Affiliate marketing what is it? This refers to basically promoting other people products or services to earn commissions from the sales generated.

So how can you get to incorporate affiliate marketing on your blog and generate some income?

Affiliate Marketing What Is Required to Start

Mostly many affiliate programs are free to join. This is because your earnings are determined by your efforts to promote the products or services.

Here is what is required to get started with affiliate marketing:-

• An affiliate program

This is the platform that contains the product or service you wish to promote. Here you will be able to select what you feel comfortable promoting and get people to purchase. The more people buy, the more commissions you earn.

• Promotion media

This involves the platforms you wish to promote on. It could be your social media accounts, your blog, your whatsapp groups or email list. Basically it is where you believe you can get potential buyers who are interested in what you are promoting.

Those are the basics of affiliate marketing what it is and an overview of how it is done.

Here are the important things to consider on your blog in order to be successful with affiliate marketing:-

1. Blog niche

Your blog niche determines the affiliate programs and services you can be able to promote.

Let us take for example you are blogging about cameras, it will be easy for you to promote affiliate links leading to cameras and accessories related to cameras compared to having affiliate links for beauty products. I hope you get the logic.

So the first thing you have to do is evaluate your niche, what information do you share on your blog and what products or services can blend well with your content.

Having this in mind will be so helpful as you will get to know what relates to your blog thus giving you a checklist of what to look for in the affiliate programs you wish to join.

2. Content

Now after you have evaluated your blog niche, you will need to come down to your content. This is the articles you publish on your blog, in terms of the amount of content on your blog, structuring of the content and quality among many more factors.

All you have to do is just concentrate on what you really need, take the necessary and leave the rest you don’t have to know everything to succeed anyway. So how does content affect affiliate marketing?

Well…in order to get approved into affiliate programs especially those which require contextual promotion, it may be a requirement to have enough content already published on your blog before they can approve your blog.

So you have to get sufficient content published on your blog beforehand.

When you have applied for an affiliate program and entered the review period, the affiliate program panel goes to review your blog in terms of the content quantity, quality and maybe traffic levels and sources (where most of your traffic comes from).

So what you can do to make sure that this content factor does not affect you is just ensure that you create content only related to your niche, be consistent in updating your blog with new content which in return will help in growing your traffic.

How soon can you start affiliate marketing?

As a new blogger, I understand that earning from the blog is among the top goals. After all you don’t want to be investing your precious time in an expensive hobby that cannot bear fruits anyway.

Well as most people will tell you, you can start using affiliate links from the start of your blogging journey as it doesn’t necessarily rely on huge traffic levels. Start a wordpress blog on hostgator today for less than $3 a month.

My Favorite Affiliate Programs for New Bloggers

1. Amazon Associates

This is by far the most popular affiliate program. It has something for every niche so almost every blogger can find something for their readers.

The great thing and advantage of using the amazon associates program is that when somebody clicks on your affiliate link you get to earn from all their purchases.

For example if you are running a smartphones review blog and you have an affiliate link for a particular phone, if someone clicks on it and goes to amazon and ends up buying a camera and a laptop, you earn commissions from all the products they purchased.

How great is that? If you want to join the amazon associates program you can go to their website here.

2. Impact Radius

This is among the most popular affiliate networks. You get to access hundreds of programs when you join.

Unlike the amazon associates program where you need people to make an actual purchase in order for you to earn commissions, Impact Radius offers CPA (cost per acquisition) marketing which only require certain actions for you to earn.

For example you could get an affiliate program that requires people to sign up for an account, sign up for a free trial of a service or just submit their email address for you to earn commissions.

That is what CPA marketing is all about. Just specific actions and you get to earn. If you wish to join Impact Radius, simply visit their website here.

3. ShareASale

ShareASale is an affiliate network just like Impact Radius.

4. AWIN

AWIN is a bit different on this list. It requires a $5 approval fee which usually gets deposited into your account after approval.

You can withdraw it with your affiliate commissions as soon as you meet the payout threshold. You can also be assured to find premium affiliate programs on this platform.

5. FlexOffers

FlexOffers affiliate network is similar to AWIN, ShareASale and Impact Radius. However, from my experience FlexOffers is my go to affiliate network especially with new sites.

This is because unlike in other affiliate networks where you write to the affiliate program for consideration, FlexOffers handles that for you which helps get approved easily into affiliate programs.

FAQ

Is affiliate marketing legal

Yes affiliate marketing is legal. You just need to disclose that you get compensated when people buy through your affiliate links.

How do affiliate marketers make money?

Affiliate marketers get their unique affiliate link URLs from the online retailers offering the affiliate program.

These URLs are what the marketers will share with their audience, then when people click on them and land on the retailers landing page and purchase a product, the affiliate marketer earns a percentage of the purchase as commission.

Can I really make money with affiliate marketing?

Yes you can make money with affiliate marketing. You just have to make sure that the product you are promoting is related to your content and that your audience is a perfect match as well.

Nobody wants to land on a fashion article and come across some cooking fat affiliate links. That will seem spammy and you don’t want that.

Affiliate marketing for beginners

In order to start affiliate marketing, find the affiliate programs that accept new affiliates without strict requirements especially traffic levels. After you apply and get accepted you will be able to access affiliate links to promote.

The last part and the most crucial is sharing the links as much as you can to reach more people as the more people you can reach, the more commissions you earn.

Is affiliate marketing easy?

Affiliate marketing is not easy as it may sound. As with every other form of business, you need to put in effort first to achieve whatever it is that you want.

Once you master how to reach your target audience for your affiliate offer, I believe you are at a better place as that can prove to be the hardest especially with affiliate offers that require specific traffic.

Is affiliate marketing passive income?

Affiliate marketing income can be passive if you go with recurring affiliate offers. Meaning that, you do not earn a one-time commission but recurring monthly commissions instead.

Discover more ways on how bloggers make money.

How to start affiliate marketing without money

In order to get started with affiliate marketing with no money, you need to have ready audience. Ready audience could be you have an Instagram account that has thousands of followers, a Facebook page or group, a YouTube channel or a blog audience.

Having this in place will not only guarantee you some level of success but will also raise your chances of getting approved into the affiliate programs.

This is because the affiliate networks need to be assured that they are working with someone who has the tools for work and that in affiliate marketing, is your audience.

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Conclusion

That is what I had for you on “Affiliate Marketing What Is Required to Start” and how to do it. I believe you found the post useful. Feel free to reach out in the comments section down below if you have any suggestions or questions and I will be honored to be of help.

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