How To Start Affiliate Marketing For Beginners: A Complete Guide in 2023

One of the most important steps to take in creating financial freedom is generating passive income.

This Affiliate Marketing For Beginners Guide will show you how it’s possible to make money while you sleep.

“It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.” 


So said entrepreneur and self-made millionaire Tim Ferris. And you know what? He’s right. If you aspire to create wealth, having a plan isn’t enough. You need to actively work towards realising it.


That’s why many successful entrepreneurs are turning to affiliate marketing, seeing it as an untapped method of generating limitless revenue online. Let’s dive in! 

What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is an innovation on the classic advertiser-promoter-customer relationship. The way it works is that retailers, usually online ones, work with different website owners/bloggers/content creators, also known as affiliates, to promote their product.

 The affiliates will then advertise the product (via an affiliate link) within their own content. Every time a sale is made via that link the affiliate earns a commission. The exact payment terms vary across the industry; however, one thing is for sure: getting into affiliate marketing for beginners is easy and scalable.

Let’s break down affiliate marketing for beginners a bit further with an example.

 Let’s say someone reading your blog clicks on an affiliate link, which takes them to Amazon to buy the retailer’s product. A cookie is generated that shows the sale came from this link. Voila! You have just earned a commission on this sale and generated passive income for yourself in one swift move from affiliate products.  Now you’re an affiliate marketer!

How Do I Become an Affiliate? 

One of the best ways to get started in this growing industry is to take an affiliate marketing course. Beyond that, you take the first few steps toward creating significant wealth online in this affiliate marketing beginners guide. 

Step One – Choose a profitable niche

Knowing how to start affiliate marketing is all about knowing your niche. The best affiliates hold sway in specialist niches. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to produce content to suit too many niches. You won’t come across as expert enough.

Step Two – Cultivate a following

To start your affiliate marketing career, you’ll want to build rapport with an engaged audience that shares a very specific interest. Use your content creation skills to position yourself as an expert in that niche area. Doing these two things means you can customize content to suit your target market and optimize the likelihood that they’ll buy the product based on your recommendation.

Step Three – Register for an affiliate program

Find a company that has an affiliate program and begin reviewing their products and services. Simple. The trick here is to leverage the support and trust of your audience to convert readers and viewers into buyers. The most important thing is to make sure you are offering your audience value in the form of helpful, interesting and informative content.

That’s it! That’s how to start affiliate marketing. You’re welcome.

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: Is It Worth It? 

As a newcomer to affiliate marketing, you may have a number of questions:

  • How much money can I earn? 
  • Is it still profitable? 
  • Can I make enough to replace my day job?

The answer to all of these questions is: it depends. It depends on how well you put into practice the concepts outlined in this affiliate marketing beginners guide. It depends on how much effort and energy you want to devote to becoming an affiliate marketing professional. 

You’ve read this far. So, you obviously have the interest. What’s stopping you from truly learning how to start affiliate marketing successfully? The results are well worth it.

In general, depending on your level of experience and the size of your following you can expect to make:

  • Up to $300 a day for low level affiliates
  • Anywhere from from $300 a day to $3,000 a day for intermediate affiliates
  • Above $3,000 a day for high-level affiliates

As you can see, while getting started can take some time to reach a certain level of momentum to reach these income levels, it is absolutely possible to make a full time income and money online.

How Do I Find Affiliate Products?

The key word here is research. When choosing the right affiliate products to promote, it is essential you look into the following:

  • Will my audience see the value in purchasing this product?
  • Does the retailer offer competitive terms and payouts?
  • Am I genuinely interested and familiar with the product?

Once you can answer yes to all three questions, congratulations! You now have an affiliate product that you can start promoting. 

However, it’s important to never directly tell your audience to buy the product. Remember, you are simply recommending it. Affiliate marketers that steer too much towards selling products without offering real value to their audience quickly fizzle out. 

When looking at affiliate marketing for beginners it’s a good idea to check out Google Trends. This awesome internet search aggregator showcases all of the trending topics people search for across a specified region within a specified date range. 

You can be sure that if a lot of people are searching for something online, enough of them will buy related products to make your job as an affiliate marketer very rewarding.   

How To Start Affiliate Marketing by Joining an Affiliate Network

Remember the classic advertiser-promoter-customer relationship we mentioned at the start of this affiliate marketing for beginners guide? There is another factor that needs to be taken into account: affiliate marketing networks.

 Amazon is the biggest and best example of an affiliate network. That’s because it affords the opportunity for affiliates to promote thousands of different products. A useful tip for how to start affiliate marketing is to join an affiliate network. 

Simply run a Google search for “affiliate networks” and you will reveal countless options. However, to make this affiliate marketing beginners guide even more user-friendly, here are some of the top affiliate networks you can check out for yourself:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Awin
  • CJ Affiliate
  • Peerfly
  • ShareASale

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners eBook

Now that we’ve covered the basics, if you’re ready to take action, I recommend this $7 Affiliate Marketing ebook that covers:

  • What to expect as an Affiliate Marketer – The Lifestyle
  • Your Beginner Strategy
  • Sales Page and Creating the Layout
  • Platforms You Can Use to Make Sales
  • Content Marketing  – Marketing Your Email List, Blogs and Sales Page
Affiliate Marketing For Beginners

Affiliate Marketing For Beginners: Summary

That’s it! Now, you’re all read up on how to start affiliate marketing. Congratulations on finishing this affiliate marketing for beginners guide. It’s now time to start putting the advice outlined here into action.

If you are serious about creating a passive income and generating significant wealth online, affiliate marketing remains one of the best online business ideas. Go on. Take action. It is what the path to success is paved by. What have you got to lose apart from being tied to your 9 to 5 for the rest of your days?