What is affiliate marketing? How do I start affiliate marketing? Do I need marketing skills to start affiliate marketing properly? Is affiliate marketing right for me? What are the best affiliate marketing programs? There are many questions in the minds of people interested in starting affiliate marketing, preventing them from making the right decision. Therefore, I created this comprehensive step-by-step guide for affiliate marketing for you, even if you do not have any previous experience.
Note : Sometimes I mention the word (affiliate) and mean affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
Aside from academic definitions, affiliate marketing refers to any activity carried out by a marketer for a business owner in exchange for which he takes a commission or a percentage of sales.
Of course, this definition includes activities conducted through sales representatives and brokerage companies, but we are talking here about online affiliate marketing.
For example, you charge the merchant a certain commission for every customer who buys through you, or completes a certain action.
Even AdSense ads are considered an affiliate marketing system, because you take a fixed amount for every person who clicks on the ad and goes to the merchant’s site.
I will explain the most popular types to you in better detail.
- CPS (Cost Per Sale)
The marketer takes a commission from the merchant for each sale completed, and the commission is often a percentage of the selling price of the product.
For example, after the customer buys an iPhone ($1,000), the marketer (through whom the customer made the purchase) charges the marketer 2% of the product price ($20).
There are some affiliate marketing systems that give you a fixed amount for any sale, such as Payoneer that gives you $25 (a fixed amount) for every customer who registers an account with Payoneer and receives more than a thousand dollars.
- CPA (Cost Per Action)
It means taking a fixed amount in exchange for completing a simple procedure from the customer (the customer is not required to complete the purchase), such as filling out a form or downloading an application.
In this system, the merchant offers a specific action that he wants to collect from the target segment, and pays you a fixed amount for each person who comes through you and completes this action.
For example, Souq.com pays you $1 or $2 for every person who downloads their application.
Only once the user downloads the application do you receive $1, regardless of whether he later completes the purchase or not.
The most popular CPA offers that are displayed are as follows:
- CPL (Cost per lead): Payment is made for each targeted user who registers his personal data, such as email or phone number.
- CPI (Cost per install): Payment is made for each user who downloads a specific application.
- CPC (cost per click): Payment is made for each user who clicks on an ad.
- CPM (cost per mile): Payment is made for every 1,000 users who view the ad
- CPV (cost per view): You pay for every single ad view.
Of course, the merchant sets conditions for the special offer, such as the target country, whether it is male or female, etc., and thus the payment prices change based on these conditions.
Each of these parts requires a lengthy explanation from several articles, but I will try to tell you in this explanation how to get started on the right foot, focusing on CPS, as it is the easiest for beginners.
How are commissions tracked?
Some people ask: How do I guarantee that all people who purchase a specific product through me will be charged the purchase commission and added to my balance?
Simply : from within the control panel, you obtain your own tracking link.
Anyone who purchases from this through this link, the specified commission is calculated and added to your balance (according to the terms of use of the program you are working with).
For example, I am in Amazon’s affiliate program, and I want to promote this laptop:
I’ll go to my Amazon Associate dashboard and generate a tracking link for this product, and I’ll have a tracking link that looks like this: https://amzn.to/2AEpn75
The main link to the product is like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RF1XD36
How do I withdraw profits from affiliate marketing platforms?
This question comes to the mind of anyone who wants to start an online business
I now reside in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Morocco, and I do affiliate marketing for an American company, for example. How will I receive the profits I made with this company?
There are very many ways to receive money online, and I do not know anyone residing in any country who has faced the problem of withdrawing their profits from the Internet…
Even countries that are subject to an economic blockade, such as Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon (may God bless them)…
However, these methods differ from one company to another, and some of these methods deduct high commissions and taxes from it, while others do not. I will explain the matter to you in a simplified manner.
Often, withdrawing funds occurs in one of two cases, as in this picture:
The first case: The affiliate company makes a direct financial transfer to your account in the local bank
For example: The company’s headquarters is in California and you make a bank transfer from California to your bank account in Cairo (your place of residence)…
However, not all companies adopt this method, and those who do adopt it are for large amounts ($500+), especially since the transfer commission is often high.
There are also some companies that rely on financial transfer services such as: (Western Union), where you can receive money from any Western Union branch in your city… but this case is also rare.
The second case: This is often the most common among companies, as the company sends money through your account in an electronic bank (the most famous of which are PayPal and Pioneer), and then you receive the money from the electronic bank.
In this case you have:
1- A bank account in the local bank (Bank of Cairo, Jeddah, Rabat, or Algiers).
2- A bank account in an electronic bank (PayPal or Payoneer).
You receive the profits through your PayPal account, then you send the money from PayPal to your local bank account, then you go to the local bank to receive the money in your hand 🙂
For countries that have some crises (Syria, for example), you will often need an intermediary person who will receive the money from the company (through the means it provides), and then you will receive the money from this person.
This idea is simple, but the methods differ from one company to another, and the methods of receiving money in Egypt are different from Morocco and Algeria, for example, and commissions increase or decrease accordingly.
Perhaps God will make things easier for us to write a detailed article later on the methods of receiving money in each country.
If you now have any questions, put them in the comments and I will answer them, God willing.
How do I start affiliate marketing?
In order to start your affiliate program correctly, you need to follow organized steps without skipping any of the steps.
These steps often begin by choosing the market >> then choosing the products >> then choosing the source of promotion and method of work >> then building the traffic source >> then creating content and promotion >> then receiving profits.
In fact, these steps require practical application, so I advise you to watch this video that explains this process in a practical way:
Sources:
Bluehost Hosting Bluehost Offer
Admitad
Theme
Forest Platform
SharmRock Template
Rank Math Add-on
Keyword Planner Tool
Keyword Tool
The most popular affiliate marketing programs
Before I tell you about the best companies to register with, you need to think in the opposite way.
Determine the products you will promote, and based on that choose the appropriate network.
For example, your skills qualify you to sell fitness products in Arab countries. You will search for the best affiliate marketing programs that offer products suitable for people interested in fitness.
Or you are a person who loves to talk about technology, review electronics news, etc., you will search for suitable products to promote as an affiliate.
But in general, I will tell you the most famous affiliate marketing networks, in which you will find many suitable products:
Online stores
Most major online stores have their own affiliate marketing system, such as: Amazon, Jumia, Namshi, Amazon, Ali Express, and eBay.
You can participate in the store’s affiliate marketing program directly.
You will often find in the links at the bottom of the site the word (Affiliate Program) or (Affiliate Program) or a word to that effect.
As is the case on Amazon.com
At the bottom of the site you will find the word (Become an affiliate)
If you click on it, you will be taken to the Amazon affiliate program page
On this page you will find all the information about the Amazon affiliate program: information about the program, registering a new account, contacting technical support, frequently asked questions, etc.
You can easily subscribe to any affiliate program for any other store in the same way. Here are the most popular affiliate marketing programs:
- Amazon
- Jumia
- walk
- eBay
- eTsy
- Aliexpress
- booking
- Camel
- Canon
- BodyBuilding
- Adidas
- Nordstrom
- Puma
- Toms
- Vance
- kids
There are some intermediary platforms between the merchant and the affiliate, where you register with them, and then after completing the registration, you have the possibility to enroll in the affiliate programs of many companies.
These platforms are characterized by the presence of a wide variety of affiliate programs that you can participate in, and they are distinguished by providing a better tracking and support system for affiliates and merchants. In return, it takes a commission from you in the amount of 2% of your profits.
Some intermediary platforms
Affiliate marketing success story
There are many successful case studies in different markets.
I will not tell you 10 or 20 successful stories until you are convinced that you can achieve a good return from affiliate marketing..
But I will mention one story to you that is truly inspiring even in terms of building websites in general based on SEO..
This study of one of the sites in Niche (Outdoors) I quoted from one of the blogs, as it was truly inspiring to me in the way the site owner thinks, and it is similar to the method I relied on in the previous video, so I wanted to share the story with you.
The website owner started from scratch and within two years he obtained more than a million page views, and achieved an affiliate income of about $100k, relying on SEO only.
The site owner was mainly focused on obtaining targeted visitors from the search results who were interested in the site’s market, and thus he could convince them to buy affiliate products easily.
The site was mainly based on Amazon Affiliate.
the beginning
The website owner initially decided to build a new blog despite the existence of hundreds of other blogs, but he found an opportunity in the market through which he could provide new content that would reach the targeted people.
In addition, he believes that search engine optimization is not a complicated process, and through it he can obtain thousands of targeted visitors.
Ranking in 78,000 keywords
The owner of the site appeared in more than 78k keywords, because he was analyzing the keywords well. He does not write any new topic except by analyzing the keywords derived from this topic well, and then including them in the sub-ideas of the articles as appropriate.
Note: This number means that all these keywords rise in the first 100 results on Google.
Competitor analysis
He did not start by choosing all the topics that could be talked about in the Outdoor niche, but he started by knowing the topics that competitors were talking about and that had generated many visits for them, then he would take these topics and think about them as the cornerstone of the content of his new website.
He relied on the aHrefs tool to extract data about the 20 largest competitors in his niche, brought the keywords from which they get targeted visitors, and began building content based on these keywords.
For example, if you analyze the website Webteb, which is famous for its medical content, and find that the most visited words are (weight loss, diet, immune strengthening).
You will write high-quality competitive articles on these topics in a better and more effective way that adds more value to the visitor than the topics you wrote about.
Note: I added this illustrative example of my own, to learn how to apply the study in the Arab market.
Care for every article
Now we want to write an article about (strengthening immunity). Will we write any ideas that come to our minds to cover this article?
Of course not, the issue needs more attention.
After the site owner has analyzed the keywords appropriately, he will begin to take care of each article, the sub-keywords it contains, and the appropriate topics to discuss in it.
He carried out this task by relying on aHrefs , UberSuggest , and Google search , so that he extracts keywords derived from the main word and sub-topics that can be covered in a manner that suits the researcher’s intent from the main topic. Especially in articles that are already advanced in the first results in Google.
Building links
The main method he relied on to build backlinks was guest posting.
Of course, we are not talking about this strategy in the annoying way in which dozens of articles are published daily and each article contains dozens of links to your site, but we are talking about Guest Posting the way Google likes it.
The site owner has created high-quality content and published it on blogs, with some references to it in context.
I’ll give you a practical example:
In this article published on the Riyadh Blog, it is an article that talks about the steps for creating an online store
It contains a reference to the word (marketing). If the visitor clicks on the text, he will be taken to an external blog post that talks about electronic marketing in another article.
Here is the link to the Riyadh article if you want to view it.
This example helps you reach more targeted visitors, and in addition, it gives Google confidence in your site, that there are other sites referring to you.
After creating the blog, the site owner created 25 wonderful articles in the manner we mentioned, and then he began external communication to publish Guest Posting.
The site owner began corresponding with other site owners to post guest posts. Many of them ignored him, but some began to interact with him, and approximately 25-30 guest articles occurred within the first months.
In return, he began earning some commissions from affiliate marketing for the Amazon website, as follows:
May 2016 = $334
July 2016 = $2,165
November 2016 = $4,525
February 2017 = $7850
After 14 months of launching the site, its profits reached $7,800, and during this entire period the main reliance was on SEO visitors only.
The problem he had with getting a guest post is that the majority of other site owners do not know him, and therefore it is difficult for them to trust a new site and give it references.
Therefore, the site owner overcame this problem by building personal relationships with site owners by interacting with them through social media, and participating with them in some useful contributions.
Conclusion
In this guide, I tried to collect for you some basics that will help you explore affiliate marketing and know the practical steps that depend on it to start correctly.
As long as there are some major companies that rely on affiliate marketing, such as the brands we talked about, there are certainly respectable numbers that are paid to the marketers who work with them.
I do not like to say that the best path to success is to rely on such and such an affiliate program or to rely on such and such a traffic source, and I do not work in the foreign market and you do not work in the Arab market, but I tried to diversify the work methods for you so that you can choose what suits you.
I hope you benefited from this guide..
Share with us your next experience 🙂
