What is Affiliate Marketing? How to Get Started for Beginners

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Affiliate Marketing - What is It? How to Get Started for Beginners

Welcome back to my series Going Remote. In today’s video, I want to talk about Affiliate Marketing - what it is and how you can get started. I’m going to walk you through that. I also have two bonus tips for you, so make sure you stay until the end for those.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

So, what is Affiliate Marketing? When I first got started online, I thought it was this really “scammy” thing. I think it was just the marketing of the people who were showing me this – but there is absolutely nothing scammy about affiliate marketing at all. All it is, is simply receiving a commission for products that you recommend. I’m sure, of course, that some people are not doing it the right way, but, really, it’s just a way for you to earn a commission on products that you do genuinely use, love, and recommend.

There are so many different types of companies that have affiliate marketing programs. It’s not just what I’m doing - it’s not just online business and software - it’s literally any type of product that you can think of. Really, the main benefit here is that you are already doing this - you’re already talking about your favorite products, you’re already recommending things to others - so I really feel like it’s a missed opportunity if you don’t monetize this as well.

It’s actually pretty easy to set up. Anyone can do it, and I would say that it is the most true passive income source that I have in my business. This is because, once it’s set up, then that link is living on your social media, on your website, and that is going to earn you a commission without you having to do any extra work.

Find Affiliate Programs

The first thing that you need to do is find these programs. You can simply head over to Google and Google a product that you love and “affiliate program” and see if something comes up. Many companies will have their own affiliate marketing program, and you simply need to sign up for it here. There may be an approval process, so that’s why it is super-important that you have a website and that you create content, so that you do have somewhere to put these affiliate links. You’re either going to sign up with the company directly, or another alternative is to sign up to be an Amazon affiliate. You’re not going to make quite as much money with Amazon, so I would check directly with the company first, but if there’s nothing, then you can simply be an affiliate for that product on Amazon.

Be An Affiliate for Group Programs

Another option is you can actually be an affiliate for other people’s group programs, online courses and digital products. For example, if you were to come join any of my courses, Website That Wows, Uplevel with Asana, or Scale with Kartra, I have an affiliate marketing program for all of my courses, and you can earn a 30% commission simply by recommending them to your friends. If they end up coming and deciding to join, then you will get 30% - and there is no limit on this. This can be really great, and a lot of my students earn back what they paid for the course. It’s not just me that does this – a lot of other entrepreneurs have affiliate marketing programs for their products, so just keep an eye out always, and always be thinking, is there an affiliate marketing program for this?

Once you’ve signed up for an affiliate marketing program, you’re then going to get a custom link, and this is going to automatically track all sales that are driven by you. Then all you have to do is share your link anywhere and everywhere. For example, you can share these on your website, on your blog, in the description on your YouTube videos, on social media – anywhere where you are talking about and recommending products in your content. Super-important here – you do have to disclose that they are affiliate links, so put an affiliate disclaimer with your links that lets people know that that’s what they are.

That’s a basic overview of how affiliate marketing works. Basically, all it is, is receiving a custom link for anything that you use and recommend, and then simply sharing that out instead of just sharing the company’s website.

As I said, I have two bonus tips for you, so I’m going to share those now.

Tip #1 – Create a Shortcut or Branded Link

When you first get your affiliate link, it’s probably going to be a long, hard-to-remember link, so what you want to do is create a shortcut or branded link for each of your affiliate links. If you are using WordPress, then you can use the Pretty Links plugin. If you are in Squarespace, then you can use URL Mapping.

For example, my affiliate link for Squarespace looks like this: https://squarespace.syuh.net/c/1133550/533949/9084. It’s hard to remember and also it could change at some point in the future. That’s why I like to set these branded links up, so even if it were to change, I just have to change the affiliate link in one place, rather than all the places that I’ve linked to it on my website.

If you’re on WordPress, you’re going to use the Pretty Links plugin to do this. If you are in Squarespace, then you’re going to use URL Mapping. My friend Megan Minns has a fantastic video on this, walking you through how to set these up, so I’m going to link to that in the description below.

Because I’ve set that up, now when I share Squarespace, my link looks like this: https://louisehenry.com/squarespace - which is way better and easier for me to remember.

Tip #2 – Keep Your Affiliate Links Organized

The next tip for you is to keep these organized. I use the project management system, Asana, to keep my entire business and all of the moving pieces organized. What I do is, I have board called Business Hub, and under that I list out all of my affiliate links. When you have a lot of tools and affiliate products, it’s really easy to forget about them. I list them all out, and then I also include my shortcut, the true affiliate link, and any details I need to know - such as when the payouts happen and how I can log into the affiliate portal and see all my earnings for that month. It’s super-helpful to have all of these affiliate links listed out, and then my team, as well, has access to this board and they can go and grab them and make sure that we are making the most of our affiliate marketing.

That’s it for today’s video. I hope it was helpful for you and helped clear up how you can get started with affiliate marketing. Thank you so much for watching. If you liked this video, let me know by giving it a thumbs up. Don’t forget to hit Subscribe for more, and I will see you tomorrow with another video.

Learn URL Mapping in Squarespace (video by Megan Minns): https://youtu.be/iZIsXxO71kU

Get your FREE Asana Guide: https://louisehenry.com/asana-roadmap

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