You are reading the most basic guide on affiliate marketing for beginners available over the internet.
I know that you want to have some passive income monthly coming into your bank account. This is why you are here, and be assured for you are at the right place.
Let’s begin. (I want you to take notes as you read).
Page Contents
1. Why should you even care for affiliate marketing in 2021?
I have a question for you.
Who doesn’t want to earn passive income with the hope that someday it will turn into a full time regular income?
Almost everyone wants to do that.
And affiliate marketing is where majority of them starts because the investment is very little to even sometimes zero.
Plus, you have the freedom of what products you will sell and what you won’t, which is far more better than a traditional salesperson who only deals with one kind of product.
This doesn’t end there. 81% of brands rely on affiliate programs to improve their business. That is a big number.
And what about the earning potential? I will talk about it later, so be with me.
2. Affiliate Marketing Important Terms For Beginners
Let’s know some of the basic terms of affiliate marketing system.
This step is crucial because when you read advanced articles and blogs on affiliate marketing, you will be coming across these terms very frequently.
Definition: Affiliate Marketing
Now one of the best, crisp and succinct definition I find is the one given by Neil Patel.
Here…
Affiliate marketing is the process of earning money (commissions) every time you promote a company’s products or services and drive a sale. You only get paid every time you drive a sale, just like a commission-only sales representative.
I will explain this definition in next heading. Focus on the definitions for now.
To tell you more, there are 3 types of users in any affiliate marketing system.
1. The Merchant.
Anyone who has the ownership of a product (because he has created it )will be called a merchant.
A merchant may take the form of a big company like Microsoft, Apple, Walmart, and many more.
Or it may take the form of an individual person selling some product like individual courses on udemy.
Bonus: A merchant may also be called a seller, a creator, a brand, a retailer, or a even a vendor sometimes.
Extra: A product may either be physical or digital. Some of the digital products include e-books, online courses, infoproducts, and the like.
2. The Affiliate
This is someone who does the marketing of the product.
An affiliate convinces the visitors how valuable the product is in order for them to buy it. And everytime someone buys the product, the affiliate gets a commision.
You know what is amazing here? The price of the commision is already included in the retail price of the product. So the customers do not have to pay extra above that range.
And yes I forgot to tell you that an affiliate is also called a publisher.
And this also, that even affiliates can be an individual person or a company of many persons.
3. The Customer
Do I need to define this? You may know this guy as a consumer or a buyer.
So these are the three users — the merchant, the affiliate, the customer — that are involved in an affiliate marketing system.
There is one more thing left now to define it.
Definition: Affiliate Marketing Program
In simple words, in order to do affiliate marketing a merchant creates a program, also called associate programs, where any affiliate can sign up and then starts to sell the desired products of the merchant on his or her own website.
How does that all happen? That is in the next heading.
But before that you should know that the biggest affiliate program right now on the planet is the associate program of Amazon.
3. How Does Affiliate Marketing Works
I have divided the working into two types for you to grasp the idea easily.
1. In Theory
Suppose you have an e-commerce store where you sell all kinds of books and stationery, and you are having pretty good sales from organic traffic.
But as the competition rises you want more sales because more sales, more profits. So you ask your friend’s advice for how to do that without much investment on marketing and other stuff.
He says that you can tell someone else to sell your products. But he or she won’t work for free. Right?
So what do you do?
You put the following condition that everytime that guy sells any of your product, he or she will get a commision. And the more they sell, the more they earn and thus you earn.
Now to do so you create an affiliate program and ask every marketer to sign up for your program for free and earn money everytime they make a sale.
This is how affiliate marketing works.
2. In Technical Terms
As an affiliate marketer, you can signup for any affiliate marketing program by going to the website of the companies(if they have any programs available or not)
After doing that you can promote the products of the company.
Where can you promote?
You can promote on your own blog(if you have one), or on your social media handles, or even on whatsapp groups and similar places.
How to promote?
After signing up you will get a unique link for any product that you promote.
Share this link to the customers and ask them to but it once you have told the value of the product.
And if the customer clicks the links and actually buy from it, you will get a commision of that purchase.
This is it and now you are ready to know the scope of affiliate marketing in terms of finance.
Let’s know that too.
4.How Much Does An Affiliate Marketer Earns
To be honest with you, the earning potential is limitless.
To earn more all you need to do is invest your time and build your audience. Once you have built an audience that is ready to buy the products your promote, you will have money coming into your account while you sleep.
This is true and many people have done this.
These are some of the stats.
- 48% of affiliate marketers globally earn $20k a year (which is $1660 a month).
- Only 3% of all affiliate marketers are making over $150k a year.
- Only 34% percent of affiliate marketers are willing to invest in PPC to generate traffic and exposure.
(Source: Affiliate Marketing Benchmark Report)
These are the famous affiliate marketers and their salaries are pretty much high.
These are some of the thousand of people who have become successful affiliate marketer.
Conclusion
So now you know the basics of affiliate marketing, you are in the position to know how to get started in the world of affiliate marketing.
You know the importance of affiliate marketing, its very basic terms, the model of affiliate marketing and who are the experts in the fields.
Is there anything you didn’t get in the article? Comment your problems below and I will answer that to the best of my ability.
Don’t forget to share the article.
PS: My next article will be on how to start as an affiliate marketer in 2021 from a beginners perspective.
