Welcome to our 2023 Affiliate Marketing Guide for beginners. Our site makes over $2,500 per day and in this article I’ll be sharing the exact methods and strategies used to get to where we are now.
In this article, you will learn about what affiliate marketing is, how it works on both YouTube and Google, how to join the highest paying affiliate programs and get links, how to make a good affiliate content marketing plan, and a recap of the 5 steps to start affiliate marketing at the end.
By the end you’ll have a great understanding of affiliate business, how blogs work, and what it takes to make money online in this guide of affiliate marketing for beginners.
Prefer to watch? Check out the video below:
Who Are We And Why Should You Listen?
AdamEnfroy.com makes over $2,500 a day from Affiliate Marketing, and the truth is literally anyone can start affiliate marketing for themselves. It doesn’t really take any money to get started. Now that $2,500 a day is $75,000 a month or $900,000 a year.
You can check out the blog income reports as seen above for the actual bank statements or proof from Quickbooks that you can see is just one of the revenue streams back from March 2021.
In this article, I’m going to be covering affiliate marketing step by step. I’ll cover the easiest parts of affiliate marketing, the hardest parts for beginners, and if you make it to the end; I’ll give you the simple five step framework to grow from zero to hero.
But before we get started I want to invite you to our free master class on how to start a profitable blogging business.
This gives you our content, link building, and affiliate marketing strategies exactly how we built a blog to over $150,000 a month. With that said, let’s get into the topic for today.
The Affiliate Marketing Business Model
When it comes to affiliate marketing today, this is a real business model with some of the biggest blogs and YouTubers on the platforms using affiliate marketing strategies and online marketing skills to grow an audience for themselves and establish a place in their respective Niches.
Now while affiliate marketing can be a simple enough practice, it isn’t easy at times as it’s not something you can sit down and do in a week and takes proper time to do yourself.
But more importantly, what is affiliate marketing at the end of the day?
What is Affiliate Marketing and Affiliate Marketers?
Affiliate Marketing works when a person will promote products or services companies in return for a small commission per each product sale.
The affiliate marketer will get links off of the companies affiliate program website and after signing up can then add links to blog posts or videos to then have customers click on.
When a customer clicks on a link and purchases a product or service, the now successful affiliate marketer will earn a commission and get paid.
Affiliate marketing requires you to conduct proper keyword research to know what your Niche’s audience is looking for when they lookup content online. Then you will have successful affiliate marketing results
What is a Niche?
What are niches and keyword research you may ask yourself?
- A niche is essentially a very specific segment of consumers online who share common characteristics and search intent in certain products or services.
Most affiliate marketers have a niche based in an area they enjoy which will help in finding an audience to cater your future content to and grow.
Some good examples of good high-value niches would include:
- Health and Fitness
- Travel
- Fashion
- Technology
- Lifestyle
With well over thousands of niches out there, one is bound to be made for you and your interests.
Keywords and Their Importance
- Keyword Research is the process of finding the best phrases and key terms used by customers inside of your niche when searching for products, services, or information online also known as keywords.
If you were in the kitting space, one such keyword that you could search for and garner high amounts of traffic would be “How to Knit” with many people Googling or searching on YouTube for information on said keyword due to the value it provides.
Truly, you need great keywords to garner enough of an audience and volume to get clicks on links from posts.
Ongoing evergreen clicks to your website are what is needed to help towards your goal of thousands of dollars in revenue a month by gaining an evergreen ongoing audience.
Evergreen Content and Its Value
But what is evergreen content you may ask?
Evergreen content are posts and content on your website that overtime will always do well and have consistent traffic never having an expiration date as it will always be useful to readers being mostly informational posts.
Evergreen content is needed when it comes to building an audience and establishing a place in your Niche, so where should you put this content at?
In 2023, where do we think the worlds online audience is today and where are they searching today? There are many options out there with platforms like Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit.
But for the best chances at growth and revenue answer is clearly YouTube and Google with both platforms being the largest in the digital world. Exposure is key and using both of these platforms to your benefits will lead you to success and is where all your affiliate revenue will be made from.
Affiliate Marketing On YouTube
When it comes to affiliate marketing on YouTube you need to keep a couple things in mind, but first what does Affiliate marketing on YouTube look like?
On YouTube, affiliate marketing boils down to adding links from companies into your own promotional videos mostly in the description of said video with relevant keywords to the products and their own dedicated sections in the video.
When a customer clicks on a link after watching a video from the description, they will be taken to the company website’s landing page where the product or service will be displayed in front of them.
If they purchase the product afterwards you will in return earn a commission from the sale by the company you’ve helped in advertising.
Some examples of this being put into practice can be found if you search for “Best VPNs” you’ll see a multitude of VPN affiliates with their own content.
What you will see is in the description of videos is that there are links to said VPNs as detailed in the video above such as Surfshark and PrivateVPN.
So, in these type of videos and blog posts, they will review/recommend many different companies and use custom affiliate link for each product in return since it’s a volume game.
With the video at the moment at over 45,000 views it’s getting consisted views over time which is highly needed for consistent clicks to links generating consistent revenue from affiliate sales.
When you think about conversion rates it sits at around 2% or lower, thus consistent clicks/views are needed. You’ll see a similar situation when checking blogs talking about VPNs, it’s just in a reading format.
With it’s own methods of using affiliate links throughout the articles being a best category list post with ongoing traffic via Google. This isn’t scam-like in spamming links through Clickbank, Instagram, Forums, etc.
There’s only two places you should focus on: YouTube and Google with best transactional list posts. So, without ongoing and consistent traffic with affiliate links, you’ll never reach the levels you want to aspire to be with your blog or youtube channel.
How to Join an Affiliate Program
Before we start, what is an affiliate program and it’s purpose? An affiliate program is a company, affiliate merchant, or network offering referral links to products after an affiliate marketer has signed up.
However, what is a referral link and it’s purpose?
Referral Links and their Importance
- Referral Links are personalized links to identify the affiliate marketers they’ve been given to from affiliate programs and networks and are used to link back to specific products or services.
Being able to identify the marketer, the companies are then able to pay some of the affiliate sales in a commission back to the owner of the unique affiliate link.
With these links an affiliate marketer can put these into posts wherever they choose and start advertising a company’s products through posts on both Google and YouTube.
As long as the link is easy enough to find and click on, a potential customer is going to be able to make a purchase and in return the marketer will earn a commission.
An Example of Using Express VPN
The good news is that it’s fairly simple process to join these affiliate programs/networks and get links.
For example, I’ve googled Express VPN Affiliate Program and here on their affiliate site I can see their signup tab. When I choose become an affiliate I can join this program.
Now, programs are either run independently by the company themselves on their own affiliate site or by an affiliate network.
One great example is this one run by Express VPN and as you see, it asks for information when you want to become an affiliate with your username, first and last name, ID, and your website or youtube channel information.
I see a lot of videos on youtube such as, “How to Start Affiliate Marketing Without a Website” but if you want to make thousands of dollars in real money you need to do it the right way. You’ll need a website and or a youtube channel. So, you want to put that information down as well.
Answer truthfully under website information if you do PPC(Pay Per View), how many visitors you have, etc. and know that even if you have zero traffic there’s still a possibility of getting approved.
Lastly, fill out your company information. If you are a sole proprietor and it’s just you feel free to put in your name or leave it blank.
Then add your Paypal email which is typically how companies will pay you. Finally, click signup and then they can approve you to join the program.
How to Sign Up the Right Way
Overall, it’s important to get a couple of things approved.
One is to have a website up and going which you can do in a day with sites like Bluehost and Wix and the second is to have a domain name email address.
So instead of having a domain name email address rather than having a gmail, having an official company like email address can help to get you approved.
Also, you can make the numbers for your site look good, but don’t go and lie to them outright.
Try to get ahold of someone at the company if you’re starting out then email them and tell them from finding their information on sites such as LinkedIn and reach out.
Try something along the lines of “Hey I’m just starting this website, theres a lot of potential here I’d love to promote you” and they’ll probably approve you into the program.
Those are ways to better your chances at getting approved when filling out an affiliate program signup form. Another one is once you’re in you can also join most affiliate networks like Share A Sale, Impact, CJ, and others.
Once approved, you fill out a similar form with your website and then you get approved to the network.
Once you’re in, you can go to your affiliate dashboard and find companies you want to advertise for by using the search box and applying for the links of products you want to advertise for.
Keep in mind that you can sort them as well. Let’s say your niche is involved with women’s clothes, once you’ve picked a category you’re then able to look at specifics such as the highest earning over the past 30 day, and so on.
To join a program add a description on how you plan to promote and give yourself a better shot at becoming an affiliate partner with them.
I’d say as an example “I write to five hundered thousand monthly readers at Adamenfroy.com, here’s the two to three articles I’m going to promote you in. I look forward to hearing back from you.”
Something simple like that is more than enough, but giving some context and background is important and if you’re starting out and you don’t have any traffic yet, you can still say “I’m just starting out I’m growing this personal brand” and try it that way.
That’s the easy part, the hard part is actually finding and getting traffic.
It is easy enough to signup and get links, but how do you get hundreds of thousands of people to visit your website or channel and click links? That’s with traffic.
Your Affiliate Marketing Content Plans
Written Content Plan
So, to get consistent clicks on your affiliate links either on your youtube channel or website, you need a content plan. And one that isn’t going to take up too much of your time.
So as an example I can use a tool like Jarvis that’s hooked up with Surfer SEO to write an article about the best VPNs and these ai writing tools can speed up the writing process and create these highly monetizable affiliate list posts pretty quickly.
I can write a prompt down along the lines of “When choosing the best VPN service,” and then can hit compose and the tool will come up with a response.
“There are mant factors to consider. Price, features, and security are all important, but the best VPN service for you will depend on your specific needs. Here is a list of the seven Best VPN services of 2022, ranked in order from best to worst.”
I can keep going after this, compose more, and create lots of words for you to work off of with these ai writing and learning tools along with seo scores on the side to tell you exactly the right keywords to put in.
These articles are very helpful in creating and optimizing blog posts that rank on search engines and get consistent traffic.
YouTube Content Plan
The other one is YouTube which is a little tougher overall because if you’re willing to outsource a majority of the workload and pay another person or small group and trust them on camera and give them laser-sharp outlines exactly on what to cover with a well written transcript that’s fine.
But if you’re not, you’ll be doing YouTube all by yourself until then.
That means to do YouTube yourself, you’ll be tasked with getting the equipment necessary by having a camera, mic, recording software, etc. and recording the products you’re reviewing yourself.
Having a script format beforehand is key for your videos.
Make sure to do some keyword research in advance for you videos using tools like vidIQ which is a great tool for YouTube SEO work and can help to find exactly what keywords you need to go after once it has read your video for you.
For example, on vidIQ you can see for this specific affiliate post I want to do best VPNs and I see there’s best vpn service then it gives you different scores based on the opportunity.
With YouTube and blogging you have to create a consistent content plan based on keyword research based on content assembly either in youtube video format or in blog post structure and create a content plan around that.
The 5 Steps to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing
So here is the general overview for the five simple steps to get started with affiliate marketing:
You Need a Source of Ongoing Traffic
It’s important once you’ve found your Niche and begin the first steps of creating an audience to understand what SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is and how it affects your content and strategy going into affiliate marketing.
SEO is the process of optimizing a website and it’s content for better relevance. With proper SEO tools and strategies you will be able to use keyword research and get your posts to rank high.
With both YouTube and Google allowing you to gain the most traffic, you’ll have the edge over your Niche’s competitors.
So you need either a YouTube channel with people finding you in the algorithm on a consistent basis and using those best transactional types of videos or you need a blog where people are googling and finding that information every single month and is the hard part.
Creating a Content Plan
Whether you are a blogger or a youtuber, you need a consistent and competitive schedule of content based on keyword research for what people in your Niche are looking for and an assembly method to create this content as quickly and efficiently as possible.
If you’re blogging, using tools like Jarvis and Surfer can easily help out in creating written content fast with ai to write monetizable content based on prompts you enter. As well as adding in much needed keywords to help better promote your content on Google and rank high as a result.
If you’re on YouTube, make sure to write the transcripts and have all equipment necessary to film your videos. If you can afford to outsource and have someone else do all the busy work that is required from creating YouTube content, I highly recommend it.
And along with tools like vidIQ you’re able to have AI read your videos and help aid in finding the perfect keywords to better rank your content on YouTube and gain more views and subscribers as a result.
Join Affiliate Programs
This is the easy part from here on out. You join affiliate programs by searching on Google for affiliate programs/networks in your Niche and fill out those forms.
It’s also important to know the difference between networks and companies that offer affiliate programs with companies like Amazon having their own amazon affiliate program.
You can stop at their affiliate website to find and advertise any products only offered on Amazon as do most affiliate programs.
Companies out there like Share A Sale, Clickbank, and Impact all offer more than links to products from one company, instead of only having one possible company to advertise for these network companies offer multiple links from other companies on their behalf.
On these sites you can become affiliate partners for all sorts of companies out there so make sure to do some research into what companies would fall under your Niche when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Add Your Affiliate Links
Simply go into your dashboard on the websites you’ve signed up for on affiliate programs and add the link to your description if you’re on Youtube and talk about it with its own dedicated section within the video.
For blog posts it’s the same thing by making a call to action and saying it’s an affiliate link. Make sure to disclose that it’s an affiliate link as well by adding a disclaimer which you can find many of online to help add one yourself.
Get Clicks and Get Paid
And that’s it! Once you’re able to keep the content flowing and keep receiving clicks you’ll continue to get paid and make money.
As long as you’re able to attract an audience and keep the momentum going, you’ll have nothing but affiliate marketing success in no time at all!
Wrap Up
Overall, affiliate marketing is an easy process for someone to get into and start their own journey as an affiliate marketer.
As the field continues to evolve over time, it’s important to get off on the right foot when starting out in affiliate marketing with email lists no longer being the best possible path for sharing links.
Google and YouTube helped play a part in shaping how the marketing world is today and knowing how to play to their strengths will help you better understand how to grow your website in your niche and begin earning affiliate revenue.
