How To Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing For Beginners (2022) + Hidden Truth That No One Tells

Everyone wants to make money online with affiliate marketing. The search trend has really gone up, especially in the current scenario. People are searching for how to make money during the lockdown, how to make money online with affiliate marketing as a beginner etc.

You can even make money while you are sleeping with affiliate marketing, Sounds cool! but the truth is it takes time. When I started this blog, I made only a few dollars & it was less than my domain & hosting renewal fee. But now, I am making a decent amount of money from affiliate marketing.

So, in this post, I am going to teach you how you can make money online with affiliate marketing as a beginner. I have also shared SOME HIDDEN TRUTH ABOUT AFFILIATE MARKETING THAT NO ONE TELLS YOU & AFFECTS YOUR AFFILIATE EARNING. 

So, let’s get started.

Table of Contents

•  1. Find Your Niche
• 2. Don’t Focus On Money First
• 3. Join Affiliate Programs
• 4. Popular Affiliate Programs (Category Wise)
• 5. Manage Affiliate Links
• 6. Create Great Content
• 7. Use The Power Of Coupon Codes
• 8. Drive Traffic To Your Website
• 9. Follow Google’s Rules
• 10. Add Affiliate Disclaimer
• 11. Promote Products That You Have Used
• 12. Impact Of Ad Blockers On Affiliate Conversion
  • 13. FAQS

1. Find Your Niche

There is very high competition in any category. But if you focus on a specific category let’s say – ‘Travel‘ & under travel, you have chosen “Adventure Travel” then it will be a little bit easier to rank on search results. This also will help you build a more focused audience.

Another example, you can choose a category – ‘Food‘ & under food, you have decided to go with “Vegan foods”.

If you are passionate about any topic then you can also go with that. But I will suggest you do research about your audience. 

I blog on WordPress (Mainly on WordPress Speed Optimization) & Digital Marketing. So you can decide on your niche & based on your niche you should start your blog.

You can start a blog with WordPress. You don’t need any coding skills to start your blog. With just a few clicks you can set up your blog. Here is the complete step-by-step guide on how to start a WordPress blog (With Video Tutorials).

2. Don’t Focus On Money First

This is one of the common mistakes that most bloggers make.

First, try to drive traffic to your blog by writing blog posts. Most affiliates only approve those blogs that have some traffic.

Even to get approved by Google Adsense, you must have some traffic on your site.

So, apply for affiliate programs according to your niche & once you get approved by affiliates, add your affiliate link to the products or services that you have mentioned in your posts.

3. Join Affiliate Programs

Based on your niche, you can join affiliate programs & networks but as a new blogger, only a few affiliate programs & affiliate networks will accept your application.

Tip: Before applying for any affiliate programs I will suggest you write a few articles & try to drive traffic to your blog. You can also use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. to drive traffic to your site. 

Here are some of the affiliate programs & networks that accept new bloggers:

• Amazon Associates
• ShareASale

Now let’s discuss these two affiliate programs in detail.

• Amazon Associates

Amazon accepts all the applications but if you are looking to promote products from Amazon.com then you have to make 3 sales in 180 days. If you can’t make 3 sales using your affiliate link then Amazon will close your account. But still, 180 days is quite enough to make 3 sales.

Recently Amazon has reduced its commission rate in all the categories & I don’t think it makes sense to promote Amazon products. Let’s take a look at the new commission rate –

Best Way To Promote Amazon Products

Write a detailed blog post on products that you want to promote. People also search on youtube for product reviews so you can go to both blog posts & video reviews.

Here is an example of a blog post where they are promoting the best gardening tools.

Here is another example this time it’s a video tutorial. In the description, most of the links are amazon affiliate links (see the screenshot below).

This is how most people make money from Amazon affiliates. 

• ShareASale

Shareasale is an affiliate market place & they accept new bloggers. You can find products to promote and earn a commission. They have around 3900 plus brands and have a minimum payout of $50.

4. Popular Affiliate Programs (Category Wise)

Online Retailers:

• eBay – Offers Up to 4% commission with 24 hours cookie time.

• Target – Up to 8% commission on popular categories with a 7-day cookie period.

• Walmart – 1-4% commission in most of the categories.

• Aliexpress –  Most of the categories have around 8% commission & for electronics, it is 3%.

WordPress Themes:

• Elegant Themes –  Offers 50% commission per sale.

• ThemeForest –  30% commission on any first purchase you refer to.

• My Theme Shop – offers 55% commission per sale with 60-day cookie time.

• StudioPress –  35% commission per sale.

• Template Monster – 30% commission for any user’s first purchase and 10% commission on further purchases.

WordPress Plugins:

• Elementor –  It’s a popular page builder plugin and offers a 50% commission.

• WP Forms – It’s a drag & drop form builder & offers a 20% commission.

• Alidropship –  It’s a WordPress plugin for dropshipping. Alidropship offers 30-50% commission with 30 days of cookie time.

Web Hosting:

• Cloudways – Starting at $50-$150 /sale. Best cloud hosting provider. 

• SiteGround – Starting at $50 – $150 per sale. SiteGround is a good shared hosting provider but recently they have increased their page, CPU limits & high renewal price. But still, Siteground is better than other EIG brands. 

• GreenGeeks – Starting at $50/sale, the more you sell the more you earn. GreenGeeks is an affordable web hosting provider & uses Renewal energy to power its data centers.

• Bluehost – $65- $150/sale but their servers are slow. Bluehost is owned by EIG.

• Hostgator –  Another EIG brand that offers $65 – $125/sale. I have used their hosting & it was really slow. Not a good hosting to promote.

• Hostinger – Offer 60% commission per sale. They are offering web hosting at affordable prices. Their servers are really slow.

• Kinsta – $50 to $500 after every signup based on the type of plan. They also provide 60-day tracking cookies. The best part of the Kinsta affiliate program is they pay 10% monthly recurring commissions for the lifetime of the customer you referred to.

• WP Engine – Starting at $200 per sale.

• Inmotion – Starts at $50 and goes up to $150 per sale.

• Godaddy –  Godaddy offers the lowest commission which is 15%. But Godaddy is also slow.

Affiliate Marketplaces:

• ClickBank – check out the complete list here.

• MaxBounty – Big-commerce, Canva, Adobe, McAfee Antivirus, Alibaba, Aliexpress, NordVPN, Fiverr, Shutterstock, Treehouse,  Skillshare, etc. 

• CJ (Commission Junction) – Hotels.com, American Express, Overstock, Samsung, etc.

• Admitad – booking.com, Aliexpress, DHgate.com, Shein, Adobe, Lenovo etc.

Other Affiliate Programs:

• LongTailPro – 30 % commission with future recurring payments.

• WP Rocket – 20 % Commission on every sale.

• SEMrush – 40% recurring commission.

• KW Finder – 30% recurring commission.

• Grammarly – $20/sale.

5. Manage Affiliate Links

Managing you’re is quite easy in WordPress. I use the Pretty Links plugin (free version) to manage all my affiliate links.

Pretty links plugin cloaks & tracks your affiliate links. This plugin has both a free & paid version but I think the free version is OK for beginners.

What Is a Cloak Link?

Link Cloaking makes your affiliate links shorter and into your own domain link. Most of the affiliate links are long & difficult to remember. The cloak link makes your affiliate link shorter, easy to remember & automatically redirects to the affiliate site.

Example of an Affiliate link:

Example of a Cloak Link:

Create a Cloak Link:

• Install & activate the Pretty Links plugin.

• Go to the Pretty Links > Add New.

• Add Title – You can write your affiliate brand name here or anything just for your own understanding.

• Redirection – Choose 301.

• Target URL: Paste your affiliate link here.

• Pretty Link: Choose your Own Affiliate URL means that cloaked version  (For example https://www.digirockstar.com/malcare).

Finally, click the Update button. 

You should always use the cloaked affiliate link on your website.

Other Important Setting:

Go to Pretty Links > Options > Reporting & Check the boxes of auto Trim clicks & Filter Robots.

6. Create Great Content

The success of affiliate marketing lies in great content. You can either write blog posts or videos or both. 

Add affiliate links in your content, you can add text/button/images in your blog post. Some bloggers also add banners in the sidebar (see the screenshot below). But in most cases it doesn’t work well that’s why I have removed all my banner ads from my sidebar.

For Youtube videos add your affiliate links in the video description. This is how most YouTubers make money.

7. Use The Power Of Coupon Codes

Coupon codes are really powerful in making more sales. Brands also offer custom coupon codes for your audience & when a visitor applies your coupon code, the commission will be credited to your affiliate account. With custom coupon codes, people don’t need to click your affiliate link. But if there is any common coupon code then in that case you have to tell your audience to click on the links & then apply the coupon code.

8. Drive Traffic To Your Website

The next step is to drive traffic to your website. There are many ways of driving traffic to your site & I will suggest you apply almost all these ways to bring more traffic.

Here are the 4 ways you can try:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is a process of optimizing your web pages to get traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc for certain keywords.

Driving traffic from SEO doesn’t cost any money but it takes time to rank for any keyword. 

• Paid Traffic

As the name says, You have to pay for traffic to search engines like Google & Bing by using PPC ads. You will rank for the keyword instantly at the top search results with PPC ads.

But I will suggest you run ads for the affiliate programs that have a high commission.

• Drive traffic from Social Media Sites

Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc can also bring traffic to your site. In the beginning, most of the new website gets traffic from social media sites only.

• Build Your Email List

By sending emails about your blog post, you can drive traffic to your site. You can also promote products or services by adding the affiliate link and making money.

But building an email list takes time. To collect visitors’ emails you have to offer valuable content. You can use free email automation tools like Mailchimp (free till 2000 subscribers), and Aweber (Free till 500 subscribers) to send emails to your subscribers.

9. Follow Google’s Rules

Always follow Google’s rules on Affiliate marketing to avoid Google penalties. 

• Read the complete guideline here.

10. Add Affiliate Disclaimer

Adding an Affiliate disclaimer provides transparency to your readers and you will earn the trust of your readers. 

If you are promoting products of companies based in the USA, Canada, & the UK then you have disclosed your affiliation.

If you are getting traffic from European Union countries then also you have to disclose your affiliation & it applies to both E.U & non-E.U Companies.

11. Promote Products That You Have Used

Always recommended those products that you have used & are of good quality. You might make a few dollars by recommending a product that is of low quality but in the long run, those audiences will never visit your site. That’s why it is really important to promote good products that get your audience.

I promote web hosting, themes & plugins that I have used & I also mention their pros & cons so that my audience can make their decision.

12. Impact Of Ad Blockers On Affiliate Conversion

According to the Blockthrough’s PageFair report 2020, more than 763 Million devices use Ad Block. Ad Blockers are not only blocking ads but also blocking tracking. If a user has installed Ad Block on their browser, clicks on your affiliate link & purchases the product then it will only show the click in your affiliate report, not the conversion. This is how most affiliate marketers are losing money.

So, before joining any affiliate program I will suggest you contact the affiliate support & ask them about Ad Block tracking.

13. FAQS

Conclusion:

All the points covered in this affiliate marketing blog post are the beginner’s guide to getting started.

It will take time to make your first affiliate sale. Once you make your first affiliate sale, you will get more confidence to create more content. 

Join affiliate programs according to your niche & if the affiliate program has a recurring commission then you can make more money.

Remember that the first step is to choose your niche and then build your affiliate website or blog on WordPress using GreenGeeks hosting (it’s affordable web hosting & you will get a free domain).

This is how you can make money online with affiliate marketing as a beginner. If you have any questions on affiliate marketing, then fill free to comment below. Also share this post on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

A2 Hosting

Starting At $2.99/month

GRAB THIS DEAL

Cloudways Hosting

Starting At $10/month

Cloudways Review

GRAB THIS DEAL

WPX Hosting

Starting At $20.83/month

WPX Hosting Review

GRAB THIS DEAL