Learn what is affiliate marketing. How can you earn via affiliate marketing? How to start affiliate marketing today? I will show you the most successful platforms that can be used globally to earn a steady stream of passive income each month. You do not need to be an influencer to become an affiliate marketer. You do not need a website to start affiliate marketing. This is affiliate marketing for absolute beginners to start making money online and working from home. Become your boss and start your work from home today.
What is Affiliate Marketing
In simple words, get custom promotional links, for a product, from a business, and post those links anywhere when needed. That’s it. When somebody clicks on those links and purchases something from a service or a business, you will earn a commission. Affiliate links have your id so that you get the commission.
In detail, affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is a way for a company to engage with other businesses or individuals to promote its products or services in exchange for a commission on any sales that are generated from that marketing. It can be an effective way for a business to reach a wider audience and generate more sales, as the affiliates involved are typically experts in their field and can reach a targeted audience with their marketing efforts.
Should I Have My Products to Start Affiliate Marketing
No. Other established businesses have products that they want to promote. You will promote those products by sharing their links. The company or business will provide you with the product links. They will provide you with the product link that you have to share. You will get commissions from product sales.
How Business will Recognize That I Sent a Customer to Them
Each affiliate link has an id or some sort of tracking mechanism. Your affiliate links will be marked by your affiliate id. When someone clicks those links and goes to the business site, business will recognize who sent a new customer. Each affiliate link is unique and created for a specific affiliate marketer.
Can I Track My Affiliate Links Progress?
Yes. You create an affiliate account and get the link containing your id. Your Affiliate account will provide you insights on impressions, clicks, and conversions that you brought to the business. Your affiliate account dashboard will display how much are you earning through your affiliate links.
Difference Between Impressions, Clicks & Conversions
Impression: Impression is when your affiliate link is viewed but not clicked. People see the link that you shared. It’s an impression. The impression does not generate affiliate commission.
Click: People click on your link and go to the target business website, product, or service. This is a click. Click does not generate affiliate commission.
Conversion: Conversion is when the user purchases the product or service that you recommended by sharing your affiliate links. Conversion generates affiliate commission.
What is Affiliate Commission
Affiliate marketers earn a commission (profit share) on product/service sales. That profit can be 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, or even more. Let’s say if a product is $100. Affiliate commission is 10% on that product. When you get that product sold, you will earn $10 for that sale. This is just an example. Affiliate commission may vary from product to product.
How to Create Affiliate Account?
To create an affiliate account, you will have to go to the relevant site that offers an affiliate program. Almost all big brands or sites sell something. A service or a product. They also offer their affiliate program. Look for ‘affiliate’, ‘affiliates’, or ‘affiliate program’ at the bottom of the website. Go to that link and create an affiliate account. Even though you use that service, they may require you to create a separate account for their affiliate program. They may ask you where will you use affiliate links. You can share these links on social media platforms, in bios, in websites, in comments, or in youtube video descriptions. After you have signed up, they may manually approve your account so you may have to wait for some time. But many also give you affiliate account access right away.
If you like a service or site or brand, search its affiliate program and you shall find it. For example: Search for ‘Amazon affiliates’, ‘Amazon associates’, ‘Aliexpress Affiliate program’, ‘Tubebuddy affiliate program’, ‘Hostinger affiliate program’ and you will find those pages. There you have to create an account and get the affiliate links or generate affiliate links. Separate affiliate accounts for each service. Amazon has a separate affiliate program, Hostinger has a separate one, and every service has a separate affiliate program. If you promote 10 services, you may have 10 different affiliate programs and you will have to maintain 10 different accounts with relevant services.
How to Create Affiliates Links?
After you have affiliate program access and an account, you can look in the dashboard for the affiliate links area. Sometimes they give you your affiliate link right away. Sometimes you have to create an affiliate link yourself. Many affiliate services allow you to customize that affiliate link. That link will contain the affiliate id that is unique to you. Copy the affiliate link and save it for later use.
Where Can you Do Affiliate Marketing
Sharing affiliate links and earning commission through those links is affiliate marketing. You can publish or share affiliate links anywhere. For example Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Emails, Email newsletters, Whatsapp, PDF documents, articles, and blogs. Share your affiliate links on social media platforms, in bios, in websites, in comments, in youtube video descriptions, or anywhere that any platform allows. Sometimes people ask for certain service recommendations. If you have an affiliate link for a similar service, you can share that link. For example, if somebody asks me to recommend a good web hosting service, I know which affiliate link I should share with him. It’s like a win-win. Your friend is asking for a recommendation and you are giving him a link for a service that you trust but it’s an affiliate link. Your friend will get the service and you get the commission. In some cases, your friend may also benefit from the affiliate link. Services offer a discount if someone is joining them via an affiliate link.
If you are a YouTuber you can get more benefits from affiliate programs. For example: If you talk about creating websites. If you publish tutorials. You can recommend a web hosting service to your viewers in the video description. You can create a full tutorial on how to use a service and provide its affiliate links in the video description so that people can easily find that service by clicking your affiliate links.
If you use Facebook, join Facebook groups and share your affiliate links there. For example, if you have an affiliate link for a web hosting service, join Facebook groups related to web hosting, watch what people are asking or what they need in those groups, and share your affiliate links in comments or replies.
Use microblogging platforms like Twitter. You can publish microblogs on Twitter and post affiliate links under each Tweet. Promote services and products through their affiliate links on Twitter. Twitter is easy and less time-consuming for publishers. Articles, blogs, or videos take time to create. But Twitter does not need much time. On Twitter you can share a little update about anything and post the affiliate link at the bottom of a tweet. Use URL shortening services to shrink the affiliate link’s URL in case it’s a long URL.
Share your affiliate links in Whatsapp groups, in chats, and in similar messaging apps.
The three best platforms to share affiliate links are Facebook groups, Youtube videos, and Whatsapp groups. These seem to be more successful than others.
How Affiliate Marketing Works?
You go to a business website and search for an affiliate link at the site. Usually, it’s at the top, under the about page, or in footer links. Click on that link, signup for the affiliate program, get the affiliate link, and share it anywhere online. A viewer views the link, clicks on the link, and goes to the business website. Viewer purchases the product or service. You get the commission or profit share from this transaction.
Types of Affiliate Links
Affiliate links can be for one product or the whole store. You can recommend a product or you can recommend a store or both. If you recommend a product or if you have an affiliate link for a single product, then you will get a commission for that product only.
If you have an affiliate link for a store like Aliexpress or Amazon, then from your affiliate link if a user goes to Aliexpress or Amazon and buys something or anything, you get the commission depending on the product and whether the product allows commission or not.
That is because some affiliates track your link as well. For example in the case of Aliexpress or Amazon associates, if you are an affiliate partner and share your affiliate link somewhere and a user clicks at that link but does not buy that product but buys any other product or in the case when the user does not buy any product that day but returns after few days and buys any other product from the same service, you will still get the commission. This is because the user used your affiliate link to explore that service. A cookie is dropped in the user’s computer that recognizes who recommended or introduced that user to that service. The cookie remains there for a few days to recognize your recommendation.
So affiliate links can be site-wide or for a single product only. Bigger the store, brand, or service – the bigger the benefits and profits. So when you create an affiliate link, look for what type of affiliate link are you generating. Is it for a single product only or it is for the whole store, service, or brand?
How to Make Sure Affiliate Links Work?
You should know about the service that you are promoting and you should promote that service to the targetted relevant audience. For example, if you have an affiliate link for a web hosting service, you should know what is web hosting and how it works. Then you should find users who use web hosting. Go to that group of people or audience and share web hosting affiliate links with them. People interested in that service are more likely to click on those links.
So know the product behind your affiliate link and know where is its potential audience. Share affiliate links with the relevant audience only.
How to Choose Product for Affiliate Program
Choose a product that is useful and has a lot of potential users. Choose a product that gives more commission.
How to Watch Affiliate Links Progress
From the affiliate account dashboard for each affiliate program. Go to the affiliate account, and sign in, the dashboard will show the full report, containing clicks and conversions.
How Affiliate Programs Pay You
Affiliate programs pay you via PayPal, Payoneer, Skrill, Wire Transfer, or bank transfer. It is important to know if you will get paid via an affiliate program or not. Ask them if they allow withdrawal in your preferred way. If you can not accept payments via PayPal, you need to make sure that the affiliate program can send you commissions in a different way like bank transfer or Payoneer.
Popular Affiliates for Pakistan
The following services allow commission withdrawal via wire transfer (bank), Payoneer, or skrill. That is why these are suitable for Pakistan.
- Fiverr: Start freelancing
- Payoneer: Send & receive payments globally
- Hostinger: Web hosting
- Amazon: Amazon affiliates / Amazon Associates
Popular Affiliates [Worldwide]
The following services may prefer PayPal for commission withdrawal so may not be suitable for Pakistan but you should confirm this with their support.
- Streamyard: Streaming & recording studio
- Debounce: Email validation tool
- Appsumo: Best deals on your favourite software
- Invideo: Online video editor
- Epidemic Sounds: Royalty free music for video creators
- TubeBuddy: Boost YouTube views with video promotion & SEO tools
- VidIQ: Boost YouTube views
- Storyblocks: Royalty free music, videos and images for content creators
- Siteground: Web hosting
Will This Technique Work For Everybody?
Yes. It can work for anybody. But you will have to work for it. You have to be consistent, persistent, active, and patient. To do anything significant you have to be patient and work gradually toward it. You will have to partner with good affiliate programs, create links, write catchy titles to promote those services, know about the service that you are promoting, know the relevant audience for the service, and prove to be helpful for people to make it all work for you. You may also need to build your social network to promote affiliate services. Maybe start a YouTube channel or a blog.
I hope I was thorough in this affiliate marketing guide. Let me know if you have any comments or questions.
Thanks for reading
Best of luck