Google My Business Management Google Ads Consulting Facebook Ads Consulting SEO Content Writing Service Hiring Freelance Content Writer Facebook Like Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Digg Del Tumblr VKontakte Print Email Flattr Reddit Buffer Love This Weibo Pocket Xing Odnoklassniki WhatsApp Meneame Blogger Amazon Yahoo Mail Gmail AOL Newsvine HackerNews Evernote MySpace Mail.ru Viadeo Line Flipboard Comments Yummly SMS Viber Telegram Subscribe Skype Facebook Messenger Kakao LiveJournal Yammer Edgar Fintel Mix Instapaper Copy Link Affiliate marketing is a way for publishers like you and me to promote products and services that we like and use to the people we serve through our platform. It’s my favorite kind of marketing arrangement because when used appropriately, it’s the perfect match of a person (me) promoting a product they like (made by someone else) to the people that have chosen to give me their attention (you). I want to talk about what it takes to start affiliate marketing. Let me state two details at the beginning: there will be affiliate links in this post as there are in lots of my posts. (I disclose that fact on my about page, which is good to do and also the law in the US – more on that later.) Second, these are my simple methods for affiliate marketing. There are far more intelligent and complex ways to do this executed by the really smart people I’ve met at events like Affiliate Summit. Start with me, but if you get really involved in this space, go to that conference. The purpose of this article will be to walk you through what it takes to build a media site (or sites) and promote products and services that you use and like. There are other methods to make and deploy affiliate marketing. I’m sharing just mine. My intention isn’t to create some exhaustive tome. I want to get you started and get you on the path to making business happen. Oh, and if you want a handy checklist to go along with this, I’ll trade you. Sign up to my newsletter and get the Start Affiliate Marketing Checklist. Good? Like most any online business idea, people go a little crazy. They think, “This is super easy and I’ll just set up a website and someone will drop bags of money off at my house.” It never EVER happens that way. You will always have to work and people will only ever give you money if you’re delivering some kind of value to them. The method I recommend for affiliate marketing is to build a content media “property” around a topic of interest (YOUR interest) after determining whether there’s some related affiliate marketing programs. That means you’re going to do some blogging, maybe some podcasts, some video. You’ll be in the media making and promoting business. It’s a hard time for this. There is a GLUT of content out there. Author Mark Schaefer wrote about content shock as far back as 2014. There’s just gobs of people creating “content” for the world out there. Two reasons. 1.) If you’re just going to phone it in, stop reading this article. It’s obvious when you do this and no one will pay attention to you. 2.) If you feel strongly about some particular topic or topic area, it will require your effort to make something of value for people. Treat affiliate marketing like a business – Serve people something of value or they’ll go elsewhere. Put in the time. Work to make your product (good content) worth it. Create new content at least once a week – And again, “content” means a blog post or a podcast episode or a video. Some kind of media that serves your potential buyer. Make the content valuable – Anyone can make a few bucks delivering junk content, but that’s not serving anyone. People will quickly realize your goals and abandon you. And Google will punish your search ranking badly if they suspect you’re not working to help the people who show up on your site. Always know the product you’re promoting – This is important. Some affiliate marketing programs are lucrative but are in areas where you have no domain knowledge. Never promote something you can’t vouch for. Either be an active user of the product and service or be closely connected with the company who sells it. YOUR relationship with the community you serve is at stake. Affiliate marketing is a 100% trust-based game. Seek out ways to serve the people who give you their attention – Your relationship is never about selling the product. It’s about equipping the people you serve with tools they might find valuable. That requires you to go looking for products and services that might enhance the experiences of those people who give you their attention. Learn at least the basics of the technology you use to create this material – The very basic affiliate marketing that I do requires that you know how to copy and that you know how to paste. Beyond this, I’m going to recommend a few tools that might make the whole thing a little better. Learn how to post a blog post. Learn how to record and edit a podcast. Learn how to shoot and post a video on something like YouTube. You’ll need these skills. This is likely the hardest part, but it doesn’t have to be. Here at [chrisbrogan.com], my tagline is “Use media and community to earn more customers.” That means I talk about business stuff around marketing and communications for the most part. Right? Pretty wide-stretching topic. The negative to this is that I don’t rank highly on Google for many useful things. The plus is that I can pick lots more things to promote, where it makes sense. For you, I want you to consider Step 1 and Step 2 in the same time frame. As you start looking for a topic area, it has to match up with you well. Is this an area you know well? Can you list ten articles to write about? Is there something people buy to improve their experience in this space? Can you find products for the space? (See Step 2)
The best platform to have for affiliate marketing is a self-hosted blog. A self-hosted blog (i.e. WordPress.com) is essential to maximizing affiliate income because on a non-self-hosted blog (i.e. WordPress.org, Blogger, Blogspot, Tumblr, etc.), you don’t own your own website, and thus, do not have freedom to place affiliate links wherever you’d like on your blog.

Email marketing: This is best in small doses. You don't want any partners sending out bulk emails to customers who aren't interested in your products or services, but with proper consideration for who's receiving the email, this could be an effective method. For instance, if you sell design tools, you might reach out to marketing agencies and ask, if they're working with a specific client on a design project, whether they might consider sending a URL from your site within the body of the email. This could help their clients leverage your tools to create higher-quality content, while giving agencies an added source of income.
Secondly, you’ll also need to provide a way to get paid. Many affiliate programs pay via Paypal so it will be a necessity that you get a Paypal account. All you’ll need to share is your Paypal email address. Still, other programs will want to pay via direct deposit into a checking account. This is why it’s also a good idea to register for a free business checking account.