Affiliate Marketing Tutorial For Beginners 2024 (Step by Step)

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another video. In today's video, I'll walk you through a complete

affiliate

marketing

tutorial

step

by

step

. So by the end of this video, you will know everything you need to know about

affiliate

marketing

to start your own business. Now, this is going to be one of those videos that moves at a pretty quick pace, but it will go over everything in detail. There will be a lot of valuable information in this video, totally free here on YouTube. And what's going to make this one unique is that I'm going to walk you through screen recording on my computer and show you real examples and show you things on my screen so you can see what this looks like in practice.

Now before we get into this video, if you don't know me, just to give you some credibility, my name is Greg Gottfried. I've been making videos here on YouTube for a couple of years and I've also been doing affiliate marketing for a couple of years. I learned how to do affiliate marketing the hard way before there was much information about it. So I learned a lot of things through trial and error. That's what I'm going to share with you in this video. Many of the things I have learned in the process are not yet in the public domain.

They aren't shared very often on YouTube or anywhere else you learn how to do affiliate marketing. So I think I have some unique things to bring to the table and I think you'll get value from them. Now, with all that being said, at the beginning I want to spend a little time going over affiliate marketing so that as we look at real examples of this and different strategies and how it can be done, you have a great understanding of why these different strategies work and why some of them don't work because you understand the concept of affiliate marketing very well.

Now after discussing the business model of affiliate marketing, I will discuss some of these strategies that you can use to do affiliate marketing. You'll look at the pros and cons of these different avenues of doing affiliate marketing and see which one you'd be most comfortable with based on the skills you already have. Now, when it comes to the different affiliate marketing strategies, in this video I am going to share with you the most basic affiliate marketing strategies that would be the easiest for a beginner, and I will take them all the way to the end. to the most advanced strategies so you know what is available and the different ways you could do this business.

So sit back and relax. This should be a very useful video. And if you have any questions along the way that aren't covered in this video, let me know in the comments. First things first, let's discuss what affiliate marketing is. And I want to break it down in a way that's really relatable and what affiliate marketing really is, not the complicated explanation of it. So in the simplest terms, what affiliate marketing means is that you partner with a company, they give you a unique referral link, then you share that link with other people, and when someone clicks on that link and Make a purchase from that company, you will receive a commission for that sale.

Now, you may be wondering, "What is a sales commission? What does that mean?" Well, this will vary between different companies. So, for example, you can get 25% of the amount of money they spent on the company, or you can just get a flat fee. So you could get something like $50 every time someone buys a product. Basically, you are a commission seller for a company, but the beauty of affiliate marketing is that there are a lot of great companies, almost every big company has an affiliate program, and everyone can join for free, with no strings attached. . In reality, it is not necessary to be an employee of that company.

It's basically like a freelancer where anyone can join for free and then you get your unique referral link, and if you don't make any sales, you get no payment, no harm, no foul. But if they generate sales, they will simply receive their commissions. So I'll start with a couple of examples to show you what this looks like in the real world. So starting with a company called Best Buy, which is a big electronics store that you can physically walk into here in the United States, if you go to their home page and scroll to the bottom, you'll see that they have all these different buttons that are going to Like Contact Us or different places on your website.

Almost every large company has a button that says Affiliate Program. So all you have to do is click this button and you will literally be able to join their affiliate program for free. Literally just click Sign Up, fill out a little information about yourself and they will give you their unique referral link that you can start sharing with people and automatically get commissions on anything they buy. So, that's an example of Best Buy, which is kind of a big personal store. But once you get into affiliate marketing, you will discover that there are even better affiliate programs you can join.

I'll talk about this a little more as we go. But an example of this would be Amazon. So if you go to Amazon, scroll to the bottom, as you can see here, they have become affiliates. And then the same concept here, you just hit Sign up and then you can create an account and you can be an Amazon affiliate. Now, the great thing about this is that when you join these programs, you can get unique referral links to any products that company sells. So when you think about Amazon, Amazon sells so many different products. So, you could literally be an affiliate for any different hobby or passion you have, any different topic, any niche, all through the Amazon affiliate program.

Now, something else to show you before we move on here, this one is more exclusive and as we get further into this, you'll start to see why I'm showing you some of these obscure companies. This, for example, is a website called Bluehost. Bluehost is one of the leading online software products. Basically, if you want to create a website online, most of the time you will use a host, basically someone to get your website up and running, and Bluehost is one of the biggest ones out there. That being said, you scroll to the bottom and you can see again that they have affiliates.

So you might see it says Affiliate Program, it might say Affiliates, it might say Referral Program. We are looking for something like that. But you click here, and the same concept, you click the join now button and you can get your unique referral link. And this is a case where they pay a flat fee instead of a commission, and I'll show you why. This is really cool before we continue. You'll see here that it says you'll receive $65 for each registration or referral. So every time you send them a buyer, you get $65 as a flat commission. But what I love about this and what's starting to get really interesting in affiliate marketing is that if you go to one of their products here, if you refer someone here in your link and they go ahead and say, "Okay ". , I want to start with this plan, this is the cheapest hosting they have." So the amazing thing about this is that the person you referred here can literally spend $35.40, they can pay and then you will get a commission of $65 It seems a little strange, when you just heard about affiliate marketing, how can this happen?

How can someone spend $35 and then the Bluehost company will pay them a commission of $65? Well, the reason for this is something like site hosting? web, traditionally speaking, when someone signs up to host their website with a company, they typically keep their hosting with that company for more than three to five years. Then Bluehost will receive that $35 over and over again, and they will only have to pay us the $65. once. So it's kind of like a win-win. Someone just has to spend $35 and then you, for sending it there, you'll get a $65 commission. So I just wanted to show you that, just a couple of different examples of affiliate programs. before we start tackling different strategies and move forward from here.

Well, before we get into these strategies, a couple of quick FAQs that will probably help you a lot if you're just getting into this business. So the first question here is: do you need prior experience if you are going to start affiliate marketing today? The short answer here is no. There are so many different routes or avenues, different ways that you can do affiliate marketing, that even if you're starting out as a complete beginner, you've never had an online business before, you can start today and be successful. Another fun fact about this is that, while we are talking about how to get started, getting started with affiliate marketing is 100% free.

As you can see with these different programs, you can join the programs totally free. And then in the different ways that I'll show you, you can market to get people to click on your links for free as well. Ok, next question, if you are going to start affiliate marketing today, how soon will you be able to start making money? Now, this will depend on your pace and how quickly you create marketing content and share it online, but I would say it's safe to say that you should start making money from this in the same month you start.

This is not one of those business models where you start and have to wait and wait and wait a year until you start making money. This is one of those business models where you can start seeing results very quickly. So if you are someone who is in a position where you want to start an online business but you don't really know if it's going to work yet, this would be one that I would recommend starting. And then within a month you'll see that it's starting to work and you'll basically be able to start working more and more on it and publishing more content and then you'll start making more income.

Well, another very common question here is how do you get paid? So how do these companies, when you join their affiliate programs, pay you commissions? Well, there are a couple of different ways. I would say the two most common ways are PayPal. So if you already have a PayPal account, you can literally send businesses your email address to your PayPal account. And then usually every month, at the end of the month, for any sales that you've sent them and any commission that's due to you, they'll automatically be sent to your PayPal account. Now, talking about the PayPal account, you don't need a business account for this.

You literally just need a personal PayPal account, completely free to create, and then you simply share your email with them for the PayPal account. You do not need to share any other information. Now, the second most common way I would say you get paid is through direct deposit. So, same concept, once a month, companies will automatically pay your commissions, but this way they go directly to your bank account. Again, you don't need to have a business bank account for this. This is something you can literally use your personal bank account for. That said, whether you get paid through PayPal or direct deposit, you can do affiliate marketing from anywhere in the world.

You do not need to be located in the United States. You are literally in any country and you can still do affiliate marketing. You will see what I mean by this when we talk about the different strategies for doing affiliate marketing. No matter where you are. Alright, the next thing I think you'll find helpful is do you need a business entity? I know we're talking about a personal PayPal account and your personal bank account to receive payments. Well, do you need a business entity for affiliate marketing? The answer here is no, you don't need to create a business entity for this.

I would say that once you start making around $50,000 per year in profits, then you might want to consider starting a business entity for yourself. It will simply make all your commission payments arrive much more organized than if you mixed them up in your personal bank account. Okay, and the last question I'm going to ask in these quick questions is how much time do you need to invest in this business model? This is one of my favorite benefits of affiliate marketing. The affiliate marketing business model is one where you can create content and you can spend time up front and publish that content on the Internet, and that content will stay on the Internet for years to come.

So it will literally earn you passive income commissions for years into the future, where you don't have to keep updating that content, you don't have to keep publishing more content. Once you get it out there and have put in a lot of work from the beginning, you will literally continue to make money for years. This is something I can absolutely say from experience. I've been doing affiliate marketing for a couple of years. And without lifting a finger, there is content I created a few years ago that still makes me hundreds or thousands of dollars each month from just one piece of content.

Alright, now that we've gone over what affiliate marketing is, we've answered many of these common questions and hopefully we're on the same page aboutthe business model. Now let's move on to the fun part, which is what are the different strategies for doing affiliate marketing, so you can see which one best suits your needs and then you can start doing it. Okay, so there are three main categories that affiliate marketing strategies fit into. Now this is where some of my personal experience will come into play. What I am about to share with you in these three different categories is not commonly shared, especially in this way.

I hope this is very valuable. So the first general strategy on how to do affiliate marketing, which happens to be the most beginner friendly here, is what I call search. Basically, when someone goes to Google or YouTube and does a search about a product they want to buy, we want to appear in that content as results and make a recommendation about the best product that we think would be better. adjust them with our affiliate link. So, for example, if we type in the best dirt bike helmet, you can see from the results that we will get some of these suggested products that you can buy right away.

Google suggests an article to us, which is “Top 5 Dirt Bike Helmets for Track and Trail”. And then just to show you what else is on this search results page, we have videos that come from YouTube, as you can see here, they all say YouTube. And then we have different links to things like Reddit, which is a forum. We have different articles or individual articles that we could read, and this is where we want to appear. So when someone is looking for the best item or is about to make a purchase, comes and searches for something, we want to appear in these results.

Now, I'm going to start with the result of an item just to show you what it looks like. So any of these, basically, websites that we're looking at here, you can click on this and it'll take you to their website, where they'll essentially give us their recommendation on what they think is the best product for us, and then they'll put their link of affiliate. This is common practice on almost all websites, but you will see things like this. So the number one that we recommend is this helmet, and here's the link to that product, and it's on Amazon.

So if we click on that link, it instantly redirects us to Amazon. So for me as a buyer it feels like I'm just on Amazon, nothing is different. But when you look at the actual link he sent us here, you can see that the tag is dirtbikeplanet. You can see this is actually a referral link from Dirt Bike Planet, which is this website. So for us as buyers, when we come in and read this article, click on that link and make a purchase, we don't care that it's an affiliate link. The price of the helmet is the same price on Amazon.

But since I clicked on this affiliate link, anything you buy on Amazon right now, they will get a commission. So you'll see that as you go down here, you'll see the advantages of this helmet, and then you'll move on to the next helmet, which is number two, again, another link. It's the same concept here. That would be the first of this type of search results here. Basically, you are writing an article that will appear on Google when people search for something they want to buy. Now, the second way you can take advantage of search is with videos.

Now, this is quickly becoming my favorite way to do affiliate marketing. And without going into too much detail here, the reason is that these articles that I just showed you here that are text-based, well, there are artificial intelligence tools that are coming out just last year, and they're getting more and more powerful. , where you can basically come in and say, “Write me a blog post about the best dirt bike helmet.” You hit Enter, and this is a free AI tool that will basically write you an entire blog post or an entire text-based article that you can then basically copy and paste into your website and publish to Google.

Now, this I will continue to write here, but just to show you here, this is why I am no longer a big fan of creating affiliate marketing websites and creating written articles, because anyone can come here and write a hundred of these different articles for day, and they can basically just take what these recommendations are, go to Amazon, find the affiliate link and paste it here, and basically post it all over Google. And because this is totally free and so easy for people today, it's making it a lot harder for us to appear on this first page here with our article written because Google is getting a lot more people to submit articles.

That's why I like these videos. Basically, the videos also appear here on Google. So, for those of you who don't know yet, Google is the number one most visited website on the Internet. If you just look at these crazy numbers, there are around 99,000 searches every second on Google. So we just wrote the best dirt bike helmet, that happens 99,000 times a second on the Internet. Therefore, there is a large amount of traffic directed to all of these search results pages. That being said, YouTube is the second most popular website on the Internet. Now, it doesn't say how many searches there are on YouTube per second, but there are over three billion searches a month on YouTube.

That is totally independent of Google. These are one in addition to the other. But back to this example of the best dirt bike helmet, if instead of creating a text article and publishing it on your website and showing up here on Google, if instead you create a video and it doesn't even have to be on the video, you can show with the camera what that dirt bike helmet is or what product you are talking about without you being physically in front of the camera. If you create that video and post it to YouTube, you'll take advantage of all the traffic that comes to YouTube, the three billion searches per month.

But also, and this is the secret, you can also take advantage of Google's traffic of 99,000 searches per second. Because what not many people know is that Google and YouTube are owned by the same company. So Google now shows these YouTube videos in Google search results. Therefore, you are getting double the traffic or double the people potentially viewing your content. Now when you click on any of these videos, it will take you back to YouTube and then you can watch here, this is the affiliate link here. So if you click on this, it will take you to the website and you can make your purchases right here and you will earn your commission the same way as if you had a text article.

So, without going into too much detail here, those are the first two options. Both fall into the search strategy of affiliate marketing. That brings us to the second general strategy on how to do affiliate marketing. This is called social. So instead of using the search approach where people search for content regularly and we create that content as an answer to their search, we are using social media to build an audience and then introduce our affiliate products to people. So to show you an example of this, let's go to Instagram. This is just a regular Instagram page that is a perfect example of affiliate marketing.

So this is called toponlinefinds. They actually have 487,000 followers. So, to implement this strategy, you need to create an audience or already have an audience on some type of social media channel. That's why I say this one is a little more advanced. But if you are someone who has that, this might be a good option for you. And you're basically just showing photos of different products that you're an affiliate of. So in this case, it's most likely Amazon, and she can create posts about any product that's on Amazon or even any product anywhere else because you can join several different affiliate programs.

And then instead of writing an article about that product or creating a video about that product, you're literally taking a photo of that product and then writing in the description what that product is. And then, although there is a little nuance here on Instagram specifically, you can't put clickable links in each of these posts. Then she'll say, "Click on the link in the bio," which is right here. If you click on this link, it'll say, "Okay, what are you looking for here?" I came in here, I'm looking for the Amazon store. And then before you know it, you're on Amazon on their affiliate link and here are all the products you see on their social media page.

So if you go here, you click on something that you're looking for, something that you saw on her page, now you can buy one of these products and she'll get her commission that way. So think of this as the opposite approach to searching. The reason I like Search for Beginners is because you can create content that answers what people are already searching for. With this social method, you are building an audience and then continually introducing them to new products. Now, as you continue to grow your audience, every time you make a post, more and more people will see that post.

And if they like the product you posted about, they'll click your link, make a purchase, and you'll get your commission. Now, something else that would be good to note here is that you can join as many different affiliate programs as you want. You're not limited to just Amazon, for example. You can join 10, 20 or 30 different affiliate programs at a time. And then you can share those links simultaneously. It is not something exclusive. It is not necessary to be an affiliate of a single company. And also, with that being said, each company has its own type of membership terms.

So we already talked about the commission. You may be paid a percentage of the sale or the percentage the person spends on the website after they click on your link, or you may be paid a flat fee as a commission for anything you purchase. But something we haven't talked about yet is the cookie window or the attribution window. Basically, what is a period of time from when someone clicks on your link, how long after they clicked on that link will you still receive the commission? Now on Amazon, specifically, there is a 24-hour attribution window. So when someone clicks on your link, like I just clicked on your link and now I'm on Amazon, anything they buy in the next 24 hours on Amazon, she'll get the commission.

This could be something totally unrelated. Then I could close Amazon, I could go make lunch, I could come back and buy something tonight, something I needed to buy anyway. She will still receive the commission because it is within the 24 hour time frame. However, in some of these other programs, the attribution window is 30 days, or even 365 days, in a full year. So when someone clicks on your link, if they come back in 25 days, or if they come back to some of these programs in five, six, seven months and decide they want to make a purchase on their own, you don't even have to go back and click your link again, you will still receive that commission.

That's the beauty of affiliate marketing. What makes it so passive is that when someone clicks on your link, you have a period of time after which they can come back on their own and make a purchase, and you will still receive that commission. That is the second general strategy for affiliate marketing. We've covered search, we've covered social media, and now let's get into the last strategy, which is the most advanced, and this is what I call spending. So in this strategy, you'll find affiliate programs and spend your own money on advertising to get those products in front of the right people when they're ready to make a purchase.

Now, this strategy will be by far the most advanced for affiliate marketing. Many people I know who do affiliate marketing and have been doing it for years still haven't even gotten into this affiliate marketing strategy, simply because it's very technical, it's very difficult, and it comes with a lot of risk. But I want you to know what this strategy is so that if you have these skills, you can do it this way. Now, the most common example of this is found on YouTube or Facebook. Basically, if you type something on YouTube, basically using the search approach, if we start with the best electric bike, you can see two things here.

First, there is an ad at the top that says, “Best electric bike of 2023.” If we click on it, it will take us directly to a company that sells electric bicycles. Now this ad is actually published by the company, they sell their own products, but you as an affiliate could publish that ad. And knowing that, let's say you make $100 as a flat commission, as long as you can get people to click on this ad and make a purchase by spending less than $100 on that ad, you'll have some sort of profit margin there. Now, another way to look at this is with an actual video.

So if you click on the first video here, or any of these actual videos that are here on YouTube, this ad will appear here and it will play beforeSomeone else pays for this video. So in most cases, what you will see here is an ad about electric bikes. So, you're targeting someone who's coming in trying to find the best electric bike, trying to get you to click on their links so you can make a purchase on the website. And again, same concept here. The person posting that ad hopes to spend less money than the amount of flat fee or percentage commission he will earn when people make a purchase.

You will now see these video ads on YouTube and you will also see them on Facebook. That's the number one and number two most common place you'll see these ads. When you're on Facebook, the way you'll see it is when you scroll through your feed, you'll see an ad and it's a video. That's where this comes into play. That said, the reason why this strategy is so advanced is, when we look at the other strategies, basically creating written articles or videos and posting them on Google or posting them on YouTube, and even the next social strategy where you're building an audience and you're creating posts for them, both things are completely free.

You don't have to pay anything to create that content and publish it for people to see. And then people will find that content for themselves. When you get into this spending category where you spend money on advertising, every time you try to get someone to see that content, you have to pay. So when we look at these other two strategies, there really is no risk to them. Every time someone comes and decides to make a purchase, you get paid a commission. But when you look at this advanced strategy, from the beginning, you have to spend money and hope that your ad is good enough and targeted to the right people, that one out of, say, 100 or 1000 people. actually make a purchase.

So, as your costs start to add up, you need to make sure you get a sale that has a higher commission than the amount you've spent. Now, just for reference here, when applying this spending approach, the margins are typically, if done right, around 20%. Now, I say this just so you know what it looks like, although it is a very advanced way of doing affiliate marketing. Typically you'll see people who take that approach spend $5, $10, $15, $20,000 a day on advertising, and they've got everything dialed in here and they're making a 20% margin. Now, with that being said, something that I have absolutely learned and that I think you should know before you start affiliate marketing is that any strategy you choose here will really have a huge impact on your lifestyle while doing affiliate marketing. marketing.

So, for example, if you're doing the search strategy and you're creating content, whether it's a written article or a video, and you publish it on the internet, that's stress-free. You don't take any risks there, once you post it on the internet it will stay on the internet for years and people will find it organically. You're basically responding to what people are already searching for. Plus, every dollar you earn in commission is simply a direct profit because you don't have to pay for advertising. Now, as you move towards the social approach to affiliate marketing, there is a little more stress here because you have to post constantly and give your audience a reason to stay subscribed or follow you on your social account.

Plus, you won't get that constant flow of organic traffic like you do in search. It's more about building an audience and then continually sharing posts with them. Then the lifestyle starts to get a little more stressful there because you have to keep up and stay on top of things. And then once you get into the spending strategy for affiliate marketing, that comes with a very stressful lifestyle. There you only have a 20% margin. And to make money you have to spend money. Therefore, you will always be thinking about your ads. How are they performing? Do I have to create new ones?

Are they starting to perform worse? Do I need to optimize things? There are a lot of things that come with that for only a 20% margin. Now, you're probably saying, "Why do people do that if it's so stressful?" Well, the reason is, once you've created a really good ad and a really good video, you can scale it up. So you can go from $500 a day to 5,000, in some cases, $50,000 of ad spend a day, and you'll only get 20% of that, as long as everything stays the same. There you have the three strategies for doing affiliate marketing. You have search, you have social media and you have spending.

If you are just starting out in affiliate marketing, I recommend starting with the search. Searching will simply be the easiest way to get started as a beginner and is very low risk. I know this is already a very long video, but if you want to know more details on how to do the whole search strategy, I will put a link in the description. Guys, that's all for this video. If you have any questions or anything you're still wondering, let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to help.