How Affiliate Marketing Works Step-By-Step

May 22, 2021

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Affiliate Millionaire

If you want a complete step-by-step guide on how affiliate marketing works, you have reached the right place.

I will assume that you know what affiliate marketing is. Otherwise, you can read this overview of affiliate marketing before you continue to read this hands-on guide.

In this article, I will cover:

How affiliate marketing is important in digital marketing
How affiliate marketing works on three of the major platforms
If affiliate marketing is really worth the effort

Click on the blue “Continue”-button below to get all the details.

Table of Contents

Newsletter

How Affiliate Marketing Is Important in Digital Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing.

The term “digital marketing” is sometimes referred to as “online marketing.” It is a broad term that consists of many different ways to market products to customers, all happening in the digital world rather than the physical one.

Digital marketing includes everything that I will discuss in this article and many other things as well.

As we all know, there are two behemoths in the online marketing world, which are Facebook and Amazon. I will start with these two before I discuss Instagram.

Can Affiliate Marketing Be Done on Facebook?

Yes, affiliate marketing works on Facebook. Make sure that you read this section if you decide to take this route, and give me a moment to explain the right way to do it.

If you are starting your journey, it might be good to know a few common pitfalls that newbies often face when marketing on Facebook.

DO NOT do the following things on Facebook:

Paste your affiliate link into your posts that you will get from the affiliate program you join. If you do it, Facebook will not approve your post, and you might risking your account if you do it.
Go into Facebook groups, and spam people with your link. It is another sure way to get banned from these groups and viewed as a spammer. It might work for a while, but when the admins of the group or Facebook understands what you’re up to, you will be banned and maybe have your account shut down permanently.
Try to promote things from your personal account. It might sound like a smart move. However, if your account is banned, you will not be able to look at a cute cat video.

You might think I don’t know what I am talking about because you have seen some random guy or gal on Youtube doing it, claiming it to work.

I’m sorry to break the bad news for you. It is all fake.

I tried to do it, and guess what? My account was permanently closed in 30 minutes. Luckily, I tried it on a Business Manager account, so I still have my personal profile on Facebook.

If I would be able to start all over, or was just starting out, here is what YOU SHOULD DO on Facebook:

Join a couple of groups to see what the market is discussing now.
Create a group on your own, and start to invite people to that group.
Before you create a business manager account, which is free, you need some education before you start to market your links, which I will help you with within the free resources section below.
Create a button inside of your group that links to your landing page, and collect their emails.
Start to learn, and implement what you learned in your course.

I hope you don’t allow the 5-steps I listed above to scare you away from giving marketing on Facebook a go.

To help you get started, there is a free resources section below that you can use to get all the training you need and everything you need to collect people’s emails.

FREE RESOURCES:

The recommended Facebook marketing training for you.

Create your account on Facebook business manager here.

The software you need to create an email autoresponder that works best with this method.

Some of the links above are affiliate links. If you decide to click through and purchase through our links, we will earn a commission from your purchase. There will be no additional cost to you. The money we earn from your purchase will help us keep up this site and create more content like this for the foreseeable future.

How Affiliate Marketing Works with Amazon

There are two major ways to make affiliate marketing work if you choose to use Amazon as your primary source of affiliate income:

Review sites. You review different products you know customers will appreciate and want to purchase, e.g., kitchen appliances.
Affiliate niche sites. You only put certain products within a specialized market, often referred to as a “niche” in marketing language, on a blog, or an online store, e.g., dog toys or knives for professional chefs.

To get customers, they often use paid ads on their social media accounts.

People who take this route often get small commissions of 0-10%, depending on customer purchases within a 24-hour window.

It might sound like a small commission, and it truly is on the lower side of things.

However, there is a silver lining to this that might not be obvious if you only look at the rate of commissions that Amazon is offering their affiliates.

Are you ready for it?

Here it is: You get a commission from everything the customer purchases within 24 hours.

Even if it is not the product you originally shared with them, you still get the commission. Honestly, that is the best part of this particular kind of affiliate marketing.

There are a ton of available traffic methods available to you. In this article, two are Facebook and Instagram, but the sky is the limit, and you can even start a Youtube channel where you unbox or demonstrate how they work.

You should consider sending them to a landing page that you own and control yourself.

It will allow you to talk a bit about the product or products you are promoting. You don’t need to own a blog. A simple landing page with more information on the products will work too.

If you choose this route, make sure that you get your own domain name too.

To get started immediately, check out the free resources section below.

FREE RESOURCES:

Get a domain name here.

Join Amazon Associates, which is their affiliate program here.

My #1 recommended Facebook training for you.

Get Instagram training here.

Get the best Youtube training that I have found here.

How Affiliate Marketing Works on Instagram

Affiliate marketing on this platform works very differently from the models I have shared with you so far.

One of the main reasons is that you can only share one link in your bio.

Compared to the other platforms discussed before, it is easy and hard to do any marketing on Instagram. At least, that is my experience with this platform.

Here we have an attention-grabbing example of an Instagram post to get people to visit a blog.

I do know that many successful affiliates are using Instagram to promote their products.

For that reason, I will share two pieces of training that will help you get the right start. By joining the training in the free resources section, you will be better off than 95% of all the people trying to sell it.

If you are just starting, I reco that you start by familiarizing yourself with Facebook’s ad manager.

There are a couple of different ad campaign choices that you can make, and if you are just starting, I recommend that you take the Facebook course that I shared in the previous section.

However, you must know these specific terms before you start any ad campaigns:

Brand awareness – it is a campaign to help you raise awareness of your brand. It is a cheap way to raise awareness of your brand, and maybe you will gain some new followers.
Reach – If you want to reach out to potential customers, this option is probably the best choice for you.
Traffic – Drive real human eye-balls to your site or online shop. Works if you are promoting different offers as an affiliate too. NOTE: Don’t use this option immediately. I recommend that you start with a likes campaign before you consider this option.
Engagement – Use this option first. Get some likes and some trust. It helps you “warm up” the Facebook pixel.
App installations – If you have an app, this is the best choice for you.
Video views – Get more views to your videos (It doesn’t work with Youtube videos).
Lead-generation – Get potential customer’s emails without making them leave Facebook.

One of the biggest pros is that you will set your own budget and choose your target market and audience.

I will share a couple of free resources to help you start your Instagram journey to make money as an affiliate on this platform.

FREE RESOURCES:

The best affiliate marketing training for you

Facebook Ad Manager

Is an Affiliate Marketing Course Really Worth It?

You are wondering whether you should invest in an affiliate marketing course or not, right?

Now, I don’t know which affiliate marketing course you have in mind, but I can tell you that if you have no experience, it will probably be the best and wisest choice you can make.

Typically, an affiliate marketing course is worth the investment if you have never made money in the past, especially if you:

Are a complete beginner
Have never made any sales
Don’t know where to start
Want to make affiliate marketing replace your current job
Want to start an online side-hustle

People who invest in an affiliate marketing course will often see results if they implement what they learn. Therefore, if you are the 1% who does it, you will be better off than most people, and it will be a sound investment to make.

However, since most people (99%) never implement what they learn, they get little to no results.

If you are serious about making a full-time living in affiliate marketing, even if you might be thinking of it as a side hustle right now, it will be a smart investment in yourself and your business to invest in an affiliate marketing course.

You will find a couple of them, both paid and free, in the resources section below.