Thirstyaffiliates basic version is free if you want extra features like geo-target, auto-linking, or tracking you need to buy its PRO version. The first time customers get a special $50 discount on ThirstyAffiliates PRO.
- Related: ThirstyAffiliates Review
- How to Geo-target affiliates links in WordPress website
- How to auto link affiliate links to keywords in WordPress
Ad management plugin: When you use the best ads management plugin, that will create an enormous impact on your sales. I recommend you to use Ads Pro plugin. Ads Pro gives a huge number of features for less price. It will help you to manage other network ads and your own ads. You can show your affiliate ads or links in a particular category or post or country. You can also create a floating, pop-up, notification bar, or scrolling ads. If you see its features, you must thank me for informing you about it. Check Ads Pro Price and features.
Not only above tools, but you can also use Sticky Password(70% discounted link) a password manager which helps to store and manage your passwords from anywhere.
Affiliate Networks
Now you have a website and required tools for affiliate marketing. As I mentioned in the above steps, if you want to earn money, you have to promote products developed by the manufacturer and make sales. In this online world, you don’t have to directly contact the manufacturer or product developer. Because there are many, Affiliate networks where advertisers are already registered. Some of them are VigLink, FlexOffers, CJ, ShareASale, mycommerce, impactradius, etc., I have given a list and details of affiliate networks that I am using.
You just sign up to any or all affiliate networks given in above list, search for advertisers, apply to that advertiser. After getting approved from the advertiser, you will get HTML code and URL. Just copy URL and paste in your website posts. Instead directly pasting affiliate URLs, use affiliate link cloaking plugin like ThirstyAffiliates.
Can I get every product in affiliate networks?
There is no guarantee that every product has an affiliate program. You may not get your product in affiliate networks. Because some advertisers maintain their own affiliate software.
If you want to promote any product, first search in Google with product appended with affiliate or referral word. For example, I want to search affiliate program for Vipre antivirus. I will open Google and search with keyword Vipre affiliate or Vipre referral.
You will see their affiliate page where you will get complete details about their affiliate program and on which network they have partnered.
I hope now you might understand what is affiliate marketing? And how to start it. If you like this article, please share this article. Want more blogging tips, follow BlogVwant on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.