Affiliate marketing is one of the most convenient ways to make money online. You don’t need startup capital, you don’t need your own product, you don’t need customer support, and you don’t have to worry about returns.
Last month I started working as an affiliate marketer and in a single day (which was not the first, but after several days of work, when my automated setup was already working), the income was $271.06 without me doing anything for it ( except the initial work, which I will explain later).
All income has been earned by recommending software products through my social channels such as uploading videos to YouTube and even my own website (a blog in the software selling niche) and because the sale arose from my recommendation, I received a portion of the sales price as commission.
How does Affiliate Marketing Works ?
And this is how affiliate marketing works: on the one hand there are companies that want to sell a product or service, and on the other hand there are Affiliates who promote those products and receive a commission for each sale that results from their recommendation. This is an absolutely win-win situation for both parties. The company increases reach without additional marketing costs and only pays a commission when an actual sale is made and the affiliate can generate an additional source of income without launching their own product.
How does Affiliate Links Work ?
Affiliate sales are mainly tracked through so-called affiliate links. For example, you can join Amazon as an affiliate and you can select any product that is related to your website. Continuing with the example, if your website is about literature, you can select books or papers from Amazon and create your affiliate link.
To give you an idea, an Amazon affiliate link looks like this: https://amzn.to/xxxxx .
The part where it says “xxxxx” is generally a unique identifier that Amazon uses to track who the affiliate is that sent the click and what product that link refers to. In this example, and only by way of illustration and so that you understand better, Amazon has something similar to this in its databases:
| Link Unique ID | User Id | Product Id |
| xxxxx | Martin | 12345 |
Link Unique ID=xxxxx
User Id= your Amazon user (to know that the click was recommended by you and thus attribute the commission if a sale occurs thanks to the click that Amazon received from your affiliate link).
Product Id= to know which product page to redirect the user who clicked on your affiliate link.
So when someone clicks on your affiliate link, Amazon registers that this entry to its platform was due to your recommendation and if there is a sale it knows that it must assign the commission to you. Obviously, the technology behind this operation is much more complex, but in general terms, it can be understood like this.
IMPORTANT: Such affiliate links must always be clearly marked on your website or content platform as an affiliate link to be legal. That is, it is a legal requirement in most countries that you identify your affiliate link as such, so that the user knows that you will earn a commission if he decides to purchase through your link.
If you click on an affiliate link, what is known as a “cookie” will be placed on your device. A cookie is simply a small file that stores information. When you click on the affiliate link, the company promoting the product may use cookies to know, for example, that the click was based on my recommendation, so that a subsequent purchase can also be attributed to me and thus you earn the commissions.
Cookies are generally stored between 24 hours and several months, which means that you can earn a commission for a click that was made several weeks ago (yes!! affiliate marketing is very advantageous). The tracking technology and the administration behind it are provided by so-called affiliate networks.
Affiliate Networks
An affiliate network is like an intermediary between one company and another. Companies can offer their products through affiliate networks, and that way, affiliates like us can find thousands of products to promote.
Affiliate networks not only provide the affiliate link but usually also provide a platform that allows generating reports on the activity of each affiliate and each product that is promoted through that network to know the performance.
As you can see in the screenshot above, each affiliate network offers you a report of your performance in a certain period of time. The report headers such as CR, EPC, etc. will be explained in another article. But you can get an idea of what awaits you within a CPA affiliate network by promoting their links.
Affiliate Links – The Redirections Importance
Affiliate networks almost always act as intermediaries, being the ones who provide you with the possibility of promoting a product, but they in turn are also affiliates, either of another affiliate network or of the product to be promoted directly.
So it is very possible that when you obtain your affiliate link a process like the following will be generated when somebody clicks on your link:
As you can see, an affiliate link can follow a variable number of redirects, depending on the affiliate network you take the link from.
It is very important that the affiliate network you choose is as close as possible to the final product, because each affiliate network through which the link passes receives a commission. That is, if you manage to register with an affiliate network that has the product in a third or fourth redirect, you will possibly be earning a lower commission than if the network you have access to has a reputation and is very close to the final product or offer.
There are tools like LinksTest that can help you discover which networks your affiliate link goes through before reaching the final product or offer page. If you try the Affilitest or LinksTest.com tool you can see that the interface is very simple, you just enter your affiliate link, specify the country to which the offer is directed and select the device with which you want to test the offer, for Android example and after a few seconds the tool returns a list of hops or redirects that your link goes through.
As you can see you enter your affiliate tracking url and the tool shows you all the redirections the link goes trough up to the final destination, which in this case is a Google App
But the most important aspect of these tools is that you can identify Networks that are closer to the final product or offer page and therefor will pay you more commissions if you convert the offer or sale.
Are there just some Affiliate Networks ?
There are several affiliate networks that you can sign up for for free. One of the best known is, for example, the Amazon affiliate program, which we were talking about recently. You can use it to advertise any product that is available on Amazon as an affiliate.
Without a doubt, Amazon is almost certainly the platform where you can get more products to promote, but it is not the only one.
Just as an example, other affiliate networks can be:
There are thousands of other Affiliate Networks, like CPA Networks that you can find at https://www.affpaying.com
On these platforms you can find a large selection of products for different niches, but if you don’t see a company or product that you would like to promote, you can also search directly on the website of the company that you are interested in and, usually, you will be able to Find an affiliate program. See for example this Liquid Web Affilaite Program:
Do you normally have to apply as an Affiliate?
Yeah. In many companies that offer affiliate programs, a subscription process is required.
During the application process, for example, websites, blogs, or social media channels are reviewed for a little quality check to ensure they are a good fit for this company. On Amazon you don’t have this quality control. That’s why these are really good affiliate networks that beginners without much experience can get started with.
The amount of the commission varies depending on the product for various reasons. Some products or platforms have very strong branding, such as Amazon, almost everyone knows how the ordering process on Amazon works, and this makes it much easier for a store to sell products because people have confidence in the brand. Amazon knows this clearly, it has the upper hand, and that is why the commissions it pays are usually a few cents or a few dollars for each sale.
On the other hand, as an affiliate, it is also much more difficult to sell some products because most vendors are unknown and do not have a strong bond with the audience. The same goes for expensive products: the commission for expensive products is, of course, much higher, but it is also much more difficult to sell such products.
For example, I don’t have to think twice before buying a pair of socks on Amazon, but I do when I book a trip that costs several hundred or 1,000 dollars.
Then, it can sometimes take several weeks or even months for the purchase to be completed. And if you plan to generate regular income with Affiliate Marketing, it is very important that you register a business and report the income on your tax return.
Traffic, Traffic and More Traffic
And once you get past the bureaucracy, you can start promoting the products and this is also the area where most people fail, because they expect immediate results and business doesn’t work like that. You will only receive a commission if a person clicks on your affiliate link and then purchases the product, which means that the first thing you need is traffic, that is, people visiting your website or your social media channels.
You can buy traffic, for example, through Google Ads or Facebook Ads, or if you just want to build organic reach, while it may sound tempting to just buy traffic, I would definitely advise against doing so.
The first unadvisable temptation is to buy traffic through platforms such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads. And why is it not recommended? Because if you don’t know what you’re doing and you set up your campaigns in a couple of clicks and launch it, you can lose your shirt and more. And you are just starting out, don’t try to rush time or start spending money before you have generated the first dollar. Per click prices have become extremely expensive in recent years and it is difficult to be profitable at all.
The next suggestion is to create an organic link (this means an affiliate link that doesn’t cost you money when someone clicks on it).
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is completely free, but it involves a lot of work. Although most people don’t want to hear it, this is the only way to generate long-term income with affiliate marketing. You can generate organic reach by regularly publishing relevant, high-quality content. This is the only way to develop a certain authority in the long term and in this way build an online asset with a certain authority that provides you with free traffic for years.
You don’t necessarily need an extremely large number of clicks or a significant number of links. You can obtain certain interesting commissions with just a few clicks. For example, this month I made almost $50 in commissions with just 89 clicks on an organic link in a specific niche. But the statistics vary greatly depending on the niche you choose, the price of the product, the branding of the product of the company that provides it, and some other factors.
The interesting thing about this is that after 100 or 200 clicks (which, as I told you, should be organic) you can begin to measure your results with more or less reliability.
I try to convey my knowledge in the most beginner-friendly way possible. Of course, it is also possible to make money with proper marketing if you are a beginner and don’t have much reach, but it is very important that you have the right expectations.
In advance, thank you very much for reading this far. If you found the material interesting and valuable, please share it.
Until next time!!
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