Beginner's Guide to

Affiliate Marketing

Beginners Guide To
AFFILIATE MARKETING

The Ultimate Guide to Generating Sales with

Affiliate Marketing: Expert Tips Collection

Edited by: Web Hosting Advices 2023/2024

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 Beginner's Guide to
Affiliate Marketing

Table of
Contents
AFFILIATE MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR BEGINNERS................. 3

UNDERSTANDING AFFILIATE MARKETING ......................................................................................... 4

TYPES OF AFFILIATE PROGRAMS ARE: ................................................................................................... 5

EARNING WITH CPA PROGRAMS ............................................................... 8

RULE 1 – PROMOTE A RELEVANT PRODUCT ..................................................................................... 8

RULE 2 – CLOAKED LINKS ...................................................................................................................................... 9

RULE 3 – PRODUCT, SERVICE, OR MERCHANT REPUTATION ....................................... 9

RULE 4 – BUY, USE, EXPERIENCE, AND PROMOTE ................................................................... 10

HOW TO CHOOSE A NICHE? .......................................................................... 11

PROMOTE THE ESTABLISHED PRODUCTS AND SERVICES......... 15

EMAIL MARKETING ........................................................................................... 17

SALES FUNNEL ...................................................................................................19

CONTENT MARKETING ................................................................................... 21

USE OF BANNERS ............................................................................................22

HIGH-TICKET PRODUCTS ..............................................................................24

LANDING PAGE PROMOTION .....................................................................25

BUILDING TRUST WITH SOCIAL PROOF ............................................... 27

SCARCITY MARKETING OF AFFILIATE PRODUCTS ....................... 29

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 Beginner's Guide to
Affiliate Marketing

AFFILIATE MARKETING
STRATEGIES FOR BEGINNERS

In this guide, I’ll show you 10 affiliate marketing strategies you can use to leverage your
online income.

If you read this income report, you know that most bloggers earn most of their income doing
affiliate marketing.

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 Beginner's Guide to
Affiliate Marketing

UNDERSTANDING AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate marketing is making money by selling the products you haven’t created. You
pick an outstanding product, become its affiliate and market it in pursuit of making sales.

Once a qualified sale is made, you get a fixed percentage of commission.

For thousands of bloggers, affiliate marketing is the key to their passive income.

The illustration below will give you a mind map of the complete affiliate marketing
process:

03 04

Customers click the The system tracks

links or use coupons and credits the
and purchase sales to affiliates

02
05
Affiliates publish
the links/coupons Merchants approve
on social media and process the
or websites orders

01 06

Merchants provide Affiliates get paid

affiliate unique according to the
links/coupons commission agreement

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 Beginner's Guide to
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TYPES OF AFFILIATE PROGRAMS ARE:

01 02 03 04
CPC CPA Recurring Bonded

You would have heard of the first two, however, the latter one may confuse you. Below I’ve
explained how all four of them differ and work and after that, we will discuss which one
works the best (and for whom).

CPC – CPC stands for cost per click.

When you join an affiliate program that gives you a

commission based on CPC, you get a commission
whenever a person clicks on your affiliate links,
banners, or other marketing materials such as custom
images and infographics.

This term is often used in the impression-based

advertisement sector; however, some affiliate
programs do pay with these criteria.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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CPA – CPA Stands for cost per action.

In this mode of Affiliate marketing, you get a commission

only when a visitor converts into a paying customer for
the merchant you are promoting. That means, the person
you’ve referred to the merchant should buy something in
order to make your referral eligible for a fixed commission
such as WPengine affiliate.

When you join a program that pays you on a CPC basis, it

means that you have to drive real customers to that
merchant which will do an action such as buying a
product, renting a product or giving a lead.

Recurring – Must similar to what the word

recurring stands for.

The recurring paying affiliate programs are the

one that pays you again and again either for a
fixed period of time or for a lifetime.

Recurring commissions mean you have to refer

a customer once and then on, anytime the
customer renews or extends its subscription,
you will be paid a commission. This is where you
generate truly passive income – refer a customer once,
and make money till they continue to pay the merchant.

The criteria can be seen in SaaS and hosting affiliate programs

which require recurring payment by the customer for using the
service.
Examples – Cloudways, SEMrush etc.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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Bonded – This is by far the highest

paying and “not so popular” affiliate
program commission rule.

The bonded commission system goes like

this – You refer a customer to an online
course or subscription-based product
website.

The customer then fills up a form and

generates a lead and enters the sales
funnel of the company. That’s it.

The customer is then bonded to you. Every

activity of this customer will be tracked and
if any further sales are made by this
customer, you will be paid.

When an affiliate program pays you on a

bonded commission’s rule, it means that
your affiliate commissions will be paid
without you doing anything at all.

Based on the above four types of affiliate marketing, you should be choosing and
promoting the products that would pay you a recurring commission.

However, it still has a small share in terms of merchants to promote. The most famous and
openly practiced affiliate marketing type is the CPA. Almost every other merchant has an
affiliate program that pays you on a CPA basis

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 Beginner's Guide to
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EARNING WITH CPA

PROGRAMS

Affiliate programs generally pay for Cost per action to make the most out of your sales, you
need to make sure you choose products based on certain standards and rules.

I follow a couple of rules and a set of norms before promoting any product on my blog and
below, I’ve shared all of it.

RULE 1 – PROMOTE A RELEVANT PRODUCT

Following up on my previous agenda I won’t promote any irrelevant product

on this blog. Neither it creates a sale nor it impresses any of the visitors at
all.

I recommend you to choose the affiliate products very carefully. A few

months back, I found an incredible affiliate marketplace called Flexoffers. It’s
great to find high-paying affiliate programs in every niche possible.

I searched for WordPress and web services niches on flexoffers and found
several affiliate programs including MaxCDN and Popup domination.

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The promotion of relevant products has been a major contributor to my

affiliate earnings. From $200 to more than $1000/month in 6 months of
blogging, I have seen a lot of tactics that support you in escalating your
affiliate income.

It helps my readers to make better decisions as they can relate to the

product I am promoting. You can check out some income and traffic reports
here.

RULE 2 – CLOAKED LINKS

Cloaking my affiliates links has given me a sense of peace. I don’t have to

fear that my affiliate earnings will be stolen or I won’t be paid for my hard
work. Here is a good article where its discussed in detail here.

It also helps me to track the percentage of valid clicks as well as it provides

branding for external links. With a link cloaking plugin, you don’t have to
manually add a Nofollow attribute (which keeps my SEO healthy) to each
and every link and this also helps the link management by stacking them
into categories.

I suggest you add a link cloaking plugin as soon as possible because it will
help you to work more efficiently if you start doing it from the very
beginning. I am using ThirstyAffiliates on my blog since 2017 and it works
great. Here is a step-by-step guide to cloaking your first affiliate link.

RULE 3 – PRODUCT, SERVICE, OR MERCHANT REPUTATION

This is one of the most important aspects to look for before promoting a
merchant, product or service on your blog. It might happen that a product
may seem to be very promising at first, but what about its performance? Is it
accurate enough, is it stand on industry standards, do people love it?

You should do thorough research on the past and present of a product you
are going to promote and make sure it is reputable enough and stands on its
promises.

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RULE 4 – BUY, USE, EXPERIENCE, AND PROMOTE

This rule is excellent in making cents to dollars. Before you promote a

product, Buy it. Think of this purchase as an investment. Take a few days and
discover the inner sides of the product and try to find in-depth pros and
cons.

After having a first-hand experience of the product, write a detailed review

or an in-depth tutorial mentioning the experience and time you had with the
product. Add your opinions and tricks and help people better understand the
product.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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HOW TO CHOOSE A NICHE?

Choosing a profitable niche in affiliate marketing is crucial for success. Here's a concise
guide to help you make the right decision:

01 PASSION & KNOWLEDGE

Start with your interests and expertise. A niche you're
passionate about will keep you motivated, and your knowledge
will help you create valuable content.

02 MARKET RESEARCH
Analyze potential niches for demand, competition, and
profitability. Use tools like Google Trends, keyword research,
and competitor analysis to gauge market viability.

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03 AFFILIATE PROGRAMS
Research affiliate programs related to your chosen niches.
Look for high commission rates, reliable tracking, and good
product quality.

04 TARGET AUDIENCE
Identify your target audience's pain points and needs within the
niche. Understand their preferences and tailor your content to
resonate with them.

05 MONETIZATION OPTIONS
Ensure your niche offers multiple monetization opportunities,
such as affiliate products, digital products, or advertising
revenue.

06 LONGEVITY & TRENDS

Consider the long-term sustainability of the niche. Avoid trends
that may fade quickly and opt for evergreen topics with
consistent demand.

07 TEST & ITERATE

Start small, test your strategies, and measure results. Be ready
to adjust and pivot if needed.

08 LEGAL & ETHICAL COMPLIANCE

Ensure your chosen niche aligns with legal and ethical
standards.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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How to do Niche Research

Begin Niche
Start With Your Size up Your Create a Content
Keyword
Passions Competition Plan
Research

Ü Hobbies Ü Website Size Ü Free and Paid Ü 40-50 Articles

Ü Areas of Ü Authority &

Tools within the
Experience Links Ü Commercial Niche

Ü Connections Ü Number of
Intent Ü ‘’Content

Competitors Keywords Archetypes’’

Ü ‘’Your Edge’’ you can scale
Ü ‘’Your unique
Ü Supporting
Content Ideas with
factor’’

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 Beginner's Guide to
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To help you get started, here are a few niches examples:

HOBBY NICHES
Photography, Travel, Sports betting, Event Tickets

MONEY NICHES
Debt Settlement, Bitcoin, Investing, Credit card, Mortgage

LIFESTYLE NICHES
Luxury, Cruises, Travel, Online dating, Airlines, Fashion, Jewelry

TECH NICHES
Web hosting, WordPress, VPN, SaaS, Gaming, Software

HEALTH, AND FITNESS NICHES

Weight Loss, Fitness, Yoga, Organic, Nutrition, Vegan

HOME & FAMILY NICHES

Home security, Coffee, Baby products, Dogs, Gardening

ALTERNATIVE NICHES
Forex, Art, Essential oils, Herbal, Personal development

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 Beginner's Guide to
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PROMOTE THE ESTABLISHED

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Tough to Generate When it comes to selecting the product for promotion, many affiliate
marketers are missing out on this.

It’s quite a sale or even a lead by promoting a fairly new product as an affiliate where all fo
your earnings depend on a sale. So what I do is I pick a product from one of my similar niche
site that is converting well enough to promote.

This helps me to build a relationship with pre-existing merchants that are seeing good
results from my niche website and this helps me to get exclusive offers too.

Let’s take an example. LongTailPro is a keyword research tool that has a sales ratio of 16.2
(approx) out of every 100 leads on one of a blog. I see it’s converting very well on some of
the blogs that are similar to my niche.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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Now there is a fairly new keyword research tool called KWfinder which is having a lesser
sales count and is not converting well enough.

In this case, I can confidently promote LongTailPro on my blog. This has helped to verify the
quality of the products as well as the needs of my readers without spending a single cent.

Similarly, for hosting, I know Bluehost performs exceptionally well due to its attractive and
straightforward landing page. I can sign up for a Bluehost affiliate and promote it without
any worries since it delivers the highest quality of service to most beginners.

This will work for you forever. Use it and I hope your sales will double at least in 30 days or
less.

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 Beginner's Guide to
Affiliate Marketing

EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing is one of the hidden strategies for

generating direct affiliate sales faster than any medium.
Since the beginning of online communication, email has
been a sustainable source to connect with customers and
readers.

However, List building today is helping many bloggers and

Here’s a spoiler online marketers generate thousands of sales with minimal
effort for a long time. The first step to email marketing is
Email marketing is setting up an email marketing service.
the most effective
affiliate marketing In the next stage, you will have to collect as many emails as
strategy in any niche possible by using some lead generation plugins and tools.
and for any product. This will help you to convert your visitors into potential
customers.

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A very great way of earning through affiliate marketing is setting up automated emails that
work on autopilot and give you more time to focus on further campaigns that will generate
more income and profit for you.

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SALES FUNNEL

A sales funnel is a multi-scale project. You can set up a sales funnel to promote an affiliate
product strategically. This can be done on your website but the best of the sales funnel can
be extracted by pairing it up with email marketing.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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Sales funnels work this way – You capture a lead through one of the opt-in forms on your
website. Once the subscriber confirms it’s the subscription to your funnel list, the promotion
starts.

The first email is set to give a sense of introduction and getting familiar with your subscriber.
This doesn’t include any affiliate promotion in any case. keep it as personalized as possible
to create a remarkable first impression that stays forever.

The second email is set to ask your readers about their interests and opinions. You can also
include a Q&A in your email to acquire the list of problems they are facing.

The third email will include an affiliate link to the most relevant product or service that is
the best option you think for solving a particular problem. Remember to show them the
value by including your personal experience with it and most importantly, Try to write the
emails to a mentor rather than being too sales-ish.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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CONTENT MARKETING

If you never came to this term, I will assume you are unaware of how the blog works for a
website. when we say to promote a product on a blog by writing a post or if we say driving
traffic to a website through creating content, to promote a product for a commission, It’s all
content marketing.

Simplified – Content marketing is about driving targeted traffic that generates sales through
useful and powerful content.

When I write a blog post about a keyword research tool for PPC, or when I write about the
Mailerlite or about the Fiverr affiliate program, it’s all content marketing.

Here, I am trying to drive traffic from search engines in order to send more traffic and
generate more sales on these websites which pay me the commission on every successful
one.

My content helps me market these products which in turn helps me to earn money since I
am an affiliate of whatever I am promoting.

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 Beginner's Guide to
Affiliate Marketing

USE OF BANNERS

Banners are generally easy to use and work on autopilot. Set it and forget it. since we are
talking about affiliate promotion banners here, we will be paid for any action that is made
by a visitor we refer.

However, I strategically place every promotion banner so that people with different
interests see a different banner.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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If you browse a post from the WordPress category, You will See a Hostgator banner
between the post after 5 paragraphs. This helps me to get the maximum click on that banner
as people who are browsing the post from the WordPress category should be interested in
WordPress hosting.

Similarly, I placed a HubSpot banner in the online marketing category and Media.net banner
in the make money category. I suggest you do the same and, in a few moments, you will
observe a better CTR and action on your affiliate banners.

I use WPAdvanced Ads plugin for grouping and Ad rotation. This plugin helps me to target
specific regions as well as visitors differently. The Advanced ads plugin helps me to Geo-
Target my banners as well.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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HIGH-TICKET PRODUCTS

Sure. This needs to be done. I promote many small as well as micro-paying products on
BforBloggers, But that doesn’t help me to earn a living out of it.

Some products such as Sucuri and Updraftplus pay a very low commission to its affiliates.
I still promote them because I use and trust them.

However, I do promote some high-paying products such as Kinsta hosting. Why? Because
when I talk to one of their team members or their affiliate managers, they give a series of
certified customers with testimonials that prove they are the best in the business.

High-ticket products need to be promoted because they fill the gap between low earnings
and high expenses. When choosing high-ticket products, All of the same rules apply as we
discussed above. You can find such programs from marketplaces such as ShareASale.

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 Beginner's Guide to
Affiliate Marketing

LANDING PAGE PROMOTION

Landing pages need to be curated. When a visitor first lands on your website and finds your
content interesting, the visitor is likely to explore more about you by going to your
homepage.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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If your landing pages have nothing but a simple pale appearance, you will eventually lose
sales. To make the most out of your landing pages, either convert them into a lead capture
page or make it a visitor funnel.

Read this guide to find your top landing pages and then, get yourself the Elementor Or
LeadPages landing page builder. By using LeadPages, you can create high-converting
landing pages with a drag-and-drop builder.

You can also set up a funnel system through these pages. Imagine a visitor coming onto
your landing page. the visitor then scrolls a little bit down and finds an interactive and
beautiful demonstration of how you use Convertkit for email marketing. This visitor will click
on the button to find out more about how that helped you.

Don’t sell the product directly, create content that indicates and shows the useful side, and
makes the visitor fall in love with it.

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 Beginner's Guide to
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BUILDING TRUST WITH

SOCIAL PROOF

Focus on your memory and try to remember this, you visited a blog or a website that has
the software, ebook, or any kind of a product to sell. You were browsing the webpage and
suddenly you see a Small Fomo bar like this –

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 Beginner's Guide to
Affiliate Marketing

This popup was telling you that a moment ago, a guy named John, purchased a product from
that website. This Fomo bar was giving you the proof and most importantly, this was giving
a solid reason to buy the product. That is called social proofing.

You can use the WPfomify WordPress plugin to add the same FOMO bars on your blog to
promote your product reviews and increase your revenue as an affiliate. Read the
WPFomify review and learn how to use it.

It can be seen in action at the MonsterInsights blog.

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SCARCITY MARKETING OF
AFFILIATE PRODUCTS

The very effective and high-on-converting promotion type is scarcity marketing. While we
browse through some websites, we come through some promotions that are offered to us
for a limited time.

Sometimes, these websites may show us that a product has limited stocks that would end
soon.

That is how scarcity marketing works. You can also start the promotion of some affiliate
products using scarcity marketing.

A very impressive WordPress plugin is Thrive Ultimatum by Thrive themes which works
great for promoting limited offers on WordPress websites. Discover Thrive Ultimatum.

That means without pre-planning, you would miss out on a great number of opportunities
that could prove to be profitable to your business.

If you are just starting out with affiliate marketing, make sure you use the landing pages and
banners from the very beginning. This will at least give you an opportunity to convert
visitors.

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I would stick to all of my rules before choosing a product as well and I would suggest you
to start with some selected products at first. keep your focus on one or two products at a
time and escalate your marketing skills as much as possible by continuous learning.

Email marketing should be done efficiently. Even if you’re starting a blog and don’t have any
money to spend, you can still use MailChimp to collect your visitor’s email. This will help you
to create a long list of potential customers in a short time.

So, What affiliate marketing strategies are you going to use to increase your sales?

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