A Short Guide on Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

When it comes to the topic of affiliate marketing, many are confident that they know exactly what it is. While some people don’t trust it and say it’s a scam, others claim it’s the best part about digital marketing.

As always, the truth lies in the middle. While it’s true that affiliate marketing can make people a ton of money, it’s also a fact that it’s sometimes ineffective and a waste of time.

In this short article, we will discuss affiliate marketing for beginners. We will explain what it is, how it’s done, and some of the main benefits and drawbacks that come with it. So sit back, and let’s get started.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is where a person can earn a commission for promoting a product or a service that another company produces. It’s a monetization model, where an affiliate partner gets paid for providing the retailer or advertiser with a particular result.

In most situations, that desired result is a sale. However, there are some affiliate programs that reward leads, free-trial users, and even clicks to their website.

For the most part, affiliate programs are completely free to join, so there are no high startup costs for aspiring affiliate marketers. However, actually earning money from this type of advertising is complex.

Why Should You Consider Affiliate Marketing?

If you want to earn an extra income and you’re looking for a good side hustle to take up, then affiliate marketing should definitely be on your list. There are a few reasons for that.

Low-cost and low-risk

In order to do affiliate marketing, you only need a platform – whether that’s your website or one of your social media profiles. However, if it doesn’t work, you will lose time and money.

Easily scalable

If you get the hang of it and start earning money from affiliate marketing, a world of opportunity opens up in front of you. As an affiliate marketer, you can work with as many companies as you like and earn commissions from all of them.

Types of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is tricky – you never know if the person promoting the product has actually even seen it in real life. That’s why in 2009, renowned affiliate marketer Pat Flynn introduced the three different types of affiliate marketers. By understanding these three types of affiliate marketing, you will see how many utilize this model to earn money online.

Unattached Affiliate Marketing

The first type of affiliate marketing is called “unattached.” That simply means that the person who’s an affiliate partner has no authority in the industry of the product that he or she is advertising. This means there’s no connection between the affiliate partner and the customer, which is why the affiliate partner often runs PPC (pay-per-click) advertising campaigns that aim to make people click on them and buy the product.

Unattached affiliate marketing is quite popular because it doesn’t require the affiliate partner to have a reputation or a substantial online following.

Related Affiliate Marketing

With related affiliate marketing, the partner is still promoting a product that he or she hasn’t personally used but that’s within his or her niche. In this case, affiliates must have an audience, regardless of whether it’s through YouTube, TikTok, or another social media platform. They need to have some sort of influence, which makes them a trusted resource for recommending services or products.

The issue with related affiliate marketing is that it can be challenging to promote a product that a person has never used to an audience that’s generally interested in the niche and expects to hear an expert’s take. Along with that, if a person has never used a service or a product and tries to say it’s excellent, but it turns out to be awful, then the person will lose the trust of his or her followers, and soon this affiliate marketing income will come to a halt.

Involved Affiliate Marketing

Basically, this is almost what we see all the time from influencers on social media. They recommend products or services in their niche that they’ve used and enjoyed and give their audience a link or a coupon code that earns them a commission. Most marketers believe this approach to be the best, as it’s the most transparent and is rooted in trust.

With this type of marketing, the affiliate partner is promoting products and services that are generally beneficial and that his or her followers may need, instead of just doing it for the sake of earning a few bucks. However, building the kind of credibility needed to do involved affiliate marketing well takes a long time and a lot of effort.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners – Lessons Learned

When it comes to affiliate marketing for beginners, there are a few lessons that I hope you took away from this short article:

• Affiliate marketing can bring you extra income if done right – it costs nothing to start doing it and has no hidden risks.
• There are three main types of affiliate marketing:
  – Unattached
  – Related
  – Involved

• Most marketers agree that the involved affiliate marketing method is definitely the way to go. It is the most transparent and helps build trust between the company, the affiliate partner, and the customer.

If this affiliate marketing for beginners short guide wasn’t enough for you and you’d like to learn more, then head over to the Camberlion blog – a lot of exciting information awaits.