How to Get Started & Make Money with Affiliate Marketing. A Basic Guide for Beginners

Step 1: Choose a Profitable Niche

Most successful affiliate marketers focus on niches when finding and promoting a product. There’s literally thousands of products both physical and digital in all kinds of niches. Picking a niche that you have some kind of interest in, is recommended. Example:

• Health (Weight loss, Fitness, Yoga);
• Relationship (Dating, Wedding, Divorce, etc.);
• Wealth (Make Money online, Entrepreneurship, Investment & Trading).

Step 2: Create a Website/Start a Blog

Fortunately, getting a website these days is so easy, quick and affordable. If you treat affiliate marketing as a serious business, you need to have a website or blog to maximize your income potential. Once you have your niche or idea of what your website is going to be about. You should get started creating a website or blog. It will be worth it.

See: Create a Website or Blog in 10 Minutes.

Step 3: Build Quality Content on your Site

Content is an integral part of your online business’ success. You can generate  more leads and generate more sales with quality content.

You have several options to create a content for your website or blog:

• Write or do it yourself.
• Hire a writer. See: Hirewriters.com, OnlineJobs.ph
• Purchase Premade Articles. These are pre-written articles that you can claim as your own. You can edit, retitle and use them as is.

Here’s what you can do to build quality content:

1. Start with Keyword Research
2. Find The Most Shared Posts for this Keyword
3. Use Quora to find Questions You can Answer About The Keyword
4. Search for Images to Feature
5. Look for Videos To Play
6. Prepare Resources to Link in your Article
7. Build an Outline Using Your Research
8. Write a Catchy Title
9. Present a Compelling Intro
10. Create a Featured Image
11. Include a Table of Contents
12. Use Lots of Screenshots
13. Use Short Sentences and Paragraphs
14. Create Callout Boxes
15. Determine Your Call-to-Actions

Step 4: Build An Audience

Building an audience for your site will, in some ways, follow naturally once you start producing valuable content. An interested audience will not only bring you consistent traffic, but also result in consistent sales and leads for you.

Step 5: Drive Traffic to your Site/ Blog

It’s now time to build traffic to your website. You can use paid traffic or free traffic from social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, etc

Step 6: Apply for Affiliate Programs

You can start researching for affiliate programs. See comparison guide here. Sign up

Step 7: Add Affiliate Links to your Content to Monetize

Once you are approved to Affiliate Programs you have applied for, you will be provided marketing & promotion materials. Grab your affiliate links and other assets and embed them in your blog posts.