Want to learn how to start an affiliate marketing business in 2024?
If yes, you are in the right place.
Is your dream to wake up in the morning, turn on your laptop or smartphone, and find a message like this?
I guess your answer is yes.
Well, your dreams can be true with this business model called affiliate marketing because this is one of the best ways to earn a recurring and passive income while you sleep.
So if you’re here to learn what affiliate marketing is and how to get started, this step-by-step guide will be useful to you.
Because in this article, I’m not only going to help you better understand what affiliate marketing is, but I will also show you how to start your affiliate marketing business on the right way.
But before we get to the point, let’s first understand what affiliate marketing is and how it works.
Since this affiliate marketing guide for beginners is an in-depth guide, you can skip to the section you want with the use of the table of content below.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing in which an affiliate through his own marketing strategy helps a merchant to promote his products or services in exchange for a commission.
In other words, affiliate marketing is about promoting other people’s products or services for a commission.
In this marketing channel, there are usually 3 parties in the sales chain and at the end of the day, each party wins.
We have on the sales chain:
- The seller or merchant: he is the one who creates the product or service. In other words, the owner of the product/service.
- The affiliate, also called the publisher: He is the one who promote the merchant or vendor’s products or services to his audience.
He acts as a middle man between the merchant and the customer (the vendor target’s clients).
- The customer or consumer: The customer is the both the vendor and affiliate’ target client.
He is the one who is looking for the product/service to meet his needs or solve his problems. Thanks to the affiliate, he or she can to find the right product or service that he might not have found on his own.
Now, you know what affiliate marketing is, let’s move into the next step of my step-by-step guide on how to start an affiliate marketing business to find out how affiliate marketing works.
Also, read how to make money blogging in 2024.
(an eyes-opened guide that will make your blogging journey successful)
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing as I said previously, consists of promoting other people’s products/services and receiving a share of the sale set by the merchant called commission.
The affiliate acts as an middleman between the merchant and the customer or consumer. His role on the one hand, is to help the merchant to promote his products or services and the other hand the consumer to find the right product/service he wants or looking to buy.
Here is how affiliate marketing works in a practical way:
- Choose a Product: An affiliate picks a product or service they like and want to promote.
- Attract Visitors: They create content, like blog articles, to attract people interested in that product through search engines like Google.
- Inform and Refer: Visitors read about the product on the affiliate’s blog and, if convinced, click on the affiliate link or banner that takes them to the seller’s page.
- Purchase: The visitor decides to buy the product on the seller’s page and completes the purchase.
- Track and Reward: The seller uses tracking tools to credit the sale to the affiliate, who then gets paid a commission based on the agreed-upon rate.
- Get Commission: The affiliate receives their share of the sales, known as commissions, for successfully driving the sale.
How to start an affiliate marketing business in 2024 on the right path?
Starting an affiliate marketing business is simple.
Because you don’t need to create your own product or service.
You also don’t need a huge budget to get started.
But simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy.
Yes! Getting started is easy, but succeeding in your affiliate marketing business isn’t.
Online gurus often pitch the idea of earning money effortlessly while you sleep, painting a picture of passive income that seems too good to be true.
They profit from this narrative while leaving you, the beginner to face the struggles alone. Ultimately, many end up giving up.
However, like any business endeavor, success doesn’t come without effort. It requires dedication, late nights burning the midnight oil, persistence, and patience before you can see the rewards of your hard work
To get started here are the steps to follow to get your affiliate marketing off to a successful start:
1. Decide in which niche to get in
If you want to be a successful affiliate in the affiliate marketing industry, you’ll need to choose carefully the niche in which you want to position yourself.
If you don’t know what a niche is, let me explain it to you in a few words.
A niche is a market segment with a target audience you plan to reach.
Your target audience is a group of people your business tries to reach with your marketing or advertising efforts.
So you should first determine a well-defined target market and also find out who is your ideal buyer or customer.
In other words, find out who is a good fit for the products or services you want to promote.
Related post: How to choose a profitable niche in 2025
2. Choose a good and winning product in your niche to promote
Once you have chosen your niche, the second step will be to find a good product or service that will add value to the lives of your audience.
I emphasize your choice of product because your reputation matters.
If you choose a product because of its commission rate that is higher while the product has poor quality and doesn’t bring any value to your audience, you are set to fail.
In other words, don’t choose a product because of the profit you will get but because of the quality and value, it can bring to your audience.
Want to make money on autopilot? So let’s get into the next section on how to start an affiliate marketing business in 2024 to learn how to make our business profitable.
3. Create your affiliate marketing website
If you want to be a successful affiliate marketer and make a passive income on autopilot, you should put a system that can generate a no-stop and quality traffic and leads for your business.
And the way you can generate such no-stop traffic and leads can be achieved in 2 ways:
- Whether you invest in paid advertising or pay companies like Google or Facebook to send you traffic in exchange for your hard earned cash, or
- You invest in SEO by just creating a website or a YouTube channel that will drive free traffic to your funnels.
You can use YouTube or social media platforms like Facebook and forums to promote your affiliate offer.
But doing affiliate marketing in this way is like renting properties. You can get banned at any time if you break their rules and all your business is lost.
Smart affiliates not only create a website + a YouTube channel but they combine them with email marketing.
You don’t have to do it all at once at first, but in my humble opinion, if you are just starting and on tight budget, a blog is the best way to go because not only it doesn’t require a lot of money to get started, but also it is an effective way to drive free and targeted traffic to your marketing funnel.
Learn how much it costs to build your own money-making website in 2024.
And if you are not on a tight budget and want to use blogging as a marketing tool for your affiliate marketing business, I recommend you check out this an all-in-one platform where you will have al l the necessary tools and training to develop your business. This is the platform I use myself to run this blog.
Related post: How to create a website and make money on the side.
You can also read: How to start a blog with Bluehost.
4. Attract your audience via search engines
The importance of using a blog for your affiliate marketing business is that you drive free and organic traffic from search engines like google by optimizing your articles with relevant and long-tail keywords that will lead you to reach your target clients easily and without spending money on paid ads.
All you have to do is master SEO so that you can optimize your website and your money-making website is ready to generate free and no-stop traffic for you.
Plus you can make passive income because once your blog post is published and ranked, you don’t need to do anything again ( unless updating it) to promote your products/services and make money.
That leads us to our next step to starting your affiliate marketing business.
You can also read: How to increase your website traffic to over 200% in a month
5. Promoting your affiliate offer to your audience
Once you have built your traffic generation system – whether it is a blog, a YouTube channel or any mediums, and it start driving traffic, the next step is to start promoting your affiliate offer.
Instead of just inserting your affiliate links inside your article or content for your visitors to check it out and buy your offer, you should build an affiliate marketing funnel to generate leads and then turn your leads into customers.
Note that sending your visitors directly to your affiliate links is not a smart way to do affiliate marketing. You should focus on building your email list. This is a valuable asset you own – just like your website or blog.
Also, promoting your affiliate offer include promoting your content because without promoting your content, no one will discover or find it.
Also, read our guide: How to generate leads on Facebook for free in 2024.
My FAQ on how to start an affiliate marketing business
What is affiliate marketing and how does it work?
Affiliate marketing is the process of selling other people’s products for a commission. In the selling chain we have:
– the merchant who is the one that owns the product,
– the affiliate who acts as a middleman between the advertiser or merchant and the customer, and
– the customer who is the one who is looking for the merchant product to solve his problems or fill his needs.
Can I do affiliate marketing without a website?
Yes, you can. If you don’t want to do affiliate marketing using a blog or a website, you can do it using Youtube, social media platforms, forums, etc. This is a guide that will teach you how to do affiliate marketing without a website.
How to start affiliate marketing for free?
Affiliate marketing doesn’t require an investment to get started as it is with MLM. You can sign up with any company that offers an affiliate program for free and get started.
But keep in mind, you will need to invest (your time and even money) in your business if you want to make a sustainable income with your affiliate marketing business. There are tools you will need to run your business depending on the strategy you follow. For blogging you can see the start up cost here. For paid advertising tools you will need to include email marketing tools, and sales funnel builder tools.
How much money do I need to start an affiliate marketing business?
Unlike mortar and brick-and-mortar businesses where you need to invest thousands of dollars to get started, an online business (mainly affiliate marketing) doesn’t require a lot of money to get started. Because you don’t need to create your own product or service or to rent a local to stock product. With under $100 you can have your affiliate marketing business up and running with Bluehost or Wealthy Affiliate.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is the quickest and easiest way to get started and the best way to build a passive income online.
The best part is, it doesn’t require a lot of money and everyone can get started whatever their location.
What you need is just a laptop and an internet connection, a small investment of your money and your time.
I hope you found my step-by-step guide on how to start an affiliate marketing business helpful.
From now, you have an idea of what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and the best part you can get started today by following these easy steps.
I want to hear from you. Have you started your affiliate marketing business? Or are you just looking to get started?
If yes, how is your progress so far?
Share your experience with us in the comment section below.
Be an ACTION taker, SOW YOUR SEED TODAY!
To your success!
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Before starting affiliate marketing everyone should have got the proper knowledge about it.
Hi, Brian
Thank you for stopping by!
Yes, you are right. Having the required skills before you start will fasten your path to success!
But note that the learning never stops. So you cannot master every aspect of affiliate marketing before you.
You can learn while you are building your business. This is what we all do.
And the exciting part, you can earn while you are learning.
Agree?
All the best!
Kudos to you.
I have a Google Blog website, i have not purchased a domain name or do any web hosting. please i need full guide on how to launch the website and participate in affiliate marketing.
Hi, Emaka
Thank you for stopping by and for your comment.
I helped dozen of online entrepreneurs create their own business so far.
So if you want to create your own professional blog and then make money from it, you in the right place.
You can contact me via my contact page here for guidance.
Thanks.
Hi Sebastian,
This is an informative article to let people know how to make money online in 2020 when we face a hard time during the lock-down situation by COVID-19. I think people could get your point of view quickly because you make it comprehensive and easy to understand. It’s also good to know that we could maximize the earning potential by leveraging website, YouTube Channel, and email marketing.
Since you mentioned Bluehost here, I wonder whether it provides training courses too? I know it’s a website hosting service, not sure what other powerful features they have. It will be great if you can leak some tips to use Bluehost so that I would have a clear picture.
Thanks in advance,
Matt
Hi, Matt
Thank you for stopping by.
You are right. Bluehost is a web hosting service provider only. So the answer is no. They don’t offer training as Wealthy Affiliate do.
For entrepreneurs who want an all in one platform like training, coaching, web hosting and other necessary tools to start and grow their business, or a way to save their expenses Wealthy Affiliate is the best choice for them.
But Bluehost can be the best alternative to people who can’t join WA for restriction issues.
And sure I will do.
Thanks
This was some good advice on how to start an affiliate marketing business! I appreciated how well you articulated the ins and outs of affiliate marketing. I learned a great deal from your post. Thanks so much!
Hi, Robert
Thank you for stopping by.
Glad you learned something great throughout this guide.
All the best.