What is affiliate marketing, I hear you ask. In this article, I’m going to explain in more depth so you’ll know exactly how it works. Plus, I’ll answer questions like:

• What is it?
• Where do I go to get started?
• Why would I want to do it?, and
• What kind of industry would I use it in?

Affiliate marketing isn’t a business in itself. It can be, but every business can implement it and every business can have a revenue stream coming from affiliate marketing. In fact. it’s a great way to add an additional income stream to any business.

You see, it’s really important for any business to not rely solely on just one stream of income. Imagine that you rely on a platform like Facebook or Instagram for your marketing and sales and that platform shuts down? You would lose your entire business

Therefore, as you grow your business, you want to gradually add additional streams of income. This does take time and you won’t become a millionaire overnight. No matter what anyone else tells you. You have to build your business gradually and then the income will follow.

So, let me explain what affiliate marketing is.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Basically, it’s a way to generate income without having your own products. In affiliate marketing, we promote other people’s product.

Let’s look at an example.

You have a dog breeding business and you create videos on YouTube showing people how to raise and care for their dogs. In your business, you use a lot of different products. Of course, you love the products that you use and are comfortable recommending them to others.

All you have to do is find out if the manufacturer of the products that you want to promote has an affiliate program. If they do, you sign up as an affiliate and include your affiliate links whenever you talk about a certain product.

Then, when someone clicks on that link and purchases the product, you’ll receive a commission of 5% to 50%, depending on what the company is offering. But remember to only promote products within your niche because that’s what your ‘customers’ will expect.

Find Your Niche And Stick With It

I’ve seen a lot of people who start affiliate marketing, just go out and find all sorts of products to promote and then post the links all over Facebook or Instagram.

That’s not the way to do it and it won’t get you the results you want. You have to figure out what your niche is and then stick with it.

Maybe you’re in the healthcare industry and are using some health products from a multi-level marketing company that you really like and that are working for you. You can promote those with your links by telling other people about them.

On the other hand, you might be really focused on a Keto diet. You follow it yourself and understand the different ingredients that you need when cooking. You can find most, if not all, those ingredients available on Amazon. So you join the Amazon Associates program and start promoting those products with links.

You could even consider promoting some special cookware that you like to use or appliances that you’ve found work really well within the Keto niche.

Or, maybe you’re an artist and there are products that use for creating your artwork. Things like charcoal, watercolors, pastels or acrylics. You could promote those by showing people how to use them correctly.

Another big niche is construction. You could create videos that show people how to lay flooring, for example. Then, you could mention some places that sell flooring that you’re affiliated with. Check to see if Menards, Home Depot or Lowe’s have affiliate programs. Many more companies are now offering them. This is because it’s cheap advertising for them. They don’t pay you until you actually generate some sales.

Where Do You Get Your Affiliate Links?

This is quite easy. You can simply do a Google search for the products that you want to promote. Then, check on the company website to see if they have an affiliate program.

Tips: You can usually find this information in the footer of the company page.

Otherwise, you can just send them an email or fill in the ‘contact us’ form and ask them – “Do you have an affiliate program?”.

If they don’t, that’s fine. Just search for another company that sells a similar product and check them out.

How To Promote Your Links

In my opinion, the best way to promote any kind of affiliate product is to start a blog or a YouTube channel. Don’t just throw your links all over social media platforms because you think it will be easier. It simply won’t get you the results you’re looking for.

You see, both blog posts and YouTube videos will show up in search engines and that’s where people go to search for products that they want. So if you’ve created a video or a really comprehensive blog post about a certain product, you have a chance of being found when someone searches for that product.

As an example, on my YouTube channel in the video description, I always put links to my free ebook on affiliate marketing and to my coaching program.

See what I did there? Sharing your links should be natural, just like you’re having a conversation with your readers. So you’re not actually ‘selling’. You’re just promoting your products in a completely natural way.

How Do You Choose A Niche?

If you’re not sure whether the niche you’re considering is actually going to be viable – Google it. In fact, you could start asking the questions that you think people would ask about the niche you’re considering. Then, check to see how many search results there are for those questions.

Tip: You don’t want to pick a niche that has only a small number of results because that means nobody is looking for answers. On the other hand, you also don’t want one that has a huge number of results because you’ll find that it’s going to be too competitive.

However, if you do want to enter a competitive niche like health, relationships or creating wealth, you have to differentiate yourself from all the competition. That means you have to narrow down within your niche and find a less competitive sub-niche.

Affiliate Marketing Takes Time And Dedication

So, let’s summarize the three basic steps to getting started in affiliate marketing:

1. Choose your niche
2. Find affiliate products to promote in that niche
3. Start a blog or a YouTube channel and start adding content

That all sound fairly simple and straightforward, right? What you need to understand though, is that to do it correctly takes time because you need to build an audience.

It could take you a year or more before you actually start earning some decent money. That’s why a lot of people fail. Because they don’t stick with it.

In the beginning, you may be creating a video or writing a blog post every day but not many people are seeing these or becoming subscribers. It doesn’t matter. You have to keep creating content because that’s what people are looking for.

Then, once you’re well established, you can start to cut back on the frequency of posting because you already have a lot of content that people can consume. And, once you put those links in your content, they’re going to stay there. The exciting thing is that you can be paid a commission on those links for years to come.

That’s what we call passive income. Do the work now and reap the benefits, year after year after year.

So, that’s basically how it works in a nutshell. Please tell me in the comments if this was helpful. If you want to know more you can subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Hopefully this helps you to get your business started. I can’t wait to hear your success stories!

You’ve Got This!