How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
Guide for Beginners

Earning from home is now very widespread and one of the options that will suit everyone is affiliate programs. Anyone can join and develop in trade marketing without having any initial knowledge and without a website. Everything that can be useful in mastering this niche, you can find in this article and start your journey as a partner.

What is affiliate marketing?

What is affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing in which the advertiser works with a partner contractor who is responsible to him for the result, expressed in business terms. Work happens, as a rule, according to models. The contractor (partner) receives a reward for each buyer and / or sale, visitor, subscriber, brought or carried out thanks to his efforts.

The term "affiliate marketing" is often used for an entire industry that includes a number of specialized companies and professionals. This can include affiliate networks, affiliate program managers, and various types of single affiliates (freelancers) who have many methods in their arsenal to promote their advertisers' products and services.
It is very profitable for partners and customers to work together. The former earn income with almost no effort, while the latter optimize the costs of marketing campaigns by spending the budget on specific targeted actions.
Once upon a time, sellers independently created their own affiliate programs. Now special aggregators are engaged in affiliate marketing, which allow the customer not to waste time creating their own network.
CPA networks
CPA networks consist of a large number of sites gathered in one place, where customers add their offers (offers). At the same time, not every offer can get permission to publish, since it is very important that affiliates receive high conversions and, accordingly, generate income. Usually, the aggregator takes a commission from affiliates, so its profit also depends on their profit.
As a rule, affiliate marketing networks have their own specialization. These can be, for example, online stores, online games, banks and loans, information products or online education, and so on. Before placing an offer in any network, it is worth finding out this specialization. If there are significantly more offers in a segment than in others, it means that the network has collected resources targeted at a specific audience, and local affiliates have good experience in promoting these categories.

How does affiliate marketing work?

How does affiliate marketing work
By 2022, the volume of affiliate (or affiliate) marketing in the world will reach $8 billion, which is almost twice as much as in 2015. Now this is one of the most effective ways to increase sales and increase brand awareness.

Affiliate marketing delegates the responsibility to promote a product or service to partners, the company itself can only monitor statistics and track fraudulent sites.

Some affiliates create fraudulent sites and publish links using geotagging and ad timing so that they cannot be tracked.

However, brands track conversions through special tracking platforms that analyze information about the time of appearance and the status of leads. Agencies working with influencers usually have test targeting formats where you can test the impact of an ad on an audience over a limited period of time.
How to make money with affiliate marketing for beginners? The scheme of affiliate marketing is simple: the manufacturer offers a product or service and shares the profit with partners. Partners promote the product on their site and receive a commission for each sale. For the customer, the cost remains the same because the commission is usually already included in the price of the product or service.
The main advantage of affiliate marketing is customer loyalty to the content author or to the site where they follow the link to buy the product.
customer loyalty to the content
Users who are interested in content are valuable to the brand. They are either well-informed and sincerely believe that a certain product is necessary and useful for them, or they have formed their attachment to a brand or a certain niche through content.
The complete opposite of such a client is one who was attracted by a discount or coupon. The main task of such a buyer is to buy goods as cheaply as possible, he is not loyal and will go to competitors as soon as possible.
client is one who was attracted by a discount or coupon
client is one who was attracted by a discount or coupon
The complete opposite of such a client is one who was attracted by a discount or coupon. The main task of such a buyer is to buy goods as cheaply as possible, he is not loyal and will go to competitors as soon as possible.
Quality content lasts a long time and continues to bring interested buyers again and again. Affiliates, that is, partner sites, will not necessarily lead to quick transactions, at first the number of transactions will grow slowly, but in the end it will positively affect the number of repeat transactions.

A marketing partner drives traffic to products/services by linking them to a consumer. Its main goal is to get people to act here and now: place an order, register on the site, fill out an application, that is, perform the necessary targeted action (Conversion Flow), which will put money in his pocket.
Partner tasks:
  • find goods or services (offers) for promotion;
  • determine the target audience, identify its problems;
  • study the product, formulate its benefits, advantages;
  • make a marketing analysis of competitors, their strengths and weaknesses;
  • create marketing materials (ads, landing pages);
  • attract potential buyers (traffic sources);
  • optimize the campaign (test the components of the campaign, bring it to profit);
  • scale an already profitable enough campaign.

Why do affiliate marketing?

  • Wide earning opportunities
The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you can do it on a massive scale. An ordinary seller sells goods in only one company. But as an affiliate marketer, you can promote products from multiple companies and earn commissions across multiple companies.
  • Fixed income
Affiliate marketing is a viable income option, but it doesn't work equally well for every business. Generating income through affiliate marketing requires dedication and commitment over a long period of time.
  • Additional features for webmasters
Affiliate marketing is ideal for bloggers, coaches, information entrepreneurs, and those who create and maintain their own resources such as YouTube channels. There are many aspects of affiliate marketing that make it a good home based business model.
  • Low overhead
Most affiliate programs are free to join, so your costs are usually related to your referral and marketing methods.
  • No physical products
There is no need to create a product or service because you are choosing something that already exists. You do not need to store or ship products.
  • Flexibility
You can work anytime and from anywhere as long as you have internet access.
  • Additional income
There is passive income potential, depending on how you promote your affiliate programs. This can be added to your current home based business to create an additional income stream.
Affiliate marketing is done mainly to provide yourself with a constant active or passive income, since everything in this lesson sets you up for a partnership.

How much money can you make from affiliate marketing?

How to make money from affiliate marketing? Success in affiliate marketing lies in perseverance and consistency of character. You should not think that if you once earned $300 per day, then your profit will now always be the same. In affiliate marketing, there are many cases where, having received a rather modest income for a long time, people literally earned many times more overnight. It's all about choosing the right niche and strategy. And there are many opposite cases where partners have gone from high income to zero.
How much money can you make from affiliate marketing
There is an unofficial statistic that affiliate programmes are divided according to monthly income:

  • 1 group of novice affiliates around $300/day;
  • Average affiliates whose income ranges from $300/day to $3,000/day;
  • High-performing affiliates earning over $3,000/day;
  • Super affiliates, often referred to as "affiliate marketing gurus" who earn over $10,000/day.
There is no limit to the profits from a partnership, as you can develop your traffic sources and generate more new customers. Also, each partner can participate in several affiliate programs.

How to make money with affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to make money online. Its mechanism consists in the interaction of three main components - a partner, an advertiser and a buyer. The purpose of affiliate marketing is the promotion by a webmaster - a partner of the advertiser's product or service.

Affiliate marketing is able to bring a constant stable income. At the same time, your earnings directly depend on how effectively you are able to convert potential customers into buyers. This type of earnings is worth the costs that it requires at the initial stage, plus, this can be done anywhere in the world.

Despite the fact that affiliate marketing does not require long-term training and a huge amount of knowledge, you should not expect quick results from this type of earnings. There is a high level of competition in this area, so you still have to spend some time finding a bona fide advertiser with a quality product or service, learn to understand the primary needs of buyers, develop promotion skills and understand how to analyze your work.

Step 1. Choose your niche

To get started successfully, you need to do three things:
  • Find the right audience
  • Understand what needs and problems this audience has
  • Figure out how to help solve problems and meet needs.
If you don't know which product or service is right for solving problems or meeting the needs of your audience, you should do your due diligence. Start by monitoring forums and sites that are popular in your niche. Find out what people are worried about right now, what questions they ask and what product they would like to purchase.

A niche is a topic you choose. Of course, it is best to opt for the topic to which your heart lies, which attracts your sincere attention. This will allow you to create much better and more engaging content without too much fuss.

If you are promoting a product, you must know an order of magnitude more about it than the average site visitor. Always provide honest and accurate information about what you are selling. If the advertiser provides a trial version, be sure to use this opportunity to better understand the product.

Step 2. Choose a platform

The best place to find affiliate products is affiliate marketplaces. Browse the products available for your niche and pick a few that fit.

You can also take a look at your competitors blogs and see what products they are promoting and how they are doing it.

Sellers differ in conversion rates and commission rates. By working with different companies, you can increase your income many times over and make it more stable than if you rely on only one supplier.

When choosing, you should not be guided only by the amount of payment offered by the advertiser.

When choosing, use an integrated approach:
  • Does the company have a good reputation?
    If you do not trust the seller, do not work with him. And if you don't know anything about the product he's selling, read reviews and customer reviews on third-party sites.
  • Can the seller be trusted?
    It will be frustrating if you contact a business that will not be on the market in a couple of months.
  • Consider paying
    Do you prefer to receive a large reward once a month, or a little, but from each sale?
  • What type of affiliate program is right for you?
    It mainly depends on your traffic, you need to select a program based on your capabilities and goals.
  • Entry into the program is free, or will it require some kind of cash outlay?

Step 3. Choose affiliate programs

In affiliate marketing, it is extremely important to test different strategies and track the results with the help of special online tools. This will help you understand exactly what moves work with your target audience.
Everyone can get acquainted with the best affiliate programs:

Pocket Option

Pocket Option - Affiliate
  • Commission rate: up to 80%
The Pocket Option Affiliate Program has 4 partnership levels:

  • IB;
  • VIP;
  • premium;
  • normal.
When registering, the partner chooses one of five payment models:
Affiliate payments are available every week on Mondays through payment systems:

  • Yandex money;
  • WebMoney;
  • Neteller;
  • OKPay;
  • Skrill.

To attract traders, partners can use ready-made promotional materials:

  • landing pages;
  • banners;
  • payment schedule;
  • volume of registration;
  • and other tools.

Thanks to the sub-affiliate program, a partner can receive from 5% to 10% of the profits of their partners. The program also encourages its partners by holding competitive events with prizes.
  • Affiliate Payment Method: bank transfer, PayPal, Credit/debit card (Visa or MasterCard), Skrill

Olymp Trade

Olymp Trade- Affilate
  • Commission: 50-60% revenue share
Olymp Trade is a broker that has been operating for over five years. It is represented in more than 100 countries and has received dozens of international awards. The broker's main income consists of commissions and spreads from clients trading various financial assets. More than 30,000 traders from more than 50 countries make 5 million transactions daily, and the monthly payout reaches $13,000,000. And this is just the beginning. They not only give traders a chance to make money, but also teach them how to do it. They have world-class analysts on their team. They develop original trading strategies and teach traders how to use them wisely through open webinars, as well as one-on-one consultations with traders. Training is provided in all languages ​​spoken by their traders.

Olymp Trade is a fairly popular project that is gaining momentum every year. The Olymp Trade affiliate program boasts payouts of 50-60% through the Revenue Share program. A sub-affiliate program is also offered. As part of this program, you can expect to receive 10% of the profits of sub-affiliates.

The company also provides a wide range of promotional materials and detailed analytics on attracted customers and payments.
  • Affiliate Payment Method: Visa/Mastercard, WebMoney, UnionPay, Skrill, Neteller, FasaPay

Plus500

Plus500 - Affiliate
  • Commission: up to $800 per new active user under the CPA model
This global company has been one of the market leaders in many regions of the world for many years, which makes the benefits of working with Plus500 obvious. Plus500 is a very popular broker that provides its clients with the widest range of trading instruments, including Contracts for Differences (CFDs), which allow traders to trade assets such as stocks, currencies, commodities, cryptocurrencies, ETFs, indices and many more.

In addition, the company has a reliable regulation. Plus500 has ASIC, FMA, FSCA licenses. Therefore, the company can be considered a reliable partner. Plus500 provides its partners with all the necessary information to promote their services and detailed statistics on attracted clients and remuneration, a no less popular online broker.

Since Plus500 has the status of one of the most popular brokers, its affiliate program has some requirements that are well rewarded. With this affiliate program, only the CPA model is available, thanks to which the affiliate will be able to earn up to $800 for each active user.

This program pays its partners for experienced traders. In terms of experience, a trader should be able to create a spread of at least $40. The partner should think about whether he can attract qualified traders who will invest large amounts of money.

For promotion, partners can use: buttons, banners, affiliate links, widgets, logos, landing pages not only for computers, but also for smartphones. If you have any questions, a manager is available for partners to help you figure it out.
  • Affiliate Payment Method: bank transfer, PayPal, Credit/debit card (Visa or MasterCard), Skrill

Step 4: Create Content

In order to work properly in an affiliate program and have results, you need to create the right content. To create worthy content, you need to constantly learn, develop, and practice. It means working on your resources and building trusting loyal relationships with the audience.

In order to choose the right content, you need to familiarize yourself with its types:
  • Useful articles - nothing prevents you from combining informational articles on a specific topic with the recommendation of affiliate programs. This is a very high-quality type of content that also attracts and retains an.
  • Reviews - the essence is to show a particular product from the inside (what exactly is offered in the course, how the service works, for whom this product is, what it gives, what problems it solves, what is useful, why do you recommend it). By showing the product from the inside, the partner is already helping the client understand how it suits him.
  • Instructions - this works great when promoting various services, programs, plugins, etc. When a partner shows how one or another tool can be used and give detailed, understandable instructions on how to use it. By doing this, he solves 2 problems - he recommends a useful tool to a person and teaches him how to use it correctly.
  • Polls - the essence is to identify the actual problems of the audience in the topic - what the client needs right now, what problems he faces, what information, knowledge, skills he lacks.
It is also important to diversify the type of content that the partner offers. If the partner focuses on articles, then it is worth diluting them with a video format or other types of information provision, this will make it possible to interest customers and maintain their interest.

Step 5. Drive traffic

How to attract more traffic to the source for a partner?

First you need to familiarize yourself with the main sources of traffic:

  • Search engines are visitors who follow links to a site.
  • Advertising banners.
  • Contextual advertising - ads designed for a specific target audience.
  • Forums - discussions and experiences shared by users among themselves; a great option for hidden advertising of any product.
  • Social networks - pages of users.
  • Teaser advertising - incomplete information about a product or service, without showing the product.
  • Newsletters.
It is better for a partner to use several options in order to provide themselves with constant traffic and not lose a large number of customers at a time.
work with search engines
The most popular and effective way to get a lot of traffic is to work with search engines. The most popular and at the same time the most time-consuming, long way to create quality content that will allow you to get natural links. This is a path where a lot of content will need to be created, constant analysis of promotion results will be required, and attention to ensuring that the site is interesting, useful to people, and unique.
You can get your first traffic by creating pages for very low-frequency queries. In the first days, even months of the life of a new site, a small but natural stream of traffic is already good. Low-frequency speakers are also interesting in terms of development. Often such requests become more popular over time than they are now. This means that an article that is written with the expectation of 10 visitors will be able to bring 100 in a year. There is such a possibility.
promote the site in social networks
The second way to get traffic to the site is to promote the site in social networks. You need a public or a group with a large audience (it also takes time and effort to create one). Traffic sources here are a link to the site in the status, as well as the publication of announcements of new articles and events that take place on your resource.
The next way is to distribute links across various sites. In fact, this method includes several others.

Links can be posted:

  • on the forums;
  • on bulletin boards;
There is little traffic from there. But, as a rule, these are “quality” visitors who are interested in your offer. They are more tuned to take the action you need (buy a product or service, for example).

  • in e-mail signatures;
  • in site directories;
Directories are not all equally useful. It makes no sense to register in tens and hundreds.

  • in your comments under other people's posts;
  • in the status on your page;
  • on other sites subject to the exchange of links;
Link exchange is effective when they are placed in the visited sectors of partner sites. If you put a link in a certain "directory of links" in the back of the resource, no one will ever see it.

  • by blogging on one of the popular platforms.;
  • videos on You Tube and similar services;
  • in other communities in social networks;
  • in various gifts on your behalf (any useful files that you distribute for free).
Links in letters and gifts can have an effect if there are a lot of such letters. Sending emails without asking the user is spam, and soon the mail will be sent to the appropriate folder. If emails are sent because the user has subscribed to them, then you can expect traffic from this source. Letters will lead to the site of a regular visitor who is interested in news on this topic.
Each of these methods can be effective. If your own blog is not promoted enough, you should not expect traffic from it. And if the link is on the resource of a famous blogger, a powerful flow of visitors will flow from there. Many of them will come just out of curiosity, which is why it is important to develop your source.

Step 6: Convert Clicks to Sales

After all of the above, we can conclude that all that remains for the affiliate is to wait until customer clicks begin to be converted into earnings. Thanks to the tools provided by the company in their personal account, partners can track their results in the form of numbers and graphs and be aware of how many people clicked on the link, registered or fulfilled the necessary conditions set by the company.

Mistakes to avoid

Mistakes to avoid
In order to maintain your level of earnings from the affiliate program, you need to avoid some mistakes that are made not only by beginners, but also by experienced partners.
  • 1 Error - substandard advertising
Sometimes affiliates forget that in addition to banners, widgets and other affiliate program tools, the product needs regular advertising. We must not forget that the client needs any promotions or bonuses that are available on the sites of online brokers. If the partner forgets to disseminate this information, then clients may simply not be interested in the broker at all. For novice traders, you should always indicate the size of the initial deposit, especially if it is publicly available, as well as information about the presence of a demo account, which usually serves as a free trial of the platform's functions.
  • 2 Error - outdated content
One of the most common mistakes, both experienced affiliates and newbies, is the problem with updating the content on their web pages. In order for the partner's site to be interesting to network users, it is necessary to add articles every two to three days. You must understand that by publishing new posts, you are expanding your target audience of readers more and more each time. Also, to increase traffic, you need not only unique but also interesting content.

Constantly filling the partner's resource with fresh posts will help increase the number of subscribers, and, accordingly, potential buyers for successful earnings in the affiliate program. So, irregular work with the site is one of the most common mistakes of partners. Give your page several hours a day to update information, write a new post, or just communicate with readers and stable traffic to your site will be provided.
  • 3 Error - product incompetence
The very first and most important rule for novice partners is to know your product. Only having reliable information you can easily promote the product. At the stage of registration in the affiliate program, each partner goes through the stage of selecting the promoted product. Here you should study all the options presented and choose the most convenient and acceptable for you. If you have any difficulties in choosing a product, you can always ask your personal affiliate manager for help. After choosing a product, it is necessary to study it, at least in the parameters of a general understanding. Further, in working with your subscribers, you will have to rely on this knowledge in order to get the sales you want. It is worth remembering that a negative buying experience will affect your business much more than a positive one. Disinformation only brings bad reviews and misunderstanding of the essence of the product by customers. Study the product you are selling and it will become an indispensable tool in working with your potential buyers. And in case of difficulties, contact your personal manager for additional information or clarification.
  • 4 Error - incorrect reference
Affiliate parameter in links. Without adding an affiliate parameter, your partner cannot identify from whom the buyer "came" and, accordingly, will not charge you a reward. Also, if you have sub-affiliates, you should always check for an affiliate link so you don't lose your sales. So, in simple words, by marking the affiliate program link with your unique "name" - a parameter, you will protect yourself and your sub-partners from loss of earnings.
  • 5 Error - inaction
The online space is very volatile and each site owner has to be universal, adapt to the changing mood of network users. It is important not to get hung up on one selected tool, change them over time or use several at the same time so that the client does not get bored with the same banner or widget.

Conclusion

Affiliate programs are the most common way to make money. Everyone will be able to find what he likes best thanks to the wide variety of niches provided. Everyone will be able to receive both active and passive income from affiliate programs and the possibility of providing a lifetime.

Online trading in the market also does not stand still, which is why affiliate programs of online brokers are widespread and in great demand around the world. The main thing is to understand what you need to provide to the client as content.

The affiliate program takes time only on the first couple of launches, and then a well-established profit system awaits you, so all you need to do is start.
Author:

Victor Hinch

Researcher and writer. Specializes in finance and stock trading. Since 2019, he has been professionally engaged in research and analysis of the CFD and Forex markets and publishes news and articles about leading brokers.
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