How To Do Affiliate Marketing In 2021: Complete Beginners Guide
“Sitting on his bed, with a cup of coffee in his hand on a bright sunny morning, he was just doing all his stuff without any hustle…”
Imagine you are also enjoying the freedom of this kind, like this guy is enjoying.
Everyone wants to live a free life. A boss free life where no one will give you direction or deadlines to finish the work. Where the money is landing in your bank account every single day. But it looks like a dream. Right?
Believe me, it was a dream a few years back when there is no internet. At that time people don’t have many options.
Just think for a moment. What You can do if you just remove the internet from your life. You can only have either a brick-mortar business or a 9 to 5 job. You can also become a farmer. It seems like we don’t have any other option.
But the internet opens up a plethora of opportunities for us. Today, you just need a laptop and internet connection to start and run a successful business.
Affiliate Marketing is one such option that can give you the freedom to live life in your own terms. And Believe me, it’s not a bluff. People are earning 7 figures income by working in the comfort of their homes.
In this article, I am going to share with you a Beginner’s Guide: How To Do Affiliate Marketing in 2022.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the marketing of products or services which you don’t create or provide. You just promote them using the internet and earn a commission for every sale you make.
Let’s understand it in a little more detail in simple words.
There are three parties involved in an affiliate marketing business.
- Merchant
- Affiliate
- Customer
The merchant is the one who owns the product or service. He is the one who is actually the seller of a product or service.
An affiliate is a person who promotes the product or service of this merchant.
The customer is the one who will purchase the product or the service.
So in affiliate marketing, an affiliate promotes a product or service of a merchant to his audiences by providing some value to them. When someone buys the product, he becomes the customer, and in this transaction, affiliate earns the commission.
Pro Tip: Note down that providing value to the customer is an important aspect of affiliate marketing. Without providing value, it is very difficult to succeed in affiliate marketing.
So you might be thinking, Why does the merchant pay a commission to an affiliate and not sell his product on his own? Right???
Because it’s a win-win-win situation for everyone.
Suppose I created a product. Now I want to sell this product to more and more people. So I must do a lot of marketing for this product to reach more people.
Marketing a product is not that easy. Right?
It needs a sales and marketing team, people who will create a marketing campaign, and a lot of money needs to be spent on marketing that product.
But what if I don’t need to do all this stuff.
I will leave the marketing part to some other person who will spend all the money to promote my product and I will just pay him/her a commission for every sale he makes for me.
Even if I have my own marketing team, still it’s a good idea to have a person like this who is promoting my product on a per-sale commission basis. It is going to boost my sales figures.
So it’s a WIN situation for me as a merchant.
Now, suppose you are an affiliate. (Just imagine buddy. You are still reading this article. It means you are really interested in affiliate marketing. You are going to be a successful affiliate marketer in the future.)
So as an affiliate you are getting an earning opportunity. You can sell products and make money on every single sale you make.
And the best part is you don’t need to create any product on your own.
You don’t need a heavy factory kind of setup, no shop, no office nothing.
You can do it in the comfort of your home. So it’s a WIN Situation for you as an affiliate.
Let’s talk about the customer. Suppose your friend Rahul is a customer and he wanted to purchase that product. But he has few doubts about it. He needs someone who can solve his queries so that he would be able to take the right decision.
So as an affiliate you will clear his doubts. You will tell him the pros and cons of that product. You will tell him how this product will be helpful for him. All I want to say is that you will clear all his doubts so that he can take the decision.
Now Rahul will be able to take the decision with more confidence. It’s a WIN situation for him as well because now he finally took the decision with your help.
So it’s a WIN-WIN-WIN situation for all the parties involved in this whole process.
You can watch my video about “What is Affiliate Marketing? ” below.
Why Choose Affiliate Marketing as a Career Option
There are plenty of business opportunities available in the market. But affiliate marketing is something which has its own advantages which are difficult to find in any other business model.
Have a look at various advantages of affiliate marketing:
- Affiliate marketing is an ever-growing industry. It is growing at an annual rate of 10%.
- It’s a multi-billion dollar industry and a small percentage of it can actually change the life of anyone.
- 15% of total digital media advertising revenue is attributed to affiliate marketing.
- Big market players pay billions of dollars of commission to affiliates for selling their products.
- No heavy investment is needed to start. So there is no entry barrier.
- Freedom to work from any place around the world. No requirement for any office space.
- You have the freedom to choose which product you want to promote. If not working you can replace the product without much hassle.
- Commission on products varies from 2% to even 50 or 60%. So there is huge earning potential.
- Most of the work is in automation mode. Like if you have written and published an article in your blog. And if you know how to bring traffic to your blog then the rest of the work will be done automatically. It means you have the freedom of time.
- You can work at your own pace. It’s a boss-free life. You are your own boss here.
Sounds Convincing!!! Right?
There are plenty of things that make affiliate marketing a great business model. So, if you are planning to start affiliate marketing in 2021, just go for it. You will not feel regret about your decision.
But also keep in mind that it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme. You have to work hard at least, in the beginning, to get the ball rolling for you.
How to Choose the Right Product to Promote?
Now once you are sure that you want to do affiliate marketing, then the question arises “How To Do Affiliate Marketing In 2021?”
So the answer is, first of all, you should have your digital presence to promote any product. Then you have to choose a product to promote on that platform where you have your presence.
I will tell you various platforms where you can promote your products in the next section. Right now let’s talk about how to choose the right product to promote.
To find the product, you have to follow a few steps. I think these steps are crucial to getting the right product that you can actually sell to your audiences.
Finding Your Niche
This is the first step. You have to find your niche. Now if you don’t know what is a niche. Let me tell you in brief.
A niche is like a domain or segment of the market in which you will sell your product. As health and fitness are a niche. So if you are in that niche, you will sell only products related to health and fitness.
You will not promote a smartphone to your audience because your niche is health and fitness, not technology.
You can choose your niche based on three parameters.
- Area of interest or Passion
- Knowledge
- Profitability or demand in the market
You can choose your niche based on any one of them or even go with a combination of them.
But profitability and demand in the market should always be included in your niche. Because you are going to do a business. In the business market demand and profitability matter.
So you should choose a niche that can be monetized. For that having a market demand is very important.
But why is it important to choose a niche???
So, let me give you an example.
If you go to a restaurant for dinner and he will start selling you a mobile phone will you buy it?
Sounds weird!!! Why will a restaurant guy sell you a mobile phone?
But that’s the point I am trying to make here. You cannot promote anything that you encounter. You have to choose a niche. You have to promote the products that belong to that niche only.
So that people will be able to know that you are an expert in this field and the product that you are recommending to them is actually worth buying.
You will not buy a mobile phone from a restaurant guy. Right?
Everyone wants to buy from an expert. Once you choose your niche and start creating content in that niche only, people will see you as an expert in that field. Because you have a lot of content and knowledge to share in that niche.
This creates your authority in that field and people will not hesitate to buy on your advice.
No one is going to buy from you anything if you sell everything as an affiliate.
So choose your niche before moving forward.
Suppose I am a fitness freak guy. So what I can do is, I can choose Health and Fitness as my niche. I will use this example to find my micro-niche in the next step.
Finding the micro-niche
After you select your niche, it’s the time you choose a micro-niche.
Choosing a micro-niche is important because generally in a broad niche already a lot of big brands are ranking on google. There is a very high competition in a broad niche.
As a newbie it’s very difficult to compete with all these big companies which are spending millions of dollars to rank for those highly searched keywords.
Also the more you narrow down in a niche, the easier to target the right people.
People interested in your product can find you more easily.
You can also create content based on the requirements of a specific group of people.
Pro Tip: if you are trying to target everyone, actually you are targeting no one.
Choosing a targeted audience for promoting your product or service is extremely important. When you choose a micro-niche, you already narrow down your audience. Now you are more targeted to a particular audience.
So, I have chosen Health and Fitness as my niche in the previous section. Now, there are many subcategories under health and fitness. A few of them could be men’s health, women’s health, bodybuilding, gym training, yoga and so on.
You can use amazon to dig deeper into any category or do some google research to find some micro-niche ideas related to your niche.
Suppose I chose yoga for men as my micro-niche. So it’s the time to verify the demand of the niche in the market.
Steps To Verify the Demand of Your Micro-Niche
Follow these steps to verify the demand of your micro-niche in the market.
Step 1: Type your micro-niche keyword in google to look at auto-suggestions.
If people are searching for things related to your micro-niche then it’s the time to move to the next step.
Step 2: Use Google Keyword Planner to find the monthly search volume of your micro-niche keyword.
Look for the volume parameter in search results. The monthly search volume should not be very high. You can go with a search volume of 1000 or more.
If there are a sufficient number of people searching for your targeted niche, You can go with this keyword idea.
Step 3: Check the trend in google trends. It should not be down-trending. If the trend line is going up, then it’s a golden opportunity for you.
So after following these steps you have now validated your micro-niche idea for the market demand. It is time to choose the right products to promote.
Choosing the Product
To choose the product you can do two things. First, you can find a few products that you are aware of in your micro-niche.
Like you are already using a product and you know how good the product is, then you can promote that product in your affiliate marketing campaigns.
The second thing that you can do is you can go to various marketplaces like Amazon and Clickbank. Find the top-selling products in your niche on these platforms and you can start promoting them.
Watch my video “How To Choose Product For Affiliate Marketing?
You can read the reviews and check the ratings of these products. It’s important to check these things so that you only promote the genuine product to your audience.
Don’t try to promote anything without any research. You have to build trust with your audience.
If you promote a non-valuable product you will lose the trust of your audience. In the long run, it will hamper your growth and success in affiliate marketing.
Your focus should be on solving the problem of your audience and giving them valuable content.
Popular Platforms to Start Your Affiliate Marketing Journey
Let me share with you a list of a few top marketplaces where you can find the products related to your niche.
All these platforms are free to join. But when you go to apply for any of these affiliate programs.
First, you have to get approval from these platforms. For getting approval you have to tell them about yourself and your method of promotion. Once they are satisfied with all your details, they will give you the approval.
Once approved you can pick the products you want to promote. Just get your affiliate link and start promoting it to your audiences.
Amazon’s affiliate program is one of the most famous affiliate programs in the world.
Amazon is the biggest online marketplace in the world. You have multiple products to sell. Their program is by the name “Amazon Associates”. Just go and check out their program.
When you are applying for any affiliate program make sure you should have something to show them like your blog or YouTube channel.
So, my suggestion is before applying for approval just go and create some content, post it on your blog oy youtube channel.
Only after this try to apply for approval. Otherwise, they may reject your request upfront.
Clickbank is another very big market place. You can find the product of almost any niche on this platform. You can also find many digital products. These are also very good to promote.
So choose the best selling products of your niche and start promoting them. This is how you can start.
5 Ways to Promote Your Products
1. Blogging
You already know what is blogging. Right? Blogging started in India in 2005. But at that time it was not very popular because of the low penetration of the internet.
People used to do blogging as a hobby and not to earn money.
But after 2010 there were so many people starting their blogging journey and now doing it full-time. They are earning a lot of money. Affiliate marketing is the best thing that is giving them the results.
Most of the big bloggers are doing affiliate marketing in their blogs.
Once you have a blog and if you are writing valuable blog posts for your audience. Here You also have the opportunity to put your affiliate links in your content.
As you are giving value to your audience through your content. So many people will end up clicking on your affiliate link and buy the product.
So many of them may be looking for your recommendation because they have trust in you.
So blogging is a very powerful method of doing affiliate marketing. If You don’t have a blog yet, start one as soon as possible because you are missing a very good earning opportunity.
The best platform to start a blog is WordPress. It’s easy to use and you can create your own blog even if you are from a non-technical background.
To begin you just need to buy a domain name and web hosting. The domain name is the name of your website and web hosting the space that you buy on the server on a subscription basis. It is the place where you store all your web pages.
After getting them you can just install the WordPress in just a few clicks of your mouse. Yes, technically by doing this you just launched your blog. Your blog will be live after this process.
The next thing will be to customize your blog as per your needs. For that, you will get the dashboard where you can control and customize your blog.
For designing attractive web pages you can use a page builder like Elementor. You can place the opt-in forms on your blog to collect their emails. I am going to discuss emails later in this article.
Once you have everything in place, you are ready to go. Just start writing awesome articles and promote affiliate products in your blog posts.
Pro Tip: Always have profit and non-profit posts in your blog. Don’t put affiliate links in every single post. Maintain a balance between two types of posts. It will help you to build more trust with your audience. At the same time, it will also help you to rank higher on search engines as your focus is not only making money but also providing value.
So, this is the best and most common method to promote your affiliate products.
Check out this blog post: Complete Guide: How To Start A Profitable Blog In 2021
2. Social Media
Social media could also be a great way to promote affiliate products. You may be using it just to connect with your friends and family. But it can also be used to make money.
Affiliate marketing is one way of earning money from social media. Although so many affiliate programs don’t allow posting affiliate links directly on social media.
But you can do it indirectly like posting the link of your blog or youtube video which contains the affiliate links somewhere.
You can use multiple platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
It will also help you get more traffic to your blog.
Also what you can do is you can write a valuable post on your social media profile by targeting your audience. You can offer the solution to people who have shown their interest by commenting on the post. You may ask them to comment if they want some guidance.
When you connect with them, you can send your affiliate links to them. This method may seem a little pushy but so many people are doing it.
If you really try to solve the problem of your audience it will not be pushy at all.
You can also join some forums related to your niche. Quora is also a very good platform to actually solve the problem of your target audience and also to promote your articles.
So use all these channels to promote your content. It will help you to grow even fast.
3. YouTube
YouTube is not just a video streaming website. It’s much more than that.
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world. People are searching for the solution to their problems on YouTube. So here lies the opportunity for you.
If you are there to solve the problem of your targeted audience, you can leverage this opportunity.
You can come up with a video that is providing them the solution to their problem.
You can convince them through a video that your recommended product is the best solution to their problem.
Once they are convinced. They will buy the product you are promoting there.
Almost every Youtuber is already doing it. When you see the description of the video, you can find a couple of affiliate links in that section.
I recorded a posted video on youtube about various ways of doing affiliate marketing. Watch this video to know “How To Do Affiliate Marketing?”
So make a YouTube channel and post your videos. Be consistent with the frequency and schedule of posting videos.
4. Emails
Emails are still the best way to connect with your audience. People have the habit of checking their inboxes regularly. When they open the mailbox, they are also very focused as they don’t want to miss something important. So if you have a mailing list, it’s a great way to promote your affiliate products.
There is a very famous quote that “money is in the list”.
So having a mailing list could be a goldmine for you.
Start Collecting emails from the visitors of your blog. It will give you the opportunity to connect with them in the future even if they don’t come back again to your website.
To do it through emails you need an autoresponder. It’s a tool in which you can do a lot of automation and launch your email campaigns.
It will make your work very easy. You don’t have to send emails to every new subscriber manually.
Just launch a campaign for new subscribers. Whenever someone will subscribe for your email list, it will automatically start sending him the pre-written emails as you have scheduled them.
Few famous autoresponders are ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, MailChimp, AWeber, etc. You can start free with MailChimp or Moosend. As your mailing list will grow you can take the paid subscription of it.
Remember that you should not start promoting your products from the first email itself. First of all, nurture your subscriber through valuable content. Only after that, you should recommend your affiliate products.
You don’t propose to a girl at the first meeting, right??
So follow the same here also. Build a relationship with them first. Propose only after they have some trust in you.
5. Paid Ads
Getting organic traffic is not easy at all. You have to post content with consistency for a long period to get some good traffic on your blog or youtube channel.
If you have patience then it’s good. You will definitely get the results. But if you want to grow fast then you have to spend some money on paid ads.
You can use google ads and Facebook ads to get the traffic to your blog or youtube channel. It can help you grow fast but at the same time, it also needs some initial investment.
So if you have some extra money to spend on paid traffic then you can use them. Otherwise without paid ads also you can get results but it will take more time.
What you do here is, you promote your articles using paid ads on Facebook or Google. You run ads by targeting your potential buyers. They see the ad with the link to your article. They click on the link. They read it and if you will be able to convince them to buy through your blog, they end up buying the product.
The advantage is you start getting traffic immediately. You don’t need to wait for organic traffic. But to stay profitable you have to optimize your ads and blog. So that you actually make sales.
Otherwise, instead of earning money, you may even lose the money in your paid campaigns.
Important Points to Keep In Mind
- Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You have to spend your time, energy, and also some money to actually see the results.
- Consistency is the key to success. Be consistent with your content. You will definitely be able to turn the table.
- You should know your target audience. If you don’t know your audience and try to sell to everyone, you will end up selling to no one.
- You can make your ideal customer avatar for every affiliate product you promote. It will help you to target the right people in your paid ads.
- Always focus on solving the problem of your audience and giving them value. It will help you to make a relationship with them. You will be able to gain their trust. It will make your affiliate marketing business long-lasting.
Conclusion
So, in this online world, there are multiple ways to make money online and affiliate marketing is one of them.
Affiliate marketing is a business where you just promote the products of others. You earn the commission for every sale you make.
But the question is how to do affiliate marketing in 2021? So there are multiple ways of doing it. You can start a blog or YouTube channel or you can leverage emails. Plenty of options are there.
It’s a booming area of marketing. Companies are spending billions of dollars in their affiliate marketing campaigns. So you should grab this opportunity and if you want to make money online you can start with affiliate marketing.
But at the same time, it’s not a quick-rich scheme. You have to give your time, money, and efforts to actually start earning money. It’s a business and any business takes time to grow.
This business gives you more freedom and an independent lifestyle. You can earn more by spending less time. This is the biggest advantage of affiliate marketing.
So what are you waiting for??? If you are really serious, start something online. Start with affiliate marketing. You will not feel regret if you do it in the right way.
If you are still reading it till here. It means you are actually interested in affiliate marketing. So don’t think much. It doesn’t require much investment. Just begin and see how you can go forward.
Best of luck for your journey as an affiliate marketer