Affiliate Marketing: What It Is & How to Get Started in 2025

Imagine you wake up, your email is full of messages telling you how much money you made overnight while you were sleeping.

Sounds amazing, right?

This might sound like a bunch of lies, but it’s actually true for a lot of people who do business online. They make money even when they’re not actively working, all credit goes to  affiliate marketing.

Over five billion people in the world are online and this number is growing. With the rise of the e-commerce industry a lot of people are also buying stuff on the Internet. In 2022, the total sales from online stores worldwide were estimated to be more than 5.7 trillion U.S. dollars.

Affiliate marketing has taken center stage in the playbook of digital entrepreneurs. But what exactly is affiliate marketing, and why should you care about it?

Do you want to get better at affiliate marketing? If yes, you should start your own business account. But there’s more you need to do. You’ll have to arrange and schedule your posts. This is where some social media management  tools can be really useful. However, before you start thinking that it’s all a piece of cake, you need to learn about affiliate marketing for a better idea.

In this detailed affiliate marketing guide, we’ll explain everything about affiliate marketing, talk about its different parts, and give you helpful tips to start and keep a successful affiliate marketing business in 2024. Let’s jump in and find out more about this amazing way of making money online!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a type of online marketing where a company pays people or other businesses (called affiliates) to promote their products. These affiliates get paid for every person they bring to the company’s website who buys something. It’s like spreading the word about a product online and getting rewarded for it.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing is a smart way to make money online. It involves four important parts. Let’s simplify these roles:

1. The Seller: This could be a big company or an individual who has something to sell, like a toy or a book. They give a special link to the affiliate to use in their content.
2. The Affiliate: This is the person (like a blogger or influencer) who talks about the seller’s product and shares the special link. If someone buys the product through this link, the affiliate gets some money. This is called a commission.
3. The Buyer: This is the person who clicks on the affiliate’s link and buys the product. Their purchase is tracked through the special link, so the affiliate gets credit for the sale.
4. The Network: This can be a group that helps the affiliate and the seller work together. They provide tools like helping with payments and choosing products. Some sellers have their own teams to do this.

The affiliate puts the special link in their blog or social media post. When a buyer clicks on this link and buys something, the sale is connected back to the affiliate because of the special ID in the link. This way, all sales are correctly given to the affiliate.

The great thing about affiliate marketing is that it’s good for everyone. The seller sells more products, the affiliate earns money, the buyer finds something they want, and the network makes everything run smoothly.

How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing [Step-By-Step Guide]

Affiliate marketing is a way to earn money online that has helped many people around the world. We always ask people for recommendations before buying something online and this is the reason for its success. It works as recommending products or services to others and if you have a huge following your recommendations will have value. Here’s how to get started with affiliate marketing.

Step 1: Pick a Topic

Choosing a topic is the first step in affiliate marketing. This topic will guide what you write about, the products you promote, and how you make your money.

Why Picking a Topic Matters

A topic, or “niche,” is a specific part of the market that focuses on a certain type of product or service. Picking a good topic is crucial for success in affiliate marketing. Your topic needs to be something that can make money, but it should also be something you care about.

Research and Making Money

To find a topic that can make money, look at what’s popular, who else is doing it, and how much money it could potentially make. You can use tools like Google Trends and keyword planners to see what people are looking for online and how many other people are writing about the same thing.

Your Personal Interests

Remember, it’s important to pick a topic you’re interested in. If you love your topic, you’ll be more excited to work on it and your audience will trust your recommendations more.

Step 2: Find Affiliate Programs

After you’ve picked your topic, the next step is to find affiliate programs that are good for your topic. Joining a big and well-known affiliate network can make this easier.

Research and Review

Take some time to look at different affiliate programs. Look for products that are really good and that you would use or suggest to others. Also, check the reputation of the affiliate programs, like how often they pay, how quickly they pay, and how much help they give their affiliates.

Things to Think about When Picking Programs Commission Rates:

Some programs pay more money for certain products or levels of sales.

Product Relevance: Make sure the affiliate products you pick match your topic and your audience.

Public Perception: You don’t want to hurt your reputation by promoting a product from an affiliate program that people don’t trust.

Step 3: Make a Website or Blog

Your website is like your online shop. It’s where people will go to find out more about the products you suggest.

Choosing a Name and Hosting

First, pick a name for your website that fits your topic and is easy to remember. Then, choose a hosting provider that’s reliable and has good customer service.

Setting Up Your Website

WordPress is a great tool for both beginners and experienced website owners. It’s easy to customize, user-friendly, and has lots of plugins for extra features.

Customizing and Designing

Your website should look neat, professional, and show off your unique style. You might want to hire a designer to make a logo and custom theme, or you could use one of the many themes available for WordPress to make your site stand out.

Important Plugins

Plugins are tools that can add more features to your website. For affiliate marketing, you might want plugins that help manage your affiliate links, track how well your links are doing, and improve your site’s search engine optimization (SEO).

Step 4: Make Good Content

Content is very important in affiliate marketing. It’s how you will make your audience trust you and show them that you’re an expert in your topic.

Understanding Your Audience

The content you make should be useful to your audience. Understand what they need, what problems they have, and what they’re interested in, and make content that interests them to stay relevant.

Keyword Research

Use keyword research to help plan your content. Find words and topics that are important to your audience and that lots of people search for but not many people write about.

Blog Posts

Write interesting, informative blog posts that include your affiliate links when it makes sense. Be honest about your affiliate relationships and only suggest products you really believe in.

Using Affiliate Links Naturally

Don’t force your affiliate links on your audience. Include them naturally in your content, directing your readers to products that really meet their needs.

Step 5: Get People to Visit Your Website

Getting people to visit your website is very important for an affiliate marketing business. Without visitors, you won’t have anyone who can become paying customers. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Use SEO best practices to help your website show up higher in search engine results. This can include using keywords well, building links, and creating high-quality, evergreen content that stays relevant over time.

Social Media Marketing

Use social media to share your content and talk with your audience. Each platform has its own rules, so make sure to adjust your strategies accordingly.

Try Paid Advertising

If you have the money for it, consider using paid advertising to get more people to visit your site. Platforms like Google AdWords and Facebook let you target your ads, which can be a cost-effective way to advertise if you do it wisely.

Build an Email List

An email list lets you talk directly with your audience. Offer something valuable or a freebie to get people to sign up for your emails, then use your list to share new posts and offers.

Step 6: Track and Improve Performance

To do well in affiliate marketing, you need to use data. Look at how your website and promotion strategies to audit and develop a more efficient approach.

Use Analytics Tools

Tools like Google Analytics can show you where your website visitors are coming from, how they’re using your site, and what content they like the most.

Performance Analysis

Regularly check how your affiliate links are doing to see which products are selling, which strategies are working, and where you could do better.

Improve Content and Promotion

Based on your analysis, make changes to your content and promotion strategies to earn more money. This could involve changing your call-to-action, updating your content, or trying new ways to promote your site.

Step 7: Monetize Your Traffic

Once you have a steady number of people visiting your website, it’s time to think about different ways to make money from it. Apart from affiliate links, there are other ways you can earn money from your website.

Try Other Ways to Make Money

Think about using a combination of affiliate links, sponsored posts, and display ads to earn more money. Try different strategies to see what your audience likes best and what works best for your topic.

Test and Improve

Like any marketing effort, testing and improving are important. Try different affiliate programs, test different places for your ads, and try out sponsored content to find the most profitable options for your site.

Types of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has different styles, each with its own perks and ways:

1. Unattached Affiliate Marketing: In this style, you share products without really selling them. You give your audience useful resources or tools, and your affiliate links. It’s an indirect approach. For example, you might write a blog post on “15+ Best AI Tools for Social Media Management” and include affiliate links to those tools.
2. Related Affiliate Marketing: With this style, you share products that are related to your main topic but not directly competing with the products you usually share. For instance, if your website is about fitness and you usually share workout gear, in related affiliate marketing, you might also share related items like vitamins and health supplements.
3. Involved Affiliate Marketing: This style needs you to be more active. Here, you personally use the product or service you’re sharing. This could mean writing a detailed review of the product, creating a how-to video showing how to use it, or comparing it with similar products. This approach often builds trust with your audience because they see that you have firsthand knowledge and experience with the products.

Why Should You Do Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a cool way to make money online. Here are some reasons why it’s worth trying:

1. Passive Income

   One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you can make money even when you’re not working on it. It’s a dream for many, isn’t it?

   Once you put your affiliate links on your website or social media, you can make money anytime someone uses them, even when you’re sleeping or on vacation!

2. Low Risk

   With affiliate marketing, you’re sharing other people’s products, so you don’t have to worry about making your own products or keeping a stock. This means it’s not risky because you won’t lose money if something doesn’t sell well.

3. Scalability

   Affiliate marketing is easy to grow. You start small and as you learn what your audience likes – which products they’re interested in, what kind of posts get the most likes, etc., you can do more of that to reach more people. You don’t need a lot of money to start, which is great!

4. Global Opportunities

   The internet lets you reach people all around the world. With affiliate marketing, you can share products with people no matter where they live – in your own town or on the other side of the world. This means you have so many chances to grow and make money, as you’re not just stuck with your local area.

Related Article: Best Affiliate Marketing Programs for Beginners in 2024

How Much Money Do Affiliate Marketers Make?

According to Glassdoor, an affiliate marketer usually earns around $59,060 in a year. But this amount can change a lot depending on things like your experience, the topic you choose, how big and active your audience is.

How Much Do Most Affiliate Marketers Earn?

More than half of all affiliate marketers earn $10K or less in a year. But about 33% of them manage to earn more than $10K per year. This shows that while you can make good money with affiliate marketing, it might take some time and a lot of hard work to earn more.

Full-Time Affiliate Marketers

For those who do affiliate marketing as their main job, most of them earn less than $100K in a year. They usually earn around $30K-$50K in a year. This amount can be different for everyone and depends on the marketer’s skills, the topic they choose, and how good their marketing strategies are.

Revenue vs. Net Profit

When we talk about earnings in affiliate marketing, it’s important to understand the difference between revenue and net profit. Revenue is the total amount of money you make before taking out expenses, while net profit is the amount left after all expenses are taken out. Most affiliate marketers make between $30K and $50K in a year after taking out all expenses.

Guidelines for Achieving Success in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can seem complex, but it doesn’t have to be. Let’s break down some steps you can take to succeed in this field.

1. Understand Your Audience: Think about who will be interested in the products or services you’re promoting. What do they like? What do they need? Knowing your audience helps you choose what to promote and how to talk about it.
2. Choose Good Products and Services: Don’t just promote anything. Choose products or services that are good quality and useful. This way, people will trust your recommendations.
3. Be Honest and Trustworthy: Always tell people when you’re promoting something and getting paid for it. Don’t just promote everything you can find. Choose things you believe in and that you think your audience will benefit from.
4. Use Different Ways to Reach People: Don’t stick to one way of promoting products and services. Use different methods like social media, blogging, email, etc. This gives you more chances to reach people and make sales.
5. Stay Updated: The world of digital marketing is always changing. Keep learning about new trends and tools to stay ahead.
6. Test and Learn: Try different things and see what works best. This might mean trying different types of content, placing your affiliate links in different places, or using different ways to reach people.
7. Connect with Other Marketers: Talk to other people who are also doing affiliate marketing. You can learn a lot from each other and it can help keep you motivated.

How to Join Social Champ’s Affiliate Program

Would you like to try affiliate marketing but don’t know how to begin? Let’s make it easy for you. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to become part of Social Champ’s affiliate program. Social Champ is a tool that helps manage social media. It’s known for being user-friendly, providing excellent support, and giving good rewards to their affiliates.

Steps to Join Social Champ’s Affiliate Program:

1. Sign Up

   First off, you need to sign up on the Social Champ website. If you’ve already done this, just log in using your username and password.

   

2. Find the Affiliate Section:

   After logging in, find the affiliate section on your dashboard. If you’re new, you might have to wait for the Social Champ team to turn this feature on for your account.

3. Complete Your Profile:

   In this step, you’ll need to provide some information for your affiliate profile. This usually includes how you want to be paid, your blog or website link, and a short plan of how you’ll promote Social Champ.

4. Get Your Unique Links:

   After your profile is complete and approved, you’ll get your own special links. These links keep track of when someone clicks on them and buys something. Social Champ might also give you some materials to help you promote their tool.

5. Begin Promoting:

   Now, you can start sharing your special links. You can put these in your blog articles, social media posts, emails, and so on. When people click your links and get a paid subscription from Social Champ, you’ll earn a reward.

Featured Article: 15+ Powerful Social Media Marketing Tips for Businesses

How to Do Affiliate Marketing Through Different Platforms

If you want to do well in affiliate marketing, it’s important to work with platforms that match your specific area and marketing goals. There are many popular affiliate platforms like ShareASale, ClickBank, and CJ Affiliate that offer loads of products and services for you to promote. When choosing a platform, think about how much they pay in commissions, when they make payments, and how good the seller’s website and products are.

The best affiliate platforms know that their affiliates are important and give them tools to help them succeed. These tools can include software to track your progress, tools to create reports, and different materials to make marketing easier.

For example, the Amazon Associates program is one of the most popular ones because it has a huge number of products and a very useful set of tools for affiliates. This program lets affiliates make custom links, keep track of how well they’re doing, and use a variety of banner ads and product carousels on their websites.

Affiliate Marketing With Social Media Platforms

Billions of people use social media— making it a great place for affiliate marketing. Each social media platform is unique and has different types of users, so you need to adjust your affiliate marketing strategy according to the platform.

1. Facebook

   You can share affiliate links on your Facebook page or in groups, but the best way to use Facebook for affiliate marketing is through ads. If you create a good ad campaign, you can target specific groups of people, which can lead to more people buying the product you’re promoting.

2. Instagram

   Instagram is all about pictures and videos, making it a great place to promote products. You can use stories, posts that let people shop directly, and work with influencers to improve your affiliate marketing.

3. Twitter

   Even though Twitter limits how much you can write in a tweet, it can still be a good place for affiliate marketing. You just need to make sure your tweets are short and sweet. You can also use pictures, videos, and GIFs to make your posts stand out.

4. LinkedIn

   For those who are doing B2B (business-to-business) affiliate marketing, LinkedIn is a great platform. You can share expert content with an affiliate link included subtly. Joining relevant groups can also help you reach more people and get them to engage with your content.

Affiliate Marketing With Blogging Platforms

Blogging platforms are great for affiliate marketing because they allow you to build relationships with readers through your content.

1. WordPress

   

   WordPress has many plugins and themes that make it a great place to show your affiliate content. If you write high-quality blog posts that are optimized for search engines, you can get more people to click on your affiliate links.

2. Blogger

   

   Blogger is a blogging platform from Google that’s great for beginners. It’s easy to use and you can also make money through AdSense.

3. Medium

   

   Medium isn’t really known for affiliate marketing, but some writers have been able to make money through Medium’s partner program. This program pays writers based on how much members interact with their content.

Affiliate Marketing With Video Platforms

Video platforms are very good for affiliate marketing because they let you show and explain products in a way that’s engaging. Demonstrations and reviews can make people more likely to buy the product.

1. YouTube

   

   With YouTube’s Partner Program, you can make money from ads on your videos and from links in the video description.

2. TikTok

   

   TikTok videos are short and fun. If you’re creative, you can use popular trends and music to quickly grab viewers’ attention and get them interested in the products you’re promoting. TikTok affiliate marketing is a good opportunity for brands to collaborate and connect with young audiences.

3. Vimeo

   

   Vimeo is not as popular as YouTube, but it’s still a good platform for affiliate marketing. The videos on Vimeo are usually high-quality and the audience tends to be more professional.

Affiliate Marketing With E-commerce Platforms

E-commerce platforms are great for affiliate marketing because they have lots of products and services you can promote and people who use these platforms are usually ready to buy something.

1. Amazon

    

   

   Amazon’s Associates program is one of the biggest affiliate marketing programs. It has lots of different products and it’s easy to get people to buy from Amazon.

2. Shopify

   

   With Shopify’s affiliate program, you can make an average of $58 each time someone signs up for a paid plan using your referral link.

3. eBay

   

   With eBay Partner Network, you can make money in two ways. You can get a percentage of the seller’s transaction fee or you can get paid when you send a buyer who makes a purchase within 24 hours.

Affiliate Marketing With Email Marketing Platforms

Creating a targeted email list is a great way to connect with potential customers and get them interested in the products you’re promoting.

1. List Building

   You can grow your email list by offering something valuable for free, like an ebook or a course. This attracts people who are interested in what you have to say.

2. Content Strategy

   You need to create content that’s useful and makes the reader want to take action. If you can provide a unique point of view, your emails will stand out from all the others.

3. Monitoring Performance

   You can use tools like Mailchimp or ConvertKit to see how many people are clicking on your links and buying the products you’re promoting. This helps you make your email marketing strategy even better.

Conclusion

To sum it up, affiliate marketing is a good way to make money by advertising products or services from other companies. It’s about matching the right people with the right products. With more people using social media, watching videos, shopping online, and checking their emails, there are lots of chances to succeed in 2024. So join Social Champ’s affiliate program and start making the most of this opportunity!

Frequently Asked Questions