How To Start Affiliate Marketing In 2023? (5 Easy Steps)

Are you looking for a way to make money online in 2023? If so, affiliate marketing could be the perfect opportunity for you. It consists of your promoting products or services from other companies through a blog. But how do you get started?

The biggest challenge many people face when starting out with affiliate marketing is understanding what it takes to build a successful business. With so much information on the Internet, it can seem overwhelming and difficult to know where to start. To make things easier, I’ve broken down this guide into five simple steps that will give you an overview of everything you need to do before launching your blog.

What Is And How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

As an affiliate marketer, you earn money by promoting the products and services of other companies. You work for yourself, so you can decide how much or how little you want to work.

You don’t need to have your own product or service. However, you need an active blog with content that your readers find interesting and educational.

Once you have this setup, you get an affiliate link from the company you’re promoting, and you may insert it into your blog posts. When readers click these links, they will be taken to the company’s website.

If they make a purchase, you will get a commission as an affiliate marketer.

5 Reasons: Why You Should Have An Affiliate Marketing Business?

To get you motivated, here are five reasons to start your own affiliate marketing business:

1. Work From Anywhere

You can work in more than one place. Either from home, while you are traveling, or even while you are on vacation. This gives you a lot of freedom to choose where you want to work.

2. Low Startup Costs

The costs to start promoting an affiliate product or service are low. Contrary to a brick-and-mortar store, you don’t need to rent or buy a property, and you can even start with a laptop.

3. Don’t Need To Deal With Customers

One of the biggest issues of selling your products is dealing with customers. With affiliate marketing, you don’t need to worry about handling customers because that’s the job of the company whose products you’re promoting.

4. No Need To Develop Your Product Or Service

Creating your products and services can be a time-consuming and expensive process. But as an affiliate, you don’t need to make anything. You just have to find the right products and services to promote.

5. Unlimited Earning Potential

The sky is the limit when it comes to how much money you can make with affiliate marketing. The more products and services you promote through your blog, the more passive income you can make from this business.

What Are The Different Affiliate Marketing Products?

When it comes to affiliate marketing, you have two choices: you can either promote physical products or digital services.

1. Digital Products

Digital products are digital services or software that you can promote. This includes things like:

• Online courses
• Web hosting
• Software
• Ebooks

Pros:

✅ You make more money with affiliate sales of digital products as you get a higher commission. Usually between 20-75%. This happens because these products don’t have manufacturing costs and don’t need to be shipped and stored.

Cons:

❌ Often these products don’t sell as well as physical products, as customers are less likely to buy something they can’t touch or try on.

2. Physical Products

Physical products are physical items that you can promote. This can include things like:

• Clothing and accessories
• Beauty and health products
• Home décor
• Electronics

Pros:

✅ These products are more attractive to customers as they can touch and try them before buying. This makes them more likely to convert into sales.

Cons:

❌ The commission you get on these products is usually lower than on digital products because companies have additional costs like shipping, manufacturing, and storage. You should expect commissions between 3-10%.

Notice:

⚠️ In a few niches, you can promote both physical and digital products. However, most affiliate marketers choose one or the other, depending on their niche and what they feel comfortable promoting.

3 Thoughts That Will Kill Your Affiliate Marketing Success

Before we dig deeper into the five steps, I must discuss the three thoughts that will kill any affiliate marketing success. Our thoughts are powerful! If you don’t have the right mindset, it doesn’t matter how hard you work or the strategies you apply – achieving the success you desire will be difficult.

1. I Can’t Do This

We’re our biggest enemy and often the one who keeps us from achieving the success we desire. The first thought that can kill your success is that you can’t do it.

This thought is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy, so tell yourself that you can do this and push forward. You can achieve anything you set your mind to. Do not listen to negative thoughts.

2. I Can’t Learn These Skills

All that we consider easy to do, we once found challenging. It takes time and effort to master anything, so don’t be discouraged when it initially feels complicated or overwhelming.

When I started building my online business, I struggled to write content for my blog since English is my second language.

I spent more than 5 hours writing a short 600-word article. But with consistent effort and dedication, I can now write content without issues.

So, you can learn whatever you want as long as you’re willing to spend time learning it.

3. It’s A Business

People put too much weight on trying to do something they are passionate about. But your passion is not always worth pursuing as a business. Many times, it may not be profitable online or overly competitive.

Besides, this idea is ridiculous because you build businesses to serve others. For this reason, you should choose a profitable niche you don’t completely hate. In other words, something you can stay up to date with trends and changes and write content about without feeling totally exhausted.

The bottom line is if you want to be successful online, you need to have the right mindset and attitude. Believe that you can do it and be willing to put in the work. Don’t let any of these three thoughts stop you from achieving success.

5 Steps To Become An Affiliate Marketer

If you’re looking to become a successful affiliate marketer, all you need is a plan of action. Here are five steps to get you started:

Step 1. Choose A Niche

So what niche should you choose? You should pick one that is profitable and understand or are willing to learn about. That way, you can stay up to date with trends and changes in your affiliate marketing industry so that you can provide valuable content.

Here are the best five evergreen niches that you should consider:

• Health and Fitness
• Make Money Online
• Technology
• Software
• Travel

Although these niches make money, you should expect competition, so you must find a way to stand out from the crowd. The easiest way is to go for a sub-niche in the larger niche.

For example, you could talk about and review software powered by artificial intelligence.

Or, in the health and fitness niche, you can focus on the lectin-free diet. This strategy immediately reduces your competition, and you can provide more technical information to your readers.

Also, you don’t need to choose one of the mentioned niches. You may have an interest in something else. The choice is yours, as long as it’s profitable.

How Can You See If an Affiliate Niche Is Profitable?

The best way to see if a niche is profitable is to look at the competition. If many affiliates promote products related to that niche, then there is good money to be made.

Otherwise, if you don’t find anyone promoting products related to that niche, it could mean there is not enough demand for the products.

You should always focus on the money before you decide to build a blog. One of the major mistakes many people make is creating a blog without first researching if the niche is promising.

Usually, they only realize this after months or years of working hard — and one day, they wake up and realize, “Gosh, I have nothing to promote to my audience!”

Ideally, you want to find a niche with moderate competition and many products to promote.

Step 2. Find Good Affiliate Programs

You have different affiliate programs available to join. You can choose between programs run by networks or companies.

Different affiliate programs within the same niche can have different commission structures and policies.

Each program will have rules regarding how much you can earn and what you need to do to qualify for commissions.

The best thing you can do is pick one program that works for you and stick to it. As a result, you can build a relationship with the company, and sometimes they may increase your commissions in the long run.

Company Affiliate Programs:

To see if a company has an affiliate marketing program, go to its website and look in the footer section. You probably only need to register to start promoting the company’s products.

In addition, you can also contact them directly and ask if there is an affiliate program.

Affiliate Networks:

An affiliate network is a marketplace where advertisers and publishers can find each other and agree to work together. This way, the advertiser can find partners that will do a good job of promoting their products or services.

The most popular and best-known affiliate networks are:

• ClickBank: Best for digital products like ebooks, software, and online courses.
• ShareASale: Best for physical and digital products with over 16,500 merchants
• Amazon Affiliate Program: Best for physical products. One of the most popular affiliate networks.

Before joining any network, make sure to read its terms and conditions. After you register, you’ll be able to access your affiliate dashboard. Here you will find all the products and services from different advertisers that you can promote.

You must pick products and services that match your audience’s interests and start promoting them.

Have at least ten affiliate products you want to promote in your niche before building your blog.

Step 3. Build a Blog

Once you have researched the niche and found good affiliate programs, it’s time to start building your blog.

Don’t worry because you don’t need to spend the next months learning to code to build an affiliate site. Fortunately, long gone are those days! Instead, you need three things:

1. Web Host Provider

A web host is a company that stores the files and code of your website. Without a web host, you won’t be able to build a blog online. I recommend choosing a good company. Most cheap web hosts provide poor-quality service.

For example, your website takes ages to upload on someone’s computer or mobile screen. Whenever you run into a problem with your site, their support team won’t solve it.

To have a successful affiliate marketing blog, you must have a great web-host company like WPX Hosting. This company offers excellent support, and your site will run blazing fast.

Just click here to register an account with WPX Hosting.

2. Domain Name

Your domain name is your website’s address. For example:

• WPX.net
• Google.com
• Youtube.com

You need a domain name to identify your website on the Internet. When registering a domain name, pick one that’s easy to remember and related to your niche. Another option is to use your name as the domain name.

For example:

• BestGadgets. com
• BestToolsReviews. com
• JordanAlexo.com

Check the images below to see how you can register a domain name with WPX Hosting.

3. WordPress

Once you have registered with WPX Hosting and have a domain name, it’s time to install WordPress.

This platform is a content management system (CMS) that makes it easy for you to create and manage your blog. It’s free, open-source software with thousands of themes and plugins.

To install WordPress, login to your WPX Hosting account and click “Manage Websites.” You should have your domain listed there. Just click on “Manage WP” to install WordPress.

Check the images below to see more details.

Once you have clicked on the “Manage WP” button, a pop-up will appear. Click on the” Install WordPress on the website” prompt.

Congratulations! Now you have a blog with WordPress installed.

Step 4. Create High-Quality Content

Now that your affiliate website is up and running let’s talk about content. Content is the lifeblood of a successful blog.

Your goal should be to create high-quality content that helps your readers solve a problem or makes their lives easier. Your content should be easy to skim through, well-structured, and visually appealing.

Make sure you are thorough and provide as much detail as possible. Remember to include affiliate links in your content where appropriate. Also, you need to optimize your articles for search engines. I’ll talk more about this later.

This helps your blog rank higher in Google, Bing, and Yahoo and get more organic traffic. And, of course, more visitors means more affiliate income!

When it comes to affiliate marketing content, you have two options:

Informational Posts

These are the posts that provide helpful information to your readers. It can be about anything related to your niche. This includes:

• How-to
• Lists
• Tutorials

Informational posts are a great way to build an audience interested in your niche.

Transactional Posts

These posts are the money-makers! You should write product reviews, comparisons, and best lists, that provide honest and unbiased opinions about the products you promote. Here are a few examples:

• Product reviews
• Product A vs. Product B (product comparison)
• X Best Products (top-10 list)

It’s important to remember that you should never recommend a product simply because it pays more. Your readers will ultimately decide if it’s the right product for them. Also, make sure you include affiliate links to the products in these posts.

Your links should be easily visible to your target audience. Remember, not everyone is tech-savvy, so you want to make sure your links are easy to find.

Informational To Transactional Blog Post Ratio

You should stick with a 70% informational to 30% transactional post ratio for most niches. This provides a great balance between content that promotes products and content that offers helpful information to your readers.

The ratio may vary depending on the niche you are targeting and the tone of your blog. For example, if you are focused on travel, you might want to write more informational posts than transactional posts.

On the other hand, if you have a blog where you review products and services, switch up the ratio and write more transactional posts than informational ones.

However, it’s important to remember that regardless of the ratio, your content should be high-quality and provide value to your readers.

Step 5. Drive Traffic

Having a successful affiliate marketing blog will take time! One of the biggest challenges is getting consistent and high-quality traffic. Your affiliate marketing efforts will only be successful with it.

So, let’s see how to get organic traffic by following the next three steps.

Step 1. Keyword Research

You want to find keywords relevant to your niche with low competition. For this, you can use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Google Keyword Planner.

These tools display a lot of information, such as keyword difficulty, average monthly search volume, competition analysis, etc.

Initially, you want to focus on long-tail keywords (search terms with three or more words) with lower competition and receiving decent traffic.

You should write content for these search terms. Since they are low competition, you have a better chance of appearing at the top of search engine results.

Step 2. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Your website to rank higher in search engines like Google and Bing. To do this, you must create great keyword-focused content optimized for SEO. This includes using the right keywords in your titles and content and optimizing your images.

You can find free video tutorials on YouTube to help you get started with SEO. Also, you should install the following plugins on your WordPress website:

• Yoast SEO (All in One SEO Pack): This plugin lets you optimize your content for search engines and helps you ensure it is error-free.
• W3 Total Cache: This plugin improves your website’s loading speed and reduces server load.

Once you have some basic SEO knowledge, you can use software like Surfer SEO to speed up the process.

This application helps you identify your competitors’ exact keywords and content strategies and gives you insights into how they rank.

Step 3. Social Media Platforms

I would wait to jump to a social media platform since splitting your attention between multiple channels isn’t a good idea. You should first focus on creating great content and getting traffic to your website.

Only then start to add your content on social media platforms. Pick one social media platform that goes well with your blog. For example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Then slowly start using other platforms too.

One of my favorite platforms is YouTube because it is the second largest search engine after Google. You can provide videos related to your blog and include affiliate links in them.

Last Thoughts

Setting up a successful affiliate marketing blog requires time and effort. You must find the right keywords to target, optimize your content for SEO, and post regularly on social media platforms.

Furthermore, you should create posts that are 70% informational and 30% transactional to provide value to readers while promoting products or services.

So now that you have an effective affiliate marketing strategy, what’s next?

Just keep learning and perfecting your skills as an affiliate marketer. You may find many budget-friendly and fantastic online courses on Udemy and Skillshare to help you further your knowledge and take your blog and business to the next level.

With dedication and perseverance, you will eventually build a loyal audience who will trust your recommendations about different products or services!

Start today by searching for a profitable niche and create a solid affiliate marketing plan to drive consistent, high-quality traffic to your website.