How to Learn Affiliate Marketing for Free
These days,
doesn’t it seem like everyone you know is on a mission to find the next best
side-hustle that will help them make money online and
land them a stable, reliable, and passive income source? And let’s be honest,
you’re probably searching too, right? So whether you’re taking an interest in
stocks, crypto, or affiliate marketing, you first turn to the internet and try
to find free content to educate yourself on any given topic before investing
money in workshops or online courses.
If your searching brought you to this article, we’re pretty confident that
you’re looking for ways to learn affiliate marketing for free. Affiliate
marketing is a highly competitive industry, but fortunately, it's a relatively
easy space to get into when you have proper guidance and reliable tools at your
disposal.
What Will
You Learn About in This Free Affiliate Marketing Guide?
In this free
affiliate marketing guide, we will cover everything you need to know about this
industry, including:
What
affiliate marketing actually is
How
affiliate marketing works
The
most popular affiliate marketing niches (and which is best for YOU)
Which
affiliate marketing channels are the best (and the best to get started
promoting with)
List
of FREE affiliate marketing courses you can continue learning through.
In addition,
we’re going to let you in on why networking is so important in this industry,
key affiliate marketing terms you need to know NOW to talk-the-talk, and of
course, tips and tricks on how to actually make money in this industry…
What is Affiliate Marketing and How Does It Work?
Affiliate
marketing is any form of marketing where an affiliate (a specific person,
company, or brand) promotes someone else’s products or services for a
commission through various advertising channels. These channels can include
email, paid advertising such as Facebook or Google ads, YouTube, social media
pages, blogs, and more. Essentially, affiliate marketing enables you to
earn money online by driving interested buyers to a company’s
website or landing page.
Commission rates vary, and depend on things like whether the product is a
physical or digital product. If you want to get a sense of what some of
the best affiliate marketing products look
like, check out an affiliate network, like the Digistore24 Marketplace where we
have a wide range of offers you can choose from and start promoting right away.
What is
an Affiliate Network?
An affiliate
network is like a middleman between a product owner and an affiliate. Rather
than going straight to a vendor or company and trying to promote their product,
you can run the entire process through a platform. Affiliate networks like
Digistore24 allow affiliate marketers access to a multitude of physical and digital
products, as well as tools to support their affiliate marketing
efforts. Integrated payment processing and accounting automation are also
available, features that some competitors do not offer.
We may be biased, but going through an affiliate marketing network is the
easiest way to get started. Typically, these platforms have a solid knowledge base and onboarding process that you can take
advantage of to further your affiliate marketing efforts. It’s as easy as
creating an account with your preferred email address, browsing the affiliate
marketplace, and choosing a product from a specific category to promote. You’ll
decide how to best promote that offer with an advertising channel (using some
of our tips below), and before you know it, you’re on your way to making sales
and getting paid juicy ccommissions.
When it comes to choosing the right niche,
always gravitate towards things you’re already familiar with, or even better,
passionate about! When you already have a fair amount of knowledge about
something, chances are, it will be way easier to promote affiliate products
from that niche. Rather than venturing into an affiliate niche that is
completely new to you, and spending a ton of time researching - you should aim
to promote something that is already familiar to you and your lifestyle so that
your time can be spent earning money.
For example: If you are a workout enthusiast, choose the health and fitness niche
and find a workout plan or supplement to promote. If you want to learn more
about the best affiliate marketing niches,
we wrote article about that too!
Where Can
Affiliates Promote Offers?
As an
affiliate marketer, you have a wide variety of options to choose from when it
comes to promoting an offer. You can advertise on different websites or blogs,
social media platforms, through email marketing… you name it. All you need is
your affiliate link, and you’re ready to get started!
Let’s go through all of the marketing channels you can promote on:
1. Social
Media
Let’s face
it, we’re all on social media. Starting with social media affiliate marketing first
makes sense because the space is already familiar. However, there’s still a lot
to learn about each platform. First of all, there are two ways you can approach
advertising on social media: organic or paid.
Basically, organic advertising means you’re doing everything without paying
money - you are simply creating and promoting content on your personal or
business page, groups, stories, and more. And of course, sneaking in a
promolink.
Paid advertising, on the other hand, requires you to invest money in ads. To
have success, you also have to learn how to maneuver each social media
platforms’ advertising tools. These tools aren’t hard to master, but you do
need to put in some time to learn how they work.
So, which platforms are the best for promoting affiliate offers?
Facebook - Facebook is a great medium for
affiliate marketing. Both organic and
paid advertising work well on the platform. You can choose to promote offers on
your personal page, business profile, in various groups or by creating ads -
but make sure you read their compliance rules beforehand.
Instagram - Advertising on Instagram is all about creating visually appealing content.
Sharing educational content, while keeping everything “pleasing to the eye” is
the fastest way to gain a following on the platform. Regular posts, reels,
engaging stories and once-in-a-while live streams can go a long way. And of
course, you can run ads too.
Pinterest - Although different, Pinterest is still a social
media platform. It works more like a search engine, so make sure that when
people search for a specific topic, your posts will pop up. You can create
different Boards and populate them with Pins, and hyperlink the pins to lead to
your sales page or landing page.
2. Blog
If you’ve
been blogging for some time already and have a decent audience, promoting
offers in your posts is the way to go. Just make sure the offers you choose to
promote are in line with the topics you usually tackle in your articles.
If you run a personal development blog,
for example, you may consider writing a top 10 listicle of products that could
help your readers better help themselves, and link to the sales pages of the
offers you’re promoting. Don’t forget to also make use of affiliate banners.
In case you don’t have a blog, you may consider starting one. All you need to
do is choose a niche you’d enjoy writing about - preferably something you’re
already passionate about, and keep posting content consistently. Also, make
sure you do a little keyword research beforehand for search engine
optimization.
You can then share this content on social media, as well as email.
3. Email
Building
a strong email list for affiliate
marketing is key. Let’s say you’ve already made a few sales by
promoting offers on social media and your blog; that means you probably now
have email addresses you can work with and promote other offers to. It’s time
to start doing email marketing.
You can leverage the power of email by sending your subscribers valuable
content, while also squeezing in a few offers that your subscribers might find
useful. Make sure to keep it balanced though, and always be relevant and
informative. Also, avoid being spammy at all costs and don’t forget to keep
those subject lines and headlines snappy.
4.
YouTube
YouTube is
among the best traffic sources for affiliate
marketing to send organic and paid traffic to offers. You can
either create video ads and target specific audiences, or create a YouTube
channel, become a content creator and post entertaining or educational videos,
while carefully sliding in products in your videos and promoting them.
If you’re a content creator, the key to success is to integrate products in
your videos naturally, without the audience feeling that you’re forcing
something onto them. And don’t forget to add affiliate links in your
description, either!
There are a lot of ways to earn money with YouTube affiliate
marketing... You just need to find something you enjoy making videos
about.
5. Ads
We already
established that using ads on YouTube and on social media for affiliate marketing can
be lucrative. But you can take your affiliate marketing a step further by
promoting offers with Google Ads, native ads or solo ads.
Google Ads - Promote offers on the largest search
engine with location-based, search-based and interest-based ads.
Solo Ads - Solo ads are featured in emails or
newsletters in which your ad is the only promotional piece.
Native Ads - Native advertising matches the content of the platform upon which it
appears on, and it doesn’t come off as an ad to end-users.
Remember to
also include remarketing into your ad strategy. Remarketing is essentially
retargeting potential customers that have already interacted with one of your
ads, but left the buyer's journey at some point.
6. Forums
As an
affiliate marketer, you can easily join online forums and start providing value
to the community by answering questions and providing insight. Once you gain a
little bit of credibility, you can slowly start promoting using your affiliate
links.
What Are
the Key Terms in Affiliate Marketing?
If you don’t
know anything about this industry, or digital marketing in general, getting
started with affiliate marketing can be a bit overwhelming. Apart from learning
about offers, promolinks, niches and different advertising strategies, you’ll
also need to understand at least a few terms and abbreviations.
So, let’s go over the most common ones, in alphabetical order:
AOV - AOV reflects the average order value of a purchase. This
metric is calculated by dividing the total revenue value of orders within a
specified time period by the number of orders.
API - API is short for application programming interface. It
basically allows apps to communicate with each other, and affiliates use it to
access real-time statistics and data in order to improve their targeting and
affiliate efforts.
CPA - CPA refers to cost per action, or cost per acquisition. It’s
a payment model where an affiliate gets paid a specified dollar amount when a
certain action is completed by a customer - a purchase, for example.
CPM - Cost per thousand, or cost per mile, CPM is a marketing term
used to indicate the price of 1,000 impressions on one web page - a sales page
or landing page, for instance - or, an ad.
CPC - CPC refers to cost per click, and is a payment method where
an advertiser, that can also be an affiliate marketer, is charged for each
click his online ad generates.
CR - CR is the abbreviation for conversion rate. Conversion rate is
the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, for example, a purchase.
If a customer clicks on your ad, goes through the buyer’s journey, orders and
checks out, that can be considered a conversion.
CTR - Click-through rate, or click-through ratio, is a metric used
to measure the percentage of visitors who click on a particular link, like your
promolink, for example.
EPC - EPC refers to earnings per click, and is calculated based on
100 clicks. EPC is used to assess how profitable an affiliate program actually
is. It’s an important metric for reporting both affiliate and merchant performance.
LP - LP is short for landing page. A landing page is a standalone
web page where a customer "lands" on after clicking on your affiliate
promolink. A landing page can also act as a “middle man” between your ad and an
offer sales page. You can create your own landing pages using Digibiz24.
ROI - ROI, or return on investment, is a measure of your
profitability. It's the measurement of how your investment generated profit.
Basically, ROI shows how much money you made off of your investment.
Which Are
the Most Popular Niches in Affiliate Marketing?
Fortunately,
when it comes to affiliate marketing, there are more than enough niches to
choose from… The hard part is actually choosing the right one for you, and
committing to it. We extensively covered a ton of niches in one
of our blog articles, so make sure you check that out if you’re having
difficulty deciding which one to run with.
Being indecisive and having to choose a niche is just like watching Netflix:
you are presented with a lot of diversity, and you spend way too much time
contemplating what to choose, and when you finally do pick one, you can’t commit,
and you go back to browsing. But thankfully, there’s a solution to get out of
this loop.
Before choosing anything, ask yourself: “What do I personally like?”
Instead of choosing what’s popular or a profitable niche that happens to be in
the top 5 of a list, go with something that you are comfortable with, or
passionate about. Promoting offers surrounding topics you actually like can
make the entire marketing process much more enjoyable - and also authentic.
However, we know that choosing your first niche can be difficult.
Best
Affiliate Marketing Niches: Shortlist
If you need
help deciding, check out this shortlist below. Currently, these are the most
popular and profitable niches, and who knows, there might be one or two in here
you actually like. Keep in mind, these are all broad niches, so we strongly
recommend you read our best affiliate marketing niches article for more
guidance and inspiration.
Health and fitness
Finance
Business &
Investment
Hobbies
Self-development
Relationships
Lifestyle and luxury
Home & family
Online technology
Alternative therapy
How to Make
Money with Affiliate Marketing
Now that
we’ve presented you with all this information about affiliate marketing, you
might wonder… How can someone actually start making money in this
industry?
Well, we essentially walked you through each step of the beginner affiliate
marketer’s journey, so if you follow the steps in this article, you, yes YOU
can actually start earning money right away!
Of course, besides studying affiliate marketing, you also have to familiarize
yourself with certain digital marketing tools,
and get comfortable with networking. As long as you take it one step at a time,
and don’t put too much pressure on yourself to learn everything at once, we’re
confident you’ll do great!
To recap, here is a quick rundown on how to start making money online with
affiliate marketing:
Do your research on
affiliate marketing; spend some time learning about the industry
Find an affiliate
network, like Digistore24, and get
full access to offers and industry knowledge;
Pick a profitable niche
from the Marketplace;
Choose your desired
channel to promote an offer on, and commit! It could be social media, email,
blog, paid ads, YouTube, forums… whatever you prefer;
Get comfortable with
data, study how your ads perform, and make sure to always tweak your
advertising strategy;
Attend networking
events to create partnerships and relationships;
Always be on the
lookout for the best digital marketing tools;
Stay up-to-date with
industry trends.
That’s
pretty much it! It sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Affiliate marketing isn’t
rocket science, anyone can do it; all it takes is patience and a willingness to
learn. Persistence is the key.
And the best part is, you can easily make money with affiliate marketing
without a website just by using just social media, or email,
for example. If you’re curious about how to make money with affiliate marketing
without an affiliate website, make sure to check out this article.
Bonus:
Top 5 Free Affiliate Marketing Courses
Affiliate
marketing courses are a great way to ease yourself into this industry, or take
your affiliate marketing training to the next level. There are quite a few free
courses available online, so if you prefer interactive learning, Digistore24
has got you covered. For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5
free affiliate marketing courses.
Let’s take a look:
1. Free
Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners - Udemy
This course
will teach you how to get started with affiliate marketing, and why this
industry can be a great fit for you. It also goes over affiliate marketing
basics, explores how to set up your affiliate website, how to attract the right
type of visitors, and of course, choose a profitable niche.
This free Udemy course is perfect for every beginner who wants to test the
waters of affiliate marketing, as well as for those who want to jump in
head-first and start making money fast. The course is broken up into 7
lectures, and lasts almost 2 and a half hours.
If you’re looking for the best affiliate marketing course, this is definitely
one of them to start with!
https://www.udemy.com/course/free-affiliate-marketing-course-for-beginners
2. Affiliate
Marketing - Great Learning
This is
another free affiliate marketing course that you can sign up for and also earn
a learning certificate. This one is super beginner-level, and touches on the
basics of affiliate marketing, as well as on different affiliate marketing
strategies and methods you can use in this industry. The course lasts about an
hour.
https://www.mygreatlearning.com/academy/learn-for-free/courses/affiliate-marketing
3.
Affiliate Marketing Course and Certification - eMarketing Institute
eMarketing
Institute is also offering a free course on affiliate marketing. All you need
to do is go to their website, register, and download the course. It’s an ebook
with valuable information on affiliate marketing, designed for beginners. Once
you read the ebook, you can also take a test within your eMarketing Institute
account to test your knowledge.
https://www.emarketinginstitute.org/free-courses/affiliate-marketing-certification-course/
4.
Affiliate Marketing Courses - Aversity
Aversity is
a website with dozens of courses on affiliate marketing. They tackle a wide
variety of topics, and most of their courses are free. Create an account and
you’re all set to browse and enroll in their courses. These courses are among
some of the best affiliate marketing courses you can find for free on the
internet.
https://aversity.com
5. The
Affiliate Method - Johannes Larsson
This is an
interactive course and takes you through the basics of affiliate marketing. It
is a free, 9-lesson, step-by-step course that includes practical and simple
steps to have success in this industry. The course is well structured, fun, and
super interactive.
https://johanneslarsson.com/course/affiliate-marketing-course-for-beginners-7-steps-full-time-affiliate/
Also, don’t forget about YouTube. The platform is filled with videos and guides
on affiliate marketing, so make sure you take advantage of the free content you
can find there, too!
Final
Thoughts
We hope
you’ve enjoyed this comprehensive and free affiliate marketing guide, and we’d
like to think that we’re putting you on the right path with all of this
information. Affiliate marketing is a very interesting and dynamic industry.
Once you learn the basics, you’ll slowly start to realize how much more you can
add to your affiliate marketing strategies, and just how far you can take your
affiliate marketing business with the right tools and people by your side.
In order to reach success and become an affiliate marketing expert, you have to
learn to be comfortable with starting small. Do your research, pick your niches
carefully, choose the right platforms to promote services on, keep tweaking
every affiliate marketing campaign, and most importantly, be consistent and
commit to growing!
Please let us know if we can do anything to help you on your journey, and if
you’ve enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends.