Are you looking to make some passive income? Do you want to earn online without creating any product? Do you dream of making money while you’re asleep? If you answered yes to all the questions, then you have landed in the right place. This guide will help you understand Affiliate Marketing point to point, how to become an affiliate marketer, and some helpful tips to kickstart your journey. Let’s dive into this guide to affiliate marketing for beginners.
In this Article:
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a referral marketing approach where an individual or a brand earns a commission by promoting a product or service made by another retailer or business using an affiliate link. In Affiliate Marketing, the individual, known as the affiliate, selects a product, promotes it on a blog, social media platform, podcast, or website, and earns a portion from every sale through the unique affiliate link provided by the retailer. It is a quick way to offer products and services and earn from them without creating your own.
Affiliates execute online marketing on behalf of a retailer or brand, with the ultimate goal of driving traffic and conversions for the brand. The affiliate is paid for every click or conversion earned by the retailer.
According to statistics, Affiliate Marketing has increased from $5.4 billion in 2017 to $8.2 billion in 2022 in the United States, offering an incredible opportunity to those looking to start a side hustle. If executed right, it can turn into a successful business idea from a side hustle.
Types of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing has been divided into three categories, and learning them will help you understand the different methods affiliates use to make money.
Unattached Affiliate Marketing
A promotion model in which the affiliate has no connection to the product or service they are advertising. In this strategy, the affiliate has no expertise in the product’s niche and does not make any claim about its use. The affiliates run pay-per-click advertising campaigns with the affiliate link and hope people will click it and buy the product. This model is for those people who want to make money without building customer relationships.
Related Affiliate Marketing
Related affiliate marketing is promoting products and services you don’t use but that are related to your niche. In this model, the affiliate marketer has an audience on a website, blog site, YouTube Channel, TikTok, or any other social platform. A related affiliate marketer also has influence, which makes them a trusted source for recommending products, even if they’ve never used them before. The only downside to this is that there is a risk of suggesting a bad product or service if they’ve never actually used it before, which can cost them the trust of their audience.
Involved Affiliate Marketing
Involved affiliate marketing means the affiliates are involved with the product or service they’re promoting. The affiliate has tried the product themselves, trusts that it will provide a good experience, and has the authority to make claims about its use. Involved affiliate marketers use their personal experiences with the product in their marketing efforts, and customers buy the products based on their trust in the marketer.
How do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
Affiliate marketers host affiliate marketing websites or create accounts on social media platforms where they advertise products and services on behalf of businesses and retailers in various ways, such as blogs, videos, reviews, ads, product links, etc.
But how does an affiliate get paid after linking the retailer to the customer? Well, there are different approaches depending on the affiliate program. The following are the ways used in affiliate marketing:
👉Pay-Per-Click: In PPC (pay-per-click) method, the affiliates engage the customers to move to the retailer’s website. The affiliate is paid based on the increase in web traffic.
👉Pay-Per-Sale: In this method, the retailer pays the affiliate a percentage of the product’s sale price after the customer purchases the product using the unique affiliate link provided by the retailer. A great example of Pay-Per-Sale would be a SaaS or Web Hosting Affiliate Program.
👉Pay-Per-Lead: Instead of paying the affiliate for purchases, the retailer pays them for each lead they generate. In this model, the affiliate has to convince the customer to go to the retailer’s website and perform a certain action, such as signing up for a newsletter or a trial account. Amazon affiliate program is a classic example.
👉Pay-Per-Install: Pay-per-install is an affiliate strategy that is very popular among mobile applications. In this model, the affiliate marketer encourages customers to install the app through a unique deep link that guides potential users directly to the app store for smooth installation. They are paid based on the app’s number of installations or downloads.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing?
You can start Affiliate Marketing in four simple steps:
Choose the platform
Consider what platform you will use to promote products or services. Blogs are an effective channel for advertising and promoting. Starting a blog is relatively easy and cheap. Once your site is up, optimize it for search engines, so you have a better chance of ranking. Once done, you can add affiliate links to your content. You can opt for YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram if you are into creating videos. YouTube has the edge over other platforms when it comes to making videos.
💡 Pro-Tip: Find out where your target audience is, and choose that specific platform. Decide your niche
Choose a topic that focuses on a specific category. For example, the topic of “Digital Marketing” is an enormous category. Rather than diving into that, try something more specific, like live streaming. This strategy will help you build a more focused audience and help you rank higher in search engines.
💡 Pro-Tip: Choose a topic you’re interested in, which will help you remain consistent.
Select your Affiliate Program
Choose the best Affiliate program depending on your niche and expertise. You must choose an affiliate program that appeals to your target audience and their desires. Before joining any affiliate program, make sure you do your research about it. Although merchants all have to start their businesses at some point, working with established vendors with a good reputation and high traffic is preferable.
💡 Pro-Tip: Go through all the available Affiliate programs before you choose.
Create Content
To earn from your Affiliate Program, you must create high-quality content and add your affiliate link to drive your viewers toward purchasing the product. For example, if you are creating a blog, add the affiliate link so that the viewers can easily go to the landing page and purchase the product via your affiliate link.
Original content is essential in content creation. Duplication can destroy your entire efforts, as the audience and the search engines do not appreciate it. However, the issue is that the internet is flooded with too much information, making it hard for you to craft unique content.
💡 Pro tip: Go the extra mile and create content that solves your viewer’s problems.
Drive Traffic to your Platform
After you have created content, the next stage is to get more people to read it so that they will click on your affiliate links. A few methods to get traffic on your blog or any other content is:
- Paid Traffic: Using PPC
- SEO: optimizing pages to rank high in search engines like Google.
- Email Marketing: Keep your audience informed about the content via emails.
💡 Pro-Tip: Offer something valuable that may trigger the reader to click on the link.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
Low Risk
Affiliate marketing does not demand any upfront investment, the cost of producing goods, employee payments, etc. You do not have to make any payment to join Affiliate programs. You only need a website or an account to create your product, and you will only be required to give your time and generate traffic on your website.
Passive Income
With some effort, affiliate marketing can help you make passive income. The 9 to 5 job demands you to be at work to make money, but affiliate marketing offers you the ability to make money while you sleep. By financing some amount of time into it, you will see continuous returns on that time as customers purchase the product. In Affiliate marketing, you receive money for your work long after you’ve finished it. Even when you’re not in front of your computer, your marketing skills will earn you a steady flow of income.
Work From Anywhere
Affiliate marketing is the perfect resolution if you dislike the 9-5 office culture. You’ll be able to establish campaigns and receive money on your virtual credit card from the products that retailers create while working from the comfort of your own home.
Low-Cost Advertising
You can spend less on the advertisement. Once you have garnered traffic on your website via organic or paid marketing strategy, you can easily make money.
Easy To Start
Becoming successful through affiliate marketing takes time, skill, and experience, and you can skip the lengthy process of creating a product yourself. As such, you can find success with affiliate marketing without being an expert in a particular niche.
Tips for Successful Affiliate Marketing
Choose Affiliate Programs Wisely
The most important criterion to remember is that the product should line up with your audience. Ask yourself, Is it something your target audience would find valuable? Does it fit with your area of expertise?
Also, make sure the product or service you’re promoting is a fit for the platform you’re promoting it on.
Understand Your Audience
Before you select products to promote, you should make sure there is an active market for them. Understand the demand for the products you will sell and market them efficiently. To obtain the best possible results from affiliate marketing, you should focus on gaining your audience’s trust. This is because repeat visitors are among the most important assets for an affiliate marketer.
Trust helps build a good affiliate-audience relationship, create an engaged community, and generate more sales.
Offer Discounts
Promo codes, like coupons, discounts, and gift codes, are an excellent way for online shoppers to be used at checkout to claim a bonus or a discount on their purchases. Unsurprisingly, offering affiliate promo codes helps quickly drive sales.
Create Valuable Content
Create content that provides solutions to the viewer’s problems. Your content must be focused on giving a resolution to viewers. Make them understand how the product you are promoting will benefit them and solve their dilemma.
Know about Your Affiliate Products
Understanding the products is among the keys to increasing sales, as the target audience will expect affiliates to be an expert in their niche.
If affiliates provide helpful information about the ins and outs of the products, they may be able to drive sales or find new customers.
For this reason, we recommend using the product before becoming an affiliate. Extensive product knowledge can boost your confidence in recommending a particular product to the audience.
Utilize Email Marketing
Send out emails to the contacts you’ve gathered who would like to receive information from you. It’s one of the best ways to connect with people outside social media.
Create Reviews and Tutorials
Create reviews and “how to” tutorials for the product you sell, as this will solve the customer’s problem and increase sales. Offer a tutorial that solves a searcher’s problem and showcases the product’s value.
Practice SEO
Undoubtedly, SEO plays a vital role in the digital marketing landscape. It helps generate organic traffic, accounting for 53% of all website traffic.
For anyone looking to grow as an affiliate marketer, we recommend incorporating local SEO into their affiliate marketing strategies.
Choose Quality Products
Another common mistake new affiliates make is selling anything and everything, including lower-quality products. While this strategy can quickly boost affiliate income, it doesn’t ensure long-term success.
As affiliate marketers have a reputation to uphold, promoting valuable products should be a top priority.
Run Ads
In marketing, peak season is when customers’ demand is at its highest. It includes some of the most important holidays, such as Valentine’s Day, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Christmas Eve.
Enroll in Different Programs
You can join multiple affiliate marketing programs. This is a great possibility as affiliates will never know if their partners deny payouts or lower the affiliate commissions.
Start Affiliate Marketing with OneStream Live
Suppose your audience is interested in video marketing, live streaming, hosting online events, concerts, corporate meetings, or anything related to video and live broadcasting. In that case, we encourage you to apply for the OneStream Live Affiliate program. OneStream Affiliate Program is an excellent way to share our fantastic live streaming solution with your audience while banking some hefty bucks.
Read More: Earn Money with OneStream Affiliate Program
How does the OneStream Affiliate Work?
Whenever a plan is purchased by a customer you referred, you will receive 25% recurring commission of the plan value. This means you will receive 25% commission every month for as long as the customer (who purchased through your link) stays with us on a paid plan. As soon as you hit the $50 cutoff mark (and you have at least 2 paying customers on your credits), you can withdraw your commission directly through the OneStream Live dashboard.
Read More: How does OneStream Live Affiliate Program Work?
Joining the OneStream Live Affiliate Program is fairly simple and straightforward. All you have to do is:
1️⃣Log in to your OneStream Live dashboard and click on Affiliate Program from the left side panel.
2️⃣ Read the Affiliate Terms and Conditions and agree to become a part of the program. Click Continue.
3️⃣ Copy your unique affiliate link and share it with friends & others in your circle. Start earning!
🎯 Important:
- Check the balance of your affiliate account in real-time by logging into your OneStream Live dashboard.
- Becoming a part of the OneStream Live Affiliate Program is free. There are no hidden costs involved.
- You will find many marketing assets in your Affiliate dashboard for promotion.
👉 Note:
- Payments are sent only to PayPal accounts. Make sure you have your PayPal account set up to be a part of the OneStream Live Affiliate Program.
- You should have a minimum of $50 balance and at least 2 paying customers in your portfolio to withdraw your affiliate commission.
Final Word
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to earn money. We have enlisted the how’s and why’s for you to begin your journey. If you follow the given techniques, you can easily make money while sleeping, and the catch is consistency. So, promote the products you believe in, use SEO, offer discounts, and gain your audience’s trust to win at Affiliate Marketing.
OneStream Live offers a unique Affiliate Program for you embedded with various assets that you can utilize for marketing. With the OneStream Live Affiliate program, you can make money by promoting an all-in-one live streaming solution.
OneStream Live is a cloud-based live streaming solution to create, schedule, and multistream professional-looking live streams across 45+ social media platforms and the web simultaneously. For content-related queries and feedback, write to us at [email protected]. You’re also welcome to Write for Us!
