How to start affiliate marketing for beginners

Affiliate marketing, if this term is new to you. You are certainly not aware of a potential market waiting outside for you to explore and earn handsomely online.

But before getting started, you need to know how to start and the basics of this performance-based marketing. So, if you are new, you must be looking guide on how to start affiliate marketing for beginners.

Here, we give it to you.

Now, What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing refers to revenue sharing by means of a middle-man. An affiliate is a person who becomes the connecting link between the seller and the buyer. And for every sale made through his reference or shared link is rewarded and paid out. This is how an affiliate earns. He becomes an affiliate member for a site, publishes its online at various sites in order to advertise. One who through his shared link buys the advertised product becomes the affiliate's source of income.

Why should you become an affiliate?

As on date, e-commerce and online marketing have increased to a large extent for the reason being the ease and availability it has provided at the doorstep. What is not being sold or brought online? And why not? It has several advantages.

•    It has shrunk a whole lot of products and services available in such a smaller; yet the biggest place, i.e., online.

•    It has increased the availability of products even to remote places.

•    Brought about urbanization. Need to deliver a product in a remote place has brought it closer to urbanized localities.

•    It saves time. One has a product handed over just right at his doorstep.

Endless benefits, one can go on to count.

How do you become an affiliate member?

Before you become an affiliate, you have to make a choice of a product or multiple products you need to advertise. It is very important to make the right choice because your performance of sales will depend largely on the choice of product.

Which is the best product to choose: The best product is the one that can maximize the profits. And such a product which is largely sold and bought online is one such choice.

Once you have selected the best product, what you need to do next becomes its affiliate member. Various online selling portals and websites offer affiliate membership. Once you become their affiliate member, they will give you a unique link. Whenever a customer will reach out to them through this link, they will pay you. Payment increases when a conversion is done.

How does it work?

Larger is the number of people looking for the product, higher is the chance of its conversion. Conversion refers to the final selling of the product. For instance, you are advertising software which is sold and bought online on a higher scale. Now you share your affiliate link at the desired online space. When any person buys that particular product through your particular advertised link, a positive conversion is said to have done. Its reward will get credited in your account. The reward is the commission that you get for making a product reach its potential buyer.

Where to advertise the link you have received:

The link you receive is unique for every affiliate. If you have a website, you can use this link code on your website. All people coming to your site will have access to that advertisement. And if it seems to suit the requirements of a person who is already seeking that product or may get interested in the product on seeing its advertisement can become the potential customer.

Now, if you do not own a website, you can write blogs. They are free of cost. You can paste this link as an add-on feature in blogger settings and get rewarded for every sale made through your unique link.

Again, if you do not have enough traffic on your website or blogs or if you do not wish to use them for advertising the links, another option is social media.

Social media sites offer both free online advertising spaces as well as paid advertising spaces. You can choose any or both. But you need to first become a member of these social sites if you already are not registered with them. Now, you have to share your unique affiliate link on these sites in groups and communities, on pages or beneath the posts which have maximum potential traffic. For example, if your chosen product is accounting software, you will have the best customers in the groups of stock exchanges, software developers and business groups. Maximum members who follow such pages may somewhere have the requirement of the accounting software. So, when they are exposed to an attractive advertisement for a product, they are likely to buy it. Either they were already seeking the product or your advertisement prompted them to buy the product. Social media also offers paid online space at very cheaper rates. You can even increase productivity with a little investment.

So, now you already know how to start affiliate marketing for beginners, let's check what goes in and what comes out.

What goes in:

What goes in to make an earning with affiliate marketing varies depending upon your choices.

1. If you have chosen your own website or the blogs or the space you own on the internet, the link will get exposed to only those people who are visitors of your that particular space. So, all the traffic coming in has got access to that product. Now, the ball goes in their court whether to click the link or not and even after clicking, whether to buy or not. But here, you have to do work only once, unlike;

2. If you choose to share the link via social media: Here, you will have to share on a massive scale to get a potential conversion. But, it will pay you even in the long run. Because you have already shared the link. Now it depends when does someone click it. It can be just now itself or can take place days or months later. This is for free space. But for paid online space, various packages are designed to promote the advertisement and reach out the potential customers boosting the sale.

What comes out:

Since it is performance-based marketing, the final outcome will depend upon the performance that your affiliate link has performed:

1. Clicks per link: How many people clicked at your link and reached the site you directed them to.

2. Conversions made: For the final items bought by the visitors who got directed to the site by your link, you get your share of the revenue. The share varies from site to site.