How To Start An Affiliate Marketing Business? (Beginners Guide)

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Start An Affiliate Marketing Business
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For anyone who understands what affiliate marketing is, the next big questions is:

How do I get started with Affiliate marketing business?

In this beginners guide, I will help you understand how to start affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a growing vertical, and you can start making money from it via a website, blog, YouTube channel & also PPC marketing.

There are many ways internet marketers are doing affiliate marketing, and you need to pick the one that suits your style of working. Below I will share how I started with it, and so far I can say confidently that it’s working, and it will work for you too.

How to Start An Affiliate marketing business:

I have shared all important links below to become a master of affiliate marketing, but first let’s take those baby steps which will help you to get the basics right.

Become an affiliate: Join Affiliate programs and marketplaces

The very first step you need to do is to become an affiliate of the products. This could be done via Affiliate networks or you can also join direct affiliate programs.  It’s a good idea to understand the difference between these two, and this post on direct affiliate program vs. affiliate marketplace will help.

You need to pick products that resonate with your skills set or the topic you talk about the most. If you are an existing blogger, YouTuber, or an influencer, it will be easy for you. We will discuss more about this as we move ahead.

Promotion Channel:

Affiliate promotion channel
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Once you have become an affiliate, the next thing is to find a way to promote the products. This could be:

  • A blog
  • An Affiliate website (Ex: Comparison website, deals, and discounts)
  • YouTube channel
  • Podcasting
  • Social media platforms such as Facebook Page or group, Twitter and so on.

The one that works the best for the long term is a combination of blog and YouTube channel. Since you will be using content marketing to drive free traffic to your platforms, your profit will be higher and over the time you will see organic growth.

The easy one to get started is via blog or YouTube channel. If you don’t have a blog, you can read my guide on “How to start a blog.” This will help you to get started in the next 10 minutes.

Sales pitch

For selling any product, you need to create a sales pitch. The sales pitch can be in the form of a blog post, video, a podcast, or can be a static web page. Many companies provide you with a product landing page.

Creating a sales pitch in simple words, you need to make your readers aware of what problem the product solves or it could be an offer they should not miss. For newcomers, it is easy to pick and product and then build an audience around it. For existing content creators, the product should align with your existing user base.

Link Cloaking:

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Link cloaking technique helps you to convert ugly looking affiliate link into pretty links. Let’s understand this by an example:

  • Affiliate link: http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?B=44&U=377725&M=47&urllink=&afftrack=SML
  • Cloaked link: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/recommended/Shareasale/

Both the links point to the same web-page, and the cloaked one looks much friendly than the usual affiliate link. Another benefit is, you will be able to track how many people are clicking on the link. It also makes affiliate link management easier. We have a detailed guide about the same in the upcoming section of this series.

If you have a blog on WordPress, you can use this plugin called ThirstyAffiliates. If you don’t have a blog, you can use a platform called Geni.us, which offers all the features you need.

Now before you get started with Affiliate marketing, here are few guides as promised to refine your skills further:

Feel free to ask your follow up question via comments and do share this useful guide with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. You can also subscribe to ShoutMeLoud newsletter for updates related to affiliate marketing.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

36 thoughts on “How To Start An Affiliate Marketing Business? (Beginners Guide)”

  1. Aditya Singh

    Hi,

    Thanks for writing such a wonderful post. I have few questions.

    Share-sale is not accepting my site. I have made a magazine site which have lot of content and different category. I am not able to earn from the affiliate marketing, people are not interested or they don’t buy from the link. How to overcome this issue.

    Affiliate marketing is a major source of income. you cant depend on google ads. Earning form google ads or yahoo ads is difficult.

  2. ronit

    Very Interesting and quite understandable.Your way of writing is impressive.It is very beneficial for all noobs like me to read your blogs to learn about affiliate marketing.IN fact, I am really getting a lot of knowledge and improvement from your posts.

    Thanks Harsh

  3. Prabash babu Aryal

    This is my 3rd-day course. With every course, I am going more interested in affiliate program. With some internal links of this post, I understand better about how Google treats affiliate link and ways to deal with that. I am expecting much more to learn every day with the e-mail course you send to me.
    Thanks a ton! harsh, you are not just a good blogger but good teacher too.

  4. Prashant Singh

    In all 3 days, (course on affiliate marketing) I understand everything . This all happens because sir you wrote mind blowing and understandable blogs. Thanks for your free course that’s help me a lot to build up my career with digital marketing.

  5. Femi

    Thank you very much.
    I really want to earn from affiliate marketing programs that are Nigerians- friendly.

    Kindly help critique my site: infotechagent.com

    I need progressive way forward.

    Best regards.

  6. Liton biswas

    Harsh,
    Good day, it’s very difficult to find a product to promote for a specific niche. I’m a civil engineer and write about building construction from civil engineering point of view. I always find it easy to write a post than to find a affiliate product.

  7. Aswani

    Thanks for sharing these tips. I will make use of these tips in my affiliate marketing campaign especially that SEO friendly link for affiliate marketing campaigns.

  8. priyanshi

    Hey Harsh,
    Your post is quite interesting and knowledgable …but can u guide me on the point that how to start affiliate marketing ?

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