How to Learn Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a popular way of making passive income through advertising other companies’ goods and products. If people choose to purchase items that you’ve advertised through affiliate marketing, you’ll earn a commission.^{[1]XExpert SourceChristine Michel Carter
Global Marketing ExpertExpert Interview. 30 September 2020.} Affiliate marketing occurs online and is done, for example, by bloggers who allow advertisements on their web pages. There are a number of ways to learn about affiliate marketing, including taking one of many online training courses. Experience is often the best teacher, and you can also learn about affiliate marketing by trying it out!

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:

Taking Courses and Learning from Marketers

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1
Try Udemy’s affiliate marketing courses if you want many options. Udemy offers a large range of marketing classes online, including several geared towards affiliate marketing. You can move through Udemy’s marketing courses at your own pace, and they’ll help you grasp the basics of affiliate marketing including partnering with companies, SEO, and increasing website traffic.^{[2]XResearch source}
- Navigate to the site and search “affiliate marketing” to see some of what they offer. You can also sort among the search results to find, for example, only those classes that have been rated 4.5 or higher.
- Get started on a class and learn more online at: https://www.udemy.com/course/clickbank-affiliate-marketing-success/?couponCode=LETSLEARNNOW. The course isn’t cheap—it costs about $200 USD—but it is frequently discounted to rates as low as $10.99.
2
Get a step-by-step walkthrough tutorial with Wealthy Affiliate. Wealthy Affiliate is a well-known and well-regarded affiliate marketing tutorial site that teaches you how to conduct research and grow your marketing practice. You can also take advantage of weekly online training webinars. The site will also put you in direct contact with a community of other beginner affiliate marketers, who you can ask questions and bounce ideas off of.^{[3]XResearch source}
- Learn more and set up either a free or premium account ($19 USD per month) online.
- A premium account gives you access to advanced-level series of courses and to live webinars that cover a variety of topics associated with affiliate marketing.
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3
Check out the Affilorama courses for a popular free option. If you’d rather not pay to learn affiliate marketing, Affilorama may be your best bet. The site offers dozens of free video lessons on all aspects of affiliate marketing, as well as training blogs to help you learn. If you’d like access to more training content, the site offers 3 premium membership packages that offer advice on how to find a marketing niche, optimize your keywords, and use social media in your affiliate marketing practice.^{[4]XResearch source}
- Create an account online and start learning about affiliate marketing online at: https://www.affilorama.com/.
4
Talk to experienced affiliate marketers and ask for their advice. Affiliate marketing can have a steep learning curve and can feel tough to break into. Fortunately, there are many experienced marketers out there who may be willing to impart their tricks and tips to you. They’ll be able to teach you to select a marketing niche that can earn you money and to design your website to get as many visitors as possible.^{[5]XResearch source}
- If you don’t know any affiliate marketers, try finding some by searching for blogs that discuss topics you’re interested in. Then look for advertising links to companies’ products. If you see these links, you’ve found an affiliate marketer!
- Or, go directly to the companies themselves. Email a company of your choice and ask to be put in touch with any affiliate marketers they work with.
- When you reach out to affiliate marketers themselves, try having a professional but friendly tone. Email something like, “Hi, I see that you have done some affiliate marketing work with Patagonia! I’m interested in breaking into the affiliate marketing world as well, but don’t have much experience so far. Would you be willing to pass along any helpful tips you’ve picked up?”

Method 2

Method 2 of 2:

Learning Affiliate Marketing through Experience

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1
Select a niche that you’re interested in. Affiliate marketing enterprises work best if you’re marketing for a product or company that you genuinely appreciate and have an interest in. Let’s say you love the outdoors, and often go on camping trips. Consider doing affiliate marketing for companies who make camping products, hiking boots, backpacks, or outdoor gear.^{[6]XResearch source}
- There are a huge number of niches you could look into. For example, you could look into doing affiliate marketing for companies who make musical instruments, snack foods and soft drinks, sporting goods and sports equipment, fishing equipment, literary publishers, office supplies, or mattresses and bedding.
- Beginning affiliate marketers who start out marketing for companies and products that they don’t care about typically lose interest quickly.
2
Build yourself a website if you don’t already have one. Affiliate marketing takes place online. If you’re new to web design and don’t want to tackle coding your own website, try building a website for free through one of the many no-cost website-building platforms like Wix, Weebly, or Wordpress. You could also use a blog site like BlogSpot as your platform to begin affiliate marketing.^{[7]XResearch source}
- If you already have a blog or website (something more official than a Tumblr), you can skip this step.
3
Post content online regularly and build up an email list. If you’re posting affiliate marketing links but nobody visits your website, you won’t make much of an income. The best way to draw new people to your website is by posting new, interesting content. Also offer an email newsletter that users can subscribe to for additional content! Don’t start doing any affiliate marketing until you have at least 500 email list subscribers.^{[8]XResearch source}
- Say that you run a blog called “The Camping Life,” about outdoor activities. You could post reviews of campsites and national parks, and send out a newsletter reviewing specific camping products that you’ve tried out.
- Depending on how frequently you post new content and send out emails and newsletters, it could take between 3–6 months to build up 500 subscribers.
4
Brush up on SEO to increase your web traffic. To be a successful affiliate marketer, you’ll need to bring as many viewers to your website as possible, to maximize the number of people who see your marketing content. For example, a great way to maximize your SEO is to include half a dozen keywords in your website copy. Then, when people search for these words in a search engine, your website will appear relatively high up in the search results. So, in our example, you’d want to use words like “camping,” “affordable,” and “backpacking” to draw in visitors.^{[9]XResearch source}
- There are great online articles about SEO that you can read to improve your know-how. You can also take free SEO training courses at Udemy and other sites.
5
Reach out to companies whose goods you’d like to market. Once you’re regularly producing content and have plenty of subscribers, it’s time to reach out to merchants with who you’d like to affiliate market. The best way to go about this is by sending an email to the director of their marketing or sales department, if you can find that information online. Explain that you run a popular website or blog devoted to a topic relevant to the company’s products. If the company agrees to take you on as an affiliate marketer, they’ll send you a specific URL that you can use to create ads on your website.^{[10]XResearch source}
- Let’s stick with our camping/outdoors example. You could try reaching out to backpacking and outdoor companies like REI, Patagonia, and North Face to see if they’ll take you on as an affiliate marketer.
6
Place the company’s URL on your site and in your newsletters. Take the unique URL that the company sent you, and position it prominently on your website or blog. It’s also a good idea to name-drop the company in your weekly newsletters and include the link there too. Try to ensure that the majority of your website’s visitors will see the link by positioning it near the top of your site and newsletter!^{[11]XResearch source}
- For example, you could have copy on your website that says something like, “I went camping last weekend and my Eureka tent kept me warm and dry! Follow the link to see their great catalog of products.”
- Eventually, website users will start clicking through the advertisements and purchase products from the company you’re marketing for. At this point, the company will send you a commission check.

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Is affiliate marketing the same thing as influencer marketing?
Christine Michel Carter
Global Marketing Expert
Christine Michel Carter is a Global Marketing Expert, Best-Selling Author, and Strategy Consultant for Minority Woman Marketing, LLC. With over 13 years of experience, Christine specializes in strategic business and marketing consulting services including market analysis, organizational alignment, portfolio review, cultural accuracy, and brand and marketing review. She is also a speaker on millennial moms and black consumers. Christine holds a BS in Business Administration and Art History from Stevenson University. She is a leader in multicultural marketing strategy and has written over 100 articles views for several publications, including TIME and Forbes Women. Christine has worked with Fortune 500 clients such as Google, Walmart, and McDonald’s. She has been featured in The New York Times, BBC News, NBC, ABC, Fox, The Washington Post, Business Insider, and Today.
Christine Michel Carter
Global Marketing Expert
Expert Answer
Affiliate marketing is not the same as influencer marketing. Influencer marketers often do not earn a commission.
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Large companies often work with many affiliate marketers simultaneously. To keep track of which purchases were made through which affiliate marketer’s blog/website, companies will give each marketer a unique affiliate ID and a unique URL to use to promote the company’s products.^{[12]XResearch source}
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A cookie will also be placed on the computer of any consumers who click the company’s advertisement on your website. That way, the company will be able to track which affiliate marketer should be paid a commission for the consumer’s purchase, even if the purchase occurred days or weeks after the consumer clicked the link.^{[13]XResearch source}
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