Affiliate Marketing: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Affiliate marketing is a multi-billion-dollar industry. That statement alone is enough to capture anyone’s attention. Statista reports that the affiliate marketing industry in the United States alone is projected to touch $8.2 billion by 2022. This is up from the $5.4 billion recorded back in 2017.

If you’re new to the game, well, affiliate marketing is the promotion of other companies’ products. You post the affiliate link to the product, and when someone uses that link to buy a product, you earn a commission. It’s not unlike being a salesperson for the company, but you have the option of doing it at scale and for multiple companies.

In this post, we’re going to provide a complete guide to affiliate marketing for beginners. Here’s everything you need to know.

Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing

To start your affiliate marketing journey, consider the following steps:

1. Picking a Platform

It’s important to note that you disclose the fact that you’ve included affiliate links as per the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) endorsement guides.The first thing you need to do is to pick a platform where you can build your brand. Of course, you don’t need to limit yourself to any one platform. Consider Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Once you’ve decided on the platform/s, you’ll need to set up a blog and work toward optimizing it for search engines.

2. Choosing a Niche

If you’re starting a blog in 2020, the reality of the situation is that you’re up against a ton of competition. According to estimates reported by Statista, the number of bloggers in the United States is set to reach 31.7 million in 2020.

This makes it all the more important to narrow down the main topic of your blog. Focus on a specific category. For instance, ‘food’ is an incredibly vast and vague category with a lot of competition, whereas Texas barbeque is a narrower one that hones in on a specific niche and target audience.

 

3. Locate Affiliate Programs

Next, as you start out, you’ll need to join affiliate programs. There are typically three types to choose from:

· High-paying, low-volume: Generally speaking, these tend to be affiliate programs for more niche products that have high payouts.

· Low-paying, high-volume: These programs tend to be for products that have low payouts but greater mass appeal. Think of videogames, for example.

· High-paying, high-volume: As the name suggests, these programs are for products with high commissions but also mass appeal. A good example is credit cards.

4. Create Quality Content

Once you’ve joined affiliate programs, you need to start developing high-quality content that is in line with your affiliate links. It’s important not to blindly curate products from bestsellers’ lists. Make sure to add value and solve problems visitors have.

5. Drive Traffic to the Affiliate Site

Once you’ve created high-quality content, the next step is to have more people read/watch/listen to it so that they click on the affiliate links.

Consider the following strategies to drive traffic:

· Paid traffic through PPC ads.

· Organic traffic through SEO.

· Building an Email List.

Incometag.com is a popular content-based blog where you can find the best articles on money-making and guides on how to start affiliate marketing, social media marketing, electronic-marketing, and more.