Best Affiliate Marketing Strategies For Beginners 2023

Affiliate marketing is an attractive business model for anyone who wants to start an online business because the risk associated with the business is low, and it is fast to start with no complications.

However, depending on who you talk to and where you get your information, it can seem complicated.

In this article, let’s see how easy affiliate marketing can be and discover the best strategies to start for beginners.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a business promoting someone else’s products for a commission.

All you need to do as an affiliate marketer is to provide information about a certain product or service to potential buyers.

There are three parties involved in affiliate marketing;

1. Seller or owner of a product
2. Buyer
3. Affiliate marketer

These three parties help each other, which is a win-win situation for all of them. Let’s see how;

Affiliate marketer provides information about products. That helps consumers decide to buy the product. At the same time, it helps the seller by promoting the product being sold.

The buyer helps the seller by making him money and helps the affiliate marketer by making him a commission.

The seller helps the buyer with the product he wants and helps the affiliate marketer by giving him a business and a commission.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

There are four main steps to starting and scaling an affiliate marketing business.

These four steps are select, Join, Create, and Adjust. Let’s discuss each step below.

1. Select A Product To Promote

The first step is to select a product to promote. The whole idea of affiliate marketing is promoting products and services.

When selecting a product, you naturally select a niche. For example, if you select running shoes as a product, your niche is health and fitness.

Another way to do this step is to select a niche first, then look for a product to promote in that niche.

This step is crucial because, as you can see later, you must regularly create content about your selected product. If you don’t know or are not passionate about that product, you will be bored; it is a matter of time.

So, when you select a niche or product, make sure one of the criteria below applies;

• You are passionate about it
• You know about it.
• And it has buyers.

2. Join The Affiliate Program

Once you select a product or a niche, you must join the affiliate program of the company that sells that program. This step is the easiest and fastest because companies want to sell products and make money. Because of that, they make it easy for affiliate marketers to join their affiliate programs.

This step is simply filling out an online form with your name, address,….etc.

This is usually found at the bottom of the company’s website.

After you are accepted to the affiliate program, you will be given a special link that is unique to you. See below what that link is for.

3. Create Content

Now that you have selected the product and joined the affiliate program, you have to create information about the product.

That is how you let potential customers know about the product and drive traffic to your offer. But content can be in many ways.

• You can write articles about the product
• You can do Youtube videos
• You can do Tiktok videos
• You can send emails if you have subscribers
• You can write on your Facebook wall
• You can do images on Instagram
• You can do images on Pinterest.
• Others

The possibilities for creating content are endless, but you must choose the method you are comfortable with, at least when starting.

Another option is to use other people’s content to drive traffic to your offer. Find out how.

4. Adjust

You will have a complete and functional affiliate marketing business with the three steps mentioned above. This step is about looking at your progress and adjusting whatever is not working.

For example, if you are distributing your effort equally between creating Tiktok videos, YouTube videos, and Pinterest pins, but you see that Tiktok is not giving much traffic, it makes sense to adjust and focus more on what drives traffic to your offer.

Can I Use Other People’s Content In Affiliate Marketing?

The short answer is. However, it is not recommended because it would not build your brand if you always use other people’s content.

Using other people’s content is okay, especially when you are starting and don’t have your own content.

Ways To Use Other People’s Content In Affiliate Marketing

• When you join affiliate programs, they most likely give you free content to use as your own. They provide you with videos, emails, and some articles. However, in my experience, these contents don’t work well unless you modify them.

• You can use other content creators’ content for a small fee. More information here.

• On Tiktok, you can use Duet. That means using someone else’s video with or without you in it. This is a successful method for the short term.

• On YouTube, you can use Creative Commons. These are videos royalty-free, and anyone can use them.

What Make Affiliate Marketing Unique Business?

If you compare affiliate marketing with any other business, affiliate marketing always wins.

When it comes to a physical business, there are obvious expenses like rent, furniture, insurance, utilities, ….etc. Affiliate marketing doesn’t have those expenses.

When it comes to other forms of online business, you have to buy products and then try to sell them, or you have to do fulfillment. Affiliate marketing doesn’t include that.

Affiliate Marketing is Unique For The Following Reasons

• You don’t have to have your product, and you don’t have to outsource products. You can use other people’s products.
• You don’t have to deal with shipping or returns
• You don’t have to deal with payments or refund
• You don’t have to deal with customer service.
• It is fast to start
• It costs a minimum of nothing to start.
• All you need is a laptop and an internet connection.

Remember, All you have to do is give information about the product you are promoting and a link to buy. After that, the customer deals with the company or the product owner.

How Long Does It Take To Build Affiliate Marketing Business?

This question can mean different things to different people.

It can mean how long it takes to build an affiliate marketing business or how long it takes to make money with affiliate marketing.

Building an affiliate marketing business can take as short as 30 minutes if you know what you are doing and have the necessary tools. But it takes you longer than 30 minutes if you are starting and have no experience.

However, nobody can tell the time it takes to make money with affiliate marketing; it depends on your method of promotion, your offer, how active you are, and so many other factors.

But, if you follow the working methods, there is no reason not to make money.

Best Affiliate Marketing Strategies For Beginners

After you build everything necessary to start an affiliate marketing business, you need to drive traffic to it. Traffic is the thing that makes or breaks the business because even if you have the best product, if you don’t have traffic and no people are seeing it, it is useless.

There are several strategies to get traffic. Some of them are fast, and some are slow.

1. Fast Ways Of Getting Traffic

These methods are working, but things might change in the future. These methods can get instant traffic within minutes, hours, and days.

a. TikTok Videos

TikTok videos have a crazy reach. You can reach thousands of people and possibly millions. All that with 15 or 30-second video.

All you have to do is record a short video talking about the product you are promoting and put a link in your bio. Encourage people to click the link in your bio to learn more about the product.

This method requires you to publish videos regularly, and you must have 1000 subscribers to have a link in your bio. In that case, you can put your link on your Instagram bio and forward people from TikTok to Instagram.

b. Youtube Shorts

YouTube shorts came to compete with TikTok, and YouTube is pushing shorts. It works exactly like TikTok. You can publish short videos and put a link in the description of comments.

c. Facebook Reels

It is the same idea as TikTok and YouTube shorts. Works the same. The only difference is the platform.

d. Instagram Reels

Again, the same idea as the previous three. All these shorts and reels came to compete, and affiliate marketers must take advantage of them.

Pro Tip – Post the same video on all four platforms to take the most advantage of all these platforms.

• Post a video on TikTok.
• Download the video from TikiTok to your computer or cellphone using SnapTik. It is free
• Then, post the video you downloaded on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

2. Long-Term And Slower Way of Getting Traffic

The following methods take some time to get going, and it is long-term planning and requires continuous work.

a. Blog Posts

Bogging is, in short, writing articles like the one you are reading here. Competition is high in this area, and all you have to do is keep Google happy.

Google must be convinced that your article is good and ranking it on the first page of Google. Let me give you an example;

If somebody is searching for running shoes and types on Google “Best running shoes,” Here is what Google gives;

Google ranked these websites and thinks they represent the best-running shoe information. So, you must write good articles and try Google to rank your articles.

You must learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which teaches you how to make Google happy.

See these blogging tips.

b. Youtube Videos

Unlike a few years back, today, it is not easy to rank on YouTube.

There are a lot of creators, and thousands of videos are being uploaded daily.

You must build authority over time; traffic will come if you consistently post good content.

What you do is talk about the products you are promoting in your videos, and provide a link in the description for those interested in buying the product.

What Is The Future Of Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing has existed for decades and is not going anywhere anytime soon.

As long as people buy things online, affiliate marketing will be around. People are moving away from buying things in person, and online purchases are increasing.

In the last few years, this is what happened;

• Companies started to offer affiliate marketing more
• People started to become affiliate marketers more
• Consumers started to rely on affiliate marketers for information about products.

Let’s look at some stats to demonstrate the growth of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketers Earning Stats

Earning	Percentage Of Marketers
Up to $80,000	80%
$80,000 to $1 Million	15%
$1 Million and more	1$

Is Affiliate Marketing Too Much Work?

It is natural that when you first start affiliate marketing, there is too much work to be done because you have to build everything around the business, and set up all the systems and tools you need for the business.

After that, the amount of work will be less because the system you built around the system will be working for you, and it becomes a passive income.

• First: Less income, too much work
• Then: Less work, more income

How Much Does It Cost To Start Affiliate Marketing?

This is the wrong question to ask. It is like saying how much it costs to get a job.

To be an affiliate marketer and start promoting any product is free. The thing that might cost money is the way you promote products. Let’s see the steps to affiliate marketing and how much each step costs;

1. Selecting a product or a niche – Free.
2. Joyning affiliate program – Free
3. Creating content – Depends
   • a. Blogging – a website around $200/year
   • b. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and other social media – Free
4. Adjusting your methods after seeing your result – Free.

As you can see, the whole thing can be done for free, or if you choose, it can be done with a minimum cost.

Can I Do Affiliate Marketing Without Creating A Website?

This question is in the minds of a lot of people because not everyone knows how to build one.

The short answer to this question is YES. You can do affiliate marketing without a website because the main purpose of a website is getting traffic. In this case, you can get traffic on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

But, let’s analyze this further;

If you are blogging, there is no way around it, and you must have a website.

If you are not blogging, it is your choice to have a website. Even if you choose to have a website, you don’t need a fancy and huge one. All you need is one simple page website called a landing page. The main purpose of it is to collect emails from potential customers so you can promote affiliate products in the future.

Here is what I want you to take from here;

• It is your choice to have a website or not.
• If you have a website, it is a simple one page that can be done in 10 minutes.
• There are tools to help you build a website without you having to learn how to code

Some Objections People Might Have About Starting An Affiliate Marketing Business

People have many objections about starting an online business that keeps them away from it. Let’s see some of these objections and examine if they are valid.

1. I Don’t Have Time To Start Affiliate Marketing

This is a valid reason. You might have a full-time job working 9 to 5, have a family, and have many responsibilities, taking away any extra time you have to do anything else.

Affiliate marketing can be done with a little time, like 30 minutes after work and a few hours on the weekend.

It can start as a side hustle and then grow to be a full-time job in the future.

Remember that in affiliate marketing, you don’t fulfill any orders; all you have to do is publish content that is helpful to consumers. That means, there are no follow-ups, no sales calls, and no searching for customers.

Once you put content online, it will be working for you.

2. I Don’t Have Technical Experience

Technical experience should not be a barrier to starting affiliate marketing because you have many options.

• You don’t have to have a website if you choose not to
• You can do affiliate marketing by recording short videos on your phone.
• You can use other people’s content.
• If you choose to have a website, it is a landing page.
• There are many resources to learn how to do that one page that teaches you how to do it step-by-step.
• There are a lot of platforms that allow you to build websites without using any codes. It is all drag and put.

3. Affiliate Marketing Is A Scam

Affiliate marketing is not a new thing; it existed decades ago.

Lately, it got more exposure because of the internet.

More than 84% of brands, including Amazon, Old Navy, and Wal-Mart, offer affiliate marketing. Logically speaking, do you think these big brands are involved in something that is a scam?

Companies use affiliate marketers and pay them commissions on a performance basis instead of hiring marketing employees.

4. I Am Too Old To Start Affiliate Marketing

Age is not an issue at all.

You can do affiliate marketing by operating your cellphone or a computer.

Countless retirees built a successful affiliate marketing business.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a good way to earn a passive income regardless of age, technical experience, or situation.

You can have it as a side hustle for extra income or as a full-time carrier.

The best part is that all you do is put content about the products and services you promote without having to fulfill orders or deal with other aspects of the business.

You can also see the pros and cons of affiliate marketing to help you decide.