How to Do Affiliate Marketing in 2022: The Ultimate Guide

If you are thinking of different ways to make money with your website or your YouTube channel, you have probably heard of affiliate marketing. It is a very useful option for generating income in the digital world. But, how do you do affiliate marketing? In this article, you have everything you need to know to put it into practice.

Let’s get started!

What is Affiliate Marketing and How Does It Work?

Before addressing how to do affiliate marketing, we must be very clear on its definition. Affiliate marketing is a method of generating income through the promotion of products or services.

Generally, this promotion is done through your own website or blog, a YouTube channel, a social media profile as an influencer, or a landing page with traffic campaigns. On these sites, we include a unique link that will direct the user to purchase a product or service. Every time the user makes a purchase through that link, we earn a small commission.

To obtain that link, we will register on the platform of the service in question, or we will contact the brands and companies that offer this possibility to reach a promotional agreement.

Then, the magical and unparalleled cookie comes into play, which tracks the user’s steps. This is what will inform that purchases have been made after passing through our link.

Types of Affiliate Income That Can Be Earned

You may be wondering if there is only one type of affiliate income. And the answer is no. There are several ways to earn income through affiliate marketing. Among these types, we find the following:

• By driving traffic. This is known as CPC and consists of earning income for every click received on the service or product page in question.
• By generating leads. Also known as CPL, income is earned for every registration made through our link.
• By performing an action. In this case, the benefit is obtained if the user performs a specific action through our link: registration, survey…etc.
• By sale. This is the most widespread and the one you will find most when understanding how to do affiliate marketing and earn money from it. For every sale made through our link, we will receive a commission.

Guide to Affiliate Marketing

Once we understand what affiliate marketing is, we can get to work. Below, I detail everything we need to earn income with affiliates:

Choose a Niche to Develop the Activity

The first thing is to conduct a study of topics and focus on something specific, that is, a niche. With a niche website or a specialized YouTube channel, we will have many more options to earn income with affiliates.

It’s not the same to talk about fishing gear in general than to dedicate a website to types of fishing line for rivers, for example. In the second case, we will be targeting a very specific topic. This will limit us to a smaller number of very specific searches, but with much lower competition, which gives us more possibilities to earn money through affiliation.

As we gain traction in the niche we choose, we can always scale that topic and cover other categories by taking advantage of the pull we have already gained.

Establish a Blog or YouTube Channel

These are the two most recommended formats for doing affiliate marketing. And if I had to choose, I would say that the blog is still a notch above in this mission.

By creating content that ranks for the keywords affecting our specific niche, we can include affiliate links and direct people to make their purchases. They will find everything in the text they reach thanks to their curiosity.

In the case of YouTube, we offer audiovisual content, which is more agile, but the affiliate links will be in the video description or in a floating card.

Create Valuable Content and Work on SEO

Before we start thinking about how much money we will earn with affiliates and how many yachts it can buy us, we must be clear about one thing: if we do not create valuable content, no one will visit our blog or channel.

And without users visiting our content, we will have no one to click on our affiliate links. Without clicks, there are no purchases; without purchases, there are no profits… you get the idea, right?

Put yourself in the user’s shoes and respond to their concerns. And you don’t need to master telekinesis to know what those concerns are. Just check the autocomplete searches on Google and YouTube or, better yet, use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or SEMrush, which will give us the data on the keywords we need.

This way, if we address frequently searched questions and do so by creating content that truly meets those user needs, we will gain their trust when it comes to clicking on our recommendations. Other media will link to us. And Google will look favorably upon us when it comes to positioning.

Identify the Affiliate Platforms That Suit You Best

When understanding how to do affiliate marketing, it is very important to know that we are not tied to a single product or service. That is, we can carry out affiliate marketing for all brands in the same sector.

However, it is very important to identify those services or products that we will recommend to our audience, based on the needs and concerns that have drawn their attention. From specific products on Amazon to very specific CRM services, it all depends on the niche we are covering.

The good thing about affiliation is that, in most cases, user purchases will generate us a benefit, even if they do not end up buying what we recommended. If they accessed through our link but decided on another product from that same website or platform, they are still a customer who arrived thanks to us.

Use Social Media to Reach More People

Building community and engagement through social media brings greater affiliate benefits. Here, we not only promote our affiliate links, but we also interact with our audience enhancing our brand and projecting that necessary trust for them to consider us a reference.

Therefore, on social media, we find a double value: our affiliate link reaches more people and we capture the attention of more users who will come to our website or channel. Once they are there, they will have the opportunity to click on our affiliate links.

Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Now that you know how to do affiliate marketing, you might be wondering why do it and what drawbacks you might encounter when putting it into practice. Therefore, let’s summarize its main points for and against:

Pros of Affiliate Marketing

One of the main virtues of affiliate marketing is its simplicity. It is a great way to start generating income online without getting too tangled up. Simply, we register as affiliates on the relevant platforms and place the link provided to us. It’s that simple.

On the other hand, we are not involved in returns, stock management, and other issues related to e-commerce. We act merely as a recommendation and receive a benefit in return.

Another great advantage is that it does not cost us anything. Generally, no platform or brand will charge us money to obtain an affiliate link. They are interested in us bringing them as many customers as possible, and we are rewarded for it.

Finally, it is a passive source of income. That is, it continues to generate money while we focus on other things. If our content is well-positioned and reaches more people, users will click on the link and generate recurring income for us.

Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Implementing an affiliate strategy has many benefits, but it’s not as simple as just placing a link and making money. We must consider a series of small drawbacks before putting it into practice.

First, working on our SEO positioning is a must. We may have published a lot of content, but if we haven’t focused on meeting user needs and positioning them, we won’t gain any economic return. Basically, because there won’t be users arriving to click.

Finally, although we don’t have to pay to obtain our affiliate link, we do have to wait to be able to cash out our earnings. Generally, each brand has a minimum amount of generated income to be able to withdraw. If we don’t reach those limits, our earnings will be held until we reach the established figure. To know those figures, it is advisable to study the conditions of each affiliate program.

In this article, I have focused on affiliate options like blogs and YouTube channels because they are the most widespread. But remember that you can also generate income as an affiliate through your influencer profile on social media or through a landing page with traffic campaigns (Google Ads, Facebook Ads… etc.).

Do you already know how to do affiliate marketing? You will have seen that it brings numerous benefits if worked properly. If you already have your project up and running and want to obtain your affiliate link from Unancor, you can do so. Register and automatically get your affiliate link. If you are already registered, just go to your “Profile” section to obtain your link.

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See you in the next post!